Unite My Heart to Fear Your Name

Posted on April 17, 2023 by Frank Richard Coats

Near where we used to live in southeast Texas

It’s been a while since I’ve written anything save for my work. I’m closing in on 20 years “under appointment” as is termed in my area of ministry. We retired in December, 2020, and were privileged to take a part-time appointment in a wonderful small church with people who want to know more about Jesus. It’s been surprising, and healing, after all the postured silliness of the denomination splitting.

But that’s another story…

And last week our beloved pet Abigayle, 11 years old, ended her journey after a growth formed inside her and kept her body from working. She and I walked thousands of miles together. She was my dog and I was her person. Perhaps there will be more on that, too. Our grandchildren loved playing “Hide ‘N Seek” with me because Abigayle followed me where ever I went, making me pretty easy to find.

Today I came across this in my reading, from Psalm 86:

For you are great and do wondrous things; you alone are God. Teach me your way, O LORD; that I may walk in your truth; unite my heart to fear your name. Psalm 86: 10-11.

“Unite my heart to fear your name.” Sometimes Scripture can be so revealing. I know my heart has been divided. I want to write, I want to play music, I want to….

In all this it is as if I have been holding something back, some reserve for myself or for what I really want to do or how to make my mark.

But today that seems so foolish, so self-centered, so sinful. Holding something back like a child hiding a dirty rock in a field of diamonds. Unite my heart, O LORD.

In the past week we have had five services, and one wedding. My sister and my brother have both been hospitalized with serious illness. My good friend is battling a recurrence of cancer. My brother-in-law has been hospitalized. I already wrote about my dog…

This weekend, God willing, I’m going into a nearby prison to be part of a Kairos team, offering a type of freedom that most of us cannot imagine. If you’ve read this far, please consider praying for our team and for our “brothers-in-white.” If you like, reply with your first name and last name initial and location, and you’ll be part of a paper chain of prayer that will surround our training room.

For you are great and do wondrous things; you alone are God. Teach me your way, O LORD; that I may walk in your truth; unite my heart to fear your name. Psalm 86: 10-11.

With my doubts, with my holdouts, with my sin, God has used even me. And God can use you, too.

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35 Years, Clean and Sober

Posted on February 17, 2023 by Frank Richard Coats

Proverbs 15:33 — The fear of the LORD is instruction in wisdom, and humility comes before honor.

This is the cross-over year. I’m 68 years old, and today I have 35 years clean and sober. I’ve lived more than half my life in the new way, and been gifted with so much more than I could imagine. Today I know the love of the Lord, I know the love of my wife, family and friends, and have work that sustains, challenges and uplifts me.

I’ve often received congratulations on these successive years of sobriety, and I appreciate them, but I’ll admit to feeling a little bit awkward. I came in early, still married, still in a home, still having a car, etc. I began in a club where folks had these wild tales of waking up in ditches, of losing everything. God took the desire away from me when I asked. It took me a long time to ask, but when I did He took it away. That’s not true for everyone.

I grew up in an alcoholic home. I saw what alcohol abuse can do to a family, and I didn’t want to live that out again with me being in the center. I think I deserve the same type of congratulations as a man deep underwater in fear of his life who finally surfaces. Should we congratulate him on deciding to breathe when he has been given the chance? Maybe so. At least he didn’t decide to take another underwater plunge right away.

The 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous and the “style of living which demands rigorous honesty” has been and continues to be a great gift, and without me being an alcoholic I might never have known. I’ve found more honesty in AA rooms, and in prisons, than in many places. The truly broken who know they are broken yearn to be healed.

I’m grateful to our Lord Jesus Christ, I’m grateful for my wife, family and friends, for my sponsors Jesse and Mike, and for all the folks along the way. I’m grateful for life, and for the gift of humility which makes a true life possible.

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Circumcision of the Heart

Posted on February 10, 2023 by Frank Richard Coats
Near our home

I’m preaching a sermon series on the Apostle Paul’s letter to the Romans. This letter is dense, and wonderful and powerful; perhaps no other writing better explains the Christian faith than this letter Paul wrote to a church he did not found, but hoped to visit. (He did arrive in Rome, finally, but in a prisoner’s chains.)

John Wesley, the co-founder with his brother Charles of the Methodist Movement, wrote a sermon called “Circumcision of the Heart” based on part of chapter two. Circumcision, an intimate physical cut, was for generations a sign of the covenant between Abraham’s people and God. Gradually, as the family of Abraham became a people, then a nation, they became the only nation bound together chiefly by a common faith — the people of the covenant. After the destruction of their Temple and nation, after the predicted 70-year exile in Babylon, the promised return began, but others were coming too. With the coming of Jesus, the kingdom of heaven drew near, and Gentiles learned of the grace of God.

Paul wrote of the circumcision of the heart in chapter two, and Wesley wrote that there were four attributes to the torn heart: humility, faith, hope, and charity (love).

In the A.A. rooms I’ve attended, we often hear: “there is a God, and it ain’t you.” Several times in Scripture we see “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” I think this means the same thing. We need to know there is a God, and we need to know God is bigger than our understanding, bigger than our desires, bigger than anything we can imagine. This is humility.

Humility leads to faith — not a tepid, lukewarm spit out of my mouth faith, but a vibrant, robust faith that grows as we live our lives in God. This is a faith that God will see us through, will be with us no matter what happens, and we will always be in God’s hands. “Where have you seen God?” We ask this all the time in our Inspire gatherings, in the church I’m privileged to pastor, in fellowship band meetings. “Where have you seen God?” Can you not see him? Learn to open your eyes!

When we have learned to exercise our faith we develop a sense of hope, because we see that God has not let us down yet! I don’t mean that everything will turn out like I want it to, but that everything will turn out, and God is in the midst of it. The greater our humility, the more robust the faith, the more optimistic the hope…

The last of these attributes is charity, or love. With humility, faith, hope and charity we will develop gratitude, and gratitude can change everything. Forgiveness is possible with gratitude, and gratitude can be a key to the Gospel — the power of salvation to all who believe, to the Jew first, and also to the Greek… (Romans 1:16).

While we were sinners, Christ died for us who are called, who feel the yearning toward God. Our defenses fall, our hearts are torn open, and we are ready to step into the life we are offered, with that intimate cut of our heart torn open like the heavens when Jesus came up from the waters of his baptism. (Mark 1:0)

Then maybe we can hear what happens next: And when he came up out of the water, immediately he saw the heavens being torn open and the Spirit descending on him like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.”

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Reflections from a Virtual Prayer Meeting

Posted on January 7, 2023 by Frank Richard Coats

Witness from the prayer gathering for the Inspire Movement, seeking to make whole-life disciples of Jesus Christ.

We met for the first International Prayer Gathering of 2023, under the able and inspired leadership of the delightful Robin.  I suppose because it is more familiar now than it needs be, but we had folk in  Ireland, England and three in our house here in Texas – different countries, different continents, different times, one God.  It is too easy for the absolutely amazing to be taken for granted.

Robin led us with questions, and divided our time in sections: past, present, possible, prophecy, pledge and then part. How have we had joy in the Inspire Movement in the past year?  What do we lost for now?  What is possible?  

Peter and Liz from Ireland were there, and early on Peter said that the Lord brought to mind the verse when the young Samuel is first hearing the voice of the Lord, and doesn’t yet recognize it.  The priest Eli told the boy to say, “speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.” (1 Samuel 3:10)  

Later in the hour, when we came to the “prophecy”, Robin asked if anyone had a prophecy for any of us, or for Inspire. Peter again said the Scripture, and added something:

“I want to pray this over you, Frank, and over Brenda and Jerry Ann (my wife and a member our church attending the prayer meeting) and your congregation.  ‘Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.”

What Peter did not know is that I had spent the night and morning before the meeting praying and studying, searching for a preaching series or direction for our church for 2023.  This is a time of new beginnings for us, any how am I going to lead?  I’m a retired, “part-time” pastor of a wonderful and dedicated church, with many multi-generational members.  I’m asked to choose the Scriptures,  choose the hymns, preach. What does the Lord want for us?  

I had been praying, and wrestling, and then Peter quoted, “speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.”  

I did get some direction, and more than that I was reminded that in my prayers, in my wrestling and in my struggling, I am not alone.  We are not alone.  God is with us.  “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.”  

Prayer is a powerful witness.  Amen. 

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Check Point Charlie and Waiting on the LORD

Posted on December 9, 2022 by Frank Richard Coats
Part of the former Berlin Wall
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Gratitude

Posted on November 18, 2022 by Frank Richard Coats

We are close to Thanksgiving, and while this is a Christmas story, it is a story of gratitude.

On Christmas morning I was driving early to our home from the parsonage. The rest of our family gathered there already, but I needed to stay for the midnight Christmas Eve candlelight and Communion. I love the service, and as pastor I have to be there, but it can be lonely on Christmas Eve.

Christmas morning was bright and clear, and I loaded up Abigayle the Destroyer into her kennel placed in the back of the Chevy HHR and headed home. Somewhere past Millikan on highway 6, headed toward College Station, I saw a man in the grass off the highway. He was carrying some flowers, and kneeling in front of three white crosses near the shoulder of the highway, those temporary crosses marking the tragedy of lost lives.

It was like an awakening, an epiphany. My griping to myself about how much I worked, how little I was appreciated, how much this or how little that, faded into nothing but gratitude as I headed toward our home in College Station on Christmas morning to greet my family, who where there waiting for me to arrive.

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Trust and Trustworthy

Posted on August 20, 2022 by Frank Richard Coats
Taken outside the Hayes Conference Centre Swanwick Derbyshire, England, 2014

For several years I made a strong but half-hearted attempt at selling insurance and mutual funds; strong because I worked hard, half-hearted because my heart was just not in it.  I tried to trick myself that it was, and I was excited about the money potential, but that latter part so rarely came my way, probably because, yes, my heart was just not in it.  

I had the privilege of working with a man of great integrity and strong faith. He mentored me in some ways, and gave me a distinction which came back to me this week, when I was reading the Psalms.  

He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will abide in the shadow of the Almighty.  I will say to the LORD, “My refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust.”  For he will deliver you from the snare of the fowler and from the deadly pestilence.    (Psalm 90: 1-3)

In one conversation with my friend and boss I said that I trusted God, and he pointed out the difference between trusting God and God being trustworthy.  God is trustworthy, whether or not I trust Him.  God does not become more or less trustworthy dependent on my faith.  

When we were kids (and this is a long time ago now),  there was a wonderful teleplay of Peter Pan, starring Mary Martin in the title role. (It’s available now on YouTube!) My generation became entranced.  At one point in the story, the fairy Tinker Bell, represented by a light on the set, was wounded and near death.  Tink would be strengthened and healed by belief — and Peter Pan looked at us through the TV screen and begged us to say out loud, “I do believe in fairies!  I do believe in fairies!” and Tink’s light, which had dimmed almost out, gradually strengthened and then shone bright.  Our belief had strengthened Tinker Bell, and she would be okay.  Whew!

Well, God’s not like that.  God is trustworthy, regardless of whether we trust God.    In our Core Value of “Sharing Fellowship”, one of the questions is, “Am I confessing my sin?”  I confess that often when I pray I do not conclude by leaving it all in the hands of God, who is faithful and worthy to be praised.   I pray and give it to God, and sometimes I take it right back up again.  Another choice would be to watch and see what will happen.  But that takes patience…and maybe love, joy, peace, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.  

And I’m not always there.  But God is.

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Who You Kiddin’?

Posted on August 19, 2022 by Frank Richard Coats

Image by LRus of Pixabay

Run with the Horses 

Who You Kiddin’?  

One of my favorite of Eugene Peterson’s books is Run with the Horses. Petersen gets the title from Jeremiah 12:5 — If you have raced with men on foot, and they have wearied you, how will you compete with horses? 

The heading over chapter 12 in Jeremiah in my Bible is “Jeremiah’s complaint.”  It’s tempting to shake my head at Jeremiah, but I get it, I understand.  Over the years of my walk with Jesus I have been tasked with things I thought unfair, and too much for me.  Occasionally a well-meaning friend will quote some Scripture like “God will not give you more than you can bear”, and I’ll laugh if I’m lucky.  (And the well-meaning friend, too!)

In our Inspire Way of Life one of  the Core Values of Discipleship is “Using Disciplines”, and one of the questions hit me today:   Am I  “listening to God through the Bible?”  

Is the Bible informing my life?  Is the Bible revealing my life?  

Once I was pastor of a church and a hurricane destroyed the Sanctuary.  My wife and I were out of town and couldn’t get back for days because of cancelled flights and flood damage through the area.    The Sanctuary had to be leveled and a new one put in its place.  We worshiped outside for three weeks because the air was foul and we needed to make sure the building was safe.  This started an adventure of several years.

I thought I had challenges before that, but I guess i was just running with the footmen before the Lord called us to run with the horses.  

And now we are facing some difficult decisions about our denomination, about our church, about our ministry.  When we dealt with the hurricane, were we running with the footmen or running with the horses?

Either way, God is faithful, and has been and will be with us.  

Am I listening to God through the Bible?  Is the Bible informing my life? 

And what about those other times when I am dead tired of all this “religion” stuff and want to walk away?  Jeremiah tried that, too, and here’s what he wrote in Jeremiah 20:9 — If I say, “I will not mention him, or speak any more in his name,” there is in my heart as it were a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I am weary with holding it in, and I cannot.

The love of God is deep inside Jeremiah, deep and burning like marrow on fire, and he tries to ignore it, tries to hold it in, and he cannot.  I know about this, too.  Maybe you do, too.  

Is God speaking to me through the Bible?  Is the Bible informing, or even revealing, my life?  I think so.

I think during my times of doubt, despair, anger, uncertainty Jesus is sitting next to me and saying something like:  “Who you kiddin?  You know I’m going to be with you, and you know you can’t give me up, and you know you don’t want to.  And you know that I will get you through wherever I call you to go.”  

This blog is named after a phrase Eugene Peterson uses in his translation of Matthew 11: 28-29:

Are you tired?  Worn out?  Burned out on religion?  Come to me.  Get away with me and you’ll recover your life.  I’ll show you how to take a real rest.  Walk with me and work with me — watch how I do it.  Learn the unforced rhythms of grace.  I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you.  Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.” 

And, as long as I’m quoting something, this verse rarely fails to bring me to tears:

When through the deep waters I call thee to go

The rivers of woe will not thee overflow

For I will be with thee, thy troubles  to bless

And sanctify to thee thy deepest distress.  

How Firm a Foundation (1787) 

529 in the UMH hymnal

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Lead Me to the Rock

Posted on August 19, 2022 by Frank Richard Coats
Taken from a helicopter in Hawaii

Am I following the Spirit’s lead?  

What a great question!  How do I know whether is it the Spirit’s lead or my own wishes?  How do I learn to identify the Spirit’s voice?  I saw a poster a few years ago that attributed a quote about friendship to John Lennon.  I’m a lifelong Beatles fan and I’ve read probably way too much about them, and I knew that quote was not John’s voice.    A little research proved my gut reaction.    So then I wondered…

How can I learn God’s voice as well as someone else’s?  I suppose it is by approaching the Lord and His Word with the same intensity, with the same desire to know.

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding.  In all your ways acknowledge Him, and the Lord will direct your path”.  (Proverbs 3:5-6) I was walking along a bayou and going over my memory verses and this was one of them.  As I walked, I suddenly understood that the Lord would “direct my path”, but that meant I needed to be moving somewhere, and be willing to surrender to the leading. 

Am I engaging mission?  Am I following the Spirit’s lead? 

At least for me, the answers are not readily apparent.  This week I’ve been revisiting Psalm 46:10 — Be still, and know that I am God. 

I’m wrestling with many things, or so it seems to me.  I’m a retired pastor serving a wonderful, small church and our denomination is splitting.  Like every divorce there is rancor and blame on both sides.  If we leave where  we are, we will take a financial penalty but we’ll be free.  If we’re free, do we want to yoke ourselves to another denomination or would we want to be simply Christians, being part of the Church that is the Body of Christ in the world?  Or maybe the denomination is not that important, but the fellowship of our local church, a form of “life together” as Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote about.  Where can we best be obedient to Christ?  

I don’t know what decisions we’ll make.  (It’s “we” because my wife and I are a ministry team and we will make the decisions.)   In my reading this week I came back to Psalm 61.  Here are the first three verses, from the King James Version.  (I’m not a KJV only person, but it tends to be the one I go to most when troubled, probably because it is  the version I read when I fell in love with the Bible as a little boy.)

Hear my cry, O God; attend unto my prayer.  From the end of the earth will I cry unto thee, when my heart is overwhelmed: Lead me to the rock that is higher than I.  For thou hast been a shelter for me, and a strong tower from the enemy.  

“Lead me to the rock that is higher than I”  moves me.  Lord, let me see as you see, let me understand from your perspective, lead me to a place of peace beyond my understanding, lead me to the rock that is higher than I.  

Am I following the Spirit’s lead?  I hope so;  I am seeking to;  and I am waiting and listening.  

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Sharing Fellowship

Posted on June 27, 2022 by Frank Richard Coats
This picture is from several years ago along the Prayer Trail at Lakeview Methodist Conference Center in Palestine Texas

Core Values of Discipleship

Sharing Fellowship

This past week we were invited to an awards ceremony for our 9-year old granddaughter Zadie.  Zadie had been invited to a Wednesday night Bible study at a local church by one of her friends, and she grew to love it.  She would ask me, a retired and still-working UMC pastor, if I knew some of her memory verses and other wonderful things she was learning.  At the ceremony she was celebrated along with a lot of other kids who had memorized Scripture and concepts.  This is a local Assemblies of God church, and they were using the King James Bible.  It was a fantastic evening, that these children were loved and encouraged and challenged.  They didn’t get the award unless they had done the work.  

I talked with the pastor afterwards, and he had served this faith community for 30 years, he had seen many of the young leaders in the church grow up, get married, have children.  When he learned I was a retired UMC pastor he asked if I had been part of the group that moved every two years or so.  When he was a kid growing up in West Texas, his parents told him that the Methodist pastor’s children would be moving soon, so to keep that in mind as he became friends with them.  We know too many pastors, too many pastor’s families, that moved so often without the chance of putting down roots.  

Yet I wondered if this pastor had friends he could confide in, people who were not of his “flock”.  

I entered seminary at 45 years old, and I had been mentored in discipleship relationships for many years before then.  With a few sterling exceptions, most of my old friends are still from this time before, or people I served with in churches  where we met in authentic covenant groups, much like our Wesleyan bands.  The friends from the last few years I have met in band.  

From our core values of discipleship in the Inspire Movement:  Am I making close spiritual friendships?  Am I sharing the ups and downs of my spiritual life?  Am I giving and receiving guidance?  And I growing in the fruit of the Spirit?  Am I developing my spiritual gifts?  Am I confessing my sin?  

Am I willing to be open, to be vulnerable, to be and receive a true friend of trust and discernment?  I am, and I am blessed by the bands I am in, where I can share where I am seeing God in my life, and be willing to be guided by prayerful reflection of others.  

Most men I know don’t have deep, spiritual friendships.  Most pastors I know do not have friends like this.  Holding yourself apart  is a way of distancing ourselves  from others and from God.  We hold ourselves apart, but we don’t have to.  We have an opportunity with the principles of the Inspire Movement to find the “open door” the Spirit revealed to  John in Revelation 3:

And to the angel of the church in Philadelphia write: ‘The words of the holy one, the true one, who has the key of David, who opens and no one will shut, who shuts and no one opens.

“‘I know your works.  Behold, I have set before you an open door, which no one is able to shut.  I know that you have but little power, and yet you have kept my word and have not denied my name…” (Rev. 3: 7-8)

The Lord working in our lives is that open door, an open door to the reality of our lives, the reality of the love of God.  We are able to pass through that open door with the help of others, with the guidance of spiritual friendships like we form in band and in house fellowships and the like.  My granddaughter is forming spiritual friendships, memorizing the Word of God and coming to a deeper relationship with Jesus, all because someone stepped out and asked her.  I am doing the same because someone asked me about Inspire, about band.  It is a good thing to see the Lord at work in our lives.  

What do you think? 

More information on the Inspire Movement can be found at https:inspiremovement.org

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