Wanderings and wonderings...

Thirty

2011-06-15T16:12:00.000-07:00

Summer is here. As a teacher its like hitting a brick wall of unbusyness- I go from 14 hour days with 100 or so students to almost nothing. Some of that time will be spent working but there are no immediate demands on my time

I turned thirty recently.
Its been a good decade, different than what I set out to achieve as I graduated high school.
I graduated college, got married, had my first kid. Im not sure what the next decade will bring, but it will probably be something unexpected. I keep reading over the story of Joseph. He was always in places where I can only assume he didn't want to be (like the bottom of a pit or in jail) and yet he was faithful and eventually was used in mighty ways for the protection of an entire country as well as his own family. The lesson for me is to be faithful where I am at and hopeful for the future.

Tape

2011-03-12T07:40:00.000-08:00

Our pastor at church has been talking about this word "Legacy", those things that we pass on to the next generation. Last week he talked about a the people of Israel demanding a king, which God reluctantly gave them (He tells Samuel, "They arn't rejecting you, they are rejecting Me") which got me thinking about a few things.

First, why did they reject God- what was the legacy from past generations that caused them to want a man king instead of a God king? The legacy of the Judges? Samuel? In the first two chapters of Judges, you can see the pattern already. God does something great, the people rejoice, God gives a command, the people dont follow through, God punishes them ("they will become thorns in your side, and their gods shall be a snare for you") This is a pattern that seems to repeat over and over through the book of Judges, but looking past that, it is how the people behaved under Joshua's command, in the wilderness, all the way back to the beginning of the bible. God is great, yet his people still reject him. (Think Adam and Eve) Rebellion is that sin that we reserve for teenagers - "hes just going through that rebellious stage" - but it seems to me that most, if not all of our sin, is linked to some sort of rebellion. If our hearts were tape, we've stuck it to so many other things that it doesn't stick to God very well.

Second, how many times do we reject what God is doing and wants for us because of a person's of group of people's legacies in out own life? We justify our own rebellion based on the rebellion of others. Samuel was getting old, his sons were corrupt. The people felt justified (and I think I would have too) in saying give us something better than your sons Samuel. And yet God saw it as a rejection of him. CS Lewis argues this as one of the hardest things for us to get in our heads, that all sin, even when directed at other people is really about rebellion against God. We justify our actions with other peoples actions, but its all rebellion against God.

Third, what are we doing that's causing people to reject God? Samuel put his sons in charge. It never says God told him to do this. It doesn't seem that there is a rule that the priesthood has to get passed from father to son -think of Samuel himself- he got the post from Eli. Samuel saw Eli's family get rejected by God for having corrupt sons but yet did nothing about his own sons. What rebellions have we cultivated in our own lives, justifying our actions (or inactions as the case may be) with the actions of others. People are waiting to see something worth following- as my pastor asked "would you recommend your life as a model for others to follow?" And I dont believe hes asking if I'm following a particular set of rules set forth by my particular sect of Christianity. Rule following only is its own socially acceptable form of rebellion from God. Just give me the rules, tell me how to act, so I can live out my life inside of those boundaries, looking godly, but never really connecting to God himself. Legalism is an act of resignation, and not of active pursuit of God.

Its time for us to lay down the arms of our rebellion, and seek the one true God. I pray that God would help us in this. That he would make our tape sticky once again as He has been faithful to do so many times in the past.

A season of grace

2011-01-20T17:24:00.001-08:00

"...the darkness of the soul mentioned here...puts the sensory and spiritual appetites to sleep... It binds the imagination and impedes it from doing any good discursive work. It makes the memory cease, the intellect become dark and unable to understand anything , and hence it cause the will also to become arid and constrained, and all the faculties empty and useless. And over all this hangs a dense and burdensome cloud which afflicts the soul and keeps it withdrawn from God."

"...Oh then, spiritual soul, when you see your appetites darkened, your inclinations dry and constrained, your faculties incapacitated for any interior exercise, do not be afflicted; think of this as a grace, since God is freeing your from yourself and taking you from your own activity."

Convinced

2010-11-10T12:50:00.000-08:00

I wish was more convinced. Hard to see current realities in the light past triumphs, either personally or corporately. Its a myopic veiw that doesnt serve me well, but I dont know how to change.

"So, what do you think? With God on our side like this, how can we lose? If God didn't hesitate to put everything on the line for us, embracing our condition and exposing himself to the worst by sending his own Son, is there anything else he wouldn't gladly and freely do for us? And who would dare tangle with God by messing with one of God's chosen? Who would dare even to point a finger? The One who died for us—who was raised to life for us!—is in the presence of God at this very moment sticking up for us. Do you think anyone is going to be able to drive a wedge between us and Christ's love for us? There is no way! Not trouble, not hard times, not hatred, not hunger, not homelessness, not bullying threats, not backstabbing, not even the worst sins listed in Scripture: They kill us in cold blood because they hate you. We're sitting ducks; they pick us off one by one."

"None of this fazes us because Jesus loves us. I'm absolutely convinced that nothing—nothing living or dead, angelic or demonic, today or tomorrow, high or low, thinkable or unthinkable—absolutely nothing can get between us and God's love because of the way that Jesus our Master has embraced us."
Romans 8:31-39, The Message

I wish was more convinced

Grooves

2010-10-01T17:52:00.000-07:00

I have not, like Stella, gotten my groove back. I moved to a new school this year, and so far, I'm just not getting the hang of it. The schedule is funky (the title alone should scare you- "a rotating modified drop block schedule") and I just feel always off balance. Theres so much to do and not enough time to do it in. But thats not all of it. Theres something else... something I can't put my finger on so its hard to talk to anybody about it.

Desafinado- I'm out of tune. It's probably because I don't read my bible much or pray much any more. I remember feeling like the bible was alive, now when I read its like dust in my mouth. I cant just read it for relationship and edification. All my education, my studying, my time spent in the word comes back and smacks me in the face. Sometimes I wish I could go back to a simpler time in my faith, where I wasn't thinking about systematic theology or the Caledonian definitions, and I could enjoy a reading of Jesus feeding the 5000 or to stand in awe at the parables Jesus used instead of thinking about the most prevalent views interpreting those parables.

And prayer scares me even more. I know, its relationship and communication and fellowship and all those other things we call it, but in some sense, I don't want to know what God thinks right now because I'm afraid he might actually want to speak. I'm weary and leaderless. I'm afraid he might actually want me to be leading others. And I don't have the time or the energy. I fall asleep on my lunch break so I cant even imagine running something. Its not that its not something I want to do. But you have to eat, right? So I spend my time and my energy on a job that's paying my bills even if its not what I want to do forever. People keep telling me its a ministry. So I try to wrap my head around that and serve those in front of me, but its wearing thin.

After all this goes through my head I think to all the books and encouragement I've received through the words of those that I will probably never meet in this life, and I have some spark of hope that this isn't for nothing, that struggles are producing something. To paraphrase Jack Lewis, who I am is no mystery to God, and someday it will no longer be a mystery to me. But hope deferred makes the heart grow weak.

Remiss

2010-07-22T03:54:00.000-07:00

I have been remiss as of late to blog as much has been going on! Its summer and as a friend of mine says "The top three things about being a teacher are June, July, and August!" Lots has been going on. I got a new job! I am officially the new science teacher at Linfield in Temecula. I'll have 3 Chemistry classes, an AP Chemistry class, and one Physics class.

I taught both chemistry and physics last year but this will be my first year teaching AP which I guess is a step in the right direction for my eventual goal of teaching on a university level at some point though I probably wont be teaching in the sciences. Linfield is sending me to an AP conference for 5 days in August before school starts in San Diego. It will be a sort of mini vacation, working in the day then having fun in San Diego in the evening- going to the Organ Concert, the Zoo and maybe even a Padres game if they are home that week.

I have been working around the house a lot, some personal stuff, some stuff for our friends next door, to keep busy.Its good honest work that leaves me tired but feeling accomplished at the end of the day. There's some thing honest about working with your hands and the good night sleep that accompanies a weary body. I've always told Wifey I'd like to own a farm some day, and working around here only reinforces that. We started a patio garden earlier this year when I gave my wife a small tomato plant. That garden has grown to two tomato plants, a pepper plant and some cucumbers. The strawberries gave us 5 or six juicy red fruits before it was attacked by the crow. It never really recovered after that. An expansion plan is already swirling in my head.

The messages at church have been good, though I've been feeling disconnected from the people there. It probably has something to do with the fact that we now live a lot farther away so connecting with people from church becomes more of an effort and the fact that I used to be a lot more involved than I am now. Two memorable messages were from Dave Snow and Buzzy Enniss. Dave spoke on July 4 about how we were made to be connected to God and people- Happy Dependence Day. Buzzy spoke on father's day, and had a choose your own adventure story about Moses being asked to do great things for which he was either unprepared or just thought he was unprepared. But he gave a great point that I keep thinking about - Success is not found in the outcome but rather in the obedience.

Lastly (though these points are not in any sort of chronological order) Wifey, B, and I went to Pasadena for a weekend. Wifey went to a womens conference and B and I wandered around the city. We went and checked out Fuller Theological Seminary and I really liked it! I'm hoping at some point to be able to go back to school. I have this dream, and some day it might work out of working part time as an associate pastor at a church, teaching one or two adjunct classes and writing books about theology and church history. Oh and having a farm too. Someday. But for now, I work to eat and support my family, which is ministry number one.

Nothing But Blue Skys

2010-06-17T12:49:00.000-07:00

Three Paintings I am working on for Bennett's room!

Most of my projects for the summer are sorta mundane, necessary but not really interesting either in writing or in pictures (like shortening the blinds) but thought the process of making these is cool. Got a few hours (or days) left to go on them :)

10 Pins

2010-06-09T10:28:00.000-07:00

Ten Pins

Where did it come from?

Maybe from primitive man,

Throwing rocks at food?

Finals

2010-06-08T11:19:00.000-07:00

Finals

Red pens, stacks of tests

The part of teaching I hate

But soon summer comes

The Future

2010-06-07T10:15:00.000-07:00

The Future

On the horizon,

A boat! Can't quite make it out...

What change will it bring?

I can smell it... can you?

2010-05-07T08:39:00.000-07:00

Summer is Coming

Soon, school will be out

Then projects, family and fun

Almost can smell it...

Earth Day!

2010-04-21T11:52:00.000-07:00

So tomorrow is Earth day. We have no plans as of yet, but I'm sure we will come up with something because it seems an important day of remembrance. God created the earth- and it was good. God had us name the animals and care for the garden and I think some of the principles derived from thinking about those things have become woven into our lives. This isn't a brag list, just some things that we've been able to do to as a family. There's always more we could do, some of them take an initial investment of money or time or an ongoing commitment that necessitate gradual implementation.

Cloth Diapers- I have nothing but good things to say (probably because my wife mostly is involved in this process, but truly she only has good things to say too!) I think we became convinced of the rightness of this decision after hearing Rob Bell's "God is Green" series and learned that 300 years from now that diaper (and its contents) will be unchanged as it sits in a land fill. So we decided (before we even started trying to have kids) to at least try to use cloth diapers. Ultimately they save us money, and if you have the time to do a couple extra loads of laundry a week we totally recommend them.

A clothes line- Our neighbor read this little book called "Serve God, Save the Planet" that contained some tips for being more "green" - #1 keep the sabbath - #2 ditch the dryer. So okay we haven't gotten rid of the dryer (though its old and seems to not be working as well so...) but we have a clothes line, and time of day permitting we hang stuff on it (mostly our diapers, see above). UV light from the sun is a great natural biotic killer so its great for diapers. Actually keeps them whiter and helps remove stains. (as a plus his organization is putting on a webcast this afternoon for Earth day- check it out here!)

Our Eating Habits- So trying to eat better as we become more informed about where our food comes from and how it is treated has led us to eat less and less processed food, and more and more food we have cooked ourselves. Our neighbor has a huge garden operation. He has a trailer with lights and watering system where he sprouts seed, a green house to accelerate early growth and an extensive raised bed area. He grows all year round with seasonal plant harvest with a canning operation for the vegetables that can be canned. We often get large bags of squash with the admonishment to simply "do our part." Some day I hope to follow in their foot steps, growing my own food and storing it for latter use, but for now, we are happy eating the excess, going to farmers markets and generally trying to make our food from scratch as much as possible.

Perhaps we will go and purchase some herb plants for our patio garden we have talked about. So far we have one plant, a tomato plant that my wife has been diligently keeping alive and now has 5 tomatoes growing on it!

Some interesting web sites i found today...
The blogs on blessedearth.com - serving God, saving the planet

A blog on homesteading and the impact of our plastic waste

What's that gotta do with Easter?

2010-03-26T15:24:00.000-07:00

So I am sitting here at school with spring break so close I can taste it. Im still here because I am letting some students finish a test that, due to a time overage in a schoolwide event, they ran out of time durring class to finish.

The event was attended by all physically, but mentally most were glad to spend an hour or so out of class and wistful for 2:45 and cessation of school work for the next two weeks. Students were handed a palm frond at the begining of a walk were to spend time moving from station to station remembering what Christ had suffered through. Most students walked by the stations while talking to their friends. The crucifixion is hardly given a second thought. During first period they were to write a prayer, a picture, a confession, anything really on a stone to place at the foot of the cross. Most had nothing to say. I suggested thank yous. I gave them historical quotes from the patristic tradition "that which He was He remained, that which He wasn't He became" or "That which is not assumed is not healed"

The saddest for me however was when I suggested one of my favorite verses that sums up a huge part of my beliefs about who God is, what He is like and what He has done for us, a student looked at me and said, "What does that have to do with Easter?"

The verse? From John 1- "And the word became flesh and dwelt among us"

How my heart sometimes aches for people to see and love the truth of God...

Sabbath Manifesto.

2010-03-20T09:31:00.000-07:00

Apparently Rabbis are encouraging a "National Day of Unplugging" today, March 20th, in an attempt to reclaim the purpose and meaning behind a day of rest. Their list of 10 principles for the sabbath.

1- Avoid Technology- A little hard socially with cell phones and email, but personally hard because I am usually getting stuff ready for school.

2- Connect with Loved Ones- A little easier. Sarah and I have set a goal to share our table with others at least once a month

3- Nurture Your Health- Probably good. Take a walk, do some yoga. Exercise helps stress and lowers blood pressure.

4- Get Outside- Get your vitamin D happy drugs.

5- Avoid Commerce- How come you get a sabbath but the people serving your lunch don't?

6- Light Candles- I'm not sure of this one but I would be willing to try it. Maybe its a way of connecting the past with the present?

7- Drink wine- Blessed be the Lord, creator of the fruit of the vine...

8- Eat Bread- Yum, gluten here we come

9- Find Silence-- Hard to do with a one year old. But I do usually wake up first so I do get some silence in the morning before the house gets moving.

10-Give Back- Interesting. All the other ones focus on self but this one is outward focused. I think you could do this especially in the exercising of biblical hospitality which we are learning needs to be geared towards those who are in need of hospitality and broadened to include the meeting of emotional and spiritual needs in addition to meeting physical needs.

Sackcloths and Ashes

2010-02-25T11:36:00.001-08:00

(I'm trying to post at least once a week and one larger post a month to work as part of my Epiphany day goals so I will be posting more often though maybe in a wider variety of genres)
These are pretty much the best chips ever. They are intensely spicy but not that Mexican sorta spicy that you cant get out of your mouth but that addictive sorta instant burn that goes away in a wash of warmth and goodness. They are slightly sweet with a bit of nutty goodness thrown in for good measure. I could eat the entire bag in one sitting with out a problem. I think I might even lick the bag if I could. And you would think something that yummy has MSG or food preservatives or something bad like that in it but there isn't a single weird ingredient.

Even as I searched today on the Internet, for pictures I discovered a whole new world wide community of my fellow "spicy Thai lovers". (or here, or here, or here)

And yet I was very disappointed today when my wife sent me the following picture in a text message.

DISCONTINUED!?!?!?! Now its true that we have seen no bags of Spicy Thai chips in the last few weeks but discontinued? No more, ever! I tried to get Sarah to go round to all the stores and buy up a reserve, but she just laughed at our dilemma. Apparently she is not a true believer. But there is hope! It seems that Spicy Thai has not made the official list of "retired flavors" on the KettleFoods.com web site yet. So we need to get the petitions going! Stop emailing your congressmen (and women) and start emailing Kettle Foods. Don't let them retire Spicy Thai and thus group it in with other failed flavors like Island Jerk, Red Peppers & Goat Cheese, and my personal favorite, Cheddar Beer. Get your picket signs ready and your walking shoes on! SAVE SPICY THAI! SAVE SPICY THAI!

The Prophet of Convenience

2010-02-24T00:59:00.000-08:00

One of my (many) heroes of the faith is a Saint by the name of John who lived in Damascus. Now he was the last saint that was accepted by both the Roman Catholics and the Eastern Orthodox before the Great Schism (which properly refers to the split between east and west and not the protestant reformation). His writings leaned towards the east defending the use and veneration of icons, but he actually lived in a Muslim controlled area. There's a great story about how he gets accused of trying to convince the church to send troops to oust the Muslims, they cut off his hand, he grabs it, prays for it be reattached and goes right on writing.

He writes a book called Heresy in which he outlines bad and outdated theology of various groups but the one that I think is relevant for today is about what he calls the Ishmaelites which if you are interested you can read here. The real point being that voracity of the Koran is much to doubted.

It seems that Mohamed was into what ever was convenient.

He wrote an "edict from Allah" that allowed him to marry another man's wife.

He wrote an "edict from Allah" that allowed for the inclusion of a pagan site of worship to be included in Islam so as to help transition those already accustomed to worshiping there.

At points in the Koran he has "edicts from Allah" some times extolling Jews and Christians as "people of the book" when he needed to find refuge among them from his enemies and other times calls them infidels that need to be converted or killed.

Most of what he knew of Christianity came from heretical exiles of the church - Arians mostly - who believed that Jesus was a created being and therefore separate from God. (If you want an historical treatment of why this is important to Christianity you can check out my post called "Only God Can Save Us"

All this to say that St John of Damascus considered Islam not to be its own religion but a heresy of Christianity, seeped in basic ignorance of key Christian beliefs (he thought the Trinity consisted of God, Jesus and Mary and that Mary and Moses were brother and sister) and in the idea of his own convenience.

But this post isn't about Muslims, the Koran or Islam. Its about the fact that all to often, we as Christians become our own prophets, seeped in ignorance, giving preference to our own convenience.

We ignore doctrines and practices that seem hard. We become satisfied with easy answers (the Trinity is like an Egg...) and turn away from God himself to the things of God because they seem more tangible. Church is easy - we can ignore the hard things sometimes spoken from the pulpit as meant for another and avoid those certain people that stir up wild emotions in us. We can suit our study of the word to avoid those difficult passages like Matthew 25 where it seems that we will be judged not for right beliefs but for right action, or for passages that call out our particular pet sins like Anger, Lust, and Covetousness. Even Christian service can be manipulated into making us feel good, or keeping us so busy that there is no time for true reflection.

Convenience is the opposite of change.

And prayer is the agent of change. By sitting down, stopping, and embracing who God is, what he has done for us and seeking him for guidance and direction we are really looking for change. We don't like when we are confronted with our need to change things about ourselves.

At some level we all like ourselves or at least our habits. That's why we still do them. We feed what ever wisp of desire and appetite comes our way because we are not sure that any one else will. And we fill that desire with junk, what ever happens to be lying around because it may not be there if we wait to fill it. CS Lewis says its "not that our appetites are too strong, but rather that they are too easily pleased" and that "if it seems that nothing in this world can satisfy us, perhaps we were not meant for this world".

Even as I write this, I feel convicted of my own relationship with Him. It has fallen off as of late. I'm afraid of change. I want a plan, I want to see the end of the road before I start something, and seeking Him about what He wants and not about what I want seems a little beyond my faith right now. I see the hungry people and cant figure out how these few scraps of food are supposed to feed so many. I'm afraid of Him asking me to do something crazy, to step out onto the sea. I'm afraid to even seek sometimes because I know he can and does speak.

So in the old testament if a prophet was not of God, the people would throw stones at him till he died. So I'm picking up a stone for my own prophet of convenience. And it may take time, and there might be times when we shrink back, feel overwhelmed and are alone. But take heart for He is with us.

"The truth is, anyone who believes in me will do the same works I have done, and even greater works, because I am going to be with the Father. You can ask for anything in my name, and I will do it, because the work of the Son brings glory to the Father. Yes, ask anything in my name, and I will do it! - John 14:12-14

Subsistance Farming.

2010-02-07T14:11:00.000-08:00

I was listening to NPR and they were doing a report on the economy of some third world country, how there were rich foreigners there, and a few rich people but most lived below the poverty level and were subsidence farmers.

And I thought to myself, being a subsistence farmer doesn't seem that bad. If you cant make it or grow it then its you don't have to worry about it. Sounds almost Amish. I wouldn't be doing it for religious reasons, worrying that I might get corrupted by the world. But rather for the simplicity it offers. I wouldn't worry about a job, I would be directly providing for my family instead of indirectly providing money to buy our needs. I wouldn't be worrying about a car or a new computer. But I also wouldn't be writing this blog or have access to modern medicine, nor a supply of food if there was some sort of weird accident. But I think that I would exercise my faith more. Cause I don't usually worry about what I will eat or what I will wear. I worry about dumb things that don't matter much. I almost wish that was all I had worry about.

"If you decide for God, living a life of God-worship, it follows that you don't fuss about what's on the table at mealtimes or whether the clothes in your closet are in fashion. There is far more to your life than the food you put in your stomach, more to your outer appearance than the clothes you hang on your body. Look at the birds, free and unfettered, not tied down to a job description, careless in the care of God. And you count far more to him than birds." - Matthew 6:25-26

City Life

2010-02-03T14:31:00.000-08:00

I am feeling sort of wistful for the city.

I like where I live, I like the space
and the neighbors
But I wish people lived closer...
and people just sorta "stopped by"...
and our church was closer
and I could ride to the store...

Our "Walk Score" right now is a 3

This place has a walk score of 96. Someday...

Intentionality Forstalls Contempt

2010-01-26T21:30:00.000-08:00

When my wife and I were dating, one of the things we though about was getting old. Not getting old like wrinkles and walkers and grey hairs. But getting old in the same way we say “This job is getting old” meaning I am through putting my energy into it and am ready to discard it. She worried that she or I would at some point decide that each other was “getting old”. “Familiarity breeds contempt” she would tell me. This went on for a while. She wouldn’t tell me she loved me because she had “been there, done that” with her feelings and emotions. She was guarding herself from hurt, and rightly so.
So after thinking and praying about it, I realized she was right! The possibility was there that we would get old to each other and want out. There had to be some solution. Just like everything else in life you are either going forward or going back but how could we make sure to go forward only?
Choices. And not big choices, but little choices. How we chose to treat each other every day. Spending time together. How we speak to each other. How we speak of each other in and out of their presence. Even how we think of each other.
And sometimes we do better than others. But we arn't going to give up.
Because it’s worth it. To us. To god. To those around us who need to see that there are some things in life that you shouldn’t give up on. There are some things in life where failure isn’t an option.
Because only in choosing to succeed can we hope to get there.
Because only intentionality forestalls contempt.

Sola Scriptura?

2009-12-28T01:49:00.000-08:00

Last night I was talking to some friends of mine who happen to be Catholic. And not just casually catholic, attending mass and holding on to the faith of their parents, but Catholic in the best way, having converted to the faith later in life after studying and reading and discussing what the Catholic branch of Christianity has to offer, and studying hard at schools like oxford and UCLA.

And the discussion of infant baptism came up. Now I go to a Protestant where, although I have never seen nor heard of anyone in our denomination practice infant baptism, it is technically on the books as a good and right practice. However with some understanding of how it is practiced in the Catholic church this form of infant baptism is completely different from what they practice. From reading the liturgy associated with infant baptism in my church it is easily seen that it really is a dedication by the parents to raise their children in accordance with Christian beliefs; its a symbol that doesn’t mean anything but allows those arround them to help keep them in accountability.

The Catholic church on the other hand, sees baptism as the means that God uses to cleanse us of original sin. And though they get the general belief that baptism is important to the believer and commanded by God, the specifics of why they get baptized comes from another source- tradition. From the earliest of Christian writers, we can see that baptism was practiced to remove sin from the believer.

It wasn’t the topic of infant baptism that had me intrigued, rather it was the negation of that most important component of truth that is held by most protestant churches- Sola Scriptura, Scripture Alone. Ask any protestant believer what they teach at their church, and the responses will be similar, well we just teach the bible. Which in itself is interesting because if all churches were to “just teach the bible” there would be no denominational distinctives, and therefor no reasons for denominations to exist. If we were honest with ourselves we would probably say that our church teaches our pastor’s view on the bible (hopefully informed by the holy Spirit). But even that isn’t entirely true either because most pastors, after choosing their passage for the week, read various sermons and commentaries on what other people who had more time or knowledge have said about scripture. So a Sunday morning sermon must be in part though to be a third party’s, often of unknown origins, ideas about the bible.

Now some might take that as a disrespect to the office of pastor, but the role of a pastor is primarily in communication of truth and personal ministry, and not as theologians proper but it does raise an important question- who does you pastor turn to for truth? Which theologians, historians, and church fathers are informing their understanding, and how is that informing yours? We say “Only Scripture” or “Just the bible” but even our most basic ideas about who God is, are informed by Scripture and Tradition.

Go to your favorite bible word search site (I like blueletterbible.org) Now type in the word “Trinity” Go on, I will wait for you. Nothing? Lets try “Rapture”. Still nothing? Neither of these ideas is strictly from scripture though people support the ideas of each of these from scripture (The concept of the trinity has been around for 2000 years, and rapture for only about the last 150, which accounts for my reluctance to support the idea of a rapture of the church, but that is for another time) The point is, our understanding of who God is, the very core of our Christian faith, is defined in part by tradition.

Now the Free Methodists do actually believe in tradition as a valid way of receiving truth along with Reason and Experience. Now I had to make my own picture because when I started looking for pictures of the Wesleyan Quadrilateral on the internet, mostly what I found was articles debasing the ideas that tradition was an acceptable source of truth for the believer (at which point I started looking for the non-existent comment button on their sites) Unlike Catholicism, which holds an about equal view of Scripture and Tradition, the Quadrilateral creates a hierarchy: Scripture, then Tradition and Reason, then Experience.

But all of this to say, I realize suddenly why it is hard for people to embrace and love church history in the way that I have come to love it- as a text for understanding who God is, what the Church is supposed to be like and how I fit into all of that. And without seeking that tradition, all we are left with is our own thoughts about God instead of the fullness of the history of Him interacting with his people.

I have come to love the words and lives of the saints, the creeds, the truth of God contained in the history. And I have realized that I do hold not to Sola Scriptura, but rather to Prima Sciptura, scripture first, but certainly not the whole.

Try

2009-09-01T16:53:00.001-07:00

Here's a link to the commentary on a phrase that pervades
Christian thought and in my opinion is harmful to believers.
The phrase is:

"Try To Understand The Trinity and you will lose your mind
Try to deny it and you will lose your soul"

And while I understand that the point is that you cannot ever
fully understand the Trinity, thoughts and statements like this,
keep people from ever trying, and just chalking every thing up to
a "mystery" of God. He's bigger than we usually think and He's
ready and willing to reveal himself to us. If we will only try.

Only God Can Save Us... So What?

2009-08-22T07:43:00.000-07:00

In Christ alone! who took on flesh

Fullness of God in helpless babe!

This gift of love and righteousness

Scorned by the ones he came to save:

Till on that cross as Jesus died,

The wrath of God was satisfied -

For every sin on Him was laid;

Here in the death of Christ I live.

A few weeks ago I wrote a blog called "Only God can save us." In it I gave the historical (and I think still relevant) defence for why Jesus was God. It was long, probably too long, but the reality is they didn't come to the conclusion that Jesus was God on a whim, but after careful searching of the Scriptures, their own reason, ministry experience, and the leading of the Holy Spirit.

However in 2500+ words I left a rather important question unanswered... So what?

So what if Jesus is God? Does it really make that big of a difference to the every day walking out of faith? And what do we mean by faith any ways? Is the belief that Jesus was God a core issue to Christianity, or can we take it or leave it.

Upfront I will say I don't know what "the list" of all the things a person has to believe to be a Christian or if even such a list exists, but I do however think there are some repercussions to beliefs held by both sides.

The starting point in all of this for me was a young man I met at Church who did not believe that Jesus was God. He was raised in the Church, knew the bible stories, and wasn't under any sort of angst toward Church or God. He had just taken the phrase "Son of God" to mean that he wasn't God just as if I had said the "Son of the President" wasn't the president. It makes good logical sense but then what was Jesus to be to us? I asked that same young man the same question. His answer? Jesus wasn't God, he was the Son of God, just as we are to be Children of God, but where we fall short he succeeded and became the ultimate example of how we should live and even die.

Now in some sense he's right. There is an aspect of practical Christianity in which Christ stands as our example for daily life through his actions and through his teaching. In fact, in some ways we often miss this aspect of His life in evangelical Christianity. He is an example. He did tell us to do things. But was that all he was?

If Jesus was just an example for us to follow, then what was his death on a cross about? Perhaps the fulfilment of Jesus' own words "do not resist an evil person" but then where does salvation come from. Not from His death but rather from our adherence to a certain set of ideals. If this is true, then how are we judged at the end of life here on earth? By our adherence to these rules and principles? By our intentions? By the amount of our improvement? And then aren't we in a sense saving ourselves? What about Ephesians 2:8-9- "For it is by grace that you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God, not by works, so that no one may boast."

The reality is that if Jesus wasn't God, then we are still under the law because he was only able to "fulfill" the law for himself

If Jesus wasn't God, then he couldn't have died for all our sins, because he was unable to know them.

If Jesus wasn't God, then we are left with a religion based on our works and not the work of God, and leaves our salvation in question on a minute by minute basis

If Jesus wasn't God, then as Paul says we are to be most pitied

Though I'm not sure what else is on "the list" I talked about earlier, it seems to me that the Gospel must include the idea that Jesus was God, that the Word of God, who was God, became flesh and dwelt among us. That is where grace begins, that almighty immutable, all knowing, Lord and Creator of all, took on the fullness on man, to restore us to a right communion with Him. It is his vigorous pursuit of us that has accomplished this.

High Church.

2009-07-19T08:24:00.000-07:00

I went to a wedding that included mass yesterday.

There's times where I wish I went to "high church"

I love the rich traditions and that every thing in

the liturgy has been thought through to glorify God

and express correct doctrine, instead of being done

on the fly, or used because the song has good music to

it.

I don't plan on converting anytime soon.

I just have the ability to appreciate it.

Here's an excerpt from the Eucharist (Which means

"thanksgiving" and what the protestant church typically

calls communion)

Glory to God in the highest

and peace to his people on earth.

Lord God, heavenly King,

Almighty God and Father,

we worship you, we give you thanks,

we praise you for your glory.

Lord Jesus Christ, only Son of the Father,

Lord God, Lamb of God,

you take away the sin of the world:

have mercy on us;

You are seated at the right hand of the Father:

receive our prayer.

For you alone are the Holy One,

you alone are the Lord,

you alone are the Most High,

Jesus Christ,

with the Holy Spirit,

in the glory of God the Father. Amen.

Only God Can Save Us

2009-07-07T20:49:00.000-07:00

"Only God can save us."

I love Church history, especially the theological development that the church has experienced in the last two thousand years. You see, I believe in revelation and that there are truths that exist that have either been forgotten or never discovered before, but have always existed. This is not just a theological idea but a world view. Though Democritus came up with the idea of the atom, and people like Bohr and Rutherford drew us a clearer picture of the atom, the atom has been around as long as there had been matter in the universe. Truth exists, and through various means and ways we learn more about it, through the application of scientific knowledge, through logical reasoning, through tradition and through indirect and direct revelation. What I'm getting at here is that truth exists and belongs to the creator of that truth, God, and is not subject to change or alteration, however what we know of that truth is being revised and changed as we learn more.

When we apply this concept to who God is we can see that throughout the text of the Bible that God is constantly revealing more about who He is and what He is like. There's a progression of sorts, with a specific purpose that constantly gets brought up again and again. God is looking for a relationship with us. When I read through the book of Genesis I constantly have to remind myself of one thing - the bible didn't exist yet! They had no revelation other than what God had told them. They knew God didn't like murder and wanted sincere offerings from the story of Cain and Abel. They knew He wanted righteousness in all of man kind and was willing to punish the unrighteous from the story of Noah. They knew that God was willing to talk to people directly and even put up with people who questioned His authority and goodness. But no Ten Commandments. No Jewish food laws. No rules about building parapets on the roof of your house. No promise of a Messiah (and really, in their minds, probably no realization of the need of a messiah) He wasn't, in their minds, even really God as we know Him; God, the one and only. He was their God, but still just a god among many.

Why is this important you might ask? Because there is a key distinction about change I am trying to point out, God does not change, but what we understand about Him does. In fact when we look at God revealing himself to humanity its lot like teaching math or a foreign language to somebody. I think, if you really wanted to. You could sit down with the whole corpus of knowledge of math books from elementary addition and number theory all the way up to calculus and you might have 4 or 5 large textbooks worth of information. And you could just sit down and read it. Straight through. Depending on your reading speed, it might take you a week or two, maybe as long as a month. So why do we spend 12-16 years studying math in school? Because the concepts and principles of mathematics must be learned, not just merely read about. The same is true about God, He waits for the people to get a concept before He moves on to the next one. In a sense He is teaching the human race what He is like, and how they should live in light of that revelation. It doesn't mean that what was revealed first is now irrelevant, rather it becomes the foundation on which the rest of the house is built. I have some beliefs about what those foundational things were and how they were revealed in Genesis but for now I just want to focus on one of those; God speaks.

I thank God all the time that He speaks. That He spoke in the past, that He's still speaking today. I do not think that Revelation 22:21 was the last thing God had to say to us. He has fleshed out the what was meant by the promise he made to Abraham, that Abraham's seed would be a blessing to the nations in the old testament. We see a new course of the fulfilment of that promise in the new testament. And through church history we see the application of that promise through the people of God. Which is why I think church history is important. It shows us how we got to where we are now and why we believe what we believe. The old testament and the Gospels are primarily a Jewish phenomenon. After Pentecost there started to be more and more gentile followers of what was called "The Way" called such because Jesus said he was the "Way to the Father and no man enters except by me." And there came a time when their process of conversion was called into question. Did they have to convert first to Judaism and all that entailed with the food laws and methods of dressing and so forth before they could become followers of the Messiah. So they got together all the big names in the Church at that time, Paul, Peter, James and others to come to some sort of decision. Their conclusion was that gentiles did not in fact have to become Jews to become Christians. And what did they base that decision on? Look at the end of Acts 15 - "It seemed good to us and to the Holy Spirit."

This is where the idea for the church councils came from. Get together the best minds and the best leaders from the church and hammer out various issues as they arose. All of this to say, that while I don't believe that their conclusions at each of these councils (there were seven that are generally accepted.) The thrust of these councils was usually theology, soteriology, and heresy though they discussed all sorts of things and were pretty rich with intrigue (my favorite story involves the gift of ostriches to the king, but we'll save it for another time)

What I want to get to in this particular case is the first of these meetings. They were looking to answer a question that Jesus asked of his disciples; "Who do you say that I am?" They started with the idea that only God can save us. In fact Jesus' own name comes from the name Joshuah which means YHWH saves. Now that presents us to with a small problem. Why? Because Jesus claims repeatedly to be the only way to salvation and eternal life.

"When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his throne in heavenly glory. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one form another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats...Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life." (Mathew 25:31,36)

The phrase "son of man" is one of the titles used of Jesus and the kings of Israel. Here he claims that it will be him, Jesus, who sits on the throne and will separate the wicked from the good and send the wicked to eternal punishment and the righteous to eternal life. But only God can save us.

"Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life. For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God's one and only Son." (John 3:14-17)

Everyone who believes in the SON will have life. Not the Father, not YHWH, but the son. And the world was saved through the son. But only God can save us

"... whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life." {John 4:14}

Jesus will give the spring of eternal life?

"For just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, even so the Son gives life to whom he is pleased to give it. Moreover, the Father judges no one, but has entrusted all judgment to the Son, that all may honor the Son just as they honor the Father. He who does not honor the Son does no honor the Father, who sent him."
"I tell you the truth, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be condemned; he has crossed over from death to life." {John 5:21-24}

The Son can give out life to whom he pleases? He doesn't have to consult with the father?

For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day (John 6:40)

Again "every one who believes in the Son"? This is blasphemy right? How could it not be? There are more verses just like these where Jesus claims to the "the gate", "the way", "one with the Father", "the light of the world" or my favorite...

Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live,“and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?”

And its not like the people around Jesus didn't know what he was talking about. He said "Hey! I can forgive your sins, give you abundant life here on earth, and eternal life in the life to come! As long as you believe in me!" Well the scribes and the Pharisees under stood it alright. They grumbled the first time they heard it, argued with him about it and finally plotted his death.

When the 1st Church Council got underway they read these verses and others from the old and new testament and they wanted to know, was Jesus God or was he just very nearly God, higher and better than us, but not quite God? There aretwo Greek words they were arguing about.

Was Jesus "Homoousios", of the same substance, or "Homoiousios", of a similar substance (this is where we get the phrase "Don't change one iota", iota being the Greek letter "i"). They argued back and forth over the titles that Jesus and others called him, over his deeds in life, his death and Resurrection. But finally they found a starting point.

Only God can save us.

And yet Jesus claimed to save us. If he claimed to save us but was "Homoiousios", of a similar nature to God, then he was really "heteroousios" of a different nature than God. And if he's of a different nature, than he couldn't save us in the way that he claimed. And if that was untrue, what else did he say that was untrue? If he couldn't save us, what kind of man would that make him? At least tyrants and murderers only take the body. Here would be a man who takes the soul and the spirit. A cult leader or a sociopath at best, at worst a demon in some human form. If he was not of the same nature of God, then we should scrap the New Testament and take up the old ways of following the law, the sacrifices, and the rituals of seeking YHWH.

But then how do you explain the working of God in the lives of his followers? Amazing miracles, exponential growth, daily salivations. "He saved us" they said. "The evidence is there." Jesus was "Homoousios", the same nature as God, "made" from the same stuff, cut from the same cloth, in fact one with God. John 1 reflects that. "In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God." The Greek of the last phrase "the word was God" has both "Logos" and "Theos" as genitive nouns- God and the Word are the same. Who is the word? Look down a few verses. He was with God in the beginning, all things were made through him, in him was life and light, and he became flesh and dwelt among us (actually the Greek word is verb form of tabernacle, so more than just living among us he Tabernacled among us)

Their conclusion, that Jesus was God.

Did this cause some other issues? Yes! and they knew it. In fact they much of the next 4 counsels figuring out the answer to the original question "Who do you say that I am" They were settled on the God-ness of Jesus but that left them with other un-answered questions: what is the relationship between the Father and the Son? What about the "one God" belief of the Jews? Wait wasn't Jesus human too? How does that work? Um yeah and the Holy Spirit? Who or what is that? But they had a starting point. Jesus was God.

Otherwise we end up in the condition that Paul wrote about in 1 Cor 15, believing in a "savior" who could not even save himself

If in this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied (1 Cor 15:19)

But there was to much evidence then to ignore, pointing to the diety of Christ, that they knew that Jesus was who he claimed to be and did the things he claimed to be. And the corpus of that knowledge has only increased, changed lives, awakenings, people who were lost and now are found. Halleluia!

I will close with the creed, accepted by the church worldwide, that they wrote together to keep thier minds strait and thier worship of God focused on the truth of who he is and is named for the city in which the first counsel took place.

The Nicene Creed

I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible.

And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds; God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God; begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father, by whom all things were made.

Who, for us men and for our salvation, came down from heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the virgin Mary, and was made man; and was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate; He suffered and was buried; and the third day He rose again, according to the Scriptures; and ascended into heaven, and sits on the right hand of the Father; and He shall come again, with glory, to judge the quick and the dead; whose kingdom shall have no end.

And I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver of Life; who proceeds from the Father; who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified; who spoke by the prophets.

And I believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church. I acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins; and I look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Amen.

Jesus is God, right?

2009-07-01T17:33:00.000-07:00

Jesus is God, right?

I say this slightly in jest because for most Christians, its something we say we believe pretty readily but after an conversation I had at church with a guy, I went away wondering about the effectiveness of the message.

Here's how the conversation went down. I met this guy at church (actually one of the pastors brought him to me cause he had "deep philosophical" type questions and his normal go to guy wasn't there) He was taking a course on Islam taught by a Muslim and was wondering about the "First Miracle" of Jesus. Now most people have heard some allegorical teaching on the miracles of Jesus out of the book of John at some point in their lives, and when they do this they often say that Jesus changing water into wine is his "First Miracle". Now while I'm not sure that description is correct, the professor of this particular class was claiming Jesus' first miracle was that he spoke to the wise men that came to see him at his birth. (This is what the Qur'an claims Qur'an 3:46)

Now his original question had to do with how old Jesus was when the wise men came and weather or not his speaking to them would be a miracle (It wouldn't be a miracle if Jesus was say 4 or 5 but it would be if he was 1 or 2) But I was more concerned with the actual content of Jesus' supposed words from the Qur'an (though in my quick search I could not find as a quotation from Jesus; it was only stated about Jesus). His supposed statement to the wise men was "I am the messenger whom Allah has sent."

Now when I was talking to him, I took objection to that phrase. Jesus of the bible never claims to be a "messenger", John does as do the angels when they appear (which is actually the word used to describe angel - angelos in Greek just means messenger) But Jesus claims to be the Son of God, and to be of the same nature of God, and in some way actually God Himself (John 14:7-10, John 10:30, John 14:11, John, 10:37-38, John 17:11- I know these are all from John, John just has the clearest statements about the deity of Christ without needing a whole lot of explanation)

Now had Jesus appeared to the Romans or Buddhists or African Animists, there would have been much less opposition to his claim of being God. They had a plethora of gods, and one more wasn't going to make that much of an uproar. But the Jews had been uniquely prepared by divine revelation to believe only in ONE God. "Hear oh Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is ONE!" So for Jesus to show up and claim he was God... well lets just say there were those who did not receive him as such. So this was an issue that the early Church had to deal with, answering the question that Jesus posed even to his own disciples; "Who do you say that I am?" And they didn't work it all out at once but over many years, through meeting together as a whole much like the apostles did in Acts 15, through prayer, through scripture and through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.

So when all the church leaders got together to discuss the answer to the question "Who do you say that I am" they came up with a simple logical argument. "Jesus saved us. Only God can save. Therefore Jesus must have been God." Later councils also confirmed the humanity of Jesus, but without him actually being God, our "salvation" is a moot point and we should all revert back to the Jewish practices of sin management on a national scale.

But this man visibly flinched every time I said Jesus was God. After noticing it the first time I said it, I slipped in a comment about his deity a couple of times to seek if it was a fluke or not, but he had a visible bodily reaction every time. Now here was a guy who seemed moderately educated in the faith and enthusiastic about defending that faith in this class on Islam that he was taking and yet, it finally came out in conversation that he didn't think Jesus was actually God, but that he was just an example for us, and the "Son of God" was more of a title given to him for his righteousness.

Where did we fail this guy? It was obvious he was caught up in some sort of works based theology after talking to him, I think because if Jesus was just an example, then Christianity then becomes about trying (and failing) to live up to that standard, and there's no room for grace. There's no freedom for him, just a different sort of bondage.

Do we focus on the wrong sorts of things in our teaching and our discipleship, telling people to be like Christ and live a Christian life without giving them the understanding of who God is and how that is accomplished though Him in the various roles of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit?

There's three questions I always try to fall back on in writing, teaching or studying the word

-Who is God and what is He like?

-What is the Church and what is her purpose? and

-How do we fit into and have relationship with God and His Church?

And I think these are in order of importance (at least for me) that without right knowledge of who he is, the church and our relationship to God and the Church will always be skewed. Classical orthodox christian teaching, especially that which comes from the annals of church history have always seemed important to me and I'm seeing more and more the need to impart that love of the discovery of who God is more and more. People need solid food to grow into mature Christians who know who God is and reflexively know the truth from a lie.

(1025, Dang way over, sorry)

Word association

2009-06-26T14:26:00.000-07:00

This is pretty much what goes on inside of my head most days.

Really Summer

2009-06-18T17:55:00.001-07:00

Okay so I finished the last of my ESLR reports today.

And my teacher evaluation. And my measurment testings.

I turned in my books and all my curriculum.

Summer at last.

A week late.

But summer at last.

Projects galore... for me and for others.

But I think Im going to have some tea when

I get up tomorrow, and read my book for a

little while in the quiet of the morning. Maybe

on the patio where my little herbs are growing?

Maybe in my newly arranged "den" at the end

of the hallway to nowhere? We'll see.

Then I might be ready for building and making and finishing and computing.

Say hi to my little herbs. I think this is basil. Too small to tell.

Summer

2009-06-11T22:49:00.000-07:00

So its summer time. School's out, which means I don't have to go to work but I still get paid for two months. Okay so technically I still have some work to do over the summer but I thought I'd start with something fun. Like redesigning my blog. Maybe it will inspire me to write some more? I have things to say but either they seem too short and almost duh'ish or too long to make it into my self imposed 500 word limit or too convoluted to unravel in a way that makes sense. Oh bother...

At least the blog looks a little more stylish in my opinion. Nothing like at least knowing you have a space to be creative in.

The Waiting...

2009-02-10T12:10:00.001-08:00

Waiting is hard sometimes... especially when you don't know when something will happen.

Like when I was a kid... the tornado warnings would come on and we would all go sit in the closet under the stairs and watch the TV from the door. I would play with Legos and I have vivid memories of this picture of an owl that was made by stringing thread from nail to nail that was in this closet due either to incompleteness or ugliness, I cant remember. And you just don't know if something is going to happen or not. I much prefer the earthquakes of Southern California (even if I still run for door for the little ones) because of their immediacy. They happen and then they are over.

And a constant state of readiness... can be exhausting. This is why the army finds an invasion force much better than an occupying force. An invasion force is on the move with time tables and strategy whereas an occupying force is sitting around waiting for something to happen, not knowing when or where it will happen but knowing that it will. Its a nerve racking dreariness.

And in waiting for a baby to come, I feel all of this. Every day people say, "When's the baby coming?" and I have to say is, "I don't know". I cant even use what I used to say to people "Well she's due on the 6th" since that has since come and gone. Now its just a constant exercise of readiness in waiting. Waiting is hard. Because I'm used to just doing it. Just Do It.

And I realize I probably have this same problem with God. I don't really want to wait for Him. I feel like I'm out of step some times, either too far ahead or too far behind like a puppy who runs ahead of his master and strains at his leash only to find some interesting smell from which the master has to drag him. The master never changed. His pace was consistent, steady and yet always feels like an inconvenience.

And the baby's pace hasn't changed, consistently and steadily growing in Sarah's womb. It will come when the growth has culminated in a new and pressing need to be in the world and not protected from it. Soon, it will come. But the waiting is the hardest part.

"You take it on faith...

You take it to the heart...

But the waiting is the hardest part."

-Tom Petty

Barack the Builder?

2009-01-20T15:33:00.000-08:00

So I've been sitting on this thought for a while and since Obama's acceptance speech where he repeatedly said the following phrase...
"Can we do it?" to which the crowd answered "Yes we can"
Just though it was funny, cause it reminds me of Bob the Builder.
"Can we build it?" "Yes we can!"
Can I be the only one to have thought this?
Oh well. I thought it would be a good inauguration day post.

Breakthrough and Impass

2009-01-16T08:46:00.000-08:00

I feel like I have made a breakthrough in my boys bible class- they are actually starting to think for themselves. After spending a few weeks discussing prayer, i.e. what our prayers should consist of, things to pray for, prayers from the bible, and things like that my eighth grade boys have started asking the right sorts of questions- no longer is it, "How should I pray so I can get the things I want?" but "How do I know what God wants me to do?" and "Why cant I hear Him speak to me?"

We discussed the discipline of fasting yesterday. Not fasting for fasting's sake or for others to perceive you as holy, but fasting to put down the things of the world, and spend that time seeking God. As a friend of mine puts it "Word up and world down" like God and the world were two competing radios. Which one can you hear? The one that you make the loudest in your life.

I challenged them to a media fast, that is, turning off the video games, the cell phones, the TVs and Myspace to really seek after God. There were some guffaws at first, then the acceptance that they could do that for a day. To which I said how bout a week or a month? Do you really want to hear what God wants to say? Their response made my heart sad, knowing they had missed some crucial element in their education.

"Isn't there a shortcut?"

Life isn't like Candyland. There's no shortcut over the rainbow bridge.

The work of Christianity always seemed worth the effort too me. I'm being loose with my language because of my frustration, but isn't doing the work that God calls us too, infinitely more valuable than beating level seven on guitar hero?

Please give me your thoughts and suggestions? I feel that part of their openness is due to the modeling of Christ in my life, they see it and want it, but when I give them just a taste of what needs to change in their own lives to follow hard after him, they recoil as if I had dropped a snake on their desk.

How do I convince them He's more than worth it?

Tagged by Andy

2008-10-15T18:28:00.000-07:00

So a friend of mine (Andy) tagged me in his blog to write six random things about myself and then tag six other people to do it as well, though I'm not sure I have even six readers of my blog at this point.

1) Though I dont have cable television, I do manage to keep up on my two favorite shows, The Office and Project Runway. Now I know that Project Runway caters to women but I like the construction and fabrication aspect of the actual clothes they design. Oh well.

2) My wife thinks I'm autistic. I walk on my toes, I memorize things well, I tell the same stories over and over, I mutter little jokes to myself that only I find ammusing, I can keep a running count of cards up to a four deck stack and I find great comfort in rocking back and forth when ever I am distraugh.

3) I hate talking on the phone. I dont hardly ever call people or anything. It probably makes me a bad person.

4) I love building things with my hands. Maybe its because I dont get to do it as often as I like, but I think I could do it for a living. I did it over the summer for a couple of months and loved it. I think its all the thinking tim you get. Your hands are busy and you mind can be elsewhere. Unless you are using sharp instuments.

5) When I was little I would do this thing with my fingers to tell my mother she was being wierd. I found out last week that it is actually the sign in ASL for wierd. Which I guess at some point I knew but forgot because I had been doing this since I was 5 or 6 years old. Which is wierd right?

6) I like green things. I like plants. Watching them grow and flower and produce. There's something whole and right and simple about the order and the progress, the flow of seasons, and the smells of life in the soil.

Now Im supposed to tag people who blog but I dont really know that many so how bout Aaron, Micah, Glen, Willy, Chelsea and Leisy

Stage 3 of Moving and the First Week of School

2008-08-20T07:51:00.000-07:00

So when asked about how i was doing I told someone I was in the third stage of moving (like the five stages of grief). The third stage is utter loathing of cardboard boxes. (The others are, in order, excitement about moving, realization that you have only a week left to pack, the drudgery of furniture moving day, and finally acceptance.)

On a lighter note I have technically finished my first week of teaching! Its gong well and I'm seeming so far to be able to do my work at school so I don't have to take it home with me. The teachers and the Principal are pretty amazing and have given me some nice complements that they have heard from students (mostly that I'm going to make them work but that they really enjoy the class.) All my classes except one have a test on Friday, and the one that doesn't has already had two quizzes (they groan a lot but hey, its anatomy and physiology and there's a lot to learn.) This morning I led staff devotions where we prayed for one another and I'm leading worship for chapel this afternoon with another teacher here.

So that's all for my update but I'm working on an article about Worship and My Favorite Heretic (Nestorius who called himself the Hammer of the Heretics and ended up becoming one)

Peace to you all
Adam

Oy Vey!

2008-08-06T13:52:00.000-07:00

So today I went by the school and picked up yet another box of books for my classes that I'm teaching. I'm now offically teaching Chemistry, Anatomy and Physiology, 2 Biology classes and the 8th grade boys Bible class. But i had a fantastic conversation to day which i will recount here.

"Well we're having breakfast and lunch for all the new teachers tommarow."

"Great what are we having?"

"Its a supprise"

"Well Im just asking cause I dont eat pork or dairy"

"Oh cause your..." she nods at me as if waiting for me to fill in the word. "You know, like Hebrew"

Any ways I thought it was pretty funny.

-A

New Adventures

2008-08-05T07:57:00.000-07:00

So if you havent heard, my wifey and I are going to have a baby!

And we're moving out of our little barn into a much bigger barn.

And I start my first day of school on thursday.

So theres alot of change going on right now for us. The easiest change mentally to deal with is moving. I've been moving all my life. If I stay somewhere too long I have to move all the furniture completely arround just so it feels a little diffrent. I like the process of going through things, throwing out the junk, and keeping the sentamental and remmebering the stories that go along with all the little keep sakes.

And right now my wife is doing most of the work for the baby. Sure I do a few more things arround the house but shes the one "climbing mountains" as people keep telling us. But were looking foward to raising our children together and helping them to grow up strong and capible in the ways of our faith.

And school, well, its a small private school so in teaching science, I am the only high school science teacher. So my corses are probable changing today as they go over the schedule due to low enrollment in one of my classes and high enrollment in some others, but Im just rolling with the punches and excited about doing something a bit more fufilling than planning out tract home neighborhoods.

So just a quick update, and Im off to start the rest of my day; transcribing, packing, and lesson planning.

My new Job!

2008-07-19T16:57:00.000-07:00

So yesterday I went and signed my life away for the next year but Im pretty excited about it. I signed my contract for working at Cornerstone and will get my first paycheck on the first of September which will give us a working budget instead of constantly hopping from random job to random job though for the past two and the next two weeks I have and will be working for the Priors doing random work arround their house and God has been amazingly faithful in taking care of us throught this time.

So I will be teaching three science classes, a bible class and working with the worship band for chapel. I picked up some of my teaching supplies.

These are my teaching supplies for just two of my classes so I've got some lesson planing in front of me :)

Thursday Again...

2008-06-19T18:10:00.000-07:00

My wife is out of town at what was supposed to be a wedding but turned into a fun girls weekend away due to some issues with the US consulate and a visa for the groom. So Sarah is in Connecticut and I'm batching it for the weekend.

But I got a call yesterday from a school that I had previously turned down due the course load they wanted me to teach and the compensation they were offering. So I met with the principal and they actually offered me less work and more money than before so we're praying about it but it looks like a good deal and it keeps me from driving down to Escondido everyday which is exactly 50 miles there and then 50 miles back everyday.

So I'll probably end up working there starting the end of August which is good but still means I am scrambling for work in the meantime but its okay.

-Adam

Thursday...

2008-06-12T15:34:00.000-07:00

So I just got done mowing grass with my brother in-law and realized that I have been some what remiss in writing, its not that I have nothing to say but that most of what I have been learning is about doing.

Faith perfected through actions.

Its been an interesting and sometimes difficult couple of months for us. Most of my time has been taken up in looking for a job, since I lost my job about two months ago. I haven't found anything permanent yet, but have supplemented our family income through a lot of random odd jobs mostly involving some sort of physical labor. Which means I've got listening of different messages done and had lots of time to sit and think/pray.

Things I learned...

Walk in my gifting... When troubles come its easy to pull back from things and "wait and see" and really that's sin. Not to say that you shouldn't put some energy into providing for your family, just remember who you are and walk in that identity as best you can.

Remember my priorities... I got offered a job that progressively the conditions changed for the worse. At first it was full time, then fifty to sixty hours, then six days a week, oh yeah and they were going to nights for the next 4 months so I would have been working from 8 pm to 6 am seeing my wife for only 2-3 hours a day. And there were some who couldn't believe it wouldn't take it because it would have been so much money and i didn't have a job at the time. But I made a vow to my wife when we got married to do certain things that take more three hours to accomplish. She's a priority in my life.

Trying to reconcile relationships doesn't always work... But it doenst mean you shouldn't try.

Honor is a language rarely spoken... even in our Church circles. We forget the power of our words and when we rob people of honor, we acknowledge that and go back and restore that that honor to them. And if we see someone dishonored, and recognize it, then we ought to go and address those things.

Don't use pocket knives when you are tired... Which is why i now have an nice scar on my hand about 3/4 of an inch long and about 3/4 of an inch deep.

Family is important and I look foward to having our little family for a long time...

So tomorrow I have my third interview with Light and Life school in Escondido. We'll see what happens. The pastor has an integrated view of using the school to reach out and minister to families in addition to providing a Christian education to the students. If i get it, I'll commute for now, but who knows what the future will bring.

-Adam

Cars and Fridgadares

2008-03-10T17:10:00.000-07:00

So on Friday I went home early from work, cause there really wasn't any thing left to do and decided to work on my car a bit changing out my brake pads and re-installing the factory stereo so i could jam to some tunes while I was cruising around.

So when I went to take off the passenger tire this is what i was greeted by...

So thank God it didn't like blow up on me some where. Theres a chunk of rubber missing and it is worn through the reinforcing wires under the tread.

Thats it.

I'm working on some other stuff but it's not ready yet :)

Man Camp

2008-03-03T15:48:00.000-08:00

So following in the footsteps of the last few posts and the hope that the thought of a the week doesnt become a reality ("Awarness without change is worse than ignorance") I have been dealing with these issues of brokeness in my life.

In the last blog I addressed some issues with competance that I am working through. Most of them come from past experiences and while I still need to deal with my own hurts and injuries, this weekend these issues bubbled to the surface.

I went to man camp this weekend. Okay every body who didnt ride up in our car called it Men's Retreat, but by the end of the weekend we got a few others to call it that too. But unbeknownst to me, my step-dad also came up for the weekend. Okay well, Im 26 almost 27, I havent lived at home in 6 years, Im married and really, I have almost nothing of a relationship with him other than saying hi and seeing him at family events.

I came up with some younger guys and saw some guys there from other churches that I'm friends with so I didn't see him much. But then came along some "church" time where we got together as churches to talk about what we were learning/ dealing with over the weekend. He made some comments that were pretty mean, which I tried to ignore, but they really hurt. And I though, wow okay, maybe im just oversensitive right now, but 5 of the other six people took me aside in some way or another and asked if I was okay.

I think the one that was really eye opening for me was when one older guy came up and said, I couldn't figure out why he was being so mean to you till I realized you were his step son. He knew we were related but had forgotten because, as he said, he "couldn't even see any sort of relationship between us" and how if he had been up at camp with his son he would have been buddy-buddy running around and at least trying to do stuff together. So needless to say I was saddend. But it wasn't untill Buzzy got up and started reading "On God's Fridge" did I start crying.

God as the Dad I never had who hung up every thing I did on the fridge as a feeling of Joy and Pride over who I am and the life that I was living.

My hopes, my dreams, my heart, my passions, everything that wraps up who I am, held to the fridge with little colored magnets, excited about everything Im doing, and have yet still to do, celebrated at his kid, in all the glory of my twenty six years.

A Glimpse of Jesus

2008-02-26T15:32:00.000-08:00

My wife and I recently started going to this 8-week marriage study at our church. Don't worry, our marraige isn't on the rocks or anything, we just would like to learn some good tools to keep us from ever getting to that point.

Anyways, I've been thinking about something that our pastor drew on a white board which I will try to recreate here.

He said from your same sex parent you get your sense of competency, from you opposite sex parent you get a sense of worth and from both of them you get your sense of belonging. We all probably have wounds in at least one of those areas if not all three. But in my particular case, I grew up with a mostly absent father, which means that to some extent I was missing out on a healthy helping of a sense of competency.

Now realize I’m not blaming my father or any thing for issues that I have. Rather I’m just opening a window on my though processes through the last couple of weeks as I've sought to root out some unhealth and to find healing for old wounds that I didn't realize were there.

My particular thought on that Tuesday night was, okay so dad wasn't around, I didn’t get this supposed dose of competency that I was supposed to get as a kid, but what are the normal compensation factors for that lack in a persons life and more specifically, in my own life.

I’m not sure what the normal ones are, but in my case, it’s a drive to be competent. At anything. It’s made me smart, cause I studied hard and read a lot of books. It made me good at a lot of weird things because I was always striving

But behind all of those outer doings, there has been an inner struggle over shame. I feel ashamed when something doesn’t work out or I can’t figure something out. There’s a feeling that if I just did “it” a little better some one might take notice of me and say something about it. Not that “it” was ever a fixed thing; just simply what ever I had happened to put my hands to that day. School was a perfect place for that. I excelled, I stood out, I got words of affirmation, and how God was going to do great things through me.

I realize that even though I'm seeing it more clearly, it has been about a two year process to get to this point, and the details aren’t important for this discussion but I ended up being in a place where as long as I was keeping up with and exceeding what I had previously done, I was praised, especially in ministry. And I found a lot of acceptance of my competence. As long as I kept up.

I think that’s maybe what hurts the most. When I stopped rushing headlong into the fray, almost every one else passed me by, gone on to take care of other things. Some of these relationships have been restored; others are coming around, and others still I have little hope for but in God’s power.

And its not like I’ve been healed from these feelings of shame. They are still there, I recognize them, some times they get me down, and I don’t always know what to do about them. I was supposed to be somebody, right? Did I, like the wayward son, squander away my inheritance? Did I miss some opportunity or do something wrong? And when I'm faced with not even being able to provide real well for my family, these feelings intensify.

In the last couple of months I have faced more rejection than I really care to think about with the job situation. Most people might get sad that they didn’t get a job or what ever. To me it feels like a personal rejection of who I am. I’ve always gotten jobs I’ve wanted. They fall in my lap. People desire me or at least my skill set to be apart of things they are doing. Maybe this is why I'm going through this, because its time to move on from this place.

I wrote last time about brokenness, God only moving when people were broken, and my wife asked me if I was broken yet, I had no answer because I wasn’t sure what I needed to be broken from.

It’s prideful self-confidence that masks itself through nonchalantness.
It leads to self-reliance and impatience to wait on the lord.
It leads to planning and scheming and trying to guess how to be ready for whatever life throws my way.

The key to brokenness as I see it is the careful application of truth to my life through the Word of God, implanted by the Spirit so that I might actually accept the Father’s love and acceptance without the feeling I must earn His respect, before He calls me son.

A Glimse of Jesus is a book I have started reading. He calls Jesus "the stranger to self-hatred" and calls us to be the same, to acknowledge our weaknesses and yet still walk in the truth of our position as sons of God.

“Lights will guide you home and ignite your bones…”

2008-01-11T16:15:00.000-08:00

I was reading through the first couple of chapters of Exodus, where the Israelites are becoming more and more oppressed by pharaoh and the Egyptians. What were they doing? It seems they were making brinks and building cities. I’m not sure I follow Pharaoh’s reasoning in scripture, but he gets afraid at the copious numbers of Israelites in the land, that they might side with the enemies of Egypt in some future war, and decides to work them hard, get rid of the male children and put slave masters over them. So the people get oppressed and cry out to God. So God snaps his fingers and smotes the Egyptians right? Not quite. During this time a baby gets born, and through a set of unforeseen circumstances becomes Pharaoh’s daughter’s adopted child. Moses lives the Egyptian equivalent of the high life and pretty much is either ignorant to or indifferent to the plight of his people. At some point in his adult hood he gets caught killing an Egyptian who was beating an Israelite and flees the country. He marries, has children, and then God appears to Moses in a burning bush, 40 years after his escape from Egypt. After leaving Egypt, the people wandered in the wilderness for 40 more years and then Moses dies at the ripe old age of 120 just before the people cross into the Promised Land. (Just a side note, during the wilderness wanderings they had to, on average, bury eighty-two people a day- thanks Tony)

So it was early and I had to think about it but that makes Moses about 80 years old when he goes down to Egypt to set free the Israelites. And unless I missed something, the oppression that the people were crying out to God about had been going on some time before that. So for at least 80 years, but probably more, the people languished in despair.

“Then the LORD told him, "You can be sure I have seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard their cries for deliverance from their harsh slave drivers. Yes, I am aware of their suffering. 8 So I have come to rescue them from the Egyptians and lead them out of Egypt into their own good and spacious land. It is a land flowing with milk and honey-the land where the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites live. 9 The cries of the people of Israel have reached me, and I have seen how the Egyptians have oppressed them with heavy tasks. 10 Now go, for I am sending you to Pharaoh. You will lead my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt."” Exodus 3:7-10

I imagine my self in the same situation. I’ve forgotten about my people, their needs their struggles or at least ignored them long enough for it them to become nothing more than a passing thought. I have a wife, I am on good terms with the in-laws, and even have some kids and sheep and land. I’m comfortable. Then God comes along and says, “I have heard their cries for deliverance”. What? Now you’ve heard their cries? Now, when I’m comfortable? I’m eighty, I’m supposed to be traveling around in an RV and collecting souvenirs from around the Sinai. Seriously God, go pick on someone else.

I’ve always heard the story of Moses conversation with God taught as, Moses was reluctant because he really wasn’t skilled or he was shy or humble. I think he was lazy. God please, please, please send any one else. And then he gave all these excuses why someone else should do it. Finally God gets mad and sends Aaron the Levite (wait how does Moses know who his Levite brother is)

But why does God wait eighty-plus years to bring his people out of captivity…
This is the question I kept coming back to in my head.

But first skip ahead a little bit. (Past the part about God going to kill Moses cause his son wasn’t circumcised, weird stuff but I have a thought about it for my next post)

Moses talks to pharaoh and pharaoh decides to make it harder on the Israelites not easier- didn’t we all see that one coming. And does Moses get thanked for trying to help them. Yeah right, they get their ropes in a knot. Then Moses cries out to God and God says that he is still going to help them (This is a short paraphrase of a chapter of Dialog)
Then Moses goes to the people and again tells them what God said

Chapter 6, Verse 9
Moses spoke thus to the people of Israel, but they did not listen to Moses, because of their broken spirit and harsh slavery.

And when I think back to question about why does God wait so long, it seems like at this point he has waited too long. The people have been broken by their slavery. Not just in bondage. Bondage implies oppression, and oppression often brings hope for the future, hope for release and hope for change. But the Israelites were broken.

I have all these biblical themes running through my head
Stories of Exile and Oppression by Babylon, Greece, and Rome
The waiting and the longing for a deliverer in times of trouble
The hope of a coming Messiah to establish Israel for good

And I even think, yes that gives me hope, God is going to come through; he’s done it before and he’ll do it again. And so I hold on to that last scrap of hope. But I think even that misses the mark.

I think God waits till people are broken to fix them.

It seems wrong, like God is almost a bad guy, and I guess I will have to untangle all my thoughts about it over the next couple of days, but I couldn’t escape my own thoughts.

God waits till people are broken to fix them.

God waits till I am broken to fix me.

Kenya

2008-01-02T09:17:00.000-08:00

I remember my first night at the hospital. I had taken all the classes, learned the medicine and the only thing that I had left to do was actually put what I had learned into practice. I was 20 years old and for about the first hour of my shift I was pretty dumbfounded. I walked around looking, but not saying much. Blood, contusions, brokenbones, coughing, crying, moans. All of these thing were going on and I was slightly overwelmed. I rember the first thing that I did, I cleaned up the floor under a lady who had been shot. It wasnt the glamorus thing it was kinda gross, here i was with all my Emegency Medical Training and I was cleaning the floor. But it got me moving. It got me doing something and by the end of the night I had worked with all sorts of patients, drug addicts, criminals from the jail, done CPR 3 times and a bunch of other things.

And right now Im feeling that sorta dumfounded feeling again. As alot of you know I have been looking for work for the last few months. I applied for a job at ELI that seems like a great fit for me and Im eager to start, where I would, among other things, be a sort of short term missions team pastor helping with training and tending to thier needs spititually to prepare them for going to Africa and to encorage them and help them through the spiritual issues they might have at their return. I have already interviewed with the staff but have yet to interview with Don since he is in Africa.

The issue is that over night Kenya has erupted in violence. Churches have burned and the media is using terms like "ethnic cleansing". The last report I heard on Don is that they are trying to get him and his family out of the country, but that their centers in Kenya are becoming refugee camps for people who are excaping the violence, some with only the clothes on their back. If you are reading this please pray for peace in Kenya. Im not sure what else they might need from us. I have emailed the US office of ELI to see if they have physical needs. Im sure they will need money to rebuild that which was lost and to buy food since in times of unrest, the cost of everything goes up.

Here's ELI's Blog to read about what they are facing incountry.
http://empoweringlives.blogspot.com/

Here's another missionary's blog in kenya that highlights some detailed descriptions of what is actually happening in Kenya since the government closed down the news in or out of the country. http://www.dlipparelli.blogspot.com/

Some thoughts from last week.

2007-10-23T14:35:00.000-07:00

Started out feeling just plain with out hope. I guess it was the culmination of alot of things, but really it comes out of my love and hope for the Church to take her rightful place in the world instead of piddling away Her time and energies on things that neither help Her, nor the rest of the world around her.

I've been thinking and studying "spiritual gifts" as they relate to the church. My first introduction to the concept of spiritual gifts came from a guy named Dave Snow. He gave us these little questionnaires to fill out and from that we were to figure out our spiritual gifts. I still didn't have much of a concept of what they were talking about and accordingly I'm not sure that the test had any relevance to what my spiritual gifts actually were (I took the test again after a couple of years though and got what I consider a fair but rather general explanation of my spiritual gifts.

Spiritual gifts are given by God, to the Church, to bless the world.

Blessings and cursings are a biblical concept. In Genesis Abe is given the promise of God that his proceeding generations would be a blessing unto all nations. Israel was meant to carry Gods promises and blessings unto the whole world, a task which they had little success in. The Christian converts were also meant to carry that same message of blessing and hope. But like the nation of Israel we also fall short of the Goal of blessing the whole world- we often fall short of even blessing those people around us whom we care about the most.

I see this and wonder, "God, what can be done? What hope can there be when the Church doesn't even get that theres hope to be found?"

Maybe this is redundancy from my last post, but we have engaged a sort of Christianity that misinterprets the application of repentance. We even have the meaning down, but a self centered application leaves too much unsaid, undone and un-changed.

I learned in Student Venture the etymology and the process of repentance. First of all, "repent" as it is translated from Greek is a military marching term equivalent to our "about face." it goes like this. Step one, stop what you are doing. Step two, turn 180 degrees. Step three, strike out in the opposite direction. Too often I applied that process specifically and narrowly to certain parts of my life, leaving those which I though were Okay or Well Enough alone. I fought to end lust and a struggle with masturbation and pornography. I fought to end my quickness to anger. I fought to end procrastination and laziness. I go to God expecting a surgeon and he stands there as a mortician. I'd like him to cut out the bad, keep the good, and stich me back up with out leaving too much of a scar. He'd like to see me die to my self and become a new creation.

Too often I sit around planing the course, ringing my hands together while looking at the obstacles, judging the people who don't see it my way, threatening to leave them behind when I set out, figuring that all along they were wrong in their plans, their thoughts and their actions. And when nothing changes, I begin to dream of moving to far off places where "things will be different" and where the Church is healthy, and I will feel fuller while giving less.

And in all my commotion I find it hard to start- there is a plan- there is a place in the history of the Church in which we all fit, a place in the body of Christ into which we are all a part. Its time to start showing people where they fit, who Christ has created us to be, setting us apart before all time giving us our hearts and desires, so that once we have died to our selves, he could come in and show us those same dreams and hopes we once had for our lives were now to be fulfilled in His way and in His time.

I am setting out into a new season of doing. I pray that what I have learned in the last year as my wife and set out to regain some of what we had lost in our Christian faith, and returned to the basics of our calling as Christians to the world: blessing one another, sharing our meals, our home and our lives openly and without guile, seeking to teach what we know, and learn what we don't. But now I'm feeling this need that more need to engage in this both harder and simpler way. I have a month and a bit before my wife and I's one year is up. When I left working with the Well, I thought it might only be for a month or two. But when my now wife but then girlfriend got engaged we decide to take a year off from leading things to build a healthy platform of success beneath us. I feel like we have come along way in that and will continue to work on it, but we are both sensing the need to move forward in being the people who Christ called us to be.

I'm not sure what that looks like exactly yet. I'm looking forward to November when my wife and I will be heading up to Oregon to see the Bravenecs. From the sound of it, their church has tried to embrace the idea of being in community with one another and I am looking forward to talking about it with Willy.

I'm also reading three books right now that are moving and sculpting all these things about which I have been thinking about, the first is about John Westley's Class Meetings in which the author discusses practical application of biblical theology and applies it to small group meetings. The second is The Screwtape Letters by CS Lewis, which is a fictional account of the correspondence between two demons about a christian they are tempting. It is making me realize that I commit more sins than I could have guessed, and called them virtues. And the third book is called The Importance of Being Foolish by Brenning Manning. Many people talk about choosing the "good" over choosing the "best. Manning's book calls those people out, saying the "good" is really the wrong, and to repent and reclaim the heart of God for the poor, the widowed and the disenfranchised. It is the first book in a long time that has ignited a sort of fire in my belly.

Also this week I struggled with what I felt was a broken relationship and committed a sin of gossip (and un unkind words) and trying to bring people to my side. Luckily enough this friend of mine called me out and said go deal with it, so I went and dealt with it. That's as far as it went, but my hopelessness was causing me to lash out in frustration instead of dealing with things in an appropriate manor. If you think this is weird that I put this confession of sin on here, then I would agree with you, however I also think that one of John Wesley's small group questions is amazing and will encourage growth as I seek both to answer it honestly and seek honest answers from others so that we might confront sin instead of entertaining it and keeping it secret: "What sin has befallen you this week?"

So with an exhortation I leave you- Be a blessing to those around you. Bring blessings and not curses where ever you go. It takes energy to be a blessing. I bless you with the strength that God so richly provides to take blessings with you as you go on your journeys.

Page 1

2007-10-03T17:24:00.000-07:00

I've got this idea from a strange book that I once read. In the book a higher echelon demon was sending letters to a lower demon who was trying to convert and circumvent a young christian who had his normal virtues and vices. While this book has a rather spurious plot line the basic point of the story was about all the things that we fail to recognize as sin or detrimental to our christian faith. One point that Jack Lewis makes in his book is in relation to church life. Keep in mind that these are demons talking, so the language takes a little thinking about.

“One of our great allies at present is the Church itself. Do not misunderstand me. I do not mean the Church as we see her spread out through all time and space and rooted in eternity, terrible as an army with banners. That, I confess is a spectral which makes our boldest tempters uneasy. But fortunately that is quite invisible to these humans.”

The very words burn in my heart and head. And I think, Great? Terrible? Spread through time and space? And I, much like that younger demon's subject have trouble seeing the Church thus and instead focus on the shortcomings of the people who make up the Church, misguided and blinded by the actions of others.

I have been thinking as of late about the narrative continuum that is the story of the Church “spread out through time and space”. It started with the revelation of God to those whom he would call His people. These stories were recorded in the Old testament, stories of God’s interaction with man. These stories teach us about the character and nature whose name was recorded as four letters. These letters with the addition of some vowels have given us God’s name as Jehovah or Yahweh. God spoke with the prophets giving them a way to live so that the people might join into life with Him. In and of them selves they were unable to stay the course that the prophets spoke of, though they also spoke of a future hope for the people that one day they would be free.

Then one day a man appeared who claimed he was God, that he had come to fulfill the hope that had been spoken for. “The The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed,
to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.” He was killed as a heretic, but was soon proven to be who he said he was when he was seen walking around after his very public death. Soon after a change was seen in his followers, allowing them to perform miracles and, as the prophets of the old testament prophesied, to join in life with God. Over the next two thousand years, these followers continued to seek God, learning more about Him and how to be in life with him.

Which leads us to today. We often seek God, but we insist on asking questions like what should I do about my job? Should I marry this girl or that guy? How can I get out of debt? Why is there evil in the world? Should I be a Calvinist? What church should I go to? While these are all good questions, I think a better one, a question that is more in line with the heart of God is this, what is to be our role in the history of the Church?

But to speak of the history of the church one must assume a role much more grand than that of an average American christian. Much in the same way that Christ turned fishermen and tax collectors into missionaries and Evangelists. Somehow we have taken the term Christian and associated it with “good people” who pay their taxes (give to Cesar what is Cesar’s) don’t speed (obey the laws of the land) don’t cheat on their wives (don’t commit adultery) don’t cuss (let no unwholesome word come from your mouth) don’t drink or smoke (your body is a temple). But God calls us to do good not just be good. For those same people who follow all these supposed rules of the church, walk by homeless people on the street, drive by those broken down on the road, we lock our doors to keep out the hungry, and we close our hospitals to those who are dieing. Friends, the heart of God is for widows and orphans, the poor, the blind, the sick. His heart is for healing our lands. There's this story in Mathew 25 that quite frankly doesn’t fit into any theology I was ever taught in church and scares the bejebers out of me

“When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne. 32 Before him will be gathered all the nations, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. 33 And he will place the sheep on his right, but the goats on the left. 34 Then the King will say to those on his right, Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. 35 For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, 36 I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me. 37 Then the righteous will answer him, saying, Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? 38 And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? 39 And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you? 40 And the King will answer them, Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me. 41 Then he will say to those on his left, Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. 42 For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, 43 I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me. 44 Then they also will answer, saying, Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to you? 45 Then he will answer them, saying, Truly, I say to you, as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me. 46 And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”

I have been told all my life that the salvation of God is offered freely and all I have to do is accept it, that there's nothing that I can do to earn my salvation. The problem with that statement is that it is incomplete and stems from a misunderstanding of what salvation actually is. We tend to think of ourselves as free moral entities who have the right to self determination. But some times I don’t feel very free. Oh yes I have some sort of limited movement in my life like a dog on a leash or an electron circling its atom. I have a limited range but ultimately I am tied to a path that was not set by my own actions. Salvation is what God promised was to come, the ability to leave that set path, and to become more like God, joining into His sort of life. Salvation then as I understand it is about trading one kind of life, for another. But rarely do we find this sort of salvation being proclaimed from the pulpit. Because engaging in this different sort of life is going to put us at odds with the world and those that love it.

.struggles.

2007-09-29T12:54:00.000-07:00

Its funny, my hours got cut back this week, and I'm not even feeling worried about it. In fact I often forget about it till I get a call or an email from someone who has just heard or has some new lead. I dont really see this as a bad thing. I see it as God, after giving me ample time on my own, kicking my own butt, which sometimes I am desperatly in need of.

I sat with God on friday and just wrote down bullet points of what i was thinking and feeling.
I love the Church, the people in the Church, and Im discoraged by the state of the Bride.

So I'll be fleshing out some of these ideas and thoughts of my 6 pages of bullet points over the next couple of weeks (since as Alison pointed out, I now have more time to do these things.)

Talk to all yall soon.
Adam

The Church and the Third Place

2007-09-29T12:39:00.000-07:00

One of the wonderings about the third place.

"Should the church become peoples Third Place?
That is, does the church need to be the safe place that people go.
Some say yes, its a place of fellowship and community
Others say no, its not the place that needs to be inviting, its the people (who
really are the church)"

The Church and the Third Place.

Our church used to be a “mobil” church, that is, we rented a space to have Sunday morning services and every week we drove our little truck full of goodies to our improvized santuary, unloaded and set up the sound equipment, had service then packed it up again after we were finished. I used to help set up the sound most Sunday mornings which means we got there at around 7 am for a 9:30 service. It was great. People bonded over their “suffering” each week to turn a school audtorium into a place to come meet God. Having a mobil church is probably the closest thing to being part of the persecuted church that you can get in Amercia. I don’t say that to trivialize the sufferings of the persecuted church but rather just to say that mutual suffering, real or percieved, creates a bond that is hard to make otherwise. People band together over suffering.

So in all this moving about the church started renting a place off of 4 Corners in Elsinore. It wasn’t big, 30’ by 80’, nor very nice, it had concrete floors with old flooring glue on it and leaked when it rained. However it did have location going for it. Not only was it located within walking distance of mine and several other of the leaders, it was located with in walking distance of a lot of the students homes. There was a lot to do as far as building and painting the youth room and eventually it became a place where your could almost always find someone “hanging out” either having a small bible study, working on a message, reading a book, or even playing “butts up” (a rather painful game played with a tennis ball, requireing more dexterity and speed than I could muster.) The point is, that for many of the youth and the leaders, our youth building became our Third Place (see the previous blog).

And then our church moved to a building that we had built and we had a larger room with carpet, a sound board and some hansil and grettle sort of storage closets. At first we were like, woo were so excited, but then as the newness factor wore off we started to realize that we had, for what ever reason, lost a lot of that feeling. People didn’t just stop by anymore and hang out. We had schedules and things to do and stuff to acomplish.

Was it just the change of place, or was it the change of pace?

I mean its true, we lost a place that was solely our own. Which means we couldn’t just use it for whatever we wanted whenever we wanted. We now had to check a schedule and use the places that werent being used. But I don’t think the feeling of a third place is baised as much on location as it is baised on what you feel in a location. And feelings are a mixture of relationships and memories and current events.

As Christians, we often go to church, but have a hard time inviting people into our church. I think a portion of that is a level of uncomfortableness with church, due to our memories, current events in our lives and the relationships with those arround us.

We have lost our focus on the message of Grace.
We have lost our focus on hospitalyity which is a demonstration of grace.

We think the church ought to be doing it for us. The church should be providing a place of grace and hospitality right? Except we forget that we are to be the church. Where is your hospitality? Where is mine? I have forgoten that grace is the central message and hospitality is the one of the outward manifestations of grace. But what is grace? What do we mean by hospitality? More to come…

Mumbo Jumbo and The Third Place

2007-08-28T12:22:00.000-07:00

Ive got all these things that I want to write about right now and they all seemed to be stuck together and tangled like the cables behind my computer. Perhaps if i pull at the easiest one, the others will begin their long journey from thought to screen.

The first and easiest something i have been thinking about has to do with a little know place where Christians have traded in their crack pipes for something slightly less nefarious. My wife worked here for a while wearing a sorta Christmas elf looking green apron and serving their meth substitute in venti cups with pithy statements on them. Yes your neighbor hood Starbucks. Don't get me wrong, i like and drink coffee, but I have so many issues about drinking a big mack, fries and a coke blended into a frappichino (I'm not even kidding, go check out the nutritional facts)

But I wasn't really thinking about that. I was thinking about a conversation I had with my wife about smoothies and dating. We signed up for this date night at church. You read a book separately, answer some questions, then go on a date and discuss what you thought, or your questions or what ever. Its fairly good and guided, and each week there is a specific topic of discussion ranging from communication, involvement, parenting, growing old, sex, household chores, and spiritual connection. But seeing how it started at 7 o'clock on a Saturday, we didn't usually have time to go after the meeting on our date so we would go before. We cruised over to this little shopping center near the church to coffee from the Bucks. But I decided i wanted a Smoothie instead. But since the smoothie place has no chairs in it, i wondered if we could sit in Starbucks and drink it and talk. So i asked Sarah if it was okay, seeing as how she worked there and all. She said yes. Are you sure?

Yeah the want to be your Third Place.

Huh? Whats that supposed to mean. She went on to tell me that it is Starbucks corporate policy to allow anyone and everyone to come in, use their place, their electricity, their bathrooms, to eat and drink food from other restaurants, to have meetings and conduct business, and to stay for as long as you want, with out spending a dime because they would like to become your Third Place. See almost every one has a First Place. A place you call home where you go to sleep, where you eat. Its your house, your home, your abode and domicile. Your second place is your work. Where you sit and make money and get stuff done. But your third place... that's what Starbucks wants to be, the place you go to hang out, meet friends, chill. Perhaps the owners watched a little too much cheers in their life. Starbucks prides itself in its regulars, they even have a whole series of commercials where the drink looses its fancy Italian name and is called by the person ordering it (its not a triple venti latte with Cinnamon and soy milk, its simply an Eddie) So the next couple of posts on this blog will be about my thoughts on the "Third Place"

Anniversaries

2007-06-27T08:31:00.000-07:00

Today is my one-year anniversary of dating my wife. Its also her birthday which apparently in the eyes of some other guys I know, was a smart move since I only need to remember one date instead of two. I don’t see that as a bonus yet, but maybe when Im old and senile it will be nice.

I always thought that there would be things that I could learn being married that I couldn’t as a single man. And you know what? I probably was right. I was driving in the car with my wife to church on Sunday (yawn…It was way to early to be up, but we had to be their for choir) She looks over and sleepily says “You’re a good husband.” See, we had just had a big night out for her birthday, I had gotten up and made breakfast, brewed her some tea for church and ironed her outfit for church. But just two nights before we’d gotten into it over what now seems stupid but at the time seemed like a big deal. Had she simply just forgotten all that? I think I would rather say “I’m learning to be a good husband”

I never had thought of myself as selfish, nor has anyone ever called me that, not even my wife in the most heated of arguments. (Yes in two months we’ve had heated arguments. Hey give us a break we’re still learning how to communicate with each other) But the reality is, that I have seen more selfishness that I didn’t even know was there. My this, my way to do that, my needs, my time, my house. Ultimately its my space: the nitch that I had carved out in my life that I thought of as mine. It is no longer mine, its ours. Our life our future. God help me to rid myself of selfishish ambition and run the race well.

Spinning the world.

2007-06-08T11:35:00.000-07:00

Or at least a small part of it.
Its amazing to me how much a bit of change a has the ability to energize.
...

Sailing

2007-06-07T09:16:00.000-07:00

My boat seems adrift amid the sea of life.
I have untied from the dock, pushed out into water and let the wind and waves push me to and fro. The sounds and smells of the salty ocean bring to mind memories of pickles and fish as the waves lap gently against the side of the boat. Where to next. Without a map and preset course i have set out to find a new contry to belong to. Its seems frantic when the name of your destination is unknown however there is time to prepare for our land as ther is no land yet in sight. Which way to go? Any way seems okay since i have no idea how long the journey is in any direction, save the one I came from. Will i, like Chesterton, seek out new adventures only to discover landing in my own backyard, and even more supprising, find that there were new adventures to be had even there?
Run up the spiniacer, its time to start moving along Adam.

Wedding Days

2007-04-28T05:23:00.000-07:00

Man how much life changes in a year. A year ago I was faintly interested in this girl who I talked to over the internet because she was living in Russia at the time. We talked alot, and come to find out, it meant alot to her, the long nights on Ichat and the emails back and forth when our schedules didnt match well. It was about this time when we both started (unbeknownst to each other) thinking, "Hey this might work out here." She came back, we started dating, and bada bing, bada boom, here we are and now today the two of us have decied to make our connection a perminant one, at least for this life. So today I marry and join my life to my beautiful bride, and together we will explore the mysteries of God, how our relationship is to be like Christ's to the church, how two become one, and how we become stronger and better together.

More to come I'm sure...

April 28th...

2007-04-28T05:14:00.000-07:00

Two months and a bit.

2007-02-15T14:23:00.000-08:00

And I have become, at last, my own person.

And on the seventh day... rest.

2006-12-15T15:50:00.000-08:00

Rest.

"and ye shall afflict your souls, and offer an offering made by fire unto the LORD"

Then there was evening and morning. The sixth day.

2006-12-15T15:39:00.000-08:00

Okay so today I feel better. It was wierd. I heard of those 24 hour bugs, even made them up in highschool so I wouldnt have to go, but never have I experienced one. Went to Peppertree tonight. The kids put on a little production as a way to thank us for helping them and doing the Christmas gift thing for them on Saturday.

First time in along time that I really felt appreciated by someone I was ministering to. I get thanks from people I am (was?) in ministry with but rarely do people who you serve thank you. I dont think Im living for that. I could pick much "better" ministries to be apart of to be confirmed and affirmed in. It was just... nice.

Is it wrong to look for encouragement? I dont know. Some would call it living for people (instead of God) or being a man-pleaser, both of which I have struggled with and still sometimes struggle with. One of my teachers posed the question "If you had to pick a herisey to follow which would you pick?" Easy. Im would fall in the camp of the "Social Gospel", putting heaven on the back burner and taking care of people now. Helping them out of where they are at.

Let me say on the record. I am not a Social Gospelist. I just have leanings, just like any other christian arround.

But encouragement from the body, is biblical, called for by God, and sometimes very needed for strenght to continue.

Then there was evening and morning. The fifth day.

2006-12-15T15:37:00.000-08:00

Im sick!
Urgg I have a fever and chills.
One minute i cant seem to get warm.
The next I am boinling up.

Then there was evening and morning. The fourth day...

2006-12-11T17:15:00.000-08:00

Feeling a little light today.
Nothing much to say, but I promiced myself that I would write at least 10 minutes, 6 days a week (and rest on the seventh) while all this was going on. Worked today. Yeah.
Umm.

Going to go home.

Going to wash some dishes.

Going to make some dinner.

Going to eat some dinner.

Will probably clean a little. My house is not "a mess" but it could us a tidying up. Got some presents to write in. I dont wrap them because, oddly enough S. gets much enjoyment out of wrapping presents. So I just mostly write little notes for them, either in the cover if they are books or in a card taped to the front.

Mike called. Wants me to pray about starting a church with him in Sweeden. Crazy guy. I dont know if I am up to that right now. But he said it would be a couple of years before we'd go. Hes already sending me links and articles.

And I got an email from a writers blog I have. The are looking for a writer for a Missions orfanization that reaches out to europe, and they are baised in CO within about an hour (barring blizzards) of where Mike lives. Praying.

Heard from God? Not yet.
Only
Father the fatherless.
"Oh lead me to the place where I can find You"

Then there was evening and morning. The third day...

2006-12-10T23:59:00.000-08:00

Im a little late in getting this up.
All sorts of thoughts going through my head.

Church this morning.
Thought Gary was going to anounce my stepping down.
People still are expecting "Pastor Adam" or at least "Get it done Adam"
Pastor Adam is okay.

Like anyone could stop me from pastoring, tending and instructing.

Maybe my real issue is filling time with stuff that Pastors are "supposed to do" without ever doing the real work of a pastor. Like working the angles of prayer, scripure and Godly mentoring.

Maybe sometimes I am a bad friend. I went to a friends house tonight. Totally went to bless them and cook them dinner in the midst of holiday busyness. But as I was leaving, I was struck with the fact that another of my friends who is looking to be blessed, has asked for it, I feel unable to bless. Things that would totally knock my socks off dont work for him and at this point I feel unable to accomplish this task. Can people be too different? I dont know. We seem to have different views on everything from ministry to family life to how friendships should even function.

Forced together by involvement in the same ministry, held together by one touch point, conflicts ensue, Christ, the scriptures, the Holy Spirit, and when nessisary other counsilers were needed to keep us together. Remove that touch point and what happens? Do we cease to be friends? Many words spoken, but less action is taken. There isnt hate or apathay. Theres love and care and excitement, just it seems that there is a moving appart.

Where should the heart of a Son be?

Trying to hold on?- Keeping to the biblical principles of unity, and embracing the pain of misunderstandings?

Letting go? Loosing a friend to the fact that we are both growing in differant directions? Embracing the pain of a lost friendship?

Somewhere in the middle? Trying to keep a little of both to excape both extrems of pain?

Something different that I havent even thought of?

Then there was evening and morning. The second day...

2006-12-08T15:12:00.000-08:00

Day number two.
Its not overyet. Its amazing how the unimportant has so much ability to clog the arteries of our spiritual heart. Staring at a computer screen has the ability to numb the spirt, entrap the soul, and cause our bodies to fall almost into slumber.

Delt with my first wierd person who had nothing to say to me. Bye, you'll be missed. Then the wierd long awkward pause as the reality began to show that even though I had tried to explain it to them, they missed what I was saying and really just didnt get it. Dont cover it up. Dont stop what you're doing, don't doubt the ministry. Because I've left, do people think that I dont care about what happens as I leave. Dont you think I know theres a whole that no one is prepared to fill. Theres anguish in my heart over this. When I left Student Venture it took five people to take over my position. Is that pride on my part, I hope not. Rather a realization of two things.

First, God has gifted me well, trained me well, and caused life circumstances to grow me into a very capible and compitent man. I need to be wise in the application of these gifts.

Second, I need to be a man who disciples well, so that when I am called to other things, there are those ready to take my space if they havnt aready begun to push me out. Im almost thinking that no ministry should be even started with out having disciples already inplace to begin learning. Jesus practiced this principle. He called the disciples first, then went about his ministry. This also means that instead of fitting disciples into your busy schedule of ministry, the disciples become what ever ministry you choose to do.

Then there was evening and morning. The first day.

2006-12-08T08:24:00.000-08:00

Oh the spiritual implications of sleep. I once had someone describe different sorts of people and the different levels and types of tiredness that people needed to hear from God. Now I’m not saying that God cannot communicate whenever he wishes too. I'm just saying that most people, including myself, have a mode in which we operate best. Some people need physical tiredness to communicate with God. These can be your outdoorsy type people who “find God in nature” in the most orthodox interpretation of that phrase. Others need a weariness of the mind to hear well from God. These are your early morning risers who get up at 4 in the morning because that’s when they are less distracted by the on goings of the day. Then there are those who operate on a moderate level of constant fatigue. These people normally are your servant types in the church who can hear from God while serving, whether that’s vacuuming or doing dishes. Then there are the people who need to be totally at the top of their game to really hear from God. Well rested, have already been awake for a while, and have the time to sit and think.

All that to say, that I need sleep to hear from God.

So today I started a new (old?) journey to find out what God has for me (and my pretty girl); where he is leading us and what he is calling us to do. I started what amounts to a sabbatical- time taken to seek God for direction in ministry. I stepped down from any sort of official role in my church, I’ll probably have to give back my keys, clean out my bookshelf and my picture probably wont hang on the wall any more (though I wonder if I can get that picture, its kinda nice). I don’t even know if I’m still invited to the Christmas party next week.

It probably looks sudden to those around me. Its okay. I'm not super ready to have to explain myself to people but I guess I will have to say something. Perhaps that I want to be where God wants me, and I don’t know where that is right now. True, yes. Vague; that too.

The reality is that when I started at the church it was with a certain set of conditions. I knew I would have to work out side of the church to make ends meet. I mean seriously what church can afford (or has the vision) to hire three guys to run one ministry outside of what happens on a Sunday morning. No, I knew going in that I would probably never get paid here. I was to be in charge of the worship gathering of our main group. Leading, teaching and a developing a group of people with a heart to bring people to the presence of God in a real way that would cause them to ascribe worth to Him. I was also to be in charge of writing. What does that mean? Well we didn’t know either except for the fact that I was good at writing, and it seemed that God was using things that I had already written in different people’ lives, so we said yes I should be in charge of writing. Anything else? Well yeah I should share in the teaching responsibilities. Fine and dandy I guess, but really I'm not that great of a public speaker, at least not to large crowds, and not to people who look at you with blank stares and you just sit and wonder, is any of this sinking in? I like interaction. I like to answer questions and have discussions, I like to scratch where people itch, in the sense that I want to talk about what people really are thinking about and give them God’s perspective (does that assume too much on my part, maybe, but its my journal and if you don’t like it, write you own)

So how did I do at those things? Well as I sat to do a “three-sixty” evaluation of myself, my ministry partners, and our ministry, I couldn’t really help but look at what I was doing and evaluate anything other than “fails to meet expectations.” Was it because I was in some blatant sin? No I don’t think so. It was different, other than that. It was that life had changed for me. When we started, I was a single guy, in college, living in a place without running water or heat or a stove that I only paid $100 a month to rent a room. I had a job with flexible hours and I had this strange desire to succeed and help out those around me as much as a could. Some people saw this as passion and faithfulness. Others saw it as foolhardy and youthful exuberance. Nobody really saw it as a continuation of co-dependence on a system that felt very safe to me. “Succeed” I told my self “and somebody will take notice” A servant’s heart is what I was told I had. And my varied experience, my competence at many different things and fierce confidence in my ability to figure things out only allowed me to excel at filling in the gaps for people. All of this meant my cell phone rang a lot. And my desire to be liked and accepted by people meant I rarely said no. And now I'm supposed to be in charge of all this stuff? I did what any highly competent man pleaser would do. I work hard. I stayed up late, I sacrificed friendships, and I sacrificed my school worked. So the “ministry” looked good but the reality was that I was not a healthy guy.

And so in the last six months I have been growing in my realization that my place in the kingdom depends less and less on the things I do, and more and more on who I am. God has created each of us to function with him in different ways. And he’s created us to be healthy.

I am a Son of God. There are boundaries that God has, I think, built in to each one of us. Principled the same but manifested in different ways. They are the boundaries that allow us to live in freedom, but once we over-step those bounds, suddenly there is bondage and not freedom. I, in my commitments, had overstepped these bounds.

And in trying to bring myself back into right accord, I became unable to fulfill those tasks that I had once under taken. But I was trying. We are all called to be administers of the good news of the coming of the messiah. But being a pastor of a group of people is a totally different undertaking. Work, healthy boundaries, and full-time ministry quickly overflowed my schedule. I pulled out of as many “non-essential” peripheral ministries as I could.

I don’t know where I'm going with this right now. Maybe I’ll change this later and call all this history the back-story, so that I can actually write what I'm thinking with out so much explanation.

So things I did today.
Got up early and took Sarah to work- Realized that once we are married, there will be some thing to rising and going to bed on the same schedule whenever possible.

Prayed while I tried to go back to sleep-
Prayers consisted of asking God what he wanted me to do.
Response: It’s about time.
Realize that because of my lack of strength and energy, I was unwilling to seek God in what he wanted from me in the fear that he might want to “add” to my plate

Went and met with some people I work at the church with
Sorta weird. I think I feel way more okay with it than other people did. Felt like they were justifying why they thought it was time for me to step down for a while. Weird conversations about whether I had been supported in all of my change. They felt they had, but really I felt abandoned by them. Anybody who calls my future wife a Jezebel because she would like to see me healthy in my life and fulfilled in my ministry doesn’t rank real high with me on the support list. Mostly I felt condemnation. Mostly I felt confused, like out of one corner of their mouth they said, “Yes be healthy” and out of the other “How come you aren’t doing more.”

Left church but was called and asked what I wanted to celebrate about leaving. Had no answer, because I didn’t think what I was celebrating would go over well.
Hmm
Celebrating freedom from bondage that I had created for myself.
Celebrating the son who realized he wasn’t a slave.
Celebrating the chance to explore relationships with people who I feel actually have my health in mind and not what I can bring to their program
Things like that get left unsaid. I'm sure it will be some mumbo jumbo about me seeking God and what he has for me, True and untrue. I already know what he has to offer me. Health, Abundant life. Sonship. These are all things that I have instinctive, experiential, and scriptural understandings of, both their presence and their absence.

Took a nap. Remember the spiritual significance of sleep. Here it is. I'm tired a lot. Even inside of the boundaries that I have set after discovering them in myself I still push right up to the edge whenever I can. And sleep for me is a powerful tool to seek God. I have dreams, I have visions. Do I talk about them much? No. But if you want to know how Sarah and kinda figured out that we should really look at dating one another, it started with a praying and fasting woman, and a praying and fasting man. And God giving us each dreams as an answer to each other’s prayer. Did we know this? Not at the time. Sarah was in Russia, I was in the States. I prayed that my wife would be revealing herself to me. Sarah has a dream. She then prays and fasts food for me for three days while I’m sleeping that I might have dreams. I dream the same dream 3 nights in a row. Which I finally tell her about on the third day. Sorta felt like Dan’s angle in the bible. The answer had already been sent, but she continued to pray and fast cause she didn’t know it yet. God has given me specific visions. Pictures from people’s lives. Words on their faces. A vision of the story of my life. Some times with phrases that I don’t understand but keep. The first was in the response to a gal I knew. Her life was in shambles but she was totally able to pass off that she was doing great and I believed her. Then a vision came. Took my breath away. No frame of reference for me just bam. And it was all that had happened to her over the past 4 years. And a word “Adultery”. Vision # 1

Vision # 2 a couple of months later I was praying, God I'm just having a hard time trusting, of following when I don’t know where you are leading. And I woke up, this time with a vision of my life, a bunch of snapshot, flipped through at high speed, photos of my life, past present and future with the phrase “Occupy the land”

Vision # 3 today; waking up from my nap. A crowd of people with large letters above them “Father to the fatherless” A description of God? A description of a new emphasis in my life? A description of need in my life? I don’t know. Still working on what it means

Then I went and had some sushi and went Christmas shopping.

So some things to consider and pray for.
Guidance
What my next step is to be
Strength to follow what he says
That I would embrace it when it hurts that I might know what it means to be a son and not a slave

And man does it hurt sometimes. I have the experience today of a huge range of emotions. Uncontrollably sobbing to elation. Sadness that comes at the death of a thing, and yet also the feeling of a lifted burden.

Oh God show me what it means to be your son.

Through Painted Deserts

2006-10-28T12:22:00.000-07:00

Its friday.
I sat down to read a book last night. Not one of those carfully thought out books that I heard about and looked into. No, it was one of those randomly chosen, spur of the moment books that I picked up at the B&N when I was buying some books for my Islam class.
I got hooked at the intro:
"We get one story, you and I, and one story alone. God has established the elements, the setting and the climax and the resolution. It would be a crime not to venture out, wouldn't it?
It might be time for you to go. It might be time to change, to shine out.
I want to repeat one word for you:
Leave.
Roll the word around on your tongue for a bit. It is a beautiful word, isn't it? So strong and forceful, the way you have always wanted to be. And you will not be alone. You have never been alone. Don't worry. Everything will still be here when you get back. It is you who will have changed"
Did you catch that. Everything will still be here when you get back.
It is you who will have changed.
And I was digging it. I started reading the first chapter. Not two lines into it I started thinking wow this sounds really familiar. Then I hit this line
"Paul and I are quiet, our thoughts muffled by the tin-can rattle of his 1971 Volkswagen camping van" I went to my shelf, pulled off a copy of "Prayer and the Art of Volkswagon Maintainace." Same book. Same author. Diffrent title.
I guess since donald miller wrote the "Blue like Jazz" he wanted to rerelease a book Ive had for 5 or 6 years. So I started reading it again. And you know what. He was right. It was me that changed.
"Everybody has to leave, everybody has to leave their home and come back so they can love it again for all new reasons." DM

Kicking and Screaming

2006-10-26T12:25:00.000-07:00

God is not proud...He will have us even though we have shown that we prefer everything else to Him.- Jack Lewis

In the Trinity Term of I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England. I did not then see what is now the most shining and obvious thing; the Divine humility which will accept a convert even on such terms. The Prodigal Son at least walked home on his own feet. But who can duly adore that Love which will open the high gates to a prodigal who is brought in kicking, struggling, resentful, and darting his eyes in every direction for a chance of escape?-Jack Lewis

The Invisible

2006-10-18T12:36:00.000-07:00

Curse the man who said all you need is the bible and God. (Not really, but he is a moron, a good intentioned and well meaning moron, but a moron none the less) The visable church (ie the parishoners who meet in the building on Sunday mornings) that visable and boring service, where the pastor wears the wrong color tie and the person in the pew next to you smells and sings off key, that visable church is our connection point to the invisable chuch, you know that scary all powerful one that streches across the centuries and sends satan and his minions quaking in his boots. Instead of thinking 'how does anything this pastor says apply to me', try 'how do I fit into the invisible church, into the bod of the Christ.'

Soul

2006-10-12T12:59:00.001-07:00

Be sure that the ins and outs of your individuality are no mystery to Him; and one day they will no longer be a mystery to you.-Jack Lewis
Doenst it seem strange that the majority of my time is spent struggling aganst my self... that it is my inmost desires that cause the wellspring of selfishness and pride that leave me exausted; having given me my fill of sin while still leaving me so empty inside.
Sin is living insuch a way that we were not designed for.
In the same way that our bodies need oxygen and food and water and cant live on certain things, our souls were designed to need Him. And how much more important are our souls. Because we are not bodies with souls, we are souls with bodies. And those things which we cling to so tightly, will eventually crumble till we are grasping for dust in the lonley places.
And so I fell lost into that lonleyness...
But there the silence and the solitude began to overtake me. It rushed at me, deafening me with the roar of silence. Everything that I had been able to rationalize, every feeling, every thought, every action came back to me and the realization came to me that I was more broken than I thought. I had spent so much time away that I wasn't sure I was even His anymore. And I couldn't tell anybody. How could I? Here was a pastor who had reached the pinicle and found that he had been climbing the wrong peak. That what looks like success in ministry may not lead to that place where I find rest for my weary soul.
And in the lonleyness of my everyday existance, i began to hear a voice that had been calling the same thing since the creation of the world. "Adam where are you?" It had been so long since I had heard that voice that I almost didnt recognize him as friend. And feably I called out with a voice parched from the desert, "Here I am."
And thats when He takes me into His solitude, to that quieter, simpler life, where I can stop fussing and freting, to a place thats out of the wind.
What is the point of all this?
Though I hate to be lonley, it is often the prescription that my diseased soul need. It allows for that 'moment of reflection' where all that seemed so nessisary passes by the wayside and all that I had pushed to the wayside becomes absolutly nessisary.
Lonlyness and solitude and silence are not bad things.
They lead us to prayer.
They lead us to Him
And He has offered us rest for our weary souls.
-Adam Thomas

Noise

2006-10-11T10:45:00.000-07:00

TV enthralls me sometimes. I don..t have cable or satellite at my house so normally I don..t watch TV, so when I see a commercial for the first time, I watch it, staring with intense interest and finding myself laughing at a lot of them. Like the one where the mobsters are dragging a body out of their trunk to dump in the river and the satellite radio starts playing ..I just died in your arms tonight.... Okay funny right? But other commercials, which most people either ignore or flip channels through really make me take a step back and think about what is really being communicated about our society.

Take for example one I saw for a broadband card for your laptop computer that allowed you to go online anywhere there was cell phone reception. It..s oft used and maybe over repeated mantra was ..Get connected.. Get connected? I asked myself. What was I supposed to be connected to? Does this mean that up until now I..ve been disconnected? I know, I know it..s just a marketing ploy, but the reality is that most of us are pretty connected. Take myself for example. Start with my computer. I was writing this on my laptop sitting in Starbucks. At the same time, I had a couple of programs open. One was my instant messaging. No body was on except for Aaron and I had already talked to him once that day. But just incase Willy or Glen or Sarah came on I had myself labeled as ..Available... The next program I had open was my mail program. It goes on the Internet every 5 minutes to check for new mail. (The original setting was 15 minutes, I changed it to every minute at first but found that it made my computer run pretty slow on the internet so I compromised) It goes and checks two different emails I have just incase somebody was to send me an email message. If that..s not enough it then the two blogs I have setup send me messages anytime something changes. If somebody leaves me a comment or posts a new blog I know about it within a few minutes. (Though I..ve never tested the response time.. hmm a new experiment for tomorrow). I..ve got a cell phone and two different work phone lines for a grand total of three emails.

And I know a lot of you have similar systems set up. What is it that drives our desire to be connected? Do I really want or need that much information at my finger tips? Or is something else that drives us; that drives me.

The desire to be connected, to be so available that we don't ..miss.. anything that happens, whether its online, at school, hanging out with friends, the newest band or the latest show, the sweetest skateboard move or crash, all of this is driven by a sense of loneliness. How do I know this? I don..t want to be lonely so I reach out for any sense of ..being connected.. I can find. Because loneliness is the edge of a much bigger feeling of being alone. When we are lonely suddenly all sorts of doubts plague us. I'm not good enough, nobody likes me, and nobody understands me. And I try to solve those problems by being ..more likable.. or wanting to change things up or by trying harder to be ..good enough.. for people. And it works for a while. Have you noticed that? It works, kinda I guess. But soon those feelings start creeping back into my life and all of a sudden I'm faced with having to deal with all those same issues again.

So what do we do about all of this? I keep coming back to a scripture in () that says that Jesus often withdrew to the lonely places to pray. I find myself constantly running form the lonely places in my life. Yet Jesus did the opposite. Why? Why would anyone in their right mind run towards some thing that leaves them feeling empty? Scripture says he went there to pray. I don..t know what your idea of prayer is, but here..s the deal, it..s a time to speak to the creator of the universe. Okay that..s kinda intimidating right? Like going to talk to the president. Except that he created you too. Lovingly created you. Lovingly created you to be lonely. What? Were created to be lonely? I think so. I'm not positive, but loneliness seems to be a constant theme throughout the lives of the Heroes of the faith, and in their loneliness they cried out to God. Read through the psalms sometimes. God created loneliness to draw us to himself. We try to fill ourselves up with all sorts of other things, I did and still do. But he created us as lonely needy creatures that he might show us his love and his compassion to us.

So if you..re feeling lonely, try turning off the cell phone instead of calling people to hang out. Turn off the Internet and stop checking your MySpace. Don..t flip on the TV. Instead grab a bible, grab some pen and paper and go have a conversation with God the one who made you and see what he has been longing to say to you.

Risk (an answer to a question)

2006-09-22T10:47:00.000-07:00

"How often would you say you do something uncomfortable, scary or just against your general wants and needs because it is what God is asking you to do?" -Dave Snow aka Grace is the Thing

hmm

I wonder sometimes if im the only one that answers back to you on these things but anyway the word that comes to mind when you ask this is "Risk"
No not the board game, though i happen to like it (and by the way, future risk night soon?) But i once wrote a blog, when we first started doing the well that was just at the front of me starting to explore what God was doing in our group and in my own life. It was short and simple and to the point it said

Ive realized that I've never taken a risk in my life

Because everything has seemed to be a natural conclusion. Looking from the outside, my life might look a little risky. Giving up a schollarship to a prestigious school to settle in and do ministry, going to school for a degree in Christian studies, when the church I work at wont even hire me. Trusting God that He wants me in ministry, even though theres so much on my plate with work and stuff (read girl-friend).

Going into student venture wasnt a risk. It was just an extention of what i was already doing. Even starting the well didnt feel like a risk, just a conclusion of what God had already been teaching us about community and dicipleship and health. Even asking Sarah out had few risks, I knew she already wanted to, and so did I, just the next step in our relationship.

The only risk I can think of
Is putting who I really am out on the line for people to see.

Cause see the really risky thing that we can do is to make ourselves vulnerable before other people and ultimatly before God. Because I, like a lot of other people have an exterior persona that I present to the world and a private one which few, if any get to see. Few of us are lucky enough to have friends that are willing to support us in such a way that we might feel its okay to let just a bit of that inner person out, to "test the waters" and the more we let out, and the more we are accepted because of who we really are, the more our exterior persona becomes like our inner person. As this starts to happen we become less and less worried about what people who see this inner man might think because we have this group of support to fall back on where we know that we are Okay and accepted for who we are.

Ahh the risk in being true to ourselves. In front of other people.

Mine started in my writing. I wasnt writing for anyone else, just me, and for my own thoughts and my own freedom. And then I started putting stuff online and the responses I got were largely along the lines of "Did you really write this? Is this what's going on in your head? Where is this Adam the rest of the time" Hes scared of getting shot down and hurt, thats where he was.

But you cant run a ministry, or have real friends, or a girlfriend or even just live well if you are always putting on this mask, this out-in-front persona. Cause it will eventually kill you. It will. You will wake up one day in a cubical wondering what happened to your life and why it feels like it has passed you by and why you never lived any of your dreams. This will be a big part of it. Because you went along with everybody elses expectation of yourself, with you desperatly trying to conform to thier image of your persona.

I guess it was not as much of a risk as i thought. Be real or die. The risk of being real was nothing compaired to losing who I am, and who God created me to be.

And heres the deal: even if you find no-one inthis life who supports you as you really are, which I find hard to belive, but just supposing there was not one person who got you and was joyful with you being you, then remember that you were not a random conglomeration of ammino acids form in your mothers womb, but rather that you were crafted by the hands of the maker, crafted with desires and hopes and personallity that He abosulutely loves and wants for you enjoy as well.

A big thank you to those who take me as I am
And encourage the things that God has placed in me.

Monday (for Dave)

2006-09-11T10:48:00.000-07:00

Its monday morning and I feel electrisity in the air.
No not the static kind that messes up girls hair.
Nor the scary lightning-storm kind.

Just an energy and an excitement I havent felt in awhile.
I feel full and complete and more like the self of me that I actually like.

Not that life is peachy. I mean, my direct deposit didnt go through on friday so when I thought I had money I really didnt, my bunion on my foot is swollen so it kinda hurts to walk around and Im sorta hobbleing through my day, and I had spent most of the last four days being sick. But I rose early this morning, and spent some time reading the Bible, praying, and getting ready for my day. I went down to starbucks and got some tea (not because I really wanted starbucks but because my beautiful woman works down there. It was worth driving the 35 minute round trip just to see her smile) I guess I just felt ready to meet my day. Ready to see what God was going to do.

Its funny how we can slip out of things so easily. I mean it wasnt like this conscience decision to abandon God. I mean i was still reading (ocassionally) and heading out to the church to be involved with The Well and church and stuff, but I was lagging behind in the way I was taking care of relationships in my life, and generally being sort of self-involved. And you know what? Its a patern I see in my life. If I start to slide a bit, my "ministry" doesnt seem to suffer as much as my friendships and mentorship type relationships do.

I mean i guess Im sorta stupid. Filling my self up with all sorts of stuff that leaves me, craving more, appitite unfuffilled, when really I know exactly what I need to fill me up. Its like being thirsty and eating saltine crackers, i just get more and more thirsty. What i really need is a cool refreshing drink of water.

So Im reading through the book of Revelation, and this was the verse that stuck out to me this morning as Im trying to re-engage in this discipline of rising early and seeking God in the mornings. Its Jesus, speaking to one of the churches in Asia Minor in chapter 2 (and speaking to me as well.)

"I know all the things you do. I have seen your hard work and your patient endurance. I know you don't tolerate evil people. You have examined the claims of those who say they are apostles but are not. You have discovered they are liars. You have patiently suffered for me without quitting. But I have this complaint against you. You don't love me or each other as you did at first! Look how far you have fallen from your first love! Turn back to me again and do as you did at first."

Setting the Stage

2006-06-08T10:50:00.000-07:00

I wasnt sure where I was going with this when I started reading through Luke. We chopped up the first Chapter one night and said, okay, heres your section Dave, and heres your section, Willy and heres your section Adam and kinda started from there. So Im looking at the last half of Luke and all I can think about is Luke the Musical. No really. There are two people who bust out into song in just the little section I am reading. It just reminded me how in a movie someone might say, Boy I'm excited but in a musical they sing a 4-minute song about how excited they were. I have a secret confession that I like musicals, Fiddler on the Roof, Sing in the Rain, ones like that, where the music adds something extra to the story. Not just a statement of facts but rather passion filled verse.

So were going to pick up the story from last time. Gabriel, and angel of the Lord had come to visit Zechariah in the temple with a message from God. Okay, visit might be to tame of a word. This was Zechariahs one time chance to go into the Holy place and offer up the sacrifice of incense/ and the angel appeared and terrified him, just scared him silly. His message was that Zechariahs old wife Elizabeth, not old in the past tense sort of way, but old in the Ive got grey hair and cant have kids sort of way, that his old wife was going to be with child, that is shed would be pregnant, and further more that he would be filled with the Spirit form birth, and would bring the people of Israel back to their God. He would have the spirit of Elijah and would prepare the people for the coming of the Lord, the Savior. Wow, what a message. And Zech gah-faws, he doubts. And the angel makes him unable to speak.

So this is where we pick up the story today, we went from really old couple in the temple in Jerusalem to a place about 120 miles to the north called Galilee which was kinda the border land for the Jewish people. It was the last area still kinda under Jewish control, but it was also filled with Romans soldiers and Greek descendants from the Hellenistic invasions. It was an area of hodgepodge beliefs and cultures and ideas. The Romans were strong but decadent, given over to their passions; the Greeks filled with ideals and philosophies and the pantheon of deities such as Zeus, Hermes, Ares and Artimus. And the Jews, trusting in the one true God, waiting for their Meshia, the Messiah and Savior that was to free them from their bonds.

It was here that God chose to reveal himself. It was in this place that God said, I will send my son. And so He sends his angel to a young unimportant woman, to an unimportant town called Nazareth, in the border region of Galilee.

Luke 1:26
26 In the sixth month of Elizabeth's pregnancy, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a village in Galilee, 27 to a virgin named Mary. She was engaged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of King David. 28 Gabriel appeared to her and said, "Greetings, favored woman! The Lord is with you!*"

29 Confused and disturbed, Mary tried to think what the angel could mean. 30 "Don't be frightened, Mary," the angel told her, "for God has decided to bless you! 31 You will become pregnant and have a son, and you are to name him Jesus. 32 He will be very great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give him the throne of his ancestor David. 33 And he will reign over Israel* forever; his Kingdom will never end!"

34 Mary asked the angel, "But how can I have a baby? I am a virgin."
35 The angel replied, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the baby born to you will be holy, and he will be called the Son of God. 36 What's more, your relative Elizabeth has become pregnant in her old age! People used to say she was barren, but she's already in her sixth month. 37 For nothing is impossible with God."

38 Mary responded, "I am the Lord's servant, and I am willing to accept whatever he wants. May everything you have said come true." And then the angel left.

Okay so imagine you are in Marys shoes. An angel of the lord comes. Okay freaky right. I've never been visited by an angel that I know of. But every time they appear they do one of two things. Either a lot of people die. (Think Old Testament, angel of the lord comes and ZAP! Bad stuff happens to bad people.) OR the angel starts off my saying, Whoa hey its okay, dont be frightened ey For some reason I always hear angels in my head when I'm reading with Canadian accents, much in the way that peter gets an Italian mob accent, and Jesus talks like an old Jewish man. So I'm strange. So this Canadian angel appears and says, Greetings favored of God and follows that up immediately with Dont be frightened, eh! Why? Cause you are going to give birth to the Son of God. Right
Hes going to be great! We angels are just so excited! Hes going be called Jesus, and-and um hes going to be great and hes going to be called Son of the Most High, and hes going to rule on the throne of David forever and ever. Isnt that great? Um Mary you there, hello. And Marys thinking to herself, musta been something I ate. I thought that gelfetka fish I had for dinner tasted kinda weird. No but she is questioning, How can this be since I'm a virgin. Logical direct, to the point. But if her brain works anything like mine, I get pretty scared when something big comes up and I can only ask the really practical questions and have a hard time forming coherent questions about what I'm really thinking. Ill give an example, a professor of mine liked a paper that I wrote so much, he asked if I would firm it up a bit and come teach it to one of his classes. So the questions I asked him were, Okay what time, what room number, what date, when really all I was thinking was, oh crap are you freaking serious, you must be out of your mind, Even if I read the paper that would only last a half an hour and I would have another sixty minutes to fill up with something. But then my professor encouraged me and said; hey you have your head and your heart around this, dont worry about it, read the paper, share from your heart and field any questions. And so I was like o-okay Ill do it. I was so worried that I didnt even tell a lot of people cause I was afraid they would want to come and watch.

And so this is what we see with the angel and Mary. The angel says this will happen because God is the power behind it, and see here look at Elizabeth, shes pregnant too. Why? Because nothing is impossible with God. And her response was way better that my tentative o-okay- I am the lords servant and I am willing to accept what ever he wants.

Stop and think about that for a sec. I am willing to accept what ever he wants. For the most part I'm pretty accepting of what ever I want. When things go my way, I accept them, duh. I more than accept them, I embrace them, and I chase after them. But what about when I dont get my way. Someone else gets their way instead. I'm I sullen and angry. Do I try to make them trip up and fail? Do I go along, but grumpy and grouchy and complaining? Or do I accept those things. What if that other person is God? Do I accept when he gets things his way, or do I just go along hoping that maybe God will change something about those circumstances that will show to have been what I really wanted all along.

Have you ever though about the plan that God has for your life. When I do, the plan that I think of usually looks very much like the plan I had before I was a Christian. Find a wife, raise a family, do something I love for a living. I wonder what Marys dreams about her life were. The simple things, loving wife, nurturing mother, an ox that plowed well. I dont know. Most of us dont have illusions of grandeur (though there was this period of my life where I though I had super powers.) But I dont think that Mary woke up one morning and started praying, oh God, let me give birth to the Messiah. And yet wasnt that Gods plan? His son would be born of a virgin, born in Bethlehem, born at a specific time for a specific purpose. Yet the joy and stinking amusingness of giving birth to Jesus would lead her though ridicule as her son became a Rabbi in the land, and lead her to grief as he was beaten and executed upon a cross and then to joy as he was resurrected from the grave and given dominion over death, that we might have a part in the resurrection as well.

I once heard somebody say, and I cant remember who, that Mary was the first follower of Jesus; she was the first to accept him as the coming messiah. Was this obligation, the angel of the lord SAID it was Jesus the messiah I was going to be carrying around in my womb for the next nine months so I GUESS I better believe it. Okay Eeore. No she accepted it with joy. Mary went to see her cousin Elizabeth to tell her about the angel and the baby to come but before she could say anything John, who was still in Elizabeths womb, leapt for joy. I'm not sure how a baby leaps in the womb, but hopefully he didnt use the bladder for a springboard. And then Mary speaks these words.

Magnificat anima mea Dominum;
My soul magnifies the Lord,
And my spirit rejoices in God my Savior.
For He has regarded the low estate of His handmaiden,
For behold, henceforth all generations shall call me blessed.
For He who is mighty has done great things for me, and holy is His name.
And His mercy is on those who fear Him from generation to generation.
He has shown strength with His arm:
He has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.
He has put down the mighty from their thrones,
And exalted those of low degree.
He has filled the hungry with good things;
and the rich He has sent empty away.
He has helped His servant Israel, in remembrance of His mercy;
As He spoke to our fathers, to Abraham and to His posterity forever.

Thats more that just a casual okay I guess I go along, thats Mary being so excited to be part of the plan of God, even if it might cost her something personal and valuable to her, she almost lost her husband, her status in the town, everything because a woman who was pregnant from someone other than her intended husband was thought to be an adulterer and Joseph had every right to put her out of his home or even to put her to death by stoning. Jesus was not going to make Marys life easy. In fact he was going to significantly increase her pain and suffering, as the story will show. Yet, much like those musicals that we talked about something exciting happens and she burst forths into song. She bursts forth into worship.

My soul magnifies the Lord.

I could sit for a week on that. My soul magnifies the Lord.

When you magnify something, say like a distant star, you see that thing more for what it really is, It gets bigger and brighter and closer. One of my favorite things to point out to people is a star cluster called the Squaw and the Papoose by Indians though I have no clue like the scientific name. When you look at it with your naked eyes it kinda looks like a star thats oval instead of round, but its hard to make out much more, but hold a pair of binoculars to your eyes, suddenly the start separates and become two stars orbiting around one another, get a big ole honking telescope and now theres four stars dancing around each other, its actually pretty amazing. Its amazing how our Christian life is like that too. We start maybe with the idea that there is a God and hes out there somewhere. Uh-hu something like that. And the more we start to look at Him and find out what hes like, he becomes magnified, bigger and brighter and more like he truly is. My soul magnifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my savior.

And then three more months goes by and its time for Elizabeth to have her baby, the forerunner of the Messiah. The man who would prepare the way for Jesus. When Jews celebrate the Passover part of the ritual is to pour a glass of wine for Elijah and then to send the youngest child to check the door to see if he was there. Why, because his spirit was to come back and announce the coming of the savior of the Jews and the world. And so this John who would be called the Baptist was to go out in the Spirit of Elijah was born.

The Birth of John the Baptist
57 Now it was time for Elizabeth's baby to be born, and it was a boy.
58 The word spread quickly to her neighbors and relatives that the Lord had been very kind to her, and everyone rejoiced with her.
59 When the baby was eight days old, all the relatives and friends came for the circumcision ceremony. They wanted to name him Zechariah, after his father.
60 But Elizabeth said, "No! His name is John!"
61 "What?" they exclaimed. "There is no one in all your family by that name."
62 So they asked the baby's father, communicating to him by making gestures.
63 He motioned for a writing tablet, and to everyone's surprise he wrote, "His name is John!"
64 Instantly Zechariah could speak again, and he began praising God.
65 Wonder fell upon the whole neighborhood, and the news of what had happened spread throughout the Judean hills.
66 Everyone who heard about it reflected on these events and asked, "I wonder what this child will turn out to be? For the hand of the Lord is surely upon him in a special way."

Zechariah's Prophecy
67 Then his father, Zechariah, was filled with the Holy Spirit and gave this prophecy:
"Praise the Lord, the God of Israel,
Because he has visited his people and redeemed them.
He has sent us a mighty Savior
From the royal line of his servant David,
Just as he promised
Through his holy prophets long ago.
Now we will be saved from our enemies
And from all who hate us.
He has been merciful to our ancestors
By remembering his sacred covenant with them,
The covenant he gave to our ancestor Abraham.
We have been rescued from our enemies,
So we can serve God without fear,
In holiness and righteousness forever.

"And you, my little son,
Will be called the prophet of the Most High,
Because you will prepare the way for the Lord.
You will tell his people how to find salvation
Through forgiveness of their sins.
Because of God's tender mercy,
The light from heaven is about to break upon us,
To give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death,
And to guide us to the path of peace."

80 John grew up and became strong in spirit. Then he lived out in the wilderness until he began his public ministry to Israel.

Lukes a great story teller because at this point hes got us going, yeah, yeah, whats this great light going to be? The lord is coming and has already visited us? But really Lukes just giving out the story because God has set the stage, god has lined the characters up and God is holding onto the script and hes even the main player. The Jews had been waiting 2000 years since Abraham for the fulfillment of Gods prophecies. 2000 years. I get impatient at waiting for 3 minutes while my top Raman cooks. And God has promised something so much better than microwaved top Raman. The coming of the salvation of the world, Light for people in dark place, hope for the hopeless, and love for the loveless.

But the theme that is repeated over and over in Luke is how Gods plan for good and amazing things comes in when we least expect it, how he was setting the stage all along, for different things in the book of Luke, like the blind man who was blind from birth so that Jesus would have the opportunity to heal him. The stage had been set long before he ever got there so that this man might have a face to face with Jesus. And you know what?

Jesus has been setting the stage in your lives too. In my life too. Because all that unexpected stuff, the news that brought great joy, and the news that brought great sorrow, all of it set in motion to be used by God. A man blind for his whole life, healed in a moment. I wonder what he was thinking about the day before he met Jesus. I mean I wonder if he hated his situation, that he was a beggar and blind. And yet was it not God purposes to heal them for his own honor. And now his story is recorded for us, to learn from and take in. Elizabeth was barren all her life, well into old age. Willy talked about how that was seen as a curse on her for her sins, yet wasnt it a part of Gods plan so that no one would doubt that God did it. And Mary, who had to struggle though societal misgivings of a pregnant engaged woman who said she was to bear the Son of God. And you, what have been your struggles. Where were you taken through the ringer? Where has God set the stage in your life? What part are you to play.

We just watched this video for leadership about this guy who was praying for his daughters headache to go away and while he was praying it did. She died of a brain hemorrhage. Is this right, is this fair, yet the man didnt curse God, he stood afflicted but not destroyed? He knew this was just another chapter and that some of the chapters in the book wouldnt make sense till the last chapter, and that we dont get to see the last chapter in this life. He would know his dad died trying to share his faith with a tribe living in the jungle, but his family was continue on in his vision to reach the tribe with the Gospel.

The stage is set. What part are you going to play? Where has God called you? Maybe you dont know yet. Maybe hes still setting the stage, moving players and scenery into position. Will you be faithful to answer what comes your way like Mary did? I am willing to accept what ever God wants. Luke wrote down everything that God got in place for the coming of Jesus into 1st century Galilee, and tonight, God has gotten everything in place for the coming of Jesus into your hearts.

On Good News

2006-05-25T10:52:00.000-07:00

There I was last night, sitting in my office wondering what in the world I was going to say about the book of Luke. I'm just supposed to be working on an intro to the book of Luke, you know who was Luke, why did he write his Gospel and Acts, what was his favorite toothpaste, you know, stuff like that. But it was like three in the morning and I was staring into space thinking, praying and listening to the Album Leaf.

My mind had started wandering around, bouncing from weird thought to weird thought, feeling like I have to write something and the juices just werent flowing. And finally my mind hit on this though that Willy stuck in my head a few days earlier. We get to! Exclamation point.

Uhh. We get to what?

We were talking about that mental switch that happens in your brain from I have to do something to I get to do something I had this happen to me not to long ago when I moved into my new place. So one of my mental complaints when I moved in was that there was no dishwasher. I hadnt noticed before I moved in, and even if I had, I wouldve still rented the place. But either way I was now stuck doing dishes by hand. So I went to the store and bought some tools to help me out: liquid soap, a scrub brush and a drying rack. But every time I had the opportunity to pass off doing the dishes I would. I even made a rule that if I cooked for you, then you had to do the dishes. Some of you are smiling because you have done dishes under those conditions. And so the other night after I had made dinner for a friend of mine, I ran the water for the dishes and started washing them without a second thought. Okay there was a second though: I found myself incredibly thankful?- that I got to wash my dishes. It meant that there was now food in my belly when I know that there are so many people who know hunger. It meant that I had friends to spend some time with when so many are lonely, that I had a place to live and running water when a lot of folks in the world and even in our own city go with out shelter or clean water. And so I found myself incredibly thankful to wash my own dishes. There was amazing joy in it, but it still sounds weird to me.

And you are probably wondering what the heck any of this has to do with Luke- Im getting there I promise, But one more story first. When I was in my sophomore year of college, both of them, I started taking ceramics classes. I ended up taking like 5 classes, Id come in early and stay late making these pots that were like 3 feet high and have geometric designs and sunflowers on them. I dont know why, but I just really liked sunflowers in that period of my life. I loved doing it; it was pretty relaxing and became a time of quiet refection when I would throw on the wheel. The pots were good enough that I was able to sell a couple of them. And that was cool. But then I got requests for pots. Can you make something special theyd ask. Id try to show them stuff that I had already made but no, they wanted something special. And they would nag and call, and I wouldnt want to make anything let alone something for them. What had started out as an absolute joy was now drudgery because my I get to! Slash I want to! attitude had been replaced with I have to

I just heard this guy John Piper give a message that said kinda the same thing, when we have to do something that we would normally positively love, we get ripped off because we have to do it.

Dave is thinking to himself at this point where is Adam going?
Here it is. The Book of Luke is one of four in the bible that we call Gospels. Its a word that simply means the Good News.

Its the same word that the town crier would use to pronounce any good news that happened in the Roman Empire. Hed climb up to a special platform and basically yell into the air. Good news! The emperor has had a son! Good news! We have triumphed over our enemies in Germania! And its this sort of celebratory yell which Matthew Mark Luke and John wrote of in the Gospels, the challenge and cry that was given by Peter and Paul preached on, that all the fathers of the church for the last 2000 years and that we in this place have been proclaiming to you till this day. GOOD NEWS YALL: Jesus who is God loved us so much, that even though we had turned our backs on Him, he died on a cross so that we might be restored to a right relationship with him. Lets go shout that from the rooftops.

And that is the mode and the voice of Lukes gospel. Its what the angels say in the beginning of the book to the Shepards. I proclaim to you the GOOD NEWS of great Joy that will be for all people. Its the last thought of the book at the ascension of Jesus. While he was blessing them he left and was taken up into heaven. Then they worshiped him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy. Jesus, knowing in advance the sacrifice he was to make on the cross for us, said this: the Spirit of the Lord is on me because he has anointed me to preach the Good News to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight to the blind, to release the oppressed and proclaim the year of the Lords favor.

Luke was excited to share the Good News. Between the Gospel of Luke and the book of acts, which he also wrote, he contributed more verses to the New Testament than anyone else. Here was a guy who, by profession, was a medical doctor, that got caught up with Paul and ultimately with Christ, that he set out to discover if this Jesus who Paul told him about was really God, The book was written probably about 30 years after the death and resurrection of Jesus. He had all sorts of people who actually knew Jesus that he could go and talk to. And being a medical doctor, he knew something about how to research and investigate and look into things and the language that he used is precise. In fact one of my professors said the Greek thats used in Luke and in acts is some of the hardest in the New Testament because some of the precise medical and nautical terms are not found elsewhere in the New Testament.

So we are going to look into the same things that Luke did for the next couple of months following his research, his investigation until we can answer the question that Luke was ultimately getting at: Who was Jesus and what are we to do with Him?

Being Good

2006-05-19T10:53:00.000-07:00

So last week Dave talked about being set free from sin. He read through Romans 6 and talked about our old nature, our sinful self being crucified and buried with Christ and how we are now new creations, resurrected with the living Christ, the old has gone and the new way has come.

And yet sometimes I dont feel so new. Sometimes I have to strain to see progress in my life and I'm left wondering, Is this it? Is this the abundant life I was promised? Where are the streams of living water? And then Jen shared about places in her own life where she had given herself up to a sinful life and how she had been set free from that. And it was amazing to see how that resonated in a lot of you guys hearts, how the spirit was moving to encourage you and me with the grace and peace and forgiveness of God. Some of us found forgiveness in the person of Christ for the first time that night and asked for God to start us down the journey through life with Him. Others of us had lost our way and found ourselves rededicating our lives, climbing back on to the trail. And others of us were allowed to drop our heavy load, our burdens that were robbing the joy out of our Christian life, which was quickly becoming back breaking and heart breaking work.

And so most of us who made decisions last week probably went home and back to school. And whatever promise, whatever commitments we made. We probably fell short of. I did there were things that I wanted to do and didnt, and there were things that I wanted to stay away from but didnt. I dont know if your felt the same. I mean for the first couple of days maybe we tried real hard. We knew what needed to do. I gotta change this relationship, or get into the bible more, or pray. I gotta not get angry or gossip or be prideful or lustful. And it took for a day or two. And then ever so slowly the old ways started creeping up and creeping in. Our momentary experience seems to have done no conversion of this soul.

I mean, Ive got a general idea what Im supposed to do. I take the Ten Commandments you know, dont kill people, dont take their stuff or their wives, dont make gods out of earthly things. Add to that the great commandment out of Mathew 19 you know love God and love people, and the great commission of Mathew 28 teach people to follow Jesus. Throw in a pinch of all sorts of other commands in the bible. Pray with out ceasing; give money joyfully to the church. Take care of widows and the poor. Fast to train your self and go witnessing and encourage people. And yet, sometimes that whole concoction is like eating a spoonful of flour, like the dry stale dust you find in the attic. I get to the end of my week tired, tired and worn out from all the struggle with sin and the stirring onward towards the good. I find myself shouting out to God in my exhaustion.

God I just cant take it any more. I just dont want to do it anymore. It all seems like a bunch of works and trying to be good.
And so this person (point to self) is the kind of person that I think Pauls has in mind in this next chapter of Romans, so if you have your bibles turn to chapter 7 of Romans. If you dont have your bible you can borrow one of ours, and if you dont even own a bible I would love to get one into you hands. Yes I really wrote this. Any ways. Lets read.

Now, dear brothers and sisters*-you who are familiar with the law-don't you know that the law applies only to a person who is still living? 2 Let me illustrate. When a woman marries, the law binds her to her husband as long as he is alive. But if he dies, the laws of marriage no longer apply to her. 3 So while her husband is alive, she would be committing adultery if she married another man. But if her husband dies, she is free from that law and does not commit adultery when she remarries.

So this is the point:

I love when Paul does this, he spells it out cause I'm a dunderbrain sometimes.

So this is the point: The law no longer holds you in its power, because you died to its power when you died with Christ on the cross. And now you are united with the one who was raised from the dead. As a result, you can produce good fruit, that is, good deeds for God.

Did you guys catch that little phrase- As a result?

You see the Christian life is not primarily about being good moral people and doing good things. Hear me on this. The Christian life is not primarily about being moral. All the great thinkers of the ages have said we ought to be moral people. Plato, Aristotle, Confucius. All of them have said the key to a good life is to choose to do the good moral things and not the bad things. It doesnt matter what it takes or what it costs you personally- choose to do the good.

You see, morality through the power of the self is exactly what the unbelieving world believes in. Our society as a whole leads us to believe that as long as you are pretty good and mostly moral then you will be okay. I cant tell you the number of people that I talk to who see themselves as a basically good person. They dont steal or sleep around or kill people so they must be okay. If a conversation with a stranger goes on long enough the subject of Christianity will come up. I cant help it its what I do. Its in my blood. Or I guess its in His blood. Whatever. And when it comes up they hold up their hands and with a little shake they say, Whoa there, I believe that theres a God but this religion stuff just seems all out of whack. I just try to be as good a person as I can be and I think God will sort it out in the end.

Realize this- this is precisely what we have been saved from.

We have been saved from bondage to sin- halleluiah this is what we talking about last week

But we have also been saved from bondage to the law. We just read in Romans the Christian life is primarily about being united with Christ, about the life that is connected to God, grafted into the vine.

Its out of that connection and condition that our good fruit will start to grow. And when trees produce fruit, its not because of straining or striving but because with all the right ingredients a tree produces fruit naturally.

Let me give you an example from my own life and walk with Christ. When I first became a Christian and unfortunately for some time afterward I struggled heavily with anger. I was angry at all sorts of things, but ultimately I think it was a selfish anger born out of any thing that didnt go precisely the way that I thought that it should. But I was told, Christians dont get angry. We dont get mad. Love your enemies Mind you there are times when a righteous anger is okay when it empowers you to take a stand and make a difference. This wasnt that. This was just me getting pissed at people. But knowing I wasnt supposed to be angry, I took those feelings and stuffed them back inside. I just kept tucking it all back into my heart to where there was this ball of angry that sat just below the surface; seething, churning, boiling until the dam would break and some unsuspecting person would become the object of my wrath.

Slhjdogaiphspguhapodkhgpaohsdghaowuhpahsoghaoprghaohgolsg!

And the other person would stand there with wide eyes going Oh crap I never dealt with this before I was a Christian. I would just get mad at somebody, make disparaging remarks about their matronaige, and then proceed to some fisticuffs action. And at the end of it we usually wouldnt be mad at each other. Yeah wed be bleeding and bruised but that would be the end of it. And I only got angry like that every so often, going days or weeks or even months (okay so rarely ever months, this is before I became a Christian.) I wouldnt hardly ever think about it once it happened. Ah but once I tried to control my anger, theres where the battle was. Because my struggle was one of days and hours and sometimes minutes then. I was constantly trying to keep shoving the monster back in the box, to keep it from leaking out. Knowledge of the law brought death to my heart.

Where is my peace oh God?

Where is my abundant life that You promised?

Where are the streams of living water?

And then a peculiar thing most peculiar thing happened. A man in a white pickup truck ran a red light, cut me off, leaned out his window, and flipped me off while shouting obsinities as if his running a red light were somehow my fault. And I thought to my self boy that was odd. How true those words were, but not about that mans driving ability, but rather about my response to them. A bland and simple that was odd. Its probably not the first person that I didnt respond to in anger that quite justifiably I could have. Its just the first that I remember. I know exactly where it was the time of day and even the date it stood out to me so much. You see in my connection with God, He had begun to heal the anger that was in my heart and I wasnt even aware of it. He was shaping me even then to love people, this community and ultimately to serve this community and to make my service a joy because of the love that He had given me. And it didnt come from my own efforts to push back anger, but rather from the prayer, Lord God, help!
And God met that need by filling my heart wit love through my connection to Him.

I remember coming across this verse in John 14 through all of this. I am the vine, you are the branches. Apart from me you can do nothing.

What!?!?! Are you joking me? Apart from you I do a whole bunch of things here. And by the way where are those streams of living water? And the easy yoke and the rest you promised.

My yoke is easy, my burden is light. He would say.

But i'm an expert at twisting peoples words around. If any of you have younger siblings you know what I mean.
Gimmie my dollar back
Thats right it my dollar
No its not your dollar
Thats right its not your dollar.

Well I do the same things sometimes with God. He says my yoke is easy and by burden is light. Then how come my burden isnt easy and my yoke isnt light.
You see how this goes.

And so. I get to Romans eight which says

There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of the sin and death. For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the sinful nature God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering And so we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies, for this hope we are saved, but hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have? But if we hope for what we do not yet have we with for it patiently. In the same way, the spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express/ And he who searches our heats knows the mind of the Spirit, because the spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with Gods will.

And so tonight I pray that we would begin to open our hearts to God, opening up all our struggles with sin and our strivings for good and asking the Lord simply to be God over all of it. God be my God. Jesus be my sin sacrifice and Lord. Spirit come and make your home inside me.

139:1 O Lord, you have searched me and known me!
2 You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
You discern my thoughts from afar.
3 You search out my path and my lying down
and are acquainted with all my ways.
4 Even before a word is on my tongue,
behold, O Lord, you know it altogether.
5 You hem me in, behind and before,
and lay your hand upon me.
6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
it is high; I cannot attain it.

7 Where shall I go from your Spirit?
Or where shall I flee from your presence?
8 If I ascend to heaven, you are there!
If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there!
9 If I take the wings of the morning
and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
10 even there your hand shall lead me,
and your right hand shall hold me.
11 If I say, Surely the darkness shall cover me,
and the light about me be night,
12 even the darkness is not dark to you;
the night is bright as the day,
for darkness is as light with you.

13 For you formed my inward parts;
you knitted me together in my mother's womb.
14 I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. [1]
Wonderful are your works;
my soul knows it very well.
15 My frame was not hidden from you,
when I was being made in secret,
intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
16 Your eyes saw my unformed substance;
in your book were written, every one of them,
the days that were formed for me,
when as yet there were none of them.

17 How precious to me are your thoughts, O God!
How vast is the sum of them!
18 If I would count them, they are more than the sand.
I awake, and I am still with you.

19 Oh that you would slay the wicked, O God!
O men of blood, depart from me!
20 They speak against you with malicious intent;
your enemies take your name in vain! [2]
21 Do I not hate those who hate you, O Lord?
And do I not loathe those who rise up against you?
22 I hate them with complete hatred;
I count them my enemies.

23 Search me, O God, and know my heart!
Try me and know my thoughts! [3]
24 And see if there be any grievous way in me,
and lead me in the way everlasting! [4]

Under construction...sorry for the mess...

2006-05-04T10:54:00.000-07:00

David understood the power of God to affect change in the lives of the people of Israel. He knew that he needed to have God on his side if he was going to hold off the enemies of Israel. Do we understand that power today? I mean God says that he wants to do great and mighty things in our lives, changing and shaping us till we are perfect and complete and lacking nothing (James 1:4), that we are the very craftsmanship of the hand of God (Eph 2:10). He said that through the work of the Spirit of God we would be perfect because of Him. (Math 5:48)
One of my favorite authors compared the growth in the Christian life to that of a house or building.
Okay, Imagine that I had a dripping faucet, or a squeaky floor or a leaky roof, and hired a guy to come out and fix it. The guy shows up at eight on the dot and I leave him at my house and go off to do errands or go to work or school or whatever. Imagine my surprise when I turn into my driveway, pull back up to my house a few hours later and find absolute pandemonium. The front lawn: covered with stacks 2x4s and plywood. Pallets of concrete bags are sitting in the drive way and where the roof used to be now stands the skeleton of framing that was once hidden. My Eyes wide and mouth slightly agape, I walk through the front door, which has been painted in a fresh coat of green rather than the blue that it had been a few hours ago, to the bustling of activity. One guy seems to be tearing out sheetrock with the back of a claw hammer while another is busily running electrical cabling through the hall and still another is moving all my furniture into the back yard where there is a backhoe digging a large hole in the ground. What the heck is going on?!?! I start frantically looking around for the guy that I had hired to do the work this morning. I bound up the staircase (wait a minute, I dont remember stairs here, I dont even have a second story!) that opens up onto the remnants of the roof where I find the original contractor, sledgehammer in hand, poised to swing. The slow motion kicked in as I ran in front of him and yelled NOOO!!!!! WAAIIITTT!!!! WHAT ARE YOU DOING?
Startled he looks up and says what are you doing? W-What am I doing? The nerve of this guy. What am I doing? I only asked you here to fix the little things, the faucet and the squeaky floor that would have been good enough for me. But he said to me, I know but I am making it perfect.

And what if I told you that you and I are this house and the impertinent handyman was Jesus. Most of us invited Jesus in at some point to fix some leaky faucet of sin in our lives. Being angry, lust, disobeying parents, but we soon found that He wasnt satisfied in fixing only those things but moved on to fixing self-centeredness, vain thoughts, and hurtful ways. Jesus says, be perfect (math 5:48) this is my house an Im coming to live in it (1 Cor 3:16) that he is the foundation for the building of our lives on Himself (1 Cor 3:11) and that he is the only foundation that will stand the test of trials (Math 7:25)

Cs Lewis says this in Mere Christianity from the voice of Jesus

Make no mistake, if you let me, I will make you perfect. The moment you put yourself in my hands that is what you are in for. Nothing less, or other, than that. You have free will, and if you choose you can push me away. But if you do not push me away then understand that I will see this job through. Whatever suffering it may cost you in your earthly life, whatever inconceivable purification it may cost you after death, whatever it costs me I will never rest nor let you rest until you are literally perfect- until my father can say without reservation that He is well pleased with you as he said he was well pleased with me. This I can do and will do. But I will not do anything less.

But we are still all works in progress. I dont know about you guys, but I need a sign that says Under construction, sorry for the mess I may not have flipped anybody off on the free way lately but it hasnt stopped me from wanting to. I dont struggle with looking at girls on the Internet but I still have struggles with seeing them as my sisters, daughters of the Living God. I cant remember the last person that I cussed at, though there was this door where my key wouldnt work. Still under construction, sorry about the mess. But still moving forward.

Finishing

2006-04-25T10:55:00.000-07:00

May 6th is Graduation day.
I did not think that I would feel excitement. I'm glad its over and theres a sense of relief, but theres a happy feeling in my heart that I wasnt really expecting. While I was wondering what it was I realized that it was the sense of accomplishing something, the feeling of finishing a task which I started which lead me to think about other things I have started but not finished. Books that Ive started and left uncompleted. Articles and stories that need more sentances. Woodworking projects that are still in pieces. People whom I continually see and never become friends with. So I started making a list. And I was a little frustrated with its length. Mind you, this is not a list of things I want to do with my life, mearly a list of books, tasks and people with which I have never completed an already started task.

Finish what you start. Its the fourth rule of living put forth by a hero of mine when I was little named Captain Kangaroo (The other ones are 1-Say please and thank you, 2-Be On time, and 3- Do what you say) Im not entirely sure what it is, we tend to start things with gusto and then we peter out, we loose the momentum, and then stop with out completing our task. If starting something new is hard, then seeing it through to the end is even more difficult. There are consequences to seeing something through to the end. School is easy compaired with the task of graduating and then looking around and saying God now what?, of putting to good use the things which you have learned so that you can now do something a little more important that flipping burgers at MacDonalds.

When I go to die, I want to feel an even greater excitement. I'm not trying to be morbid, but I want to be excited because I finished something, because I got it done right. But to get to that point at the end, I've got to start on the right path now. Ive got to choose the right things to pursue, the passions and desires that God has given me, the person who He has created me to be.

Are you choosing the right things to start and pursuing them with all you have?

Just a thought

Risking Selflessness

2006-04-18T10:58:00.000-07:00

One of the things that I have been thinking about latley is the risk. When I read through the book of Acts or the Old Testament or the Gospels or just the whole bible, I get a great sense for how much the people of God were used by God to do amazing things. And I started wondering why. And I think that some of it was the fact that they were willing to risk all that they had to accomplish the work of the kingdom. They were willing to risk themselves. And because of that God was able to use them. I mean, start to thingk about some of the things that people were asked to do in the bible. Moses standing up to pharoh, jerimah preaching naked, hosea marrying a prostitute, peter preaching to all the religious leaders, and so on. They stopped thinking about what they wanted and started focusing on what God wanted for them.

Yet that is probably one of the biggest struggles that I face, letting go of my own desires and clinging to the desires of God. The Bible says that God wishes that none would perish, and that my mission is to go into the world making disciples, but when I go and talk to people, I mostly just want to be liked and accepted. God says that we should rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those that weep, that we are a part of a living organism and when a part of the body hurts, we all should hurt and yet its so much simpler to stay on the surface with our relationships. The Bible says that when we gather, we ought to be supporting and encouraging each other with scripture and prayer and singing and yet its more fun to play games and goof off.

And a lot of the time, all those things that I thought Id rather do leave me feeling pretty empty afterwords. And I need some sort of fix to get me going again. Seven nights in a row hanging outwith people doesnt do anything to fix lonleyness. Its prayer and seeking God and reading the scriptures and fellowship that is about encouragement and admonishing. Letting the Holy Spirit examine us, taking that time to say okay God, what do you want to work on now is a good thing. But for some of us, including myself, we start to focus inward. We start to look at what we dont have, what we need, what we want for our own lives to go down the path that we have chosen. Some people call this introspection- looking inward. I have come to realize that its more than just looking inward, its focusing inward. Call it what you want, its self-focus, self-centered, and ultimatly selfish. The world is self-focused. Media and school and sports tell us its all about us but its not. We as Christians ought to be others-focused and ultimatly Christ-focused. Its interesting to me that at mental institutions the treatment most often utilized treatment involves getting the patient to serve others. It is in the service of others that they often loose that self-focus on their own problems, starting to see that the world is much bigger than them.

Jesus says if any one wants to follow Him, then they need to deny himself, take up his cross and start following. Everyone here, at some level, has the first part down, the desire to follow Jesus. But its just so hard for us to do the next step: deny yourself. Theres a couple of things that help me with this and if you are having trouble getting over yourself (which is the highest mountain youll ever climb) try these or seek out your own ways.
The first is Prayer. I keep a record of people that I pray for. Its a reminder to me that as a Christian, we are to pray for one another. So often I can get caught up in my own needs that I forget to pray for other people, I forget that the primary work of the ministry is prayer, that above every thing we need to be people of prayer and people of one book. So the first is commiting to pray, and then regularly praying for others.

The second is Fasting. Fasting helps us cut the fat in our lives. We give up things which we are so accustomed to, which have attached themselves to our lives, and fasting helps us dientangle ourselves. We tend to think of food only when we fast so maybe I should use a different word. Maybe we need to learn the art of Simplification. Of reducing all the distractions that point us back at ourselves. I love music and I got super connect to the White Menace that is the Ipod. No seriously, Id carry it every where and used it as a means to block people out. So when it broke it was a good thing, even though it eventually got fixed. When it got fixed, I gave it away cause I no longer wanted that attachment and I knew it would bless the person I gave it to. There was a list of things that Dave gave a few years back about how to simplify our lives. One of them said make a habit of giving things away. So I did. So fasting and simplifying our lives from all the things that we just cant live without.

The third is Service. Jesus did it. He said if anyone wants to be great in the kingdom of heaven then he must serve everyone. Theres a subtleness that goes on right there. Did you know that we are supposed to serve people. That ultimately our service is towards people. Even if we clean toliets, our service becomes a service to the next person who sits there. You want to get out of a self focused funk? Then go find somebody to serve. They are out there. In church, at the well, at school, your friends, your teachers, your parents, your family. It was Jesus vission that leaders would be the biggest servants. MacDonalds got it right with their question How can I serve you today?

Are we willing to change? To deny ourselves and follow Him? Then get ready to see him move in amazing a powerful ways in our lives and in the lives of our community.

A game of hide and seek death match with the ultimate champion

2006-04-03T10:59:00.000-07:00

Last week we talked about meditation on the word of God even when life seems to be going every way but the right one. Willy shared about his week of having to struggle though his time in the word and the choice that he made to meditated upon it.

But why? Why bother with it? I go to read my bible and it seems there are suddenly a hundred other things to do, and sometimes even washing the dishes looks better than cracking open a bible. Every thing of this world pulls and tugs at my soul. Its a constant noise inside my head. Bigger, better, stronger, faster. This other thing is what will really make you happy. This other way will lead you to success and self-fulfillment.

You can call it slick advertisement, a good campaign, media marketing, or what ever, but I call them lies. Willy was right last week when he said that commercials have the ability to manipulate our thinking. I wasnt even thirsty but now after that commercial all I want to drink is a big, old refreshing coca-cola. After watching the commercial I was convinced of my need for something to satisfy a desire I didnt really even have.

And it rips us off. Because we have some real needs in our lives that the world would love to just ignore and push in the corner. Because the world cant package it, sell it, or market it in a way that makes them a buck.

But Christ came that we might have life and life to the fullest! This is not an empty promise. I have become such a skeptic some times because nothing ever seems to live up to its promises. The refreshing taste of coke that makes you go AHH! is actually the acid in the Coke burning away the lining of your esophagus. Its the same stuff you use to take chrome off of metal. And I'm afraid that Christs promises might not actually be TRUE. Draw near to me and I will draw near to you. He says to us. So because we have been burned by every thing false in this world, we fear to draw towards the one true thing, the one true reality in this world.

We are so messed up we are not even sure what truth really is. The word gets thrown around all these days. Wanna be rappers say true that, double true. People go in to court and promise to tell the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth when in fact they are totally prepared to lie. Philosophers and poets say they are searching for the deeper truths while espousing nothing more than their own personal take on life. Even Pilate when he was questioning Jesus said, What is truth?

When I go to describe a particular aspect of an object, the chair is white, the wall is brown, 2 2=4, these are all statements that can be either proven or disproved. No the chair is actually yellow and the wall is green but 2 2=4. And then theres another sort of truth. The yellow chair is better that the white one. Well why? And then I list off a list of reasons why I think this to be true, and none of them really convince you and you say well its great that you think the yellow one is better but I think the white one is better. Are you right or am I right. We cant both be right, right? This is where we realize that we maybe using words like truth and right far too loosely. I would say that what we call truth actually falls into one of two categories. The first is a description of reality the other is an expression of opinion. Often times its easy to see which category something falls in. Two plus two = four. Thats a description of reality. Rocky road is the best flavor of ice cream. Thats an opinion; it would have to be, why else would they make other flavors then. Some times its not so easy. How about Texas is big Well it is right? Thats reality. Well big compared to what? Big compared to New Hampshire, absolutely. Big, compared to South America, probably not. Its actually a statement of opinion. Now the statement that Texas is 3 times the size of California is a description of reality

Now one of the reasons that it can be hard for us to distinguish between the two types is that a successful marketer is trying to get you to believe that their opinion is actually a description of reality. And then they take things that are reality and call them just an opinion

Because theres lots of opinions out there about Jesus. He was just a man. He was a good teacher, a prophet. He didnt really die and rise from the dead. Wasnt he married to Mary Magdalene, didnt he come to America and preach to the Indians. And then what about Muslims, and Buddhists and triibalists, what about their traditions and beliefs. Doesnt that make Christianity and Jesus just another opinion among many.

No. Jesus himself said, I am the way the truth and the life and no one comes to the father except though me. Thats pretty exclusive language. And what backs that up? What makes that not just Jesus opinion, but a description of reality? Wheres the proof.

I know lots of guys who could give you good reasons how I can know that God exists, that Jesus was God, and that the bible is true. They are good reasons, I know some of them and Id be happy to share some of them if you want to come talk to me about them or drop me a line over the Internet.

But reason I know that Jesus and the word are true is because of a changed lives. Because of my changed life. You see theres third category of truth. It describes reality, but not reality as we see it. Its the reality of God. When we went to Chicago one of the guys speaking hit on this. He said 2 2=4 but that doesnt change your life. It is the truth in Gods word to us that will make an impact on our lives. But is it up to us to sort through every thing thats thrown at us during the day? In a way yes. We are to take our thoughts captive, which means examining what we are thinking about and then realizing where that thought comes from and what to do with that thought.

But we have a helper in this. Thank God that we have a helper. When Jesus was hanging out with his disciples the day before his execution, he spoke in detail about the Holy Spirit who was to come, John 16:13 I have much more to say to you, more than you can now bear. But when the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come. He will bring glory to me by taking from what is mine and making it known to you.

Do you get that? God himself has promised to lead us into the truth, to teach us the truth and yet few of us take the time to listen an follow God who is waiting to tell you great and mighty things which we do not know (Jer 33:3) We just need be willing to listen. And that requires being in the word on a regular basis, of meditating on the word, and of struggling through the drawings of our own flesh.

Hard things first

2006-03-31T11:15:00.000-08:00

"Hard things first." I didnt come up with it, I stole it from a guy who did. It was the theame of a whole year of minisrty for Stundent Venture. Its the only one that I ever really understood very well. And I got to understand it. And Im still learning to understand it.

Not because Ive got it down, and Im always rushing to do the hard things. Actually it's quite the opposite. If i could choose, I would live an easy, soft life. This might sound funny, but hard is SOOO hard some times. And easy is SOOO easy. But everybody does easy.

Jesus says that the way to heaven is hard, and there arnt many people that come this way. Are you one of those people? Am I? I want to be, but as Im climbing the road sometimes seems clogged with those comming back down.

"Excuse me, pardon me!" I cry timidly, trying to make my way through the croud, as they push and jostle me. The number of people suddenly seems to multiply from tens to the tens of thousands, a whole army of people pushing towards the wide road.

What am I supposed to do about it ? God what can you do about it?

Im tired.
Some times I want to stop struggleing.
Some times I want to stop being so burdened for people to where I cry during prayers.
Some times I want to stop digging in, to stop trying, to give up and turn back.
I want to stop feeling like I am always failing You, like I havent and wont ever do all that is required of me. Im tired of feeling lonley, weak, and afraid.

And yet through all of this You whisper
Peace, Be Still, I Am God

but what about all this other stuff i need to do, and people to help, and and and and...

Peace, Be Still, I Am God

but what about every thing that Im not, im not an evagilist, im not a speaker, im not faithful. and what about everything that i am. liar. hateful. lustful. sinner.

Peace, Be Still, I Am God

I just want to do it right

Peace, Be Still, I Am God. Draw near to Me and I will draw near to you. You have come to me thirsty, drink deep and long and have your fill. You have come hungry and I am the bread of life. You have come worn out and exausted, I will be your strength. You have come weary; I will be your rest and your comfort.

The hardest thing is knowing that God loves me, and delights in us.
Its so easy to get caught up in the locomotion of life, to do and do and do, trying to win the approval of those around us, or worse still the approval of God. We get chained down in our expectations of ourselves and forget that in our weakness, His strenght is made perfect. Its hard for us, for me, to remember precisely who God is, and what Has done for us. He says to us:

Peace, Be Still, I Am God. Draw near to Me and I will draw near to you. You have come to me thirsty, drink deep and long and have your fill. You have come hungry; eat for I am the bread of life. You have come worn out and exausted, I will be your strength. You have come weary; I will be your rest and your comfort.

With Radical Enthusiasm

2006-03-30T11:16:00.000-08:00

"Go, therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the father the son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to obey my commands and lo I am with you always, even unto the end of the age."

We are all probably pretty familiar with this verse. Infact I wouldn't doubt if most of the people who have ever talked about or written about discipleship pull this verse out at some point. In fact people use this verse to talk about missions, small group bible studies, baptisms, the trintiy and a flurry of other things. They were the last words of Jesus that Mathew recorded. They are important. Its kinda like the Post Script on the letter of the life of Jesus. It's the important closing statement, the words that are left echoing on the ears of all those present. I wonder how long it took for them to begin speaking again. I wonder how long before they put those words into action into their own lives

And yet, so often when we read this verse or even recite it from memory, it gets the same un-impassioned reading that we often give to John 3:16. You know the one I'm talking about. Slightly monotone, slightly annoyed, with all the excitement and passion of a rock. Yuck. I once heard a guy say that familiarity breeds un-familiarity. What I mean is this: we are often so aware of the notion that we disciples of chirst and that one of our jobs on earth is to make disciples of other people, that we often don't even ask ourselves if we really know what discipleship is, and if we are really involed in discipleship.

"Follow me"

Just two simple words spoken as a command. Jesus would meet these cast out guys, fishermen, tax collectors, and the like, and then he would say "follow me" and they would go. Now Rob BellA has an amazing description of what it meant to be a disciple in the 1st century, but the jist of it is this: disciples were expected to be so close, and so involved in the life of the person they were following that they became like them, doing the same things that the rabbi did. Peter steps out of the boat not because he belives in Jesus, but because Jesus belived in Peter, that Peter could become like his Rabbi.

Our first and formost responsibilty is to answer the call of Jesus on our life. It is not enough to have mere intelectual assent to a set of doctrines or a standard of conduct. We must be actively pursuing and following in the steps of Jesus. This is a reminder and awake up call. If you picked this up to read it, I am assuming that you are a christian and probably some sort of leader as well. Something Ive learned as of late is what I call the "me first" rule. When God speaks, when something jumps of the page of His Word, or when I hear sermons and messages, its all for me first. Simply put, I am not a channel of information from God to the people around me, I am a follower of God. I noticed this first in my quiet times, where I would read and say things like so-and-so needs to hear this and this person would totally be blessed by this. I would listen to sermons and hope that certain people in the audience were listening up. But I was just pushing away the things that God wanted to pour into my own life so that I wasn't giving others something I had read, but rather some thing that was a part of my own life. Then comes the next part.

"Follow me like I follow Christ"

Pauls call is the model for our discipleship to day. What it looks like is this. I follow Jesus; he changes and shapes my life, teaches me things and grows me up. Then God brings along someone else who needs what we got, teaching, encouragement, admonishment. A warning and an ecouragement: our disciples will become like us, for good and for bad. I've seen amazing replication of amazing people in their diciples, who have a passion for the lost, a hunger for the word and a longing for God. I've also seen those same people pick up nervous habits of the one who disciples.

I could give you this perfect picture of what discipleship should look like. You spend 15 minutes discussing personal struggles and joy, then 25 minutes discussing the book or scripture that you read durring the week, and then 10 minutes praying for one another. But true discipleship is messy. Its getting involved in peoples lives to such an extent, that you can look across a crowded room and know what a person is stuggling with. I know. Ive been called out like that. Discipleship is loving a person so much that you cant bear to see them stay as they are. Its invasive and uncomfortable sometimes. Especially for us, because we see so many kids perishing that it can be overwhelming to have 50 kids that you are responsible for, right? But in our group down in Lake Elsinore I have seen one man's investment in a handfil of guys change our youth group. Because he replicated the heart and passion that he had for God and for students into these guys, and now they come and serve on Sunday nights and througout the week and they are now discipling others. But it wasn't a one month investment, or 6 months or a year. They are going on three years. And this guy has commited to them for life. Its true that these guys don't need as much guidence as they once did. They've learned to go to the sorce for guidence and for teaching and to hear from God. But he is still there to pray and support and encourage. He wants to see them grow up to be mighty men of God, who allow God and not the world to influence and change them.

This is where we should all want to be because lets get honest for a moment. Two hours on Sunday morning and two hours of youth group are not enough. Not enough to get inside the lives and heads and hearts of the kids that you are ministering to. Now Im not discounting the miraculus working of God in our youth groups, but there is only so much growth that can happen in four hours a week. It takes us getting involved in our kids lives. Its more that just meeting once a week. Its going to games, seeing shows, reading the bible with them, late night phone calls, seeing their rooms, and chating with them on myspace. Its picking them up in your car and running errends, and letting them see the way that you and your wife handle arguments, and opening the doors of your house to be a sanctuary from the world. Its all that and more because discipleship is not something we do. It's a way of living.

I want to live my life in such a way that my radical enthusiasm becomes their radical enthusiam.

Earnestly Risking Authenticity

2006-03-27T11:18:00.000-08:00

Willy, Dave and I met this week and started talking about the word again only we were talking about what it means to meditate on the word. We read last week in small groups Psalm one which says "I will meditate on your word day and night." But I wonder what that really means.

Does meditating day and night, mean that I need to don an orange robe, go find a cave to live in up in the Ortegas, and sit cross-legged humming to my self for the rest of my life?

Hmmmmmmmm, hmmmmmmmmm, hmmmmmmmmm

I'm going to go with the answer of probably not. How would you ever get anything done? Monks don't write papers for English class or do algebra homework or take out the trash or put up with siblings. They have removed themselves from this life. So what would it practically look like to engage in meditation on the scriptures.

When I think of meditation, I think of bar-b-que. In Texas it doesn't matter what you are cooking, but if you cook it on the grill, its barbeque. Every thing from hot dogs, to T-bone stakes, to fish, to ears of corn: its all bar-b-que. And the best bar-b-qued meats are the ones that have been sitting in marinade all day long. The marinade soaks to the inside of the meat, changing the essential quality of the meat by breaking down some of the tough fibrous tissue so that come cooking time its tender and ready to eat. It also takes a rather boring and plain pieces of meat and adds to it the richness of flavors that things like garlic, soy sauce, and Ruby's Red Rub add to the mix. For it to work though, its an all day process. Its gotta soak.

And so when we read the word we gotta get marinated in it. Its not enough to slap a little A-1 bible sauce on our lives and call it a day. Aint no amount of special sauces going to cover up a tough piece of meat, it needs the marinade.

So I thought about what it looks like in my own life and just wrote down some of the things that I experienced through out my day on Wednesday, while I was meditating on the word.

So the first thing I would say is you gotta start early in the day to marinade something. How can you soak yourself in the word, if you haven't cracked a page in the morning?

Its 5:15. I fought getting up this morning. I snoozed the alarm but my neighbor who starts throwing tools in his truck at 5:10 has woken me any ways. I started reading 1 John 3, and its amazing how distracted that I was. Late night at school plus morning devotions equals a severe lack of focus. I was already being distracted by things I needed to get done like cleaning the dishes in the sink before people started showing up for the Ruthless Trust Breakfast Club at 6:30. I was thinking about work and ministry and church and my hopes for the future, and life in general, about everything except for 1 John. I kept having to wrestle in my thoughts like they were a pack of wild alligators. CS Lewis describes this in his book Mere Christianity.

"The real problem of the Christian life comes where we do not normally look for it . It comes the very moment that you wake up each morning. All your wishes and hopes for the day rush at you like wild animals. And the first job each morning consists simply in shoving them all back; in listening to that other voice and taking that other point of view, letting that other, larger, stronger, life come flowing in. And so on, all day We can do it only for moments at first"

"We can do it only for moments at first" What an encouragement that is. That it's not a super perfection thing, where I've got to have it all right, but a moment by moment that is seasoned with God's grace. There's two verses that kinda stuck out to me.

1 John 3:1 How great is the love that the father has lavished upon us that we should be called children of God! And this is what we are!

1 John 3:18-19 Dear children let us not love with words or tongue, but with actions and in truth. This then is how we will know that we belong to the truth and how we set our hearts at rest in His presence.

Okay so now its 6:15. People are early and I still haven't finished the dishes or made anything for people to eat. Looks like cereal and bagels this morning. We are reading this book called Ruthless Trust by a guy named Brenning Manning. Its always amazing to me that God wants to provide answers to the questions in my head. You see, when a scripture verse sticks out, its not because I think its poetic, or pretty, or that someone else needs to hear that. Its usually because I have some issue or question that is brought up by the passage itself. This morning it was the question "do I belong to the truth?" And the answer from Manning's book? Not really. I think most of the time, I probably want to belong to the truth, even though sometimes I don't. Maybe. Wishy washy bull honky. I've got an issue with being open, honest and real. And I don't know what to do about it.

Eight o'clock. I check my email before starting work. New MySpace messages. Oh goodie! There's times were I wonder if, like Dave says, we are too plugged in. I cover that thought with the reasoning that I don't have TV or Internet at home so I'm okay. I read start reading some thing that Ali wrote. Its amazing.

"I am so overcome by the gentle peace of Christ. Realizing that a life of meaning and joy takes discipline, it is necessary for me to awake each morning and choose to follow Christ. I must take each day one at a time. Living for Christ this way (daily) is so much simpler and refreshing. The future does not make me as anxious. I am content with what I have and where I am because I am with Christ. Difficulties keep finding me and taunting me, but I still find joy and peace in my Savior. I watch people in my life that I dearly love get thrashed by lies, poor decisions, and worries;; my heart breaks for them. True freedom is only ever found in Christ. So, I am choosing trust and hope in God today, because what if there is no tomorrow????"

What if there's no tomorrow to make things right? Do I find my hope and joy and peace in Jesus, or am I thrashed by lies, poor decisions and worries. My own lies and my own poor decisions, my own worries.

Ten thirty. I get in my car to drive up to Moreno valley for work. I have the "heartimus unimus" card in the dashboard of my car. I don't know if I've just never really read it before or what but it said, earnestly risking authenticity.

Earnestly- doing it with all your might.
Risking to the point were you are out of your comfort zone.
Authenticity- being real. Being who God made me.

So I threw up a quick prayer, God help me to be that man. Earnestly risking authenticity with my friends, with my family, with people I hardly know, and with complete strangers. I don't wanna hide who you've made me and what goes on in my head any more.
High noon- Its lunch time I take off to my parents house to sit and write on my lunch break but my friend Sarah comes on Aim and I talk to her instead. She's in St Petersburg Russia teaching English. She had canceled classes because one of the students, Demitri, had died the previous day from pneumonia. "They didn't teach me how to deal with this in any of my classes." She wrote. "What do I tell the other students. How do I explain that God is good and in control and will work this out, when I don't even feel that myself." My answer was you don't. You morn with the students, and when they ask you why you be as honest as you can. "I don't know why this happened, and I'm sad because of it" Earnestly risking authenticity.

One o'clock hits and a friend of mine calls for some encouragement. I've had people call for encouragement but never come right out and say it. I believe the exact words were "Adam, I need a pep-talk!"

1 John 3:18-19 Dear children let us not love with words or tongue, but with actions and in truth. This then is how we will know that we belong to the truth and how we set our hearts at rest in His presence.

What happens when we belong to the truth our hearts set at rest in His presence. So I just spoke out some truth, nothing I hadn't said before, and nothing that I wasn't willing to say again, just the reality that God has created us each with gifts and talents and treasures, and that when we come to grips with that truth our hearts are set at rest in His presence.

Crash Boom Bang rolls around, this is when the other verse comes into play.

1 John 3:1 How great is the love that the father has lavished upon us that we should be called children of God! And this is what we are!

All day long verse one was still rattling around in my head. "And this is what we ARE!" And I'm sitting at Crash, Boom, Bang wondering how many of them realize that they are children of the living God. Then I smack my self on the head and wonder if I realize I'm a child of the living God. Because a lot of the problems I have with being authentic and real come from the fact that I have some sort of image to uphold. Not an image of coolness or a tough guy, but of the pastor dude. The sort of guy who shouldn't struggle with the basics, right? Its okay for me to say to people I struggle with the application of the soteriolgical axiom of the second ecumenical council. (Don't worry there's no test at the end of this) But its hard for me to say, wow, I struggle with reading the word on a daily basis, I struggle with having mental distractions while I am praying, and I struggle with loneliness and doubt. But as I start to share these things I don't find condemnation, but rather camaraderie. Willy and I have set ourselves to being in the word in the morning, and sometimes its hard and I have to look over at him for encouragement.

Its now a little after midnight, I'm writing this for Sunday thinking what's the conclusion; how do I wrap this up? Two things.

First, when you or I meditate on the word, there will come a place were the rubber meets the road, were we will either do what it says or we wont. And if we wont it will start to gnaw at us. Remember that this is only a day in my life, and that this issue that God is working with me on has really been a process of His word and His Spirit marinating my soul to tenderness and when that fails, He has been gnawing on the tough spots with all the gusto of a dog with a rawhide bone.

And secondly marinating starts in the word and depends on the Holy Spirit to bring verses back up, all day long. That living in the truth of Gods words will bring rest to our hearts in His presence.

Be you encouraged! For though we can do it only for moments at first, God is faithful to complete the work that He has promised to complete in us

Called

2006-03-07T11:18:00.000-08:00

If you can do any thing else, then go do it.
But if you cant do anything but this, then you are called.

Mysteries

2006-03-01T11:21:00.000-08:00

1 Tim 2:8-9 "Deacons must... hold to the deep mysteries of the faith with a clear conscience"

So the verse means this for me (wow, i cant believe I just wrote that. My bible intrepretation teacher would have my head if he read that): I must hold to the deep mysteries of the faith with a clear conscience. But as I've reflected and meditated on the verse, I realized that I didnt really even have a clue on what the "deep mysteries" even were. I thought, okay, "The Trinity", God as one and as three. Right. Deep mystery number one solved. Okay "Calvinism vs Arminianism" Yes... No... Neither...Um Both. Right...Deep mystery number two solved. Okay "Escatology".......
So on and so on.

If is true that my brain "solves" these "deep mysteries" why would I still need hold them with a clear conscience. Wouldnt it be true that there would be no cognitive dissodance (a phrase I picked up in psycology) and I wouldnt have to hold them I just would have them. Now you can write this off to semantics and greek translations and what ever else, but I usually hold on to something, cause I love it (like a treasured memento or a loved one) or because it threatens to get away from me (like a climber on a rock or a wild horse) And somuch of what we loved in the begining, what made our eyes sparkle like newborn children, threatens to get away from us. The deep mystery which we once embraced has been replaced by something less real, something less than God. The deep myteries that I've been abble to come up with go something like this.

God is real.
God speaks.
God does stuff.
God loves us
God has changed my life
God changes other peoples lives.
God hears us.

So in my mind, these are the things that I ignore the most, believe the least, and are probably the most true thing I can experience. How does the Pretrib,posttrib,pantrib(thank you Monty) argument compare to the simple yet profound statement that God is real.

God is real. I start there. Because its true and I miss it. If you've been reading my blog, there was one about trusting God. And I realized that as a pastor I was missing it. I was missing the growth and power of God in my life to affect personal change. Oh my ministry was doing good. I adressed problems with the proper application of scripture, personal anctidotes, and quality goofing off time to where I saw growth in others, but never really inmyself. But to others, growth and expansion in ministry IS growth with God. Or at least looks like it. When asked about how my life was going, I always talked about ministry, never what GOd was teaching me. Dont get me wrong, I prayed, I read, I led worship. But somewhere in the nooks and crannies of my brain were the beginings of the hints of wispers of doubts. "Adam, you are wasting your life. What if its not true?" And to be honest those doubts still exist. Knowing that alot of what I do and who I am and the choices Ive made SEEM to be leading me away from the things I once had and what I desire most in life. Because God is real. Of all these things, if I dont hold to that, then my life is just a sham, my ministy a jobchoice and my relationship with God, just me talking to the celing. The funny thing is that its so obvious to us we ignore it. We almost laugh out loud when someone accepts the Gospel for truth and their eyes get bright with the reality that God exists. Deep mystery ..1

God speaks. When I speak of KN or MS, you've heard me say these words "I am no mystic." You may have even thought you knew what I was saying. In one sense it is true that "magical" thinking about God gets us into all sorts of trouble. On the other hand what I was really saying is that "God doesn't speak to me" with underlieing conclusion that "God doesn't speak to them either" and ultimatly the realization hits me now that "God doesnt speak at all because He's not real." (Are you a priest that I might make you my confessor? You didnt mean to be so candid in your email, and neither did I, yet I feel compeled to write.) But God does speak. He even speaks to me, and not in the "the bible is all of God's word we need" sort of way, though that seems to be the primary way. Its not audible. Its not a voice. I've seen a vision but only one. I have dreams but I never know what they mean. The best way I can describe it is as a thought that I have that injects itself into my "inner dialoge" which usually and almost always I reject with that same inner dialog. And its not little things. Its insight into peoples lives that when spoken allows people to releace things. Its insight into the hearts and minds of the church. And as weird as it sounds it's insight into my own heart and motives and feelings. And within the last couple of months or so, there have been four or five big ones and countless small ones, where some of them I was faithful to say, and some of them I wasnt, one of which the phrase in my head was "there's no way in hell" and the other voice said "that's right because you are not destined for that place" and then somebody else stood up in our church and said the exact thing that I had been told to say. Not just the jist of the comment, but word for word the sentance I was denying in my head. I'll pause at this point for you to reconnect your brain after the shock. Im not a skitso. I dont hear voices in my head. Like I said, its my own voice, only its not. The weight and the intrusiveness of the thought is diffrent than the normal free association that goes on in my mind. I wish I could explain it better so that, you myfriend, halfway accross the world, would be excited that God speaks. Reading this over, i kinda sound like a lunie. This is the first time I have ever tried to articulate the interaction. And to write it down, even here to a friend, makes me feel kinda vulnrable and I keep writing in little things to push off that vulnrability. But it is one of the things that made my list on the deep mysteries of God.

The rest of them might be more self explainitory, or less in need of explination, or something.

God loves us. Yes He does. No really. I mean it.

I thought it didnt need any explination but Im wrong. (The internal dialog/God speaks thing again) How many things do I do inlife to earn affection. I clean my room so my parents praise me. I get the right clothes and listen to the right music so my friends my like me. I take a girl out to dinner so I might get a peck on the cheek at the end of the night. I work hard so my boss accepts me and gives me a raise. All of my life I have had to earn my affection. Very rairly is "love" given without a reason. Its tit for tat and risk analisys. If I give them this much affection and energy, how much am I going to get back. This person didnt respond the way I wanted them to last time so im going to just hold back a little more this time.

But God does not do risk analisys.

And that way of loving is so forign to us that we ulimately do not hold to the truth that His love is permanant. And I end up working off my sins. We scoff at the middle ages, with their indulgences but I get them! Its way easier to "work off" my sins, than it is to relized that He loves me even when I don't love Him. In Him there is NO TURNING. It is amazing to see a new christian say, I found this verse and its amazing. Have you ever read it? Its John 3:16... and before he can finnish we cut him off with our quick, deadpan, un-empassioned recitation, that leaves him there with a bittler taste on his lips, his excitement like ash in his mouth, and it poisins the soul. God loves us.
Read it with a stirred up soul, empassioned for the mysteriy of God's love.

FOR GOD SO LOVED THE WORLD THAT HE GAVE HIS ONLY SON SO THAT WHOM EVER BELIVES ON HIM SHALL NOT PERISH, BUT WILL HAVE THE EVERLASTING LIFE!!!!

And when we believe that, and that before it, my lens starts to bring something into veiw.
I cannot remain the same in His love. He wont allow for it. Jesus is the impertinant fix-it man. I call him into do a simple job like stoping a leaking faucet and come home to major remodel, with an added story, new windows and an east wing. Theres stairs and cranes and alsorts of activities, and when confronted about how he's "ruining your house" he comes back with the line "Im just making it perfect" Of all the impertinant..... aggg......agggg.....arrrrrr. But yet isnt it the truth that when God started working on you, and when God started working on me that neither one of us saw the road ahead. Not just the exterior one of travels and homes and friends and ministry. No I mean the inward one where God broke me of pride, and anger and the one where he continues to breakme of loneliness and uncertainty. Where He's brouhgt faith and joy and hope and love to make me perfect. To make you perfect too. God changes people's lives. For the better. Because He loves us he will tell us. And all of that because God is real.

And the last one is that God hears us.

I am no "back burner" project with God. Neither are you. God doesnt have the kids you work with on the back burner, your friendships, your relationship with Him, nor your futurespouse on the back burner. God is not a "back burner" sort of God. Rather His thoughts about you are at the forfront of His mind, numbering as numerous as the grains of sand. He says "Trust me Adam, for you are in the middle of everything that I have planned for you." He says it to you, he says it to me , he says it to all of creation, even while it growns, even while it pains in the labor of the new life to come. God hears us, and changes us to love Him more, because He first loved us, speaking to us that He loves us and that He exists.

These are the deep mysteries. The ones that I will hold on to lest they get away from me.

There might be more. Maybe you can come up with a few. I dont know.

Trust God

2006-02-21T11:34:00.000-08:00

I am learning what it means to trust God.
We just went to HS winter camp and the thing that was nost impressed upon me was trust God. When I was praying in the little prayer chapel, the overwhelming thing that I heard and felt was trust God. Then as I left there was a penny right in the doorway that I picked up. I dont think it was there before but it might have been. Anyways, the point is on the top is insribed "In God we Trust". And then about a few hours later I was sitting in the back of the gym durring the worship service and I picked up a little scrap of paper that was laying right in front of me. Two words on it. Trust God. So now I am in the process of putting the "I" and the "My" back into the "We" and the "They" when I say things like trust God. Its for me first when I speak the things of God. Its for me first when Jesus tells me something. Its for me first when the Holy Spirit lays change on my heart. Its for me first, that I need to trust God. Me first, then you next...

6>80's Music

2006-02-14T11:36:00.000-08:00

The snow as started falling as the faint sounds of 80's music plays in the background. Not the good stuff, but the songs that everybody knows the words to, but wishes they didn't like Prince's "Purple Rain" though there was some Sting and Queen that was pretty redeeming. If there was ever a place to take a girl this was the place. Ive only ever been ice skating once and it ended with stiches, so I chose to walk around with Boston, but with the snow falling, ice-skating in the park seemed picturesque. And I was thinking of our past few days together. I pray that we come back ready to rock the Lake. If nothing else, our group has fused like brothers and sisters (though we are outnumbered 3 to 1, yikes.) Like any family theres been our struggles and issues, but the group has gelled to a thick solidarity. Theres justin who is always just this side of the line, quiet Angi who we left at a mall, Erin the trooper who survived a trip to the city hospital, Boston the joymaker who seems to have the ability to but a smile on everybodies face and myself who got the group lost while walking to moody (not entirly lost but… we were on the right street just about 12 blocks down…) Im excited to see what the rest of this week will hold. The thoughts and ideas that are swimming around in everybody's head, how they will be poured out to become concrete reality. No seminar has said here is what you do to improve your church, your ministry, your small groups. Its been fairly simple, but profound. – CHANGE YOURSELF FIRST – Focus on God in your own life. Focus on who he is. And that change will radiate outward, like ripples in a still pond. Change begins here (index finger pointing at your own/my own stearnum. A. T. Elwer

5>Hebrews 2

2006-02-14T10:37:00.000-08:00

Salvation found… Don't drift away from your salvation "Therefore we must pay closer attention to what we have heard, least we drift away from it" From the letter to the Hebrews chapter 2 Salvation is a whole that encompasses the christan life Election- Chosen by God before the world Justification- The forgiveness of sins Sanctification- Becoming holy Glorification- After this life (As good Westlyians we'd probably add one more) Adoption- becoming the Sons and Daughters of God 2 Biblical Assurances of Salvation The Enduring Faith- "He that endures to the end..." The Fruit of that Faith So… Wake up! – Pay more attention, focus, the act of being anchored to a mooring What causes us to fall into spiritual slumber? – A list The Pursit of pleasure in its various forms as an ends to itself. That is the list Listen up! – What we have heard Clearest proof of convertion is an overwhelming love for the Gospel Keep up! – Least we drift away- a ship loosed from its moorings The Gospel Declaired by Jesus Experienced by People Confirmed by God