A reason to love…..

"Because he loves me," says the LORD, "I will rescue him; I will protect him, for he acknowledges my name.  He will call upon me, and I will answer him; I will be with him in trouble, I will deliver him and honor him.  With long life will I satisfy him and show him my salvation." Psalm 91:14-16

As this season's journey seems to quickly draw to an end and the new situations that will govern the future, if only for a little while, become completed, I struggle; against myself, against the experiences of the past and the not-so-surprising expectations of a future devoid of achievement. It seems whenever I get knocked down, I get back up….only to be knocked down again. I have fought against the tendency to isolate myself….to present to the church a 'rosy' image of myself and my situation to obtain 'acceptance' of both my family and my purpose. I have spoken clearly and freely about my problems, struggles, failures and disappointments and once again, it seems to have marked me as an undesirable…especially for ministry. To the point where I have uttered the words I did back when I was sixteen years old and the church turned its back on me, unlike what it had did with my older brother.

"I think I'm done with 'church'"

Two specific events in the last evolution of my 'church' experience have brought me face to face with this unspoken heaviness. One, when I had that accidental collision with the unseen landscaping rock thrown out into the road by another car that spun out during the snow storm and cracked the transmission case to my car….$1,700.00 plus repair bill and me travelling an hour to and from work. I went to my pastor and asked for his assistance in trying to find a way to address the problem. I made the prayer request list, under the anonymous titling "car repairs". One brother, from Germany, offered to loan me the money…..I refused, on the grounds of the biblical instruction not to enter into a loan with a brother. It was one brother, part of the ultra-church ministry I belong to, who was blessed with a unexpected bonus who gave me the funds to buy another vehicle. Fine, I thought at the time, God decided that the larger would not be as powerful a testimony as the one, so He planned this to happen this way.

Three months later, the same pastor who didn't return my emails about the church's 'relationship with several repair shops, maybe we can get the costs down' information stood in front of the congregation and asked for cars to be donated "for a few people in need." There were men, he said, in the congregation who will fix them up and give these needing families transportation. I was within a day of losing my job because I couldn't get there and it wasn't needful enough, apparently. After all, the bible says to care for the single mothers and widows….not single fathers.

It is this same pastor that I requested a meeting with in June/July to discuss the problem with babysitting for my children over the summer and through the coming school year. He said that he would see if he could find someone who "can help in exchange for monetary compensation" despite my honest comment of not even being able to afford to send the kids to the 'summer camp' program the church was operating because of costs. He came to the conclusion that maybe I should investigate moving closer to family as it seems God wasn't opening doors in the Holly area. I've heard nothing from him all summer, even when the kid's mother lost her power for over a week and I had to find an alternative place for them to go…..it was another individual, through my work, that stepped up and helped with my children….and she had others who helped her with them.

Two nights ago I went to church and was talking about my eminent departure; two separate individuals said they wished they had known, one operated a childcare from her home and the other would've stepped into some kind of helping role. The pastor apparently never mentioned it to anyone and I wasn't worthy of a 'congregational request.'

I am too far gone to change course again and stay where I've felt I was supposed to stay…..it would take another miracle to work all the severed links back together and make the situation work out now. I feel that, because I am a male, that there are those who feel I don't have to deal with the same issues that a single mother would, or that I should have everything put together in a neat and tidy box…..after all, there's nothing in the bible that says 'care for the single fathers and widows.'

Do I think the pastor is ungodly? No, I think that he is in the wrong position for his spiritual gifts and purposing. Do I think the church is more worldly than godly? I think it has become a hybrid of a corporate mentality, for spoken godly purposes, and has become a weak vessel……an old wineskin…..to which new wine is being poured. Sooner or later, it will rupture into a ungodly and secular corporate entity: when the man-after-God's-heart pastor has moved on to his reward or has become a liability to the collection of congregations that he has gathered together over his years in ministry. A ministry or vision built upon one man, except for Christ, is destined to fall when that man is gone. Maybe years, maybe centuries later…..but history proves its truth.

And they won't see it coming. Because, as another pastor said to me, 'I may not agree with everything this doctrine (name-it-claim-it healing) says, but it is definitely having results'. I believe that the Gospel does not go out void….God says it will not….and the enemy fully knows this. So, with a bit of scriptural sprinkling of truths coupled with wrong theology and understanding, results are garnered in the expectations of the humanity called "church" and any unbiblical or godly means to get to the 'results' is glossed over…..congregations grow to critical mass, property is bought to house the elaborate decorations of thousand-strong communities, worship becomes a stage-show that rivals the concert venues of culturally favored musicians and groups and slowly the erosion of the congregational responsibility to its family members and the community to which it is supposed to serve becomes commonplace……and the purpose to which Christ built His church looks more like a profit-loss graphic during the board meetings of the 'elders' and 'leadership' teams.

The community of 'believers' grows larger and larger, to the point where a pastor doesn't know the sheep he shepherds because it is simply logistically impossible and the mentality of the church is 'growth is progress', community involvement is 'public relations' of a cost-benefit ratio and true discipleship is a weeding field where the productive are advanced and the troubled are either conformed or shuffled to the darker corners of congregational life. And the excuse is "The need is too great for us to help everyone."

The individual becomes less important than the many 'possibilities' of dynamic lights, sound and stage presence. The message of one man, one God, becomes less important to remain truthful to than a water-down, we'll-get-em-later, message of somewhat Truth.

It no longer seems unlikely that 144,000 of the remnant will remain on this earth to herald the tribulation. The true believers of this world will either be gone through attrition or herded up into isolated communities to be wiped out at the convenience of the populace. The 82% of the American population that claims Christianity is actually only 8%....and the tides of cultural tolerance and corporate worship will whittle that down to almost zero…..if the current treads are true and 90% of the children today will never step back into a church setting once they hit the first year of college.

"Teach a man to fish" mentality; let's formulate what it takes to make a person in the congregation be 'spiritual', financially stable and happy so that we can develop them to support our ministries and services in the big building down the street. If they struggle, there's a study program or group…..if they are troubled, they've not gotten enough of the spirit….if they stray, then they must not be honestly converted and we'll have to cut them loose….. so that we don't have to do anything than our 'title' and can 'suspend' the common expectations of relationships in favor of the need to feed the vision of the 'mega-complex' down the road. That way, it seems, the expectation becomes not one of discipling to leave the community to support or redeem another but so that the congregate, in their self-supporting life, can support the church and the leadership visions for the church congregation. They can then sit back and watch it grow…….and feel accomplished, feel the 'work' is done.

It seems the lessons are quickly given, illustrated once and then the 'trainees' are sent to the fish and tackle stores to buy their own tackle and rods. Some have to go cheap and find themselves alienated by the better equipped individuals….and still starve. Others get to the store, having lost their list along the way, and find themselves rejected from getting a copy of it again…..and still starve. Some buy the best equipment, designed for easy fishing, and then when the equipment breaks, they have forgotten how to fish in a basic way….the equipment did the work for them….and THEY starve.

What would happen if we, the church, took the 'seasoned anglers' in our congregation and coupled them with younger fisher-wannabes (physically or spiritually)? The young anglers would be under the mentorship of the elder ones until the point where; regardless of the situation or equipment, they will still land fish…..then, they are seasoned anglers and the process begins again. If they fall, starving because of unfruitful fishing, the still-lifelong-paired mentor would know it and be able to address the failure in a productive way.

It would be "I'll teach you, watch you and then help you do the same to another" fishing mentality. Fathers take their sons time and time again….and then step to the side..going further down the stream until they are out of sight, ready to jump in and help, but watching to see the growth and maturity of their sons as they do it on their own…..the sons, properly taught, teach their own….and a legacy of fishermen are born. Doesn't mean that there won't be times of starvation…in those times, through the network of mentorship and relational community, there would be those who had more to feed those who have less. Doesn't mean there won't be times of correction, for even the professional anglers make mistakes….but mentorship/relational community would again be there to help them learn and recover.

The chief ingredient isn't a formula of this bait, this lure, this line, this pole and this river/lake/stream……it is individualized, direct and hands on relationship, commitment and above all…love.

God is love….and those who are of God are His representatives of that love.

Is God a cookie-cutter, formulaic God? Did He throw the lesson book out there and LEAVE? Did He look at your mistakes, even after the point of conversion, and say…."Well, guess you're hopeless?" Is He consistently loving, faithful and true…..delivering upon His promises, inviting us to work with Him in His larger story to bring glory to Him and furthering the kingdom? Faithfully wrathful, judgmental and angry in a level of righteousness consistent with His loving, merciful and compassionate grace…….

Is He disconnected from us, or as the song goes and the verse above testifies, "He walks with me and He talks with me……and He (repeatedly) tells me I am His own." He promises never to leave us, even in the depth of our disobedience, but is faithful to wait for us to reconnect to Him….and He doesn't just sit there, listening to our despair…but sends us help when we cry out to Him…..in ways we often don't recognize until later….when our spiritual growth is enough to see it.

Why?

Because we love Him…..from love comes desire….from desire loyalty….from loyalty obedience…..born out of love's intentional relationship with God that makes us want to please Him….and the only way to do so is to……

LOVE

From that action on our part, He responds in the same….loving us enough not to leave us where we are, helpless and hopeless against the onslaught of the enemy's intentions, but to grow and nurture us to join Him in the work He is already about. We aren't required for God's plan and aren't simply story fodder for His grander, pure Story….but are active and willing participants who are continually enticed by the Reader and Author of the story to join its telling. He's read the story, knows its end and still is entranced by our participation, caught up in the moments of our story within His….equally delighted when we hear and relate with Him….inviting Him to journey with us in the writing of our own smaller part in the annals of His story…….

God doesn't have formulas, He has solutions…He doesn't smash humanity into a thin mishmash of dough and apply a cookie cutter to its width and breath of life so to have automatons of the same molding…….The structure is in place, undeniably and un-individualistic dependant…..but our involvement in it is individually crafted, and unforced…..

Because of LOVE

A love born in a redeemed heart, lived in the woundedness of this broken world, painful and sorrowful because of the corporate humanism that plagues our very beings from the moment of our birth…..until we are more like our Creator…..more tranquil, more joyful and more illogical in our loving than we could ever realize……

Being relational with those who are in pain, suffering or burdened by the world…..not just for conversion's sake (for it is not us who CONVERTS) but because God so loved us……we fish with the broken, not just to teach them to fish, but to give them the ability to fish, the desire to fish and the confidence to fish………

So, when our legacy is called upon at the moments of our 'graduation', those left behind can see those who will ensure generations of fishermen are grown up.

We have become a people of manufactured, chemically-enhanced and man-designed fish eaters eating something that tastes like fish, is shaped like fish but has the nutritional value of cardboard…..and celebrate those who have the flashy lures, the fanciest poles and the graceful moves as legendary anglers, even though they don't 'really fish' anymore but are 'demonstrators'…..flocking to hear what they have to say and let them feed us. The old, wizened anglers who fish for the sake of fishing……who know more about fishing with a string and a stick than the latest fancy move in casting…who never make the competitions but feed their communities….are forgotten or labeled 'antiquated'.

It is not the 'we' in Christianity that God calls us to, through formulaic and ritualistic worship in cushy seats of grand cathedrals…….

it is the "I" in Christianity that He entices us to…….so that we can be the "I"

…….that rescues the lost

…….protects the weak

…….answers for the speechless

…….stand by the persecuted and oppressed

…….deliver the tortured souls to God

……..by standing as a living testimony to the salvational mercy, unending grace and agape LOVE of the God who sent His only begotten Son so that none will perish but have life everlasting.

It will be those in the end days, individual in their testimony and working as an organic living and breathing part of the 'catholic' (universal) church that will not meet in the halls of grand visions or the fields of lush red crushed-velvet seats, who will live and work beside the broken, battered and bruised of this world…..loving and caring for them at the cost of their lives to harvest the fields of souls for the purpose of their Savior.

That is the bride that Christ is coming back for…..and that is what God promises to protect, guide and prosper.

 

 

 

 

Seven days till season's end...

“In his heart a man plans his journey, but the LORD leads his steps.” Proverbs 16:9

Friday I stopped by to meet the owner of the trailer and put 100.00 dollars of the 200.00 deposit down, ‘to hold’ the trailer until the next Friday, when I’m supposed to sign the purchase agreement and the mobile home park lease. I’ve informed my current landlord of my decision to move, promising to be out of the apartment by the 1st of September….so that I do not end up owing money upon my departure. As hard as I’ve tried with DTE to get a final ‘bill’, the helpful lady on the other end of the phone line would only say I owe 694.00 and there will be a required deposit. I haven’t checked with Consumer’s about the gas and will find out about the water when I sign the park lease. As of yet, there is no one and no way to pay for child care for the kids… The morning is still a problem in regards to how I’m going to look after the kids and be at my job, though the afternoon doesn’t look that bad, at the moment, for such concerns. I’ve missed the Plymouth-Canton School District by a quarter of a mile, so the kids are supposed to go to Wayne Schools…...I don’t even know if I’ll have enough to cover the rent for the first month and the three days remaining in August along with the security deposit, that is dependent on the return of the security and last month’s rent from the current landlord. I have no clue how I am going to move, both the boxes and the big stuff on my own…I have to GET boxes…Sign the kids up for school…. I have to contact DirectTV and see if I can have my friend’s account transferred to the Canton address, there’s still about a year and a few months before I can cancel the contract and not hurt my friend’s credit which she graciously put online so we could have something to watch in the northern village of Holly. I have to begin packing and cleaning the apartment.
I would like to fix the floor, putting carpet in the bedrooms and living room and retiling the linoleum in the kitchen as well as fixing the linoleum floor in the wash room, but I don’t know if that’s possible time-wise and financially….and I don’t know how I’m going to pay for the necessary repairs to the wall in what is to be my son’s room (two panels, at least, if not the whole room needs to be replaced. Would like to replace it with 3/8” drywall). There are no doors for any of the bedrooms, which I’d like to have…. I’d like to build some closets for both of the kids rooms and fix the rear entrance door, which is boarded up at the moment. Rip out and replace the carpet in my room, fix the hole in the closet wall…. I spent the time last night praying about this, asking for a last minute reprieve from going back down into the city….but it seems God is calling me out of my isolation and back into the complexities of dealing with the children’s birth mother down the road (still struggle with that) and being in close proximity to my sister again (a good thing). Whatever God has planned for this new season will, based upon experience, something exciting and growth building, progressing me towards another step in this journey home. The kids are excited and eager to move….closer to family, and closer to ‘civilization’.
And I’ll have to find a local church to attend. I can, fortunately, maintain my enjoyed and challenging tutoring under Pastor Jim Combs through the internet, even if I cannot physically be present to be there live.
As I step out in faith that God has made this provision for a place for my family to move to, I must believe that He has also provisioned the needs that such a move would take.
It’s all on God’s time and God’s dime…..I am planning the journey, but God is leading my footsteps. I would appreciate prayer for the week as I work, pack, clean….for clarification on transporting the possessions to the new place, repairing what needs to be done and allowing peace about the things I’d like to do…for grace and mercy with the financial end of everything…and for the coming weekend, from Saturday afternoon until Sunday night, as I load and unload our family from Holly to Canton.
As always, the prayers of the faithful are deeply desired, wonderfully felt and heartily heard by our dear Lord and Father for the conforming and glorification of His will for His children and the promise of their care.

Tranquility….is not a sea on the moon

"The heart is deceitful above all things, and beyond cure. Who can understand it?" Jeremiah 17:9 (NIV)

There are those, in the interests of healing and training those who follow, that will remove the heartfelt responses of this journey from the discussion of their story for this very reason…the heart, the human corrupted heart, is deceitful above all else and its reasoning for being so is well beyond the understanding of man. Dealing, they decide, with the emotional and beating pain of the heart is beyond where God would have us go, far beyond what we could understand and therefore something to be cut out and removed from our Christian walk. Love becomes a hardened, lifeless shell in the context of our humanity, for love is the very thing we cannot abide in….it is simply too painful.
 

And we develop a mechanism to prevent the heart from feeling, a switch as one friend put it today, where we think with the logic of our minds rather than the feeling within our heart. And it is that switch that throws us into alienation from God; the God of love, the God of grace, the God of mercy and the God of our creation. And, in that disconnection, we find that logic will not survive and the benefit of tranquility becomes the thing we most fear.
 

I speak from experience, but I speak it in faith because my heartfelt cry isn't, "Lord, Lord come….." but "Dear Father, help my unbelief….in what I believe."
 

I came away from the meeting today with my brothers, those men who refuse to let go of this heart and refuse to accept the logic of my argument that I cannot be worthy of what God entices me to be because I am disrupted, and far from the realization of what logically a life surrendered to Christ would or should be. They called out to that heart today….and its sorrow lay heavy upon the ground between us, its pain disturbing the peaceful tranquility of the gathering. When I tried to switch from the emotional disruption of my heart, they called me back……
 

And, in the midst of the disturbance of that movement, they glimpsed the beating wounded heart and sang of its worthiness to feel, to live and to experience the tranquility of God's peace in the disorder of chaos that logic brings. God doesn't call us to a 'measure of a man' that lies within the logic of society's demandiness….a wealth of possessions, finances and relationships devoid of feeling and disturbed eddies of our living in the broken world of this place…..but of a nourishing, illogical movement of love within a heart reborn…..a replacement heart, born in love and moved by compassion, unselfish movement and a power that is not orderly in its use but alive in justifiable use through unselfish living 'to bless.'
 

The world operates upon the value of logic; if we don't buy things, then others cannot buy things with the money that comes from our 'consumer confidence'. If we do not allow the government to support the needs of the uninsured, we are being calloused and uncaring. If we trust in God, we will not vote according to our beliefs and values, but put those aside under the title of "God will what God wills." Tolerance is not living our faith, but refusing its voice in the lives around us.
 

The church, in its missional duty to reach out to the world, has been corrupted by that very logic: if you are saved, instant and definable change takes place. If you continue to feel pain, it is because you do not love logically as Christ loved, loves or will love. There is a formula for corporate worship, a logic in counting the numbers to define the worthiness and effectiveness of a ministry. If, logically, you are not attracting the numbers, you are doing something wrong. There is a way to heal anyone, no matter the wound and there is a step by step process by which true growth within the family of God can be discerned. It doesn't require relationship, only training, and in that logic lies the death of the church that Christ entrusted to His disciples and them to those who followed on down through the ages to you and I today. Instead of a God who is both logical and illogical, emotional and unemotional; loving and unloving……we have constructed a god definable by the self-serving logic of our humanity. And doomed the sheep to which we are all called on a personal level to shepherd into being shepherds themselves.
 

Our belief becomes a coat of many colors and as interchangeable as the clothes we don in the morning.
 

We become a logical people who live in the chaos of a fallen, broken world dysfunctional…..and fearful of the tranquility that exists in a one on one relationship with God as lived in the relational state with other believers.
 

I don't speak of a logical assumption based on my experience, but to that heart that beats within me….changed by God….that I have been silently starving in the logical justification of my experience and judgmental attitude towards myself. I'm scared of tranquility because I don't know how to live with it when my experience tells me that I will only know the chaos of being unworldly in this life. If I do not let the beloved son bleed, I cannot feel and I can rationalize my unbelief away in the shadow of my belief. Logically I can assume that there is no growth, and therefore no real conversion, because of the lack of worldly stability in my life. And, as one friend said in a previous blog, I challenge the will of God in the face of my own unwillingness to be peaceful in the storm. I try and fix that which I've destroyed by the logic of my unbelief and am challenged by my faith and experience to believe in a God who is unbelievably emotional in His enticement.
 

I can speak with the dismayed logic of Peter in the face of Christ's emotional statement of the flock scattering, "Even if all fall away on account of you, I never will." And even when Christ specifically pointed out Peter's logical betrayal, Peter still replied with the logic of his masculinity and pride, "Even if I have to die with you, I will never disown you." But, in the silence of this world's movement against its Savior Peter was faced with his self-protecting logic and fulfilled the prophesy of Christ….denying Him three times. And in the failure of his logic, he realized the painful wound it had created in his heart, withdrawing to weep bitterly in the face of its realization.
 

When Jesus appears to His disciples after the Resurrection, upon the shores of Galilee where Peter had retreated with the logical conclusion that he was unworthy to be the 'rock upon which I will build My church', again Christ used His heart to speak against the logic of Peter's choice…."Simon, son of John, do you truly love me?" Three times, the exact number of times Peter's logical denial scourged the heart of Christ, Christ asked him to show that love by feeding His sheep…..and Peter had nothing to say except the logical response of "You know I love you" until the wall was breached and the emotional longing of his heart was exposed……to which he cried out with heartbreaking feeling, "Lord, you know above all things; you know that I love you."
 

Maybe I'm not making sense today as I try and write about what I learned today, in the silence that I attributed to God's abandonment in this season ending portion of my life, where everything that I had built slowly implodes into the unknown. I have less than a week to pack and be moved, again into a place that is so much less than logically I should provide as a man…..disrupted and battered about by the storms of my life, created and not created by my own hand or the hands of others……..rowing against the tide of my own destruction because illogically that slim hope remains that God is real, that God is worthy and that God stands at the helm of this battered vessel and guides me into the fury of the storm.
 

In the fury of my logic, God steers me to the storm of its creation to face the illogical emotion of my heart…..to fight the logic that this time, this final time, He will not come to my aid for I have proven myself logically not worth saving with the emotional cry of my heart to be loved, to be valued and to be rescued from the chaos of my making.

In the logic of my crisis of belief where I am broken by the realization that I cannot expect more than the chaos that my life is, God sits…..
 

Answering my emotional and wounded cry of a heart born to feel the depth and grace of His illogical love with the thing I most logically fear……
 

Tranquility in the arms of the Father who created me, who calls me and who has plans for me that I was born to do…..
 

Being the Image Bearer of a complete God, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob…….

Who weeps for His people and desires our hearts, hearts reborn through the blood of Christ.

"Worship the Lord with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest Commandment. And the second is like it; Love your neighbor as yourself. All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments." Matthew 22:37-40 (NIV)

An illogic, complete love born outside the logic of our own realization, realized in the illogical service of emotional relationship with others against the logic of our minds.
 

Sorrowed into silence....

“…and having heard these things, Jesus said to him, `Yet one thing to thee is lacking; all things--as many as thou hast--sell, and distribute to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven, and come, be following me;' and he, having heard these things, became very sorrowful, for he was exceeding rich.” (Luke 18:22-23 YLT)


“I can be so rich in my poverty, or in the awareness that I am nobody, that I will never be a disciple of Jesus.” Oswald Chambers writes in My Utmost For His Highest (Updated Version edited by James Reimann) daily devotional, “Or I can be so rich in my awareness that I am somebody that I will never be a disciple. Am I willing to be destitute and poor even in my sense of awareness of my destitution and poverty? If not, that is why I become discouraged. Discouragement is disillusioned self-love, and self-love may be love for my devotion to Jesus ----not love for Jesus Himself.”

The clock slowly ticks away on that time bomb that lies at the center of my life….it’s booming mechanical snap tolling like some endless chiming haunting my hours, whether awake or asleep, as the avenues that I have become increasingly few….and the sentries that stand at the forks increasingly agitated about my passage.

My faith has been tested these past summer months and I find more and more appalling structural in my belief and cosmetic damage in my faith than I would’ve have thought possible a few months prior. It has continued to pile on as the summer progressed and no solutions were found; no one stepped forward in the church to respond to the need with my kids….even the elder that talked so promising to me the Sunday prior to the last never called back, and yet greeted me with a kind smile when I came to church this Sunday.

The finances fell apart again, quicker than last time, and I put my pride on the shelf to go to the Soldiers’ Relief Fund ran through Oakland County to sit with a Chief Warrant Officer (Ret.) and be made to feel a disgrace to the military service, without a guarantee that they would be willing to help.

The Landlord, who has finally managed to rent all three apartments, is angry.......the lease is up September 1st and I cannot give him an answer as to whether or not I’m going to be staying in Holly.

The meeting with my Lead Pastor that I missed by being at the wrong Villager Restaurant is probably not going to happen in time, even though it was not for the purpose of discussing the situation, before I leave the congregation. He and his wife are celebrating 30 years of marriage and August is typically a busy month, even without the addition of preparing the new property for the ‘grand opening’ for the River Church. And, seemingly when I have found that niche in the church family here in Holly, I find that the movement out of the congregation will seal that undone and unexplored.

In a state of ‘increased’ conviction that Holly is where I am supposed to be, and the River is the church to which I will find the next season unfold in this journey….the confidence of those around me lie in moving out of the area.

In a state of ‘calm’ conviction that my job is the thing that I should be moving away from, into the calling of God’s from so long ago, the assurance remains in others that God will make a way, in accordance with those around me, and I will be preaching or teaching the Word……I have nothing to be gained by speaking its vision to others, nor of the vision to go overseas as a missionary. The Body has nothing to do in neither preparation nor establishment of that position to which God has foolishly called me to.

And as time grows increasingly shorter, both in this current personal seasonal ending and in the shortness of the season of this world, I am growing less and less convinced of the calling or its authenticity. The sharpness of my faith is a double-edged sword and I am becoming immune to its cutting edge; dulled by the merciless beating of it in the battlefield.

Instead, haunting images grace my slumber….of the contentment and peace of being within the purposes of God, doing the work to which God has seemed to call me……that transforms in the harshness of the daylight the horrifying nightmare that I am nor will ever be within the grasp of that purpose; being the utter sinful, though redeemed, man I am.

Like that rich young ruler, confronted with the necessity of being a disciple of God, I find myself utterly shut up with sorrow and frozen with shame. The world continues to collapse and the foolishness of the man-made structure of governance worldwide, particularly within the boundaries of my home country of the United States, continues to be exposed to the apathy of the governed.

The conformity of humanity under a worldly-established and defined ‘religion’ continues forward like a ravenous beast, consuming those opposed in the name of ‘tolerance’ and ‘unity’ and mankind cheers its cleverness under those dripping jaws…..clueless that when the truth is eaten and the world is void of the voices of the faithful who have been consumed, they surely must be the beast’s next meal source. Religion has become boastful obedience to a outside God, the love for the worldly things dressed up in mankind’s version of what god is supposed to be; silent and aloof.

Mankind has once again claimed its unfounded right to declare what is righteous, fair and dutiful of their gods.

I grow sorrowful, not because of the ‘mega’ nature/size of my home church nor the path to which its leadership have decided to follow in the pursuit of God….I disagree with its decision, but am confident in God to correct it and use the resultant mess (if any) for the betterment of the people within its walls. I grow saddened that I won’t sit under the teaching of Jim Combs, a godly man and excellent communicator of what God would have me to hear…..even now.

For some reason, even in the short fast I performed (24-hours), he remains upon my mind to sit down and talk with, not only about the burden of missionary work in Australia but of all the things to which God has burdened me with……as if even he would change the decision of the church’s lack of participation in my life, messy and bumpy as it is…..after all, there is nothing in the church about the single father being treated with the same deference as single mothers, widows and orphans.

My devotional time has suffered greatly, as is evidenced by my decreasing blog writing……there is nothing to which the fire is being fueled and I am not one to just go through the motions as if action can transform into reality and create belief….the brokenness of my beliefs, the smallness of my faith and the worldliness of my experience has brought me to a standstill……to a sorrowful silence……...and I feel less assured of my calling and purpose as a God-desired thing as I pile more and more reasoning that others have given me for the seemingly inaction of God in this place.

But I wonder if I loved the way I loved the idea of Christ and have fallen upon the reality of how much farther I have to go to be confident in loving Christ Himself.

The illusion of my belief has been dashed upon the rocks of reality……as time goes on, with the uncertainty of the future, I haven’t even packed my belongings up in preparation of moving..I don’t believe in the capability of moving. Even if I get approval from the park management to move into that beat up and damaged older trailer…..I have to come up with the funds to move, to start utilities, security and first months……and then, even then, I don’t have the confidence in the increased demand of the cost to live………though my faith is the size of a mustard seed……I don’t believe I can move this mountain, or the mountains that stretch beyond it as far as the horizon.

I have been sorrowed into silence.

The hope remains……and the assurance of God’s authority rings in the silence of my ears.

And my sorrowful heart lifts up its plea…..its heart-rending brokenness crying out its pain…….

“I will cry out to you, O LORD. I will plead to the Lord for mercy: "How will you profit if my blood is shed, if I go into the pit? Will the dust of my body give thanks to you? Will it tell about your truth?" Hear, O LORD, and have pity on me! O LORD, be my helper! You have changed my sobbing into dancing. You have removed my sackcloth and clothed me with joy so that my soul may praise you with music and not be silent. O LORD my God, I will give thanks to you forever.” (Psalms 30:8-12 GW)

Even in this place, I cannot deny the authority of God, His mercy and grace and the demand of voicing that praise and thankfulness as the ship fills with the waters of this world and prepares to go under. I cling, against any worldly hope, to the fantail of this massive ship…….determined to gasp life-giving breath until I am no longer able, until this world consumes me in the mouth of the mighty beast that roams hungry upon its surface.

His story will remain, even if mine ends.

Prayer

It all depends on what you can do and how much you are willing to compromise to make the situation work. Here is the mobile home that I can afford to live in so that I can move closer to my family so that I can keep my job and yet have help with the kids…….

Sometimes the provisions that God has for us don't look like what we imagine. Pray that I can be accepted by the mobile home park that has the one I can afford….and that we can make the move soon.

 

A Holy man....emailed things

Barring the obvious simplisty of this, I thought it was an interesting thought:

This was emailed to me by one of my non-Christian co-workers.......


A Holy man was having a conversation with the Lord one day and said, 'Lord, I would like to know what Heaven and Hell are like.'


The Lord led the holy man to two doors.


He opened one of the doors and the holy man looked in.


In the middle of the room was a large round table.
In the middle of the table was a large pot of stew,
which smelled delicious and made the holy man's mouth water.
The people sitting around the table were thin and sickly.
They appeared to be famished. They were holding spoons with very long handles that were strapped to their arms and each found it possible to reach into the pot of stew and take a spoonful.
But because the handle was longer than their arms, they could not get the spoons back into their mouths.
The holy man shuddered at the sight of their misery and suffering.


The Lord said, 'You have seen Hell. They went to the next room and opened the door. It was exactly the same as the first one.


There was the large round table with the large pot of stew which made the holy man's mouth water.
The people were equipped with the same long-handled spoons, but here the people were well nourished and plump, laughing and talking.

The holy man said, 'I don't understand.
'It is simple,' said the Lord. 'It requires but one skill.
You see, they have learned to feed each other.
The greedy think only of themselves.

When Jesus died on the cross, he was thinking of you.

Sweat, blood and our tears....

“The Lord disciplines everyone he loves. He severely disciplines everyone he accepts as his child." Endure your discipline. God corrects you as a father corrects his children. All children are disciplined by their fathers. If you aren't disciplined like the other children, you aren't part of the family. On earth we have fathers who disciplined us, and we respect them. Shouldn't we place ourselves under the authority of God, the father of spirits, so that we will live? For a short time our fathers disciplined us as they thought best. Yet, God disciplines us for our own good so that we can become holy like him. We don't enjoy being disciplined. It always seems to cause more pain than joy. But later on, those who learn from that discipline have peace that comes from doing what is right.’ (Hebrews 12:6-11 GW)

“One word more before Mr. Drew comes,” Mr. Polwarth said to the young Thomas Wingfold, “are you still thinking of giving up your curacy?” Thomas Wingfold is the main character in the story George MacDonald wrote called The Curate’s Awakening. It is based on the Church of England. Wingfold is challenged by an atheist about his faith and finds himself on a journey to define and realize that faith’s truthfulness or the folly of his profession. The crippled Mr. Polwarth becomes his spiritual mentor and it is near the last third of the book that he asks this question of the curate.

“I had almost forgotten I ever thought of such a thing.” Wingfold replies, “Whatever energies I may or may not have, I know one thing for certain; I could not devote them to anything else worth doing. Indeed, nothing seems interesting enough but telling my fellowmen about the one man who is the truth. Even if there be no hereafter, I would live my time believing in a grand thing that ought to be true if it is not………….I will go further, Polwarth, and say I would rather die believing as Jesus believed than live forever believing as those that deny him……I will teach that which is good, even if there should be no God to make a fact of it. I will spend my life on it in the growing hope, which may become assurance, that there is indeed a perfect God worthy of being the father of Jesus Christ.”

As I sat in church this Sunday past the pastor challenged us to make the right decision when we face our moment in Perga, as John Mark did in this important city of Pamphylia on the Asiatic mainland. (Acts 13:13), where we can choose to follow God or give in to our fears, sorrows or even desires of the sinful nature. As is the usual case, Pastor Jim Combs challenged me in a personal way…..for I’m sure the sermon enticed others in their own stories to ‘man up’ to God’s calling for them….but the realization since having the vision of missionary pastorship in the ‘wilds’ of Australia first planted its roots in the fertile soil of my faith came to me as I listened to a truly passionate and pursuing man of God speak His words to me. I had reached my “Pamphylia” and was packing to go home…..to turn my back upon the uncertain and fearful future of God’s purpose for me.

I have half-convinced myself that I am not visioning this grand and impossible dream for the right reasons or the right way…that to presume that God would call me to the pastor profession to be used as a mouthpiece of His Word is preposterous and foolish. After all, the Church has made its decision some years ago and continues to agree with its verdict with each appeal after appeal. I am more exhausted by the bruising of coming against the wall of this rejection than I am doing the work He has set before me. After all, who am I? A redeemed sinner who seems to fall more than he walks, who holds to the lifeline given by the gift of salvation with the passion of a drowning man who is being pulled under by the weight of his old nature’s life; finances, home, relationships and so on….all a struggle to maintain, let alone to bring them up to a ‘normal’ level. Who, in the midst of the battle, would dream of another field in which to engage the enemy…..even my pastor seemed a bit surprise that, in the midst of the struggle of the past week with my children and their mother, that I would still want to sit down with him and discuss his overseas adventures for God. Even the words of my brother in Christ, echoed for so long in the time we’ve walked this road together, seem to lose a bit of their vigor and conviction as they are uttered again. Can one work themselves out of a job with God? Just like Wingfold, I’ve thought about whether that ‘call’ to ministry was simply my way of dealing with the complexities of life and an effort more to find a comfortable position in which to coast along.

Even as the ground that I’ve gained in the effort of finances and securing a stable home for my family crumbles under my feet and the roads to chose from grow narrower and narrower…and neither is without cost to follow them, both shrouded in shadow so I cannot discern the correct one and the sheer impossible future that either presents settles forcefully upon my stomach enough to give me pain. Either I quit my job come this September so that I can maintain my current place of residence in Holly, which would be problematical since the very income I need to maintain it would be lost, or I move my family closer to work and family so that they can ‘share’ the burden of caring for my family….maintaining my job, for the time I can work there (its in the automotive industry). Unfortunately, I’m 78 points from getting a mortgage and 10,000 from having a family member buy the property and renting it to me until I can get my own mortgage. So, I’m in a rock and a hard place, neither promising a rosy future.

My Pamphylia is a fearful, dreadful place and all I want to do is to go home.

George of Worthy News Ministries sent out a devotional today regarding the faith of Abraham, referred to as the first ‘Hebrew’ (which means: one who crosses over) and the first man since Noah to ‘cross over’ from a idolatrous society and its polytheistic worship into a personal knowledge of the Creator God. He is referred to, in the hall of heroes, as the hero of faith. When God called Abraham to a land of Promise, sight unseen, and Abraham went, entering into a new level of spiritual truth, holiness and transformation. A mighty hero of faith and the father to all who hold to the promise that God gave Abraham, whether Jew or Gentile, as George shows us in the reference of the devotional verse “Abraham’s seed and heirs according to God’s promise” in Galatians 3:29.


Nothing is known of Abraham’s life before the biggest move of his life, though we can deduce that he was probably at least comfortable….for he moves not just his family but his entire house in accordance with God’s command. But, he moves on the vagueness of a promise….’to a land that I will show you.’ But, as he follows that call, that enticement into the unknown, we do know, as George points out, that he didn’t have a life of ease that was free of troubles or dangers. Sarah is a captive of Pharaoh’s harem, barren until old age. He is forced, because of his loyalty, to rescue Lot and his family at great risk to himself and his men. He follows the urgings of his wife and lays with Hagar, her servant, and begets Ishmael whom he is forced to send into the desert. And, what is known as the greatest test of faith, God seems to demand the very source of the promise as a sacrifice and Abraham comes moments away from giving up his own son, Isaac’s, life in obedience to God.

Yet, Abraham is considered the ‘father’ of faith (Romans 4:16) because of the movement and execution of faith that he made within these trials, not because of his actions. He doesn’t live life perfectly, nor does he always make the right decisions, but he is, according to the promise of God and the words within the testaments He left for us, the father of us all.

Why does it seem that the expectation within the western Christian culture is that God, in His full abundance and love, rectifies and promotes comfort, well-being and prosperity upon receipt of the tenderness of cries for the free, undeserved and personally unattainable gift of salvation? Whereas one, upon submission of their souls, lives and will, find themselves on easy street in the concepts of temptation, consequences of sin and as such are readily tracked as to their affiliation. Those who suffer tribulation, trials, temptation and other ‘warning’ signs are not of the family but merely posers readily gobbled up into the ‘mega’ Church to be patronized and pampered. The broken had better hide their struggles, otherwise eviction is imminent and assured. If you are in constant struggle, either with finances, relationships, job or even your faith, then you are ‘not of the blood’ and yet, it is those very leaders who live in million dollar homes, preach to thousands strong congregations in double-digit properties who are being discovered in blatant sin. That is why, I think, the church’s corporate body is lead like the helm of a business; an entity which feeds upon the livestock of its formation for its continued and ongoing substance for the appearance of lofty spirituality. Which is more Godly, the mega-church of thousands or the humble neighborhood church of a mere 100? Neither, if the flash and dash of their motivation lies in the comfort of the chairs, the visual cunningness of the audio/video or the personality of the Preacher. But if the intention is to restore, equip and shove out the door those who gather in…..then, I dare say, such are the bricks the church lives upon..

What did Christ come to this world to do? Simply to save mankind from the punishment of sin, or was there more to his sacrifice upon the cross of mankind’s evilness that he was set forth to attain for the purposes of God? There are those within the false, misguided and mistaken religious movements that haunt the western and eastern landscapes of ‘spiritual’ movements that would say, and I think truthfully so, that the demand of death for that is too much for the ‘crime’ and therefore it must have either entailed more or simply be a myth borne of mankind’s need to have meaning. There lies greater purpose within the sacrifice that defies the human heart to understand.........and such definitions as what have been offered in the most quickly growing movements don’t seek that understanding, but cast it to the side with the rest of the discards.

“…......Suppose that the design of God involved the perfecting of men as the children of God. Suppose that his grand idea could not be content with creatures perfect only by his gift but also involved in partaking of God’s individuality and free will and choice of good. And suppose that suffering were the only way through which the individual soul could be set, in separate and self-individuality, so far apart from God that it might will and so become a partaker of his singleness and freedom.” Our young curate proposes, “And suppose that God saw the seed of a pure affection…..but saw also that it was a seed so imperfect and weak that it could not encounter the coming frosts and winds of the world without loss and decay. Yet, if they were parted now for a few years, it would grow and strengthen and expand to the certainty of an infinitely higher and deeper and keener love through the endless ages to follow----so that by suffering should come, in place of contented decline, abortion and death, a troubled birth of joyous result in health and immortality ---suppose all this, what then?” As Greg Kouhl, Stand to Reason, quotes in his book Tactics a marine training axiom, “The more you sweat in training, the less you bleed in battle.”

There is more to Christ being nailed to the cross and taking upon the sin of all of us……..Wingfold says, “He cannot bear that you should live in such misery, such blackness of darkness. He wants to give you your life again, the bliss of your being…………Heartily he loves you, heartily he hates the evil in you……..[you] that already know yourselves to be sinners, come to him that he may work in you his perfect work, for he came not to call the righteous, but sinners ---us, you and me---- into repentance.” A process begins at the moment of rebirth that will complete only upon the attainment of God’s plan……the perfection of His creation….and its restoration to its place within the entirety of all of creation. Therein we find God, a God “large enough, grand enough, pure enough, lovely enough to be fit to believe in”, free from the trimming and folding of the sort of God that would be simply a measure of ourselves and lacking in sufficiency to sustain us for more than the most temporary of times. And, if we are seeking to emulate Christ, shouldn’t we do the same? Being unable to bear those who suffer, and re-suffer, and so move with deliberate intentionality into those lives….not to fix temporarily or to offer the briefest of contacts but to journey alongside them for the season we’ve been given strengthening and supporting their weakened muscles and sinew until they walk into His design?

How can we do that when we keep each other at a distance, afraid if they walk into our messy lives that they will condemn us for the things we struggle against, realized or unrealized? How can we expect leaders, born and breed upon the comfortable life of service who have borne no troubles, tribulations or (in their minds) sin lead those who struggle in the darkness? Did not Christ Himself become born of woman, from the beginning….as an infant…and grow for thirty-three years within the very world that we trod? Did He not face the typical temptations of childhood and show the perfect power of God…..to hate sin, reject its power and model a sin-free life? We walk as if we are in white clothes, casting our voice into the world so that we don’t get our fancy duds dirty…and cast our assertions of ‘theory, existence and personally invented ideals’ into a world that is jaded by such mythical things instead of jumping in without thought into the murky depths of another’s life and trusting God to provide both the provision and the strength to come away clean. It is when we are in up to our necks in the cesspool of life that we panic…and drown the very lives we are supposed to save.

In a few days, I have the pleasure of sitting down with my pastor and discussing the mission field…..his experience and thoughts about it and the trials, tribulations and joys of such work. I may never stand upon a stage or in front of a group and preach the words God would have me to speak…..maybe this is all that is allowed me, though the dream is in the blood like a parasite, urging me to struggle against the restrictions and find God’s open door to the vision’s fulfillment. Could be, as with Paul, I will spend most of my journey on this earth doing what seems to be small potatoes compared to that vision he had of Rome….the honor and privilege of bringing the truth to its councils and street corners……and at the end of his journey, being borne in chains to his very dream…..and dying in a prison. Still proclaiming the Word of God…despite the long journey of discipline….because in the end of it all, the training he had received bore him into the Father’s hands still proclaiming the Truth…despite the persecution that followed him, the beatings he took and even the transportation that bore him to his destination; no matter whatever was happening in his life, he first and foremost spoke God’s purpose for him into the lives of those who came into contact with him.

And that, my dear friends, is the purpose to which we all should attain….regardless of where God calls us; workplace, ministry, family or foreign lands……to speak without fear the Truth of God and His Son, Jesus Christ.