just as I am

A powerful quote of struggle, considering the source.

As a teenager, what I needed to know for certain was that I was right with God.

I could not help but admit to myself that I was purposeless and empty-hearted. Our family Bible reading, praying, psalm-singing, and church-going - all these had left me restless and resentful. I had even tried, guiltily, to think up ways of getting out of all those activities as much as I could.

In a word, I was spiritually dead.

And then it happened, sometime around my sixteenth birthday... I responded. I walked down to the front (of a preaching service), feeling as if I had lead weights attached to my feet, and stood in the space before the platform. That same night, perhaps three or four hundred other people were there at the front making spiritual commitments. The next night my cousin Crook Stafford made his decision for Christ.

My heart sank when I looked over at the lady standing next to me with tears running down her cheeks. I was not crying. I did not feel any special emotion of any kind then. Maybe, I thought, I was not supposed to be there. Maybe my good intentions to be a real Christian wouldn't last. Wondering if I was just making a fool of myself, I almost turned around and went back to my seat...

Now came the moment to commit myself to Christ. Intellectually, I accepted Christ to the extend that I acknowledged what I knew about Him to be true. That was mental assent. Emotionally, I felt that I wanted to love Him in return for loving me. But the final issue was whether I would turn myself over to His rule in my life.

I checked ‘Recommitment’ on the card I filled out. After all, I had been brought up to regard my confirmation as professions of faith, too. The difference was that this time I was doing it on purpose, doing it with intention. For all my previous religious upbringing and church activity, I believe that that was the moment I made my real commitment to Christ.

No bells went off inside me. No signs flashed across the tabernacle ceiling. No physical palpitations made me tremble. I wondered again if I was a hypocrite, not to be weeping or something. I simply felt at peace. Quiet, not delirious.
Happy and peaceful.

-- Billy Graham, from his autobiography "Just As I Am"

40 day journey: it's time to party

A man named Mike Yaconelli wrote a short essay called "IT'S TIME TO PARTY." Here are a few excerpts:

It doesn't take much to make most of us realize that we have become too serious, too tense, too stressful. The result is that we have forgotten how to live life. It seems like the older we get, the more difficult it is for us to enjoy living.

It reminds me of a description of life given by Rabbi Edward Cohn: "Life is tough. It takes up a lot of your time, all your weekends, and what do you get in the end of it?"

I think that the life cycle is all backward.

You should die first, get it out of the way. Then you live twenty years in an old-age home. You get kicked out when you're too young. You get a gold watch, you go to work. You work forty years until you're young enough to enjoy your retirement.

You go to college; you party until you're ready for high school; you go to grade school; you become a little kid; you play. You have no responsibilities. You become a little baby; you go back into the womb; you spend your last months floating; and you finish up as a gleam in somebody's eye.

It's hard to imagine we were a gleam in someone's eye once.

What happened to the gleam in our eye?

What happened to that joyful, crazy, spontaneous, fun-loving spirit we once had? The childlikeness in all of us gets snuffed out over the years... .

The sign that Jesus is in our hearts, the evidence of the truth of the gospel is... we still have a light on in our souls. We still have a gleam in our eye. We are alive, never boring, always playful, exhibiting in our everydayness the "spunk" of the spirit.

The light in our souls is not some pietistic somberness, it is the spontaneous, unpredictable love of life...

I believe it's time for the party to begin.

As you take part in the 40 Day Journey of Lent, are you finding that gleam in your eye?

(Note: This post was automatically scheduled... because I'm on vacation)

40 day journey: swift and tender

I found this quote the other day and have been chewing on it.

A mature Christian is not one who's informed about Jesus, but one whose life is transformed by Him to swift and tender responsiveness.

How does your life match up with that?

(Note: This post was automatically scheduled... because I'm on vacation)

the problem with indifference, if you care to know

Chuck Yeager, the famed test pilot, was flying an F-86 Sabre over a lake in the Sierras when he decided to buzz a friend’s house near the edge of the lake. During a slow roll, he suddenly felt his aileron lock. Says Yeager, "It was a hairy moment, flying about 150 feet off the ground and upside down."

A lesser pilot might have panicked with fatal results, but Yeager let off on the G’s, pushed up the nose, and sure enough, the aileron unlocked. Climbing to 15,000 feet, where it was safer, Yeager tried the maneuver again. Every time he rolled, the problem recurred.

Yeager knew three or four pilots had died under similar circumstances, but to date, investigators were puzzled as to the source of the Sabre’s fatal flaw. Yeager went to his superior with a report, and the inspectors went to work. They found that a bolt on the aileron cylinder was installed upside down.

Eventually, the culprit was found in a North American plant. He was an older man on the assembly line who ignored instructions about how to insert that bolt, because, by golly, he knew that bolts were supposed to be placed head up, not head down. In a sad commentary, Yeager says that "nobody ever told the man how many pilots he had killed." (From "Yeager" by Chuck Yeager, Bantam, 1985)

hindsight lessons on transformation

Sometimes the best lessons come out of the mouths of those who have just used hindsight. I like the introduction to the book Metamorpha by Kyle Strobel (son of noted apologetical thinker/teacher/writer Lee Strobel). He titles the section, “Where I Write From.”

I am a child of the seeker church. Mine is probably the first generation of children whose parents became Christians in the seeker movement. The first time I sang a hymn was in college. I have been saved from facing issues that come with growing up around a lot of tradition; for example, I have no qualms with redoing everything if that is what is needed.

On the other hand, my lack of tradition has left me feeling my way in the dark even though millions of others have walked the way before me. What I have always tried to take away from this odd tension, though, is that people take precedence over programs and models. Just as the Sabbath was made for man and not the other way around, so are church models and traditions. But as I've experienced personally and witness continually, the church often allows structure and tradition to segregate, disenfranchise, and alienate, even when those structures and traditions are only a couple of years old.

I want to see something different in my lifetime.

I am a child of evangelicalism and went through the motions this movement said were necessary to be a leader. Yet I am a child of the emerging church as well, whose complaints and frustrations have been with me since childhood. Like so many in my generation, I have an abundance of frustrations and hurt from the church at large, but I cannot for the life of me give up on her.

I grew up thinking I was in, which was all that really important to me. For people who have lived painful and scandalous lives, finally being in means a lot. For me, it meant little. I grew up in the church and was a reasonably good kid. What was I saved from? It seemed to be that I was saved from God by God. I failed to see I was saved by God for God and that his saving grace means eternal living here and now.

My understanding of the Christian life had everything to do with what eventually will happen and had little to do with what currently is happening. I had walked through the door of Christianity, and I thought my job was just to be a good person until Jesus came back. By God's grace I have learned there is so much more. It's par for the course that, when we become Christians, we do so under many false pretenses and
affirm things we don't remotely understand - as we will see, that's okay. But we must never fail to actually journey with Jesus. We have been saved that we may live the kingdom life now.

I want to show that we do not so much need an overview of what it means to be good as we do an invitation to journey with God. In North America, we have more than often been a group of people who talk about all that Jesus came to do without any idea what it means for our lives now. It is my hope that we can journey in search of greater meaning. Fortunately, we have a God who is gracious enough to equip us for the journey we have before us.

a quote i said amen to today

Back when I was in one of my early churches I served in professionally, I was asked to fill out my first yearly denominational report. This was the first time I ever faced the (now infamous) question, "# of conversions" (or something to that effect).

I didn't know what to do... I didn't realize I was supposed to be counting all year long. Nobody told me, and so I asked my boss. He said he didn't know his numbers either and usually made up a number. Later I heard that many other pastors did the same, which kind of made me wonder about the whole thing to begin with.

It's a funny business filling out such things. You don't mean to, but tyour humanness begins to wonder, "Will my paycheck get bigger or smaller if the number was bigger or smaller?" Because apparently this was important enough to be on a denominational report, so obviously it was important... right?

Without knowing it, that question put me on a journey of asking why we track such things - does a number really tell us anything?

• Am I counting how many men's are raised at the end of a service or the one man who decides he's no longer going to raise a hand to his family in anger?
• Should I keep track of the numbers that come forward for an altar call or the woman who decides that she's going to stop being forward in how she flirts with her neighbor?
• Is there anything to be learned from a box checked on a card after service or should I be looking into whether or not those two teenagers have asked God to check their relationship with one another?

So I began bucking the system - when I was asked to state monthly how many "house calls" I'd made, I instead wrote down how many "one-on-one" conversations I'd had with people in any environment. When they asked me to state the number of people at a special event at a high school, I included anyone at the place - including the janitor who had to listen to us talk about Jesus while he waited to clean the gym. I never inflated numbers, but I definitely thought holistically about it.

This didn't always work, though. In one church I was looked at as a failure when numbers dropped during the summer that we moved out of one building and into another, even though for three months we had to meet in a backyard, under a tent, and in a building without electricity... at night. In another church, I had lots and lots of stories of life change - only they were all my stories... I wasn't raising up others to do the ministry and was doing it all myself.

Maybe that's why today when I read this I said "AMEN!"

"Stop counting conversions, because our whole approach to conversion is so, I don't know, mechanistic and consumeristic and individualistic and controlling. Instead, I'd encourage us to count conversations, because conversation implies a real relationship, and if we make our goal to establish relationships and engage conversations, I know that conversions will happen. But if we keep trying to convert people, we'll simply drive them away. They're sick of our sales pitches and our formulas." - from A New Kind Of Christian

And maybe that's why on our web site FAQ section we have this:

Q: How big is the church?

A: We honestly don't know how many people are a part of Connection Church because we intentionally don't keep count. We do this because people matter more to us than programs, and stories of life change matter more to us than mere church attendance. We kind of like doing things that promote the Almighty Name of Jesus Christ without our church ever getting any credit... because at the end of the day we're more concerned about His glory than our own.

Of course, if you pressed us on how big Connection Church is, we'd tell you that our church size is "healthy." If you pressed even further, we might disclose that we are as big as God's Church and as small as the needs right in front of us.

And if you kept pressing for a number, we'd finally tell you the
number "ONE" matters most to us... because there is always one more person to introduce to Jesus Christ, and always one more fellow Christ-follower to encourage, and always one more step we all can take with Jesus.

By the way, thanks for reading this. You are visitor number 40,107 to this web page.

i'm in 2008 now... the view is nice.

So the ball has dropped and once again we cross over into a new year.

To my friends in a time zone other than the Eastern one I'm in right now, I'd love to tell you about the future... it's pretty cool. We have flying cars and everything... the new trend is a silver jumpsuit (everyone is wearing it) and we've decided to digest little pills instead of large meals. Don't worry, though, Larry King still is on CNN.

“We are never satisfied with the present. We are always anticipating the future as if it were coming too slowly, wanting to speed up its pace. Or we remember the past, devising ways to preserve it, since it vanishes too quickly. It is folly to be wandering about, trying to find our way in times that don’t belong to us. We have forgotten about the present time that we have. So, never living, we are always hoping to live. We are always prepared to be happy, but never are.” – Blaise Pascal, 1658

you asked for it: fear factor

Robert was wondering "How do you let go of fear when it seems like it just wont go away no matter what you do and is fear both a thought and a feeling??"

I'm guessing that those questions probably come from a very personal place... there have been seasons of my life when I've known this all to well.

Fear can be a huge deal and cripple someone. I've felt deep seasons of fear, from the fear of losing my job to the fear of losing my life. It's one of those things that can motivate us to do irrational things, believe the worst in people, and create emotional guards around our hearts that we never needed to create. In all of those instances, the idea of "letting go of fear" makes about as much sense to that person as telling an alcoholic "just quit drinking."

On the other hand, fear isn't always a bad thing when the appropriate context is available. The Bible reveals that "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom" (Proverbs 9:10) because it leads to understanding-beyond-us (an oxymoron) of how infinite God is and finite we are. Then there is protective fear we become aware of when we stare down over a ledge and consider the possibility of falling.. Sometimes fear can create appropriate motivations in us to do the right thing.

The difference between those two is simple... in the first category (the negative fear), fear believes that the absolute worst will happen, but in the second category (the positive fear) fear believes that the absolute worst can happen.

For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship. And by him we cry, "Abba, Father." (Romans 8:15)

Faith, on the other hand, believes that the absolute best can happen (and will happen, if God so allows it to).

Since you call on a Father who judges each man's work impartially, live your lives as strangers here in reverent fear. (1 Peter 1:17)

In light of this, fear is obviously a choice... even if it's a hard choice to make. Granted, it is often triggered by things on the outside as well as the inside, but ultimately we have the choice to engage it or not.

I like what John McCain said about this in his book Why Courage Matters:

"We are taught to understand, correctly, that courage is not the absence of fear, but the capacity for action despite our fears."

I read those words a few years ago when I was in quite the pit of fear. While I'd always known that through God I didn't have to live this way, there was something about how this was worded that it stuck with me. Suddenly I went from doing whatever I could to please my boss (out of fear of losing my job - the bad fear) to doing whatever I could to please my Lord (out of fear of losing myself - the good fear).

So I won't presume to give you any advice because I don't know your situation. I do know this, though - that fear is always a factor...

• Relationally: Should I get close to this person? How much should I forgive? Is this relationship worth my time?



• Spiritually: What would happen if I gave God 100% of the steering wheel instead of 90%? Am I being responsible for what I've learned? Who am I helping spur on spiritually?



• Physically: If I see the doctor, will he tell me bad news or good news? Why won't my muscles heal the way they used to? Is this food bad for me?



• (and so on)

So fear is a factor, but...

it doesn't need to be the only factor.

Show proper respect to everyone: Love the brotherhood of believers, fear God, honor the king. (1 Peter 2:17)

a nod to another

Madeleine L'Engle, noted author of A Wrinkle In Time passed on to eternity exactly a week ago. Heaven's gain, our loss.

Here is one of her great insights:

To believe that the universe was created by a purposeful, benign Creator is one thing.

To believe that this Creator took on human vesture, accepted death and mortality, was tempted, betrayed, broken, and all for love of us, defies reason.

It is so wild that it terrifies some Christians who try to dogmatize their fear by lashing out at other Christians, because tidy Christianity with all answers given is easier than one which reaches out to the wild wonder of God's love, a love we don't even have to earn.

reviewing sabbath: the divine conspiracy

So one last time let's review the first and middle legs of my Sabbatical through conversations I tried having with God...

"God, is this opposition part of what you want to prepare me for? Is what is ahead so important than you want me to build some muscles for it now?"

"So perhaps if our theology can accept the tension of the known and the unknown, then maybe whatever is ahead in the broken, beautiful, ugly, forgiven, sinful, awesome world might just be possible... with God, that is... what a beautiful mess."

"God, what the heck?" (response: "Tony, what the heck?")

"What's the point?"

"Can atonement be a way of life?"

This is not the conversation I'd expected when I started.

Quite the Divine Conspiracy.

As previously mentioned, I was hoping for a nice, cushy, touchy-feely kind of sugar high with God through this journey. Certainly if I set aside 8 days with God I would find the spiritual meat I was looking for... especially if I'd read books and take notes and draw charts and make graphs and develop outlines and create sermons and eliminate clutter and reach goals... and so on.

Because then I could get "pumped up."

• And then I could come back into the church I serve in all pumped up.
  
• And then I could pump up the people because I was pumped up.
  
• And then we would all be pumped up and go out and pump up the city, and then pump up the region, then pump up the state, then pump up the country, then pump up the world.

Only... God seems to have a different perspective about that:

"Do you want to stand out? Then step down. Be a servant. If you puff yourself up, you'll get the wind knocked out of you. But if you're content to simply be yourself, your life will count for plenty." (Matthew 23:11-12, MSG)

"We know that we all possess knowledge. Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up." (1 Corinthians 8:1b)

So... none of that pumping up happened.

• It didn't happen the first day.



• It didn't happen the second day.



• It didn't happen the third day.



• Nor the fourth.



• Nor the fifth.



• Nor the sixth.

But on the seventh day...

(which is sometimes called a Sabbath...)

I got a serving of crackers.

Full circle.

And I started to realize that even though I consciously don't want a God who can fit into my pocket, I unconsciously wanted Him to fit into my pocket of Sabbath. Perhaps Him pushing back on me during this time was His way of saying, "The road ahead of you just may be full of lots of bumps and bruises and hurdles... will you still follow?"

Perhaps you've tracked the Time Magazine story of Mother Teresa and how she often didn't feel that close to God. Apparently this is a big deal, because her level of service and "humanitarian efforts" (another way for describing a Christian living out their faith) made others think she was a perfection of holiness. To find out, though, that she struggled with not feeling close to God many times in her life shouldn't be all that surprising (especially since of the Bible's own noteworthy people didn't always feel that close to God either).

Can I be one of those people... on my good days... and bad days?

Because God doesn't fit into our pockets.

And He doesn't fit into our Sabbaths.

And He doesn't fit into our quiet times.

And He doesn't fit into our traditions.

And He doesn't fit into our plans.

God doesn't fit into a lot of things because what happens is He spills out of whatever we try to fence Him in with - personal religion, church history, traditional worship, contemporary methods, emergent ideology, ancient-future practices, and so on.

We have to start recognizing that it isn't God's job to fit into our idea of what Christianity is but it's our job to fit into God's idea of what Christianity is (which is basicially dying to ourselves and inviting Him to redemptively live His life through ours).

If we could get our arms around that, we would discover the pathway ahead to true life and stop making up our own rules based on the latest books or the oldest traditions. Those elements may contain slices of God, but in the end He keeps on spilling out past their borders.... so perhaps they should always be a stepping stone and never the destination.

"The Bible is, after all, God’s gift to the world through his Church, not to the scholars. It comes through the life of his people and nourishes that life. Its purpose is practical, not academic. An intelligent, careful, intensive but straightforward reading – that is, one not governed by obscure and faddish theories or by a mindless orthodoxy – is what it requires to direct us into life in God’s kingdom. Any other approach to the Bible, I believe, conflicts with the picture of God that, all agree, emerges from Jesus and his tradition. To what extent this belief of mine is or is not harmfully circular, I leave the philosophically minded reader to ponder.”

- Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy

So the final summary:

• Sabbath is more than setting a time aside but is about setting ourselves aside... and yet it does includes a time we set aside.
  
  
• Sabbath isn't about you getting your needs met, but is about you becoming the kind of person God wants you to be... and yet in the process you do get your needs met.
  
  
• Sabbath involves keeping your soul alive to the enigma of the Divine... and yet in the process He keeps your soul alive.
  
  
• Sabbath involves dialogue with a God who speaks an ambiguous language... and yet He does this so we might discover the point of the dialogue in the first place.
  

Perhaps the application is to create a space inside of us where holy tension is acceptable, no matter what we're going through. God is so beyond our earthly senses we are incapable of rationalizing His full capacity. It doesn't mean we shouldn't try, though, allowing the Bible and the Holy Spirit to be appropriate guides.

The fact that we're even allowed to do this...

well, THAT is the real Divine Conspiracy.

leftovers: harry potter

Yesterday I shared a message that used the Harry Potter craze as a metaphor and reference point for the Big Picture of God. On that note (and in light of the news events referenced below), this is a pretty amazing passage...

Now those who had been scattered by the persecution in connection with Stephen traveled as far as Phoenicia, Cyprus and Antioch, telling the message only to Jews. Some of them, however, men from Cyprus and Cyrene, went to Antioch and began to speak to Greeks also, telling them the good news about the Lord Jesus. The Lord's hand was with them, and a great number of people believed and turned to the Lord.

News of this reached the ears of the church at Jerusalem, and they sent Barnabas to Antioch. When he arrived and saw the evidence of the grace of God, he was glad and encouraged them all to remain true to the Lord with all their hearts. He was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and faith, and a great number of people were brought to the Lord.

Then Barnabas went to Tarsus to look for Saul, and when he found him, he brought him to Antioch. So for a whole year Barnabas and Saul met with the church and taught great numbers of people.

The disciples were called Christians first at Antioch.

- Acts 11:19-26

A little background... according to the common understanding of their faith, the Jews didn’t associate themselves with any non-Jews. This crept into the early church, and for a while they struggled with who they were supposed to reach out to.

So picture this if you can– there was a time when it seemed as though Jesus just came to give a message to the Jews and only the Jews.

This line of thinking isn’t just a first century ideal, though… just this past Tuesday Pope Benedict of the Catholic Church issued a statement that asserts that the Roman Catholic Church is the one true church and that anything else is not a true denomination.


In other words, non-Catholics are not the proper church.


Well... not trying to argue with the Pope (especially if you're Catholic), but... um... John 1:12:

Yet to all who received [Jesus], to those who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God.

Apparently, God is into building bridges and He did just that as Jesus Christ. Maybe that’s why when the church decided to reach for people who it normally avoided the culture called them Christians or little Christs.


Because the image of God shows up in the most unexpected places and it often requires us to look beneath the surface... even in groups of people who are into things that we don't get.

Maybe because it can be hard to track our growth in Jesus Christ… and so we sometimes make up some rules to make us feel better that we’re not like “those people” over there. So we train each other that there are people we’re supposed to stay away from – and we build fences instead of bridges.


Which is why Jesus Christ totally messes with our world as He demonstrates what compassion looks like in real life.


It would have been shocking for people in the first century to do what Jesus did, not to mention His followers. It would be like Osama Bin Laden sending George Bush a birthday card... or LeBron James stopping his game to bring a drink of Gatorade over to Shaquille O’Neill... and so on.

Restoration of the world and people to their original image can come from the most unlikely sources... including us. If we are originally made in the image of God, then each one of us have a value beneath the surface. We need to look for this in others instead of quickly jumping to an “us” versus “them” mentality.


For instance, why are some families so into a book like Harry Potter? Maybe because it gives them something to talk about. Maybe because this book (like other epics and movies) gives a broken glimpse to the fact that we are a part of a great story.


Author J.K. Rowling put it this way about the "source" of her stuff...

''Yes, I am [a Christian]. Which seems to offend the religious right far worse than if I said I thought there was no God. Every time I've been asked if I believe in God, I've said yes, because I do, but no one ever really has gone any more deeply into it than that, and I have to say that does suit me, because if I talk too freely about that I think the intelligent reader, whether 10 or 60, will be able to guess what's coming in the books.”

Then again... a lot of people say they're Christians these days and aren't. Maybe the difference is when things happen like they did in Antioch... and the world can't help but recognize when we're like Jesus Christ.


If we are originally made in the image of God, then it stands to reason that whatever stories we get swept up into it is because deep down we know there is more to us than we’re even in tune with. It’s why boys often pretend to be superheroes or knights… why girls often pretend to be princesses. We are looking for ways to reconnect with our Creator and our God-given image without even knowing it... even through broken pathways.


Aren’t you glad that God didn’t ban us from Him? Instead He chose to use a broken opportunity to bring healing. I don’t believe God has called us to ban Hollywood or other things in this world in as much as He desires us to point to Him through the language of lost people.


Make no mistake – God has called us to be separate... but He hasn’t called us to stop building bridges in any way we can.

Be wise in the way you act toward outsiders; make the most of every opportunity. Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone. (Colossians 4:5-6)

innovative quotes

"When leading change, it takes years to transform an organization by simply changing the values. It takes just three years by mobilizing the leaders to act out the values until they become reality." - Tim Elmore

"Not all changes are improvements, but every improvement is a change." - Keith Drury

"Innovation is all about staying relevant. That's all it is. " - Stephen Berkov, Audi

"The problem is never how to get new, innovative thoughts into your mind, but how to get the old ones out." - Dee Hock

The great preacher F.B. Meyer once asked D.L. Moody, “What is the secret of your success?”

Moody replied, “For many years I have never given an address without the consciousness that the Lord may come before I have finished.” This may well explain the intensity of his service and the zeal of his ministry for Christ.

"Failure is doing the same things in the same way and expecting unique results." - Ed Young

god's will

What is God's will?

Hmm...

According to the events we remember this week, it would seem God had already made the first move in our direction to reveal that and is waiting for our response while continuing to pursue us.

"If you have ever given yourself to someone and had your heart broken, you know how God feels. If you have ever given yourself to someone and found yourself waiting for their response, exposed and vulnerable, left hanging in the balance, you know how God feels. If you have ever given yourself to someone and they responded, they reciprocated with love of their own, you know how God feels.

The cross is God's way of saying, 'I know what it's like.' The execution stake is the creator of the universe saying, 'I know how you feel.'

Our tendency in the midst of suffering is to turn on God. To get angry and bitter and shake our fist at the sky and say, 'God, you don't know what it's like! You don't understand! You have no idea what I'm going through. You don't have a clue how much this hurts.'

The cross is God's way of taking away all of our accusations, excuses, and arguments.

The cross is God taking on flesh and blood and saying, 'Me too.'"

-Rob Bell, Sex God

So perhaps God's will has something to do with simply leaning in to him and embracing the intimacy he offers. Although there are a lot of questions we have for Him, it's my experience that while He doesn't always answer them He does always offer us Himself. Since He's able to see us naked (despite the layers of emotions or baggage we hide behind), we have nothing to lose in hanging out with Him. The side benefit is that we just might see life as He does... in this way wisdom is less an answer He gives and more perspective that comes about as a result of the time spent together.

Less transactional and more relational, so to speak.

My wife and I were talking about it recently, using our marriage as a metaphor. A lot of couples believe doing all the right things will equal a healthy marriage. Others just figure it will come based on a natural chemistry they have and without all the formal effort. I think both are needed, from the benchmarks we use to keep things healthy (i.e. a regular date night) to the quality of transparent conversation we have when we talk with each other. Practically, we find ourselves able to order food for each other in restaurants, laugh at unspoken inside jokes, and finish each other's sentences.

Perhaps our relationship with God could be the same. Might that not be His will?

As we put some benchmarks out there (i.e. regular time in prayer, daily thinking on his truth, etc) we provide the framework and opportunity for some quality interaction with the Lord. Consequently, we get back to the "naked and unashamed" conversation we had back in the Garden of Eden and find ourselves able to know the kind of "tastes" Jesus enjoys, the concepts he finds "humorous," and the thoughts he thinks that we end up thinking on, too.

So maybe finding God's will is more like that... less about the "finding God's will" and more about "finding God." Pretty soon we're finishing his sentences - not the goal of the relationship, but certainly a nice benefit that keeps things fun and active.

And perhaps the conversation...

and the relationship...

start somewhere around the cross.

being revolutionary versus being cool

Don't know if you guys are familiar with Blue Like Jazz writer Donald Miller. Check out one of his quotes from an interview:

"I attended the Dove Awards and was brokenhearted. I saw all these beautiful Christians, wonderful people, with this wonderful, revolutionary message of Jesus, who, instead of saying, "Look, fashion doesn't matter, hip doesn't matter," were saying "World, please accept us, we can be just as hip as you, just as fashionable, only in a religious way."

Interesting insights. Having started my journey with Christ through a seeker-sensitive church, I received a number of philosophical seeds about how we need to provide a "culturally-relevant" alternative to the traditional church. Over the years my journey has drifted away from that into conservative/holiness waters, then postmodern concepts that rethink it all, a summer home in the Emergent Village, and somewhere back toward the basic tenets of the Apostle's Creed. In all that time I have asked the same question - is it possible that we are on the verge of seeing something healthier in the Church than what we're currently doing?

Specifically related to Miller's thoughts, what does the Gospel look like for people who are tired of trying to be cool inside the church community? How do we reach those who are tired of trying to fit into the alterative ultra-hip mold we've created in the church (or at least the one we think we've created)? Is it time to become a traditional, KJV only type church? Or are we swinging around back to the kum-ba-yah style of music?

Or maybe... just maybe... we can all be who we are while we journey together toward discovering who we really are.

Science says you can stretch the DNA of an animal - merge one version of a dog with another and you get a "mutt." What you can't do, though, quite so easily is change the DNA of something - even that "mutt" is still a dog. It takes an outside source that has enough of an "in" to your current DNA with enough "out" - the difference to be something else - to begin creating new variations of life.

Maybe the local church needs to stop stretching to be cool and realize the best way to be relevant is to be authentic...

maybe it starts with us realizing the divine DNA buried beneath the layers of trendy clothes we keep piling on.

That sounds like a revolution to me.

"Man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart."(1 Samuel 16:7b)

agree/disagree: a barbaric YAWP

An article on Relevant Magazine's web site shares some thoughts from Erwin McManus, pastor of Mosaic church and author of The Barbarian Way (among other books).

A quote of his I agree with:

I have so much confidence in the reality of Jesus that I feel no pressure to try to make people act or be a certain way. I’m banking everything on the fact that God actually changes people. For me, I don’t do what I do because I have to. As well, I don’t make my life choices because I worried about judgment or anything like that. For me, my whole motivation in life is love. And ironically, I know a lot of people think that to be irreligious means that they cuss a lot or drink a lot, and that’s where we are finding our freedom. But actually, what is happening is we’re finding safe ways to be risky. If you really want to be risky, do something that is genuinely valuable and risky at the same time. I don’t need to smoke a cigar to feel fully alive. I felt fully alive when I was in the middle of the Hezbollah.

A quote of his I disagree with:

I don’t have much value for religion. I don’t feel any need to defend Christianity. I think Christianity is the same as Buddhism and Hinduism—whenever a religion begins to say that these are the things you have to do to be loved by God, you have a religion...

The irony is that we cannot have Christianity without religion and relationship. Christianity at its beatiful core is a supernatural relationship; our religion is the way we interact with that relationship on a human level. I'm not fond of the latter reality myself, but I'm striving towards the purity of the former. Until heaven, though, we have to settle for the fact that we are all reaching out toward the supernatural in the best way we know how... and thankfully, God is reaching back through Jesus Christ. Once anything becomes a religion it can easily become legalistic ("Here's what you do to manipulate life and eternity") or fatalistic ("You can do nothing to change anything because God is sovereign."). Being a Christ-follower means somehow peacefully living in the tension of the middle.

But here's where I agree with Erwin McManus again:

The defining difference is not that you have to do these things to be loved by God, it’s that God loves you, and if you would just turn around, you’d run right into His love. The Scriptures tell us that we are unconditionally loved, and we cannot lose that love. That’s a huge risk because now God can’t motivate us through fear, or judgment, or wrath—I mean He has actually leveraged everything where He believes in the power of love to change us. That’s a huge risk.

Your thoughts?

agree/disagree: location, location, location

On Dan Kimball's blog, he recently posted about how the way we sit in a church service can affect our view of God and Christianity. I couldn't agree more.

Sort of.

Dan said:

How we sit when we gather as a church does change the way we function.... I have found more research on church architecture throughout history which convinces me all the more how pews and seating do change how we worship weekly as churches which in turn shapes how people view and think of "worship". The seating does reflect and change what we can do in a worship meeting. I will share more, but I read a quote in the Oxford History of Christian Worship which shared how worship drastically changed when pews were brought in. One quote said:

"For a thousand years and more, they had been on their feet; now their attention was fixed in a single direction. The nave [the main place where seats and pews now are] which had been entirely movement space, now was mostly seating with movement limited to the aisles. Such acts of prostration [praying laying or bowing down] were no longer feasible".

We moved from the intimacy of a home, to standing and still seeing each other and relating to one another and able to bow down and pray or even lay flat and pray prostrate, to sitting in seats all looking at the front. Most of our church architecture today was either adapted from the Roman Basilica (the law court) which is the way most long rectangular church buildings with pews and raised stage and pulpit are - or the 17th Century Theater as churches adopted seating and layout like contemporary theaters.

It's interesting, because while I agree that the seating environment in a church service or the posture we find ourselves in is important I also believe you can push past it.

For instance, whenever I have a chance to speak in environments that have static seating (meaning you can't move it) or fixed lighting (meaning I can't move out of a certain area), I find that there is usually someone who assumes the role of gatekeeper to be sure I don't cross the imaginary line. Whenever that is the case, I make it a point to still cross that line every time. Not to be a rebel, mind you, but because I find that when people expect a speaker to do certain things and be limited in where/how he or she presents then they begin to attribute that same sort of thinking to God. In other words, if in our brain a church service seems predictable then suddenly God seems predectable... which he is absolutely not.

Perhaps that's why I like to break out of the lighting scheme a bit when I talk about how we tend to hide from God. Or maybe this is the reason I will walk off of a stage and commune among the people as I share about how God is nearer than we think. Then there was that one time I didn't speak at all for a whole sermon when we dealt with the issue of God being silent.

Or when I'm sitting in a worship service, I find that I don't really care if people around me are standing or sitting. Likewise, if there is an outline to fill out from a speaker I like to take my own notes instead. If it's a place I visit often, I will try to sit in different places... anything I can do shake it up.

So I agree with Dan Kimball... and yet I disagree. You can play with any room you're in - whether you're the speaker or the listener (and hopefully you're always both).

All of that to ask... if you are a part of a form of worship (in any particular religion) how do you feel the posture or positioning of your body tends to impact your faith and/or perception of God?

millering about

I'm rereading some good stuff by Donald Miller right now. I like him... I think that if we lived next door to each other we'd loan each other ladders and stuff like that.

"The hijacking of the concept of morality began, of course, when we reduced Scripture to formula and a love story to theology, and finally morality to rules. It is a very different thing to break a rule than it is to cheat on a lover."

- Donald Miller, Searching For God Knows What

the poverty gospel - pt. 4

Who is Jesus?

This is a question that can cause a lot of debate because everyone seems to have an opinion about it. Some conclusions may have education behind them whereas others are purely experiential. Of course, many of us "feel" (or "want to feel") that he is this or was that, whether "this" is "forgiving" or "that" is "laid back" because we long to do life guilt-free. Isn't it interesting how in so many ways Jesus Christ is the stranger we all seem to know?

Perhaps in this final thought on the Poverty Gospel, it might be worth examining what Jesus thought of himself.

Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted by the devil. After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. The tempter came to him and said, "If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread."

Jesus answered, "It is written: 'Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.'"

Then the devil took him to the holy city and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. "If you are the Son of God," he said, "throw yourself down. For it is written: " 'He will command his angels concerning you, and they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.'"

Jesus answered him, "It is also written: 'Do not put the Lord your God to the test.'"

Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. "All this I will give you," he said, "if you will bow down and worship me." (Matthew 4:1-9)

Have you ever noticed that in this verbal sparring match between satan and Jesus that there is a subtle difference in the referred identity of Christ? Consider how satan refers to him as the “Son of God” - a title that Jesus never articulated to describe Himself. He certainly inferred it throughout his ministry, but only when he was pressed in by the High Priests and Pilate during His trial did He affirm it using softer language.

I think we need to pay attention to what Jesus called Himself.

While we rightfully refer to Jesus as the "Son of God," he chose to consider his working title the “Son of Man.” He inferred to His divinity all throughout His ministry, but only when He was pressed under trial did He articulate it. This didn’t deny his godhood, for there is no separating his two natures that he simultaneously lived in. In choosing to unwaveringly refer to himself as the "Son of Man," he was referring to his promise to be human for us - human all the way - while at the same time maintaining his fully credentialed divine nature. In short, God is so powerful that he can even embrace weakness without ceasing to be powerful (for the two are not mutually exclusive).

So basically satan tries to tempt Jesus by appealing to his sense of entitlement.

Seems like that’s how he attacks us, too, isn’t it?

In all of the temptations satan threw at Jesus the goal was for him to buy into his maximized identity and do something magical and flashy in the spirit of goodness. After all, would temptations for a selfless being be temptations just for him alone?

"If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread."

What would it be like if the Lord's ministry involved turning a desert of stones into a paradise of food? Wouldn't that be tempting in a world full of hunger?

"If you are the Son of God," he said, "throw yourself down. For it is written: " 'He will command his angels concerning you, and they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.'"

In an existence that often involves death, pain, and suffering, could it have been slightly tempting for Jesus to prematurely eliminate the consequences of the ways we hurt ourselves?

Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. "All this I will give you," he said, "if you will bow down and worship me."

How easier would Jesus' job on earth have been if he reigned over every culture in a way that they couldn't deny him?

But he didn't. He didn't proclaim out loud that people were to call him "Son of God" but chose the humble title "Son of Man."

And I have to ask… why?

And what does this tell us about God?

And what does this tell us about you and I?

And what does this tell us about God’s love for you and I?

So let’s not go to the victory just yet where he kicks satan's tail out of the desert. Let’s admit the temptation of entitlement for a moment.

If Satan were to appeal to a sense of entitlement in your life, where would that show up?

• In a relationship with someone?
  
• In the time you spend at work doing other things?
  
• In the downloads on your computer?
  
• In the speed you drive down backroads?
  
• In the things muttered under your breath?
  
• In the Ben & Jerry’s ice cream in your freezer?

And the devil whispers the same lie he approached Adam & Eve with, “Did God really say that was all that bad? Is it a big deal if you do this? Come on… you deserve it. Everyone else is always cheating you, so why not relax and take advantage of the position you’re in right now?”

Feel that temptation… because this is the same temptation Jesus felt and chose to overcome with Truth and humility.

This picture to th right is called "Destiny" and its painter is "anonymous."

Stare at the boy Jesus playing with a nail in Joseph's shop. Consider the shadow cast on the floor.

What does this image mean to you?

Why did Jesus choose to become like us? Like me? Like you?

And what does this tell us about God?

And what does this tell us about you and I?

And what does this tell us about God’s love for you and I?

"Earthly love, I mean the stuff I was trying to get by sounding smart, is temporal and slight so that it has to be given again and again in order for us to feel any sense of security; but God's love, God's voice and presence, would instill our souls with such affirmation we would need nothing more and would cause us to love other people so much we would be willing to die for them. Perhaps this is what the apostles stumbled upon." - Donald
Miller, Searching For God Knows What (p. 46-47)

Jesus said to him, "Away from me, Satan! For it is written: 'Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.'" Then the devil left him, and angels came and attended him. (Matthew 4:10-11)

crazy things i recently said

Sometimes a sound byte is better than a whole post. Here are a few crazy things I recently said somewhat spontaneously... and absolutely stand behind.

"Writing is one way that the human soul is able to grow a mustache."

"A person with an answered prayer is full of Christian cliches... a person waiting on an answer to prayer needs to hear none of them."

"Never treat any job as though it's a stepping stone... and yet look back on every step you've taken thus far and give praise to the Rock for providing it."

"Hope you smile like a baby with a clean diaper."

"I believe God has called us to plant a church in Portage. (pause, wait for wife's reaction) Now let's watch The Amazing Race."

i can relate

This is Donald Miller's introductory's author note from “Searching For God Knows What”:

Sometimes I feel as though I were born in a circus, come out of my mother’s womb like a man from a cannon, pitched towards the ceiling of the tent, all the doctors and nurses clapping in delight from the grandstands, the band going great guns in trombones and drums. I unfold and find flight hundreds of feet above the center ring, the smell of popcorn in the air, the clowns gather below, amazed at my grace, and all the people chanting my name as my arms come out like wings and I move swan-like towards the apex, where I draw my arms in, collapse my torso to my legs, roll over in perfection, then slowly give in to gravity. My body falls back toward earth, the ground coming up quick, the center ring growing enormous beneath my falling weight.

And this is precisely when it occurs to me that there is no net. And I wonder, What is the use of a circus? and Why should a man bother to be shot out of a cannon? and Why is the crowd’s applause so fleeting?
and… Who is going to rescue me?