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My Top Five Christmas Songs

Although they seemingly get air-play earlier and earlier each year, I really love Christmas music. Here are my top five (in no particular order).

- Some Children See Him
- Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas
- Blue Christmas
- O Holy Night
and...
- Silent Night

What are yours?

Happy Thanksgiving

In 1908, President Theodore Roosevelt, issued the following proclamation. His call to honor God and count our blessings rings as true today as it did 101 years ago.

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA - A PROCLAMATION
Once again the season is at hand when, according to the ancient custom of our people, it becomes the duty of the President to appoint a day of prayer and of thanksgiving to God.

Year by year this nation grows in strength and worldly power. During the century and a quarter that has elapsed since our entry into the circle of independent peoples, we have grown and prospered in material things to a degree never known before, and not now known in any other country. The thirteen colonies which struggled along the seacoast of the Atlantic and were hemmed in but a few miles west of tidewater by the Indian-haunted wilderness, have been transformed into the mightiest republic which the world has ever seen. Its domains stretch across the continent from one to the other of the two greatest oceans, and it exercises dominion alike in the arctic and tropic realms. The growth in wealth and population has surpassed even the growth in territory. Nowhere else in the world is the average of individual comfort and material well-being as high as in our fortunate land.

For the very reason that in material well-being we have thus abounded, we owe it to the Almighty to show equal progress in moral and spiritual things...

To read the rest, click HERE.

Image: Theodore Roosevelt, 1858-1919, 26th President of the United States of America

The Importance of October 31st

When do you think of when you think of October 31st? My guess is Halloween. And before you think this will be some annual diatribe against that particular holiday, think again, my friend. In my world view, October 31st should be honored as Reformation Day.

It was on October 31, 1517, that a young Augustinian monk and university professor called Martin Luther nailed 95 topics (or theses) for debate to a church door in Wittenburg, Germany. And when he did, the Reformation was born.

The true gospel of Jesus Christ had been lost amidst the pomp, ceremony, false teaching, and religiosity of the church. But God, as always, had a remnant wholly committed to Him and His Truth. During that time, councils and popes spoke with authority which they said was equal to Holy Scripture; Luther called them on it. He used slogans which the average layman could remember: Sola Scriptura, Scripture alone is the authority for faith and life, and Sola Fide, Sola Gratia, Solus Christos, which means that it is by faith alone through God's grace alone through the Person of Jesus Christ alone that we are declared righteous and pardoned by God.

What will you be doing this October 31st? Among other things, I'll be breathing a prayer of thanks to God for courageous men and women who brought forth the Light of the Gospel from the darker recesses of the Middle Ages.

For an excellent and brief overview of the Reformation, click here.

The Last Full Measure of Devotion

"We cannot," intoned Abraham Lincoln, as, standing on soil stained by Union and Confederate blood, he delivered one of the most famous orations of all time, "we cannot dedicate, cannot consecrate, this ground. The brave men who struggled here have consecrated it forever. It is for us to dedicate ourselves to the cause to which they here gave the last full measure of devotion; it is for us to resolve that these men shall not have died in vain."

Originally known as Decoration Day, Memorial Day has its beginnings in the honor and decoration of Union graves. It was officially proclaimed on May 5, 1868, by Union general John Logan. On May 30th, graves were decorated. The former Confederate States refused to acknowledge that particular day, preferring instead to honor the dead on separate days. It wasn't until after World War I that the day of honor evolved into remembering all American soldiers killed in battle - not just those from the War Between the States. (Click here to watch the History Channel's Salute to the American Soldier [three minutes].)

Have we forgotten the significance of this day? Too many only think of this holiday as a three-day weekend with great furniture sales. To help America educate, re-educate, and remind Americans of this day, a National Moment of Remembrance resolution was passed in December 2000. All Americans are asked, "To voluntarily and informally observe in their own way a Moment of remembrance and respect, pausing from whatever they are doing for a moment of silence or listening to 'Taps." We are asked to do this at 3:00 p.m., local time.

I don't know how you will spend Memorial Day. I know I will breathe a prayer of thanks for those who gave their last full measure of devotion that we as Americans might be free.

I think I'll go hang our flag up now.

Monday Morning Reflections

- This was one of the most amazing weekends EVER at LowCountry Community Church!

- Over 40 people responded to Jesus' invitation to become Lord of their lives.  It was incredibly humbling to be a small part of that.

- Our total church attendance was the largest in our history!  Over 2200 worshippers at both campuses in nine services. Over 500 were children between newborns and 5th-graders.

- The Hilton Head campus had a record attendance: 231 in three services!

- The Bluffton campus had almost 2000 worshippers in six services.

- We unapologetically preached the gospel.  I tied the gospel presentation in with Luke 15 and how Jesus is The Locator, seeking to place us in a right relationship with God.  People responded to Jesus at eight of nine services.

- I have never been as absolutely bone-tired/exhausted as I was yesterday when all was said and done. It's going to take a few days for me to re-group physically and mentally.  But it's a good kind of tired! I almost didn't make it through the message at 10:00 a.m. yesterday. The room started closing in on me (like it does before you pass out). I made a dramatic pause - which I hoped people thought was for oratorical reasons (!)- and tried to grab some deep breaths. I had Pastor Brian on stand-by for the 11:30 service.  Thankfully, prayer and protein kicked in. I ended the day feeling great!

- The music video that Clay and John, along with a cast of dozens put together, ROCKED and was an incredible addition to our worship experience. I hope we can get it on-line; you've got to see it.

- I watched it every time we played it throughout the weekend.

- Following the last service on Sunday, I saw two lines of people queued up to receive new believer packets from our Information Window...it was a beautiful sight!

- LCC'ers, has it sunk in yet that over 120 people have prayed to receive Christ in the last three weeks?!  Do you realize - sadly - that this is so abnormal in the American church today?! Let's keep ourselves in the place where God wants us: sharing His good news and leading people to the cross!

- We begin a new series this weekend called,

 

-  It's going to be a great series!  Have a wonderful day!

One Exciting Weekend Ahead!

Easter weekend, is for me, one of the most exciting of the year.  People come out from many different places and parts of the world to worship at LCC.  Those who are CEO people (Christmas and Easter Only) show up; we have a wonderful opportunity to present Jesus, in all His power and glory, to everyone.

I make no apologies that our nine services at LowCountry are out-and-out evangelistic.  I try to preach this weekend as if it's my first sermon and as if it's my last. I will be preaching from Luke 15 which contains the parables of the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost person. Jesus is The Locator and He is seeking out those are lost.

Please do all you can to invite those without Jesus in their lives to attend one of our nine services at two campuses.  Here are the service times and locations. And again, LCC'ers, please try to attend any service other than Sunday at 10:00 or 11:30 a.m. Those will be slammed (but that's a good thing!)

The Importance of the Individual

We're offering nine Easter services on two campuses this year; six of those services I will personally preach at our Bluffton campus. We expect that over 2000 worshipers will attend.  Those are pretty heady numbers for someone like me who grew up in a Baptist mission church where, when we exceeded 50 in attendance, there was cause for great rejoicing.

This is the first time in my ministry where we are speaking in terms of thousands (plural).  Which has made me think about the individual. 

I'm at Lake Marion today and through the pouring rain, I am watching four college-age young men fish. It reminds me of a line by my favorite author, F. W. Boreham. He writes an essay I love called, "The Stockman."  In it he draws attention to some of the greatest preachers of yesteryear: Moody, Spurgeon, Whitefield, and Wesley.  Regarding the throngs that flocked to hear these men of God preach, Boreham writes, "They liked to see a multitude of faces, just like an angler likes to feel that his line is surrounded by a multitude of fish; it enhances his chance of catching, it quick succession, first one fish, and then another, but that is all. To the great evangelists the crowd was simply the multiplied opportunity for individual conquest."

What truth!  Even in the midst of the crowd, God cares for and loves the individual.

This Easter, as God draws thousands to LowCountry, please pray that I may never forget: I preach for an audience of One to an audience of one.

Will the Real St. Patrick Please Stand Up?

I can stand it no longer.  I have something within me, that whenever I see an injustice being committed on such a regular basis, I must address it and do all I can to set the record straight!  I feel like this around Christmas and Easter each year when I see what has become of the “high and holy days” of the Christian faith.  The holiday I tackle with you now, is not on the same scale as the aforementioned holidays, but its observance has bothered me enough to set me a-scribblin’. Yesterday, they turn the river in Chicago green.  Around here,Lowcountry locals whose ancestry and heritage are not remotely connected with Ireland rushed to proclaim their Gaelic allegiance by dying their hair green, “wearing the green”, and carry around three- and four-leafed clovers. Our local newspaper headlined its St. Patty's Day edition with, "Kiss Me Anyway!"I speak, of course, about St. Patrick’s Day. (In the interest of full disclosure, I do carry around some Irish blood, although the family surname is Scottish.  My gggg-grandmother, Sarah Mullin, came to our American shores from Ireland in 1802. And the liberties we have taken with Patrick, after whom this holiday bears its moniker!  He is pictured as a leprechaun of sorts, sporting a green hat, with a short, red, pointed beard, holding aloft a pint of Guinness.  Not too far removed from the Notre Dame Fighting Irish mascot.  And then there’s the legend that he drove all the snakes out of Ireland they slithered into the sea and drowned.Being a revered pagan symbol, they fled before this harbinger of Christianity.

Allow me to set some of the record straight and share with you a bit of the real story of Patrick of Ireland.  You may be surprised to learn that Patrick wasn’t even Irish!  He was an Englishman, who grew up in during the inglorious days (or glorious days, depending upon your world view), of the Roman Empire. He was born into a wealthy family either near Dunbarton Scotland, or near the Severn Estuary in (no one really knows for sure) around 373 A.D.His father, Calpurnius, sat on the town council and in the local assembly of Christians, his father was a deacon. Patrick’s given name is believed to have been Maewyn Succat (he took on Patrick, or Patricus, after he became a priest. When Patrick was sixteen years old, he was captured from his hometown by a raiding band of Irish brigands.He was taken to Ulster, where he was sold into slavery to a chieftain for six years.He worked as a swineherder, and experienced terrible hardship and loneliness.  He witnessed firsthand, at a banquet of all places, the desperate and cruel way of pagan, Irish life.  While serving at the banquet he was a witness to a captured prince being roasted alive over an open fire.  Three years of this life brought Maewyn to his knees.  He had grown up as a nominal Christian, but his slavery years brought his faith in God into personal reality.  In his Confession, he wrote, “And there the Lord opened up my awareness of my unbelief so that I might, however late, remember my faults and turn with all my heart to the Lord my God.” While praying one night, at age 22, Succat said that the Holy Spirit revealed an escape plan to him.  He was led to escape by ship to Gaul, (now France), and it was there he made his way to a monastery where he took the vows of a monk.He surrendered his English name and took the Latin name, Patricus.  Eventually, he was reunited with his family in England. While living once again in his beloved England, by now age 45, he had a dream.  God had burdened his heart for the people of Ireland. He did not, for obvious reasons, desire to go back, but he knew that his God-ordained destiny meant Ireland was in his future.  He believed Christ was asking him to return to Ulster, not as a slave again, but as a missionary.  He shared this vision with his family who pleaded with him to stay home and play it safe.  But his vision also included the cries of his former tormentors, saying, “We beg you to come and walk amongst us.”  Patrick writes, “I was stung with remorse in my heart…" He returned to and served among her people for 31 years.  He moved among them preaching the gospel of Christ.  He spent the remainder of his life there and it is estimated that he baptized over 120,000 converts during his ministry.  He formed these converts into more than 200 churches.  Out of these converts came Columbanus, who took the gospel to the Swiss and Columba, who preached the gospel among the Scottish. Patrick died in Most of the relics of Patrick were destroyed during the turbulent Reformation of the 1500s and 1600s.  Tour guides will show you, however, Patrick’s four-sided iron bell in a public museum, a stone chair at the Rock of Cashel is said to have been his, and there is a specific mountain believed to be the one where Patrick once fasted and prayed for forty days and nights.  The testimony of his conversion, Confessions, can also be read. The king listened to Patrick expounding on the Trinity one day and was having a hard time grasping the concept.  “All this business of one God being three, how can this be?”  The evangelist patiently explained it again and again to the king, without a breakthrough.  Finally, in exasperation, Patrick plucked a three-leafed clover and said, “How many plants do I have here?”  “One,” came the king’s reply.  “Yes, but one shamrock has three leaves: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit!”  The king understood, believed and was baptized." In order that we might look into his heart and faith, read the lines from Breastplate, a poem penned by the man himself: I bind to myself this day

The power of His Incarnation,

The Power of His Crucifixion,

The Power of His Resurrection,
With His Ascension.

Christ be with me, Christ within me,
Christ behind me, Christ before me.
Christ beside me, Christ to win me,
Christ to comfort and restore me;
Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ in quiet, Christ in danger,
Christ in hearts of all that love me,
Christ in mouth of friend and stranger.

Today, Patrick is the patron saint of Ireland and Christian her.  Not a bad example to follow.  For Patrick forgave his enemies, went back to proclaim Christ to them and stayed to ensure they had a strong church to nurture and teach them.

As we reflect on our St. Patrick's Day experience, we would all do well to remember this saint who ran the race of faith so well that a whole nation once believed.

______________________________________________

I owe much of this inspiration, and flow of thought and fact, to my favorite author F.W. Boreham.  The above is some of me and some of him, paraphrased for my readers.  He wrote about Patrick in three of his books: A Witches Brewing, Dreams at Sunset, and A Temple of Topaz. All three of these are out-of-print but can be found from time-to-time at the Boreham page of eBay.  Happy hunting!  For the latest Boreham books in print, click here. Read him; you'll be so glad you did!

Merry Christmas!

Luke 2:6-20 

    [6] While they were there, the time came for her to give birth. [7] She gave birth to a son, her firstborn. She wrapped him in a blanket and laid him in a manger, because there was no room in the hostel.
 
    [8] There were sheepherders camping in the neighborhood. They had set night watches over their sheep. [9] Suddenly, God's angel stood among them and God's glory blazed around them. They were terrified. [10] The angel said, "Don't be afraid. I'm here to announce a great and joyful event that is meant for everybody, worldwide: [11] A Savior has just been born in David's town, a Savior who is Messiah and Master. [12] This is what you're to look for: a baby wrapped in a blanket and lying in a manger."
    [13] At once the angel was joined by a huge angelic choir singing God's praises:
 
    [14] "Glory to God in the heavenly heights,
    Peace to all men and women on earth who please him."
 
    [15] As the angel choir withdrew into heaven, the sheepherders talked it over. "Let's get over to Bethlehem as fast as we can and see for ourselves what God has revealed to us." [16] They left, running, and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby lying in the manger. [17] Seeing was believing. They told everyone they met what the angels had said about this child. [18] All who heard the sheepherders were  impressed. 

    [19] Mary kept all these things to herself, holding them dear, deep within herself. [20] The sheepherders returned and let loose, glorifying and praising God for everything they had heard and seen. It turned out exactly the way they'd been told!  (The Message)  
 

Christmas Eve at LowCountry!

Great news!  Our Christmas Eve services are filling up fast.  So much in fact that over 1000 of you have registered yourself and/or families on-line.  OUR 4 p.m. and 6 p.m. Services at the bluffton campus are FULL.  There is room at the 2 p.m. service.  Let me also remind you that there are two wonderful services at our Hilton Head campus, also offered at 4 & 6.  It will be filled with great music, candlelight,  and the same message as the Bluffton campus.  Please consider attending the other three service time options – 2 p.m. at Bluffton, 4 & 6 at Hilton Head for your Christmas Eve worship experience.  And if you have signed up and plan to attend the 4 or 6 o’clock at Bluffton, get there early!  Click here to register.  Merry Christmas!