Some thoughts from last week.

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.