I’ve met a lot of people who want a truth catered to their particular viewpoint.  The fact that they struggle with a part of the gospel and are offended by it doesn’t mean that it’s wrong.  It means it has authority.  Their are parts of scripture I’d remove if the editing was done by me.  I’d simply leave it out.  I mean it would be a “nicer gospel” if Jesus didn’t die on the cross.  It would be “nicer” if Sodom and Gomorrah were not destroyed.  It would be nicer if no one was kicked out of the garden because of rebellion.  It would be nicer if the central figure of the text wasn’t some guy who claimed to be God and called the priests hypocrites while He told His followers to procure swords.

But it wouldn’t be Truth either.

The Truth isn’t nice.

The Truth sometimes Hurts.

But it brings life and it’s worth every bit of offense it brings.

Let me back up a bit though.

Saturday night, my parents had called to say that their car had broken down.  They needed someone to come and get them and take them home.  Now if you know my family, you also know that my dad has AIDS and with that a weakened immune system.  So staying out of cold nasty weather in the middle of flu season is a good idea.  Becca was working on Saturday so she wasn’t with me when I picked them up and took them home.  I drove back and picked Becca up when she got off and scheduled to meet my parents Sunday afternoon to drive my dad around to fix their car so my mom could get to work on Monday.  It was an easy fix and would only take about an hour or two, half of which was going to be going to get parts.  That night Becca started feeling terrible just before bed.

She felt better Sunday morning so we thought we’d head to church.

Little side note here is that this is when I am informed that all my sites are down and I have to call my webhost and get them all back up.  Stupid little database issue.  It gets fixed and we think we are going to be late to church.

There’s a new church that I went to last week and really liked.  I wanted her to come yesterday.  Since she was feeling better with some rest, she went.  Of course, we completely forgot about the time change.  We showed up, asked where the children’s workers are and was told that we forgot about the time change.  So, we went and got the breakfast that we had skipped because we thought we were going to be late.

The service was good.  A passage from the beatitudes about the righteous inheriting the earth.  We then drove with Aidan out to my parent’s house.  Of course with my dad’s weakened immune system him and my mom decided that it would be best if Becca did not ride in the same car with him and her staying at their place probably wouldn’t be a good option.  It was decided that Becca should be taken home with Aidan and they could both take a nap.  Becca was starting to feel worse at this point.  Not too terrible.  Just sick like any other cold.

It gets worse from here.

I drive back to my parents house, pick up my dad and go find his tools at their house here in town.  (yeah, they have two places, one they live at and the other they use for storage at the moment)  We go back take the part of the car and head to the parts store.  At this point Becca calls me.

“My temperature is 103, I called R&T (some friends of ours) they are coming over to get me and take me to the hospital.”

I love my wife.  Sometimes, though she does things without a whole lot of warning though.  My first thought was “why didn’t she call me?  I’m close.  I can take her.”  Then I realize she thought the whole thing through already.  If I take her, what do I do with my dad who is stranded?  I could take him with me while I take Becca to the hospital, but it could kill him.  I could take him back out to his place and tell him to wait another day on the car, but I would be another hour doing all that running around since my parents live a bit further away.  See, I love her partly for this reason.  She thinks things through then comes to a conclusion and lets me know the end result of her whole process.  Many times I am tempted to get upset because I wasn’t a part of the whole process but when I think about it I usually come to the same conclusion she did, just after the fact.

So, in short without consulting me, she came to the best conclusion.  Call friends, finish up with your dad, meet me later.

T takes Becca to the hospital.  R comes over and watches their three kids and Aidan in our home.  I meet Becca at the hospital to check in on her while she sits in the waiting room, then I drive my dad back to the car where he finishes up there.  An hour has gone by.  Becca calls me.

“The lady who came in after me who has the same symptoms… they told her it would be four hours.  They also told her that they have an urgent care facility about twenty-three miles away that has no wait and are equipped to treat flu-like symptoms.  They close at six.  It’s five-fifteen now.  R&T have offered to drive me up there.”

“My dad and I are finishing up here.  I am on my way.”

“I don’t think we have time if we are going to make it before six.  R&T said we have to go now.”

“I am on my way.  I’ll be there in five minutes or less”

“I don’t think we have time.  Meet us at the hospital.”

“I’ll take you.  I’ll be there…. or just go, I’ll catch up.”

Racing a Train.

I turn to my dad, ask him if he is good.  He is.  I jump in the truck and head home.  Albeit a little quicker (except for those stupid speed camera traps).  Halfway home I have to cross railroad tracks.  A train is coming.  Oh great!  Just what I need.  To sit at a signal and wait.  I see the train.  I see the lights.  I also had friends when I was in youth group who died of a car-train collision.  The train is far enough away by the time I get to the tracks.  Of course I sped up upon seeing the train.  (what would you do?)

You know trains look further away when you are both heading for the same intersection.  It was a slow train, I will say that.  When I got to the tracks it was about 1/10 of a mile away.  There were no crossing bars across the road, just lights.  Still scared me though as I crossed the tracks a little faster than normal.  I think I scared the train driver more cause he laid into the whistle like a banshee.  Under normal circumstances I would not have crossed the tracks.  The mere prospect scares me.  I stop if I see lights a mile away usually.  In short, don’t do it even though I did.

That was the fastest I’ve driven in awhile when I pulled into our parking lot at five-twenty-five.

Everyone was piling into R&T’s van when I pulled up.  Four kids, two of which were under 10 months old.  I get quick directions.  Becca jumps in.  They tell us that they will take Aidan home with them, while I take Becca to Urgent Care.  I try to keep my speed at only a-little faster-than-normal speeds up to the urgent care facility.

We make it at five-forty-five or so.  They were still open.  No wait, just as promised.  Becca feels horrible.  (But to me she looks as beautiful as ever.. ‘cept paler)

Influenza A.

Okay, so that little section heading says it.  Regular seasonal flu.  Still nasty.  Still contagious.  Still could be really bad for someone with a really weak immune system.  Treatable.  Prescription prescribed.  We leave.  I take Becca home. I drop of the prescription.  I go get Aidan from R&T’s house.  He is sleepy.  I stop and get pizza as both Becca and I are hungry.  I pick up the prescription.  I make it home.  Becca is in bed.  I put Aidan to bed.  I am exhausted.  I call my friend in Arizona, M who I don’t really tell the whole story to because I don’t want to unload on him randomly (even though he is more than okay with it and I know it).  He proceeds to tell me how something I said the other day really helped him.  Of all the times I needed to hear that, it was then.

Other Contagions

I am truly blessed with friends.  I may not have a whole bunch of really close friends in life, but I have a select few and they are good ones.  R&T who come over take my wife to the hospital, watch Aidan on a whim and we can trust them with him are amazing people.  I don’t usually say too much about how good a friend someone is because it sounds hollow just saying it.  People always feel like they have to respond with “oh’ it’s no big deal”  or “that’s what friends do”.  Maybe a card is a better way to go for me or maybe it’s one of the many reasons I am writing this post.  This is one of the few places where I feel I can be myself and think through what I have to say before saying it because the rest of the time  even though I speak from the heart.  But when I do, the words feel rushed and inadequate to what I really want to express.  M in Arizona, I’ve never met in person.  We actually met on Halo 3 a few months ago.  Somehow over the distance and through some silly online game that we both play we have become good friends.  Our wives get on and play with us sometimes as well as M’s kids.  He’s been a great encouragement to me, sent me jobs he’s found that could fit what I am looking for.  R,T & M.  Thank you for your help, your encouragement and just being there somehow for us yesterday.  It may not have seemed like much, but it helped me get though the day.  It is friends like these that make me want to be a better friend myself.  This is one contagion I want to spread.

I am truly blessed with my family.  I love my wife. I love my son.  I love my dogs.  Becca does her best to provide for our family while I’ve been hunting for a position, working from home on websites, and being a daddy to Aidan.  With a wonderful family like this, one can’t help but feel that there is something more they can do.  Right now, I’ve been hunting all over the country for ministry jobs and nothing has opened up.  Becca has a really decent paying job and she is good at it and it’s close to home.  We don’t want to relinquish this time with Aidan to a daycare, so I stay home.  Sometimes I feel guilty about it, more often than not, because I want Becca to be able to stay at home with Aidan and come home to her.  I know that
is something she wants as well.  I think that makes it hard.  If there is one thing I would wish on anyone, if I could do one thing for someone it is this, to give them a family that loves them.  This is another contagion that I would infect people with.

I am truly blessed with my faith.  I think it sounds haughty if I say it that way, but there are days I couldn’t get though without God.  After all, he’s the one who gave me this beautiful family and these good friends.  I struggle a lot with my faith though.  Not in the sense that I wonder if I have faith, but in the sense of learning to trust God.  I think it became more real yesterday than it has in awhile.  I don’t think I would have raced that train if I really had a perfect trust in God.  I would have just said “thy will be done” to God and waited for the train to pass…. maybe.  See there’s an issue with that scenario too.  We have an extraordinary God who sometimes calls us to extraordinary measures.  No, maybe I didn’t feel like God told me to come within a tenth of a mile of being hit by a train.  Then again, maybe he wanted me to see something about myself.

If I would jump in front of a moving train to merely get my wife to a doctor sooner with a sickness that isn’t too terribly life-threatening, go out of my way to help my dad and out of my way to prevent him from getting sick from the same sickness, then there are a lot of people out there who still need to have someone love them enough to simply tell them the good news that Jesus Christ died on a Roman cross 2000 years ago as a sacrifice for our sins so that we could have life that no one could take away.  Without, the wages of sin is death.  As followers of Christ, this is our calling.  Save those who would die from death, and present them with not only life, but introduce them to the author of life.  What is a person worth?  Maybe this contagion is love.  I hope you catch it.

So is the church a huge rock tumbler for Christians?  We polish off the hard edges and reveal the gems underneath.

Oh how we resist that rubbing against each other though.  Learning to live with each other is hard work.  I can understand why many churches resist any kind of outreach.  They have approached that perfect synergy of not enough people to make it crowded enough that they have to touch anyone else.  They sit scattered throughout the sanctuary on a Sunday morning.  Reserved seats to avoid any kind of traffic jam upon leaving and far enough back that they don’t feel like the pastor is speaking to them too personally.

Then there is the other side.  The perfect oiled machine with jewel movements to prevent any undue friction.  It will be a politically correct sermon without really any kind of reference to sin but will focus on how God loves us just as we are.  We can scale this they say.  We can grow, make satellite churches, and take the message global.  Make easily digested meals and serve it up to the masses.  We will have our five year goals (regardless of the verse that says tomorrow has enough worries of it’s own), a perfect game plan for ministry that is a clean room dissection of the messy coagulation we find ourselves in every week when we meet together and real flesh and blood people have to touch other flesh and blood people.

I think I have figured out that this church thing isn’t about being nice.  It’s not about getting in and out unscathed.  We are humans after all.  We hurt.  We cry.  We ooze emotion and puss and blood when things don’t go right.  We get diseases of mind, spirit and body.  It’s about being close enough to feed the hungry.  It’s about being near enough to dry a tear and be a shoulder to cry on.  A community that comes into the sanctuary and huddles together to keep each other warm and safe while they devise a plan to bring in more hungry, naked and diseased children out of the wind, rain and dangers that circle to devour the unsuspecting.  A city of refuge.  A training center for those who would risk everything for those who without knowing that there is a hope for life would choose death.

When you get close to people and you learn to love them, you hold them accountable for their actions.  Not because it’s right, but because you do love them.  This accountability is hard sometimes.  Hard edges don’t get rubbed off overnight.  It’s a process of being together and going through the pain of having those edges rubbed off gradually.  Every jagged edged rock in this tumbler is valuable though.  You are valuable.  The marks we make on each other in love are a part of the process.  Who have you made a mark on this week?  Who have you held accountable?  Who have you allowed in your life to hold you accountable?

In short Life Comes at You Fast.  In one year everything has changed.  I am enjoying being a daddy.  I love my wonderful wife, Rebecca, more everyday.  I really, really want to find a full-time ministry job that will allow her to be a stay-at-home mom.  We are still working through paying off debt.  I still desire to get a good camera (canon 7d in case anyone has the extra cash laying around).  In short, there are still things we want, still things we desire and still things we need, but we are still here.  God is still in control.  My prayer life has taken a turn for the better (yet still needs work).  I am learning to trust God more, to lay down pride in my life more, to be open more, and live a more honest existence.  I’m not there yet and next year I probably won’t be either.  God is though and He is still working.

‘Pardon me, Do you know how I can get to Redbud from here?’

If you are trying to get to Redbud, I wouldn’t recommend doing it from here….

‘But, say you had to get to Redbud from here?’

‘Like I said, not from here, but see this road?  I’d go that way, then turn left where the old tree used to be down at the Michael’s farm, then make a right about five miles before the road dead ends…. but you could go the other way and shave a bit of time off your trip just follow this road the other way and turn left when you see the sign ‘

‘Thank you!’ (Moving truck rumbles off quickly while man on porch continues talking)

‘…but I wouldn’t go that way if I were you.’

Sometimes I feel like somehow as Christians we give the most incomprehensible directions to the simplest questions.  How do I get to Heaven?

‘Well, see your life that you are living now?  You are doing it all wrong.  Read your Bible everyday.  Here, take my 1611 KJV, I have extras.  Get baptized.  Quit smoking.  Quit dancing.  Move out of your girlfriends house till you are married.  Become a member of the church.  You might even want to join the choir.  Quit drinking too.  You also might want to trim all those pg-13 and R rated movies out of your dvd collection.  Tell your employer that you can’t work Sundays anymore because you have to go to church (in fact, invite him).  Volunteer to teach Sunday school to counter the rest of the bad in your life.  As for your money, give 10% or more to the church faithfully from here on out.  Oh, and your music collection needs to go.  It’s too well… unchristian.’

I know it looks ridiculous to read it all like that.  We’d never say that.  We’d be more subtle.  Gentle prods along the way so to speak.  I think there is a simple explanation why we think this way so much of the time as supposed Christians.  We don’t like the real answer.

How to get to Heaven?  The real answer:  believe in Jesus Christ as the Son of God, that He came to die in your place and set you free from the debt of sin in our lives.  He died on a cross sacrificially and rose again three days later and conquered death for all of us who believe in Him.  As for the rest of the stuff, get to know Jesus through his word, it’ll change your life.

Many Christians don’t really believe that a relationship with Jesus can change lives.  That is why they are trying so hard to change people themselves.

Why do we put up with sin in our midst?  Let me rephrase that.  Why do we put up with sin in our lives even?  It’s ugly.  We go back to it time and again.  We are a bent people by nature.  Of course we chose it (as in Adam all die).  In our churches, we have come to the conclusion that it is commonplace.  We are not on a seek and destroy mission of dealing with the sin anymore.  Maybe we should be.

See, we sin or “miss the mark” when it comes to perfection all the time.  Nothing is new here.  It’s the same old game we play time and again.  From an old poem of mine I describe it as “puddles of life that we play in… splashing blood upon everything”.  We have become careless with the blood of Christ.  We can sin one moment knowingly and mutter out some prayer later, usually much later, about how sorry we are and how we are trying to do better.  Rubbish!

There are of course little bad habits we tend to pick up though.  Rather, addictions.  How do we deal with these?  How do we clean the slate and start over when we know we will go running back to the same old thing?

The Alcoholics Anonymous program did a lot to help addictions in our age.  The first issue is to recognize the problem.  Admit defeat.  Wave the freakin’ white flag and get over yourself.  Lay down the pride.  Insert your own phrase here.

I have been reading Louie Giglio’s book.  ”I am not, but i know I AM over the last few weeks off and on.

It’s resonating with me on this level that what we really need most is not another gameplan for dealing with sin.  We need to quit the game of playing with sin.  I can’t deal with it myself.  I can’t truly repent without God taking control.  I am small.  I am weak.  I am not I AM.

Cast your bread upon the waters,
for after many days you will find it again.

Ecclesiastes 11:1

Now, I’ve fed ducks in local ponds.  I’ve fed geese.  I’ve even fed fish by throwing bread in the water.  Sometimes the animals don’t eat it.  More than often they do.  I’ve heard this passage preached in the sense of what good you do today will somehow come back on you as a blessing.  It’s always seemed to me like some kind of karmic ideology within scripture that what we do comes back to us like a cosmic boomerang of goodness.

Well, I am not a believer in karma and I’ve never had a boomerang actually come back to me no matter how I threw it.

What is the meaning behind this passage?

Apparently, during the rainy season rivers would run at flood stage, ground would become muddy, and it generally wasn’t pleasant weather to do much of anything in, much less sow seed.  Now sometimes, the flood stages of a river would last through the entire “prime” planting season.  If you threw your seed into the water, it could be washed downstream or eaten by fish and other animals.

So what about casting your bread upon the waters?

To sow your grain in flood waters was something done in faith.  There was no guarantee that you would ever reap a harvest from it.  To do good whether it seems beneficial to you or not.  When you sow a seed in faith, you reap more than just the plant of that seed.  You will reap faith, because our faith is strengthened not by mere belief, but in putting faith to work in our lives.

Verse 6 finishes up that section of scripture:

Sow your seed in the morning, and at evening let not your hands be idle, for you do not know which will succeed, whether this or that, or whether both will do equally well.

We took my parents out to eat for my dad’s birthday on Monday.  We went to Japanese Steakhouse where they prepare the food in front of you.  It tends to be a little show while you eat.  It’s really good.  But Aidan was sleepy.  His mouth hurt because of his teeth coming in and there really wasn’t much we could do.  We gave him medicine and tried to help him calm down.  Nothing worked.  He wasn’t really loud, but it made me uncomfortable knowing that he was uncomfortable.

Then there are those other moments.  Those times where he is happy and feeling great.  First thing in the morning when he wakes up.  He is wanting to cuddle and be held and play.

I don’t like when my child is uncomfortable, but sometimes it’s still the best thing for him.

I wonder if God feels that way about us too?

Maybe God is saying something like this:

“I know you are hurting.  I know you are frustrated.  Your tears, well.. I’m crying too.  It makes me sad to see you this way, but I love you.  I know you don’t understand the fullness of my love right now, but it would be enough if only you knew.  Be still and know I am God.”

This isn’t a passing obsession.

I’ve done photography for Olan Mills, photographing children, families and senior pictures.  I’ve worked occasionally for a local professional photographer who’s been doing it for over thirty years.  I’ve played with unofficial camera hacks to get more out of my little point and shoot canon.

For years, I’ve enjoyed incorporating photography into worship and fellowship by taking photographs at church events.

There’s a song that has come to mind as of late. Called “It’s all who you know” by Newsboys.

For the want of a marker
the doctors lost their place
For the want of a cut-line
they couldn’t lift his face
For the want of a facelift
his ratings dropped
Then the sitcom folded
then the network flopped

after the climb
after time turns designs to despair
it is good
nothing’s fair
it’s all who you know

For the want of a cough drop
the musher’s throat went hoarse
For the want of direction
the huskies went off course
Then the sled got snowbound
it took some time to free `em
Now they’re on display
inside the British Museum

after the climb
after time turns designs to despair
it is good
nothing’s fair
it’s all who you know

and after the fall
after all of our strivings are dust
even so
good for us
it’s all who you know

For the want of a compass
we’d be shuffling charts
For the want of good radar
we’d be glacier parts
For the want of a lighthouse
can’t you see
we’d be lost at sea
lost at sea

The frustrating part is that even so badly as I want this camera, I don’t want it at all if it’s not what God wants for me.  It’s taken a long time to get to that.  Today it became clear. In fact there are other things in my life that need the same kind of surrender/leap of faith and trust in God.

There are lots of things I want right now.  Some things I even think I need.  A new job.  A new camera.  To pay off debt.  A new car.  To even fix the car we have.  I think these things overpower me.  My own desires entrap me.  These (and I hate to put it this way) lusts, covets, and desires become my gods and idols.  I start scheming new ways to make the money I can to afford these things.  I went through the Dave Ramsey financial peace classes a few years back.  We got rid of all the credit cards.  We went gazelle intense and lived off of beans and rice.  All in all, God allowed those attempts to be thwarted.  My pay was cut at the church multiple times screwing up our family budget and I had to get another job.  Eventually, I just realized that what people required of me at the church and paid me for was not what God wanted from me.  I resigned in the midst of all of it.  I worked full-time doing photography for awhile with Olan Mills.

I have heard people say that the difference between succesful people and those who are not is this.  “Some people – things happen to them.  Other people – they happen to things.”

I think there is another category that I need to add.

Not because I think I am smarter or more able to do it.

“Some people trust that they have a God who can do anything.”

It is all who you know.

This is indeed an area I know I need to work on myself.  So what are some areas for you?  How do you need to trust God more in your life?

• Our soul – the intellectual part of us understands reason, knowledge and emotions.  The seat of our personality.
• Our body – the physical realm of our existence that feels cold, hot, pain and pleasure.

These above two are easy.  We went to school and fed our souls, we can read books and gain knowledge.  As for our body we can change it only so much as our soul which controls our determination and willpower enables us to.  It is our spirit that we have trouble with.

• Our Spirit – that part of us which lives in and interacts with the spiritual world.

Oh scientists will never quantify the spirit of man or of God.  Proud humanists would deny it completely.  This is the hardest for us to interact with.  It is even assumed from scripture that the spirit of man is dead until it is reborn in Christ.  We could assume that without Christ we are nothing more than clever bipeds that walk and talk and drive cars.

Once we come to repentance and acceptance of Christ, Christ dwells within us.   Genesis three is reenacted for us personally in that God breaths into us and makes us live again. Jesus does this in John even for the disciples.

Again Jesus said, “Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.” And with that he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.

John 20:21-22

From this we can understand one more element of the spirit in man.  The spirit lives in man, but is not of man.  In this we are most like God.  His very spirit lives within us as Christians.  The same breath of God that breathed into Adam now dwells in us.  Here God truly reveals a great mystery.  How He lives within us.

This is why when we enter into worship, we are also lifted up.

This is why when we pray we are powerful.

This is why when we read God’s word, it resonates within us.

This is the one phrase Christians, Jews and Muslims all would agree to.  Unfortunately, we all mean very different things when we say it.  There is a profound disconnect with the mere semantics and the meaning behind the words.   One must come to the conclusion that either God is all-encompassing and fits the man-made perceptions of Him or that God is something else entirely.  Each religion would conclude that God reveals Himself through prophets, and through them the written word.  God could not be God if He submitted to our ideology of Him.

Divine Revelation.

So we have come at last to divine revelation.  How does God reveal Himself?

Jews would say God reveals Himself through His Law, the Torah, and through His Prophets.  When the prophets told of a Messiah, they would state they are still waiting for Christ.  The way to Heaven is to observe the law and commands.  Basically, “be good”.  (note:  must wonder why Jubilee was never celebrated or how sins are forgiven without the shedding of blood today).  Much of the levitical law is no longer practiced or adhered to.  Instead new laws have been added to the already long list.

Islam doesn’t seem to recognize anyone but Muhammed because in Muhammed, the final revelation was apparently given.  Though they recognize Jesus as a prophet, albeit a minor one, they do not accept His claims about Himself.  If this is true and God only reveals Himself through revelation then to the Muslim God is a silent unconcerned person yet they still pray to this silent deity though nothing will come of it.  The best they can offer is undulated service to Allah and hope for Heaven.

Christians or “Little Christs” believe that Jesus was the culmination of the prophetic texts given to the Jews (or Israelites/ Hebrews) therefore the Christ.  In Christ, the law was fulfilled, grace was administrated.  In this, the revelation through the prophets has been proven infallible.  In becoming a man, God gave us the ultimate revelation of Himself.  He transcended His own creation and stepped down into it incarnate.  Fully God and fully human He demonstrated His power over creation through the elements, through miracles, and His ultimate love for His creation.  He continues to reveal Himself today through the work of the Holy Spirit.  In the death of Christ, He is the sacrifice for all sin so that all who believe upon Him may enter into eternal glory with Him.

A God Who Loves.

Jews have half the picture but do not believe even in their own prophets.  Muslims believe in a god who stopped revealing himself with Muhammed.   Christians believe that God is alive and present today, active in His creation, communing with us through His Spirit and ultimately will return for His church (those who believe in Him as the Christ).

When it comes to the average church, I often see it as a bureaucratic facade of “fiscal maneuvering” designed to look like ministry.  Meetings designed to put together action plans for increasing attendance, thereby increasing monetary means to increase attendance to again increase net wealth of “God’s kingdom” on earth.  This from the role of someone who has been in those shoes, lived those meetings.  Here are some questions I’d pose for that average church that feels they might be going through the same charade:

• If you really loved God and loved people as much as you say you do, would you still spend 12 hours a week going over action plans for five year goals or would you spend those 12+ hours each week actually listening to the hurting or caring for the broken?
• Aren’t you tired of trying to make it work, to make the numbers add up, or preaching to deaf ears on a Sunday morning?
• Does it really matter if everything goes smoothly on a Sunday morning or is it some kind of illusion of control that you want?

I for one am tired of feeling that I have to be so shallow as to be reduced to “getting it right” on a Sunday morning to have a relationship with a God who has forgiven my sins and genuinely loves me enough to die on a cross and make me a co-heir with Him.

I’d rather listen to the broken-hearted than to go to a meeting and try to figure out what is five years down the road.  Because frankly, we don’t have tomorrow, next week, the year after, or five years from now.  We have today.  If we are called to live as bridegrooms ready for the return of Christ, then we’d best start understanding that our real treasure, our only treasure is the same thing that our God came and died on a cross for, that He may come back between now and our next goal realization meeting, and that no amount of goal setting will be excuse enough for the ones we were called to reach and did not.

I have the gifts to do a lot of things.  To build websites, to serve coffee, to play drums, to lead small groups, to preach, to do design work and many more besides.  If I had these and so many other gifts, I could do so much but it would be in vain unless I failed to do that thing that is called of me, of all of us to do, to love.

This is my personal mission statement, a sound out from the depths of my heart resounding with every stroke of a key.

Love God.  Love Man.

I will fail at times to do this but I am confident that God’s grace is sufficient for even me.

But in realizing these things about myself, I am finding out more than ever just how broken I am in places.  Places where I thought I had my act together are in reality places of utter failure.  A funny thing has happened though.  The more I am realizing my brokenness, lack of faith and failures, the more I am seeing that God’s grace is sufficient for me.  I used to laugh at people when they called Christianity a crutch.  It is a crutch, and I won’t be too proud to use it rather than hobble along painfully on broken legs.

I have now come to a turning point.  I have put resumes out all over the internet, called churches around the country and done all I can do to find a ministry job doing what I feel God has called me to do.  None of it has come to pass.  At one point, I got so fed up with job boards because I was posting on them and reading them so much, that I decided that I should make my own (www.minitriki.com).

I now feel that many churches do not meet people where they are.  Sure, they say they do, but you walk in and they have their little agenda that won’t budge or give you a guilt trip when you can’t be at every small group meeting.  Immediately, there is a stigma if you smoke or drink or live with someone who you are not married to.  I grew up in churches all my life, went to a Bible College and I know that if I stood outside of a church and smoked a cigarette, I might as well have lit the place on fire and offered up a human sacrifice.  I don’t smoke, but I’ve known people so caught up with trying to quit and the stigma that the church has attached to smoking that they never understood that Jesus wants a relationship with them first and foremost.

I’m not saying that the body isn’t a temple of the Holy Spirit or preaching the heresy of license (basically means to just keep on sinning to let grace abound all the more).  But we care more about the sin in someone’s life than we do about introducing them to Jesus Christ.  Homosexuality is a sin.  Scripture clearly says it is.  But somehow no one loves the sinner anymore because the sin is so stigmatized.  Are they welcomed?  You don’t take a drunk and stand him up (if he can stand up) as an example of Godliness any more than you would a homosexual.  I will not affirm sin.  I will affirm grace though.

Grace says “Come on in”  “You are welcomed”  or even “I struggle too”.  But we can’t ignore the Word of God on this matter.  When we encounter Christ, there is a transformation that should happen.  Jesus told the woman caught in adultery “Then neither do I condemn you,” Jesus declared. “Go now and leave your life of sin.”

Jesus didn’t say “I don’t condem you, so go back to your lover”.  But we needen’t be the other extreme either and picking up stones to take the matter into our own hands.  God’s grace is sufficient.

I told a guy yesterday that he “probably cared more about his smoking addiction than God did and that God wants a relationship with him more than he wants him to go cold turkey.  If God really comes into his life and works in him, then God can take care of the smoking.”

Anyway, all these thoughts have led me to the belief that we need a church that is about the smokers, the down and outs, the poorly dressed, the tax collectors, the smelly fisherman (oops, I went a little first cenury Palestine there) the average guys, who through grace and a transforming encounter with Jesus Christ can be called Sons of God, coheirs with Christ.  If we admit it, we are all a little broken anyway.  Here is our power.  Aknowledge our brokeness and confess our sins, repent and believe that Jesus really loves us enough to die for us.  To offer us this grace we could not earn through any means of our own.

I am still seeing if people are interested in being a part of this unique ministry.  Check out the link below for more information.

RAGAMUFFIN CHURCH

I’ve been feeling God leading me to start a ministry myself.  I am not sure of the context that it will eventually take, but the initial idea is based off a book by Brennan Manning called “A Ragamuffin Gospel”  I am still laying out the foundation of what this ministry will look like and part of it will be dependent on those God leads my way.  Over the last seven months, I feel I have been spinning my wheels trying to make things work out on my own and applying for jobs all over the country.  None of those things have worked out and I haven’t been offered a position anywhere around here,  but I still feel the call to full-time ministry.

I can only do what God has asked of me.  Everything else will fail in the sight of God.  I may succeed in the eyes of men, but ultimately they aren’t the ones I answer to.

This has been a decision a long time in the making.  I’ve prayed and thought about this for several years now.  There was once a time I thought it would fit under the umbrella of another ministry.  It can’t be put off any longer now.  Keep us in prayer.

Ragamuffin Church

I might even be tempted to use Bilbo Baggin’s analogy from The Fellowship of the Ring … “thin, like butter scraped over too much bread”

I am not sure how I got this way.  In debt up to my eyeballs, trying to make it day to day.  I know I am not the only one who feels it.  My wife feels it too.  We talk about it and commiserate .  I could say it all started with my first health problems… my kidney stones, but it didn’t.  It was something else.

When I was a child I learned the basics about behavior.  What I should do and what I shouldn’t do.  Check in when I am out riding my bike, don’t stay up past your bedtime and eat your supper before you eat dessert.  For the most part, it was a bunch of rules that I had to live by if I wanted to live to see my next birthday.  I somehow retained the image of God as a heavenly father who just wants to make us miserable with a bunch of rules.

Sure, I learned about Grace.  I don’t think I realized that it was as much for me as for other people who have sinned far worse than me.  I knew asking for forgiveness was necessary, but felt that there was something missing still.  I learned that God gives grace when we most need it and least expect it.  I went through hard times then, of course then I didn’t have a family going through it with me.  Now, I do.

Things do feel hard.  Finances have me doing as much as I can whenever I can to make ends meet while I take care of Aidan.  Rebecca, my wife, is working and doing all she can.  I am looking for another ministry position praying that God opens a door somewhere we can settle down for awhile.  It seems many churches aren’t hiring right now because they are having to make hard cuts themselves.

I remember someone asking a missionary once how it feels to be called by God to do great things.  His response haunts me “Often, it feels lonely but if God goes with you, you are not alone.”  Surrender, bittersweet and pungent as incense needs to infuse us and help us lay down our silly grown up ways.  Be children again who don’t understand what we call “tact”.

Can we trust God in this?  Can we lay down the rules and the regulations for a relationship?  Can we quit ruing the failures and start living a life of abundance?   Can we quit trying to make something happen and rely on God to do His will (with or without us)?

If it was up to anything we could do to make it happen, it wouldn’t be grace at all, now would it?

Today we wear them around our necks, gilded, gold, glistening remnants of a faith that has been mashed down into a sugar-coated lump of poisonous gelatin.  It goes down easy and destroys eventually.

Living a life that Christ calls us to is dirty business.  It requires us to grab hold of a cross, laden with the splinters of scorn and ridicule and confront the facade that entraps so many.

The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.

When we embrace the cross we declare that our life is not our own and that it is forfeit to Christ, and in doing so are given life running over.  Sure, it’s hard.  Jesus didn’t say it would be easy.

I began playing with the image to only try to bring out the minuscule details I saw in this cloth.  Jesus with a black eye, some of his beard pulled out and hair matted with blood was the image that appeared.  Original image below for comparison.

But if it is real, might Jesus have looked like this?

Lately, I’ve been wondering about a lot of the Christian men who have influenced me over the years.  They have been wild, reckless, and otherwise outcasts in their Christian walk.

I want to be more like them.  It’s going to mean doing things differently than I have.  Taking a few more chances.

After all, Christ in John chapter 7 seems to mislead his own brothers, go to the feast of Tabernacles and then almost cause a riot in the temple.