Sunday, February 14

This is your choice……

"[Nebuchadnezzar said] "Now I am going to give you one more chance. If you bow down and worship the statue when you hear the music, everything will be all right. But if you don't, you will at once be thrown into a flaming furnace. No god can save you from me." [Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego] replied, "Your Majesty, we don't need to defend ourselves. The God we worship can save us from you and your flaming furnace. But even if he doesn't, we still won't worship your gods and the gold statue you have set up.""(Daniel 3:15-18 CEV)


 

"It was a test we could all hope to pass, but none of us would want to take…." the haunting words of the song by Wes King and Michael W. Smith echoes in the hallway of my mind……"Faced with the choice to deny God and live, for her there was one choice to make…." Cassie Bernall, in the final moments of her life here on this earth, spoke her affirmation of her love of her Father in Heaven and was killed on April 20th, 1999 at Columbine High School with too many others….

It is the ultimate expression of love; to lay down your life for another……it is the ultimate choice and one few of us would want to make for ourselves, let alone for ones that we love….

Did Cassie hope that God would perform some sudden intervention in the sudden evil that came into the high school that day and forever tore open the hearts of the youth that walked the halls or did she view it as an opportunity like Paul to be with Christ? I don't know, we will have to ask her after the homecoming we who are her brothers and sisters all will have one day soon….

Bernall isn't the reason for this post today, though, as I struggle with the sermon notes of a powerful Valentine's Day sermon given by Oakpointe's East Community Pastor Joe Snyder……which spoke of the starting place, the timing, the example, the scope, the attributes, the results, the supremacy, the discipline, the permanency of Love, and the command to love…………(if you want the notes to the sermon, email me…if you want the audio, check the mosaica2 page on facebook or email me for the link)……. a love that Paul was convinced 'neither life or death, neither angels or demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height or depth, not anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God….'

Not the bullet that ended so many lives that day at Columbine, or the countless other heartaches that have been visited upon the educational campuses of our nation since that evil day. Many Valentine's Days have passed since Bernall and others were taken from us…..many more will be taken in the countless Valentine's Days to come, but even that is not what burdens my heart this day after the 'recognized day of love' has become a stomach ache to some and a sigh of relief for others.

I began to read with Shannon the book recommended to us by our dear sister in Christ, Emotionally Healthy Spirituality: Unleashing A Revolution In Your Life In Christ by Pastor Peter Scazzero, of New Life Fellowship Church in Queens, New York. Reflecting on the 'tip-of-the-iceberg spirituality' that seems to haunt the Christian experience in the halls of our churches, Scazzero remarks on 'church leavers'….some of whom are leaving for the right reasons…"These men and women made a genuine commitment to Christ but came to realize, slowly and painfully, that the spirituality available in the church had not really delivered any deep, Christ-transforming life change ---- either in themselves or others."

No doubt I've confused you further…the verse from Daniel about Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego coupled with a sermon of love and a song reflecting the choice of a teenager in Columbine High School saddled up to a book obviously about spirituality…..and a quote about 'church leavers'……would seem to be nothing than the randomness of the life of a crazy man. Maybe so…..maybe so……

"The combination of emotional health and contemplative spirituality addresses what I believe to be the missing piece in contemporary Christianity," Pastor Scazzero writes. "Together they unleash the Holy Spirit inside us so that we might experientially know the power of an authentic life in Christ." (Emotionally Healthy Spirituality back cover)

"The disconnect I see is that while "life" keeps dumping on you, you are quick to quote scripture and profess faith in God's goodness and provision." a dear brother in Christ wrote in response to a question not quite a year ago I posed to him as to whether he had seen definable growth because of my connection with a ministry or not…."I wonder how much of this reflects the true condition of your soul, and how much might be pageantry that distracts you from asking the really hard "WHY…?" questions to God?" Liberties were taken, for sure, with the question and the response to its query…..but he was always welcomed to take 'liberty' where God would lead him……especially with me.

Though the liberty was taken and the intentionality of his direction was noted…..I would come back to this statement of his time and time again over the six months or so that have passed since it's electronic delivery…..


 

The pageantry of Christianity……


 

A moment of time in the space of our lives; the tempest of the storm or the calm echoes of the night sky lit with a starry carpet is often what we have before the consequences of our sinfulness or the blessings of our obedience come in rapid succession…..one moment, maybe even one where we do not realize it's passing or mourn its loss……

The three young Jews in our Daniel voice recognized that moment…..and faced the daunting realization that whether they were saved or perished in the flames, there was one choice to make…….Cassie Bernall had but one choice……God Himself, as Pastor Joe put it in the powerful sermon, had one choice to make and Pastor Peter faced in the journey he speaks of in his book…..one moment…..

It is in that moment we have a chance, an opportunity, and a monumental decision that wraps up for us this experience, this life, that we were promised (like Pastor Scazzero says) 'free and abundant.' We either become what we were meant to be or wallow in the despair of not being who we were promised, equipped and empowered to be. It is either real, powerful and affirming spirituality or it is nothing more than the pageantry of our beliefs that have never truly become a faith. Either we take that leap and trust in God's authority and ability to deliver upon the promises that love has driven Him to make or we fall into the same pit of sin that broke our parents, Adam and Eve and created a wedge between Creator and created.

A test…….

Many people I know are facing tests in their lives……unexpected complications to a life lived as best as can be lived in the desperation of quiet isolation; deep scars that haunt the memories of children who are now adults; sadness that permeates a nation's soul as another 'promised statesman' becomes nothing more than a power-hungry politician, leading us all into the position to be part of a world that is not of God…..individually and corporately, the body of Christ is facing a moment; a test………one we all hope to pass but are praying we would never have to face.

A sister in Christ walks into her job and faces giants one more time……..bearing a sling and five smooth stones from the riverbed. A brother in Christ coming to a moment in his life where the realization of his very faith means the loss of everything he held dear……corrupted and rotten, he has faced the moment where Christ's salvation means more to him than a life spent in quiet desperation for a love he will never get from those who chose to live in the darkness. Other brothers and sisters in Christ, who but for the ease of a change of clothes and the warm meal served upon the dining room table of their own homes…are but momentary glances of ourselves in dire circumstances. I hope to spend some time with those brothers and sisters serving them at the Bowery Street Mission.

Even in my own life, as time progresses from winter to spring and then summer…….these moments are coming that will test the very fabric of my faith and bring me to my own moment……..where I face that one choice, to follow God in truth and proclamation or deny Him and live a life of emotionally divorced spirituality. Moments we all face over and over again as we journey home…….It is a moment that, like Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego, Cassie Bernall, and Peter Scazzero, we all must make a choice…….to move from the point of painful inaction into some kind of action……..right or wrong……but action all the same.

Six years ago…..I made a choice to accept the salvation purchased by Christ upon a cross…………..the journey began that day and has been full of disappointments, sorrows, pain and anguish. Joys and peaceful victories have filled the cracks and crevasse of my path home….all for this moment, this test:


 

This is your time, this is your dance.
Live every moment, leave nothing to chance.
Swim in the sea, drink of the deep,
Follow the mercy and hear yourself praying.


 

I prayed for a dear cherished one last night…….and my soul cried out this song…..tomorrow she'll face her choice and then God will write the next portion of the journey, the next paragraph or the next chapter……….


 

Whatever your moment, whenever it comes and comes and comes again, step into the realization of what God can do, will do and is doing in all the aspects of your life even as you cry out for mercy upon the tenderness of His Son……

Will you deny God or will you come gather at the table spread out before you……..

I will drink of the deepness of my God's love and live in its permanent realization, because there is only that choice to make for me....................

I can only hope this made sense……thank you for journeying with me on this grand adventure…...


 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgX0tghvz4A


 

Tuesday, February 9

Testing…..waiting for God’s finishing touches.

"……….Joseph, sold as a slave into Egypt, with chains of iron around his legs and neck. Joseph remained a slave until his own words had come true, and the LORD had finished testing him." (Psalms 105:17b-19 CEV)


 

I've heard a lot lately about testing…..about God's timing and God's awareness of the plight of His children as they struggle in the depths of this fallen world, prey to many temptations, many trials and many (too many) sorrows. My nieces spoke of a friend who is only 13, but is so broken upon the mantle of this world that he tried to commit suicide by freezing himself out in the cold today……not the quickest or best attempt (as I can testify to) but one that cries out of his anguish of this world that is set so harshly against him. This isn't the exception to the norm anymore….we have progressed so far from the biblical design of society, community, family and personal accountability that such anguish from a generation taught it doesn't matter is the norm……

My heart breaks when I think how selfish I can be while dealing with my own struggles……….and how, but for the grace of caring friends and dear ones, I am but a step….a very small step….from being that 13 year old……as we all are.

I wonder how many times Joseph fell upon his knees and begged for a bit of mercy…..a bit of restraint. I'm sure he cried out in the darkness of the prison and the loneliness of his separation from his family and asked the Lord to step in to his life to bring about the purpose of those original dreams…..where his family would bow down to him. Not because it was a domination wish of his but because it was so much better than the brokenness of the life he was living.

God wasn't quite done with him yet when the brothers sold him into slavery…..there were finishing touches to polish.

I look back on the six years coming up on February 14th when I surrendered myself to God and the months later the same year where He showed me a bit of that purpose, a tasting of that promise. I have been 'forced' to look behind me as I walk in this journey accompanied by some friends. It is a darkness that is impenetrable with even the best of intentions, but that seem to slide away like butter as God is walking with me to reveal those things which hang me up in the temptations and trials of this life. Some have been healed, only to reveal the wounds festering underneath. Others cannot heal or will not be healed until the Lord comes again

I have a long way to go, despite the long way I have come from where I once was.

Add to the process of working with the collapsed structure of myself the 'sweet complication' of someone who is 'interested' in me and that work becomes complex and delicate even as it is exciting and wild. Unlike Joseph, I haven't done well in the testing department. But God, in His wisdom, just starts again with the intentional testing of His child…..enticing, attracting and desiring me (and no other) to the work He has set aside for me

Joseph was sold into slavery because he incited his brothers' wrath, by declaring himself the object of their allegiance in the dreams, and propelled their dislike for their favored brother into action. If Joseph had never spoken of the dream, would his brothers have done what they did? Who knows……at any point in the story of Joseph, whether in jail, in the jailer's house, or in front of the King…he could've taken his own opportunity in hand and tried to make it work out the way he wanted it to. But he didn't…….he let God do what God intended to do.

In the moment of testing, our true nature reveals itself…..it cannot be hidden in the moment under careful thought, ponderous decision-making or legitimate considerations. In the moment where our character is challenged, our heart reveals its nature…..in our actions.

And in that moment where we are face to face with the sinfulness and weakness of our humanity…..we fall flat upon the face of our corruption…..and feel so far from our Creator that desolation is the only music we hear…..I am sure that Joseph felt those moments, questioned his dreams and purpose…..and re-orientated himself to God in that darkness of the well, cell or accusations……

Each step building upon the other until he arrived at the moment God had purposed for him……tested and trued.

We fail…….even the mightiest among us, those professional Christians who walk upon the stages of the world, writing books of theology and understanding and gather us together each Sunday for a time of worship, teaching, and fellowship……even them. We anguish in the sorrow of the moment after, we justify the actions taken for a few moments and then admit our failures……we come to the realization that our testing isn't over, our lessons aren't learned and we slink out of God's garden burdened with the haunting of sins now past.

We fail because we haven't changed the core reasons why we do what we do……..and like the saying goes, "You'll know a tree by its fruit."

There are things that I thought, because the situations hadn't come around again, that I was 'cured' from…..only to find myself faced with them and falling back upon my sinful past, because I'm not prepared…..I haven't overwritten my heart's natural tendencies with godly tendencies…….

Even then, it is in the twilight of our shame that we can find God's redeeming grace and powerful mercy. We do not have to accept our failure as the norm but as the new exception…..we will seek out the root of our weeds and pull them permanently from our lives…..through the testing of our life under the harsh light of God's holiness…..a holiness we ourselves were called to wear.

A face we were called to recall in the eyes of those who see us…….images of our Father


 

"As for me, I will behold thy face in righteousness: I shall be satisfied, when I awake, with thy likeness." (Psalm 17:15)

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Wednesday, February 3

Images of Esther

"[Mordecai said] "If you don't speak up now, we will somehow get help, but you and your family will be killed. It could be that you were made queen for a time like this!" Esther sent a message to Mordecai, saying, "Bring together all the Jews in Susa and tell them to go without eating for my sake! Don't eat or drink for three days and nights. My servant girls and I will do the same. Then I will go in to see the king, even if it means I must die."" (Esther 4:14-16 CEV)

We all have our fascinations with concepts, ideals and even those dreams that are so far beyond the concept of our own reality that we know that they'll never come true even as we reserve that small part of our hearts for the possibility of the impossibility. We want to be policemen, firemen and doctors as we progress through our childhoods, see white picket fences and two car garages with the a-typical two point five kids and a life stretched out before us full of more joy than sorrow, more peace than chaos and more happiness than pain's embracing touch. We conceptualize, idealize and mold the form and function of everything our future will hold; the deep sea-green eyes of our better half, the twinkle of their laughter and the generosity of their profession as well as their bank accounts. After all, the opportunity to experience the American Dream doesn't cost, but its realization does.

Even in the Christian circles, we strategize with our friends and have conversations with our friends about how and what we should look for in a spouse, that significant other that will be the impus of our dreams and the center of our world…..someone who will whisper in the nighttime terrors that all will be alright and who will love you no matter what, no matter how badly things go….someone who will give us value, meaning and life. Some of us are graced with a God who requires other lessons for us to learn than the totality of missing the mark in this vital and necessary part of our lifetime 'goals', finding that one person that is our other half of the complete image of God that He designed marriage to be……..some are blessed to be so deeply in the relationship with God that they are set aside to be single, double-portioned in blessings for the sacrifice they've been called to live…..and others, far too many others, sign on for the 'idealized, secularized and socialized' institution of marriage and ,whether in months or even years, hit that moment in their lives when the windshield is shattered by the projectile of betrayal, mistrust and/or greed and the world they were once so protected against comes rushing into the compartment of our American dream and forever shatters that which was meant to be unbreakable…..we lose more than a piece of ourselves in that destruction, we surrender a piece of the complete image of God….…..there is a reason the bond of marriage were not meant to be broken; our fragile security is only a small part of it; the broken image of God that results is the largest part.

Most of us dream of the Proverbs 31 woman…..a super woman if there ever was one in the biblical text. And these women are in the church pews, in the background working, and in a multitude of other locations being the very essence of God's image of a nurturer and relationship builder…..to their husbands, their families and friends, even the grocery packer at the local market. They take what they have and use it in wonderful and glorious ways….not for a feminist declaration of what a woman can do, but because they have soaked in the presence of God and know His image He has set aside for them to radiate. I have known such women and am amazed at the powerful testimony that stands in the work of their hands and the relationships of their hearts.

But I have discovered that the Proverbs 31 woman isn't for me….the dream of that woman 'made for me' is not such a woman, though the image of such strengths and powers and sacrifices are but part of her……………….and the realization that she may not exactly exists in this world, in this time, has caused an uneasy, uncomfortable realization that I may not be able to ever find someone that will not leave or betray me…..for I am not a simple man, with a simple life, as much as I have been desperate and misleading sometimes in my hope to be.

Life has been a process, a step by step journey. There was no realization when I was young about the 'woman' I wanted to marry. My birth mother had left us at the backdoor entrance of the supermarket on five mile and telegraph (now an AutoZone) after calling our Dad to come get us……we would see her some ten years later for about three or four hours. My mom, step-mother in the parlance of the world, would raise me and my siblings…and be felled by the specter of my father's infidelity. The 'replacement' woman in my father's life would cause more scars and damage than anything else……the only image I had of a real woman for any long term was my grandmother on my father's side……

If I could find a woman like my grandmother, hopelessly devoted to my grandfather (as he was her), and capable as my mother to love children not biologically her own….well, that was enough for me. But quantifying those qualities…that was the kicker. While a Proverbs 31 woman is a wonderful ideal….but there is so much more to the 'woman' of my dreams that is necessary…..that special something that is beyond the scope and breath of Proverbs 31.

No disrespect to that Proverbs 31 woman I have known……she continues to amaze and defy those around her with her strength, compassion and conviction.

I think I realized when that Proverbs woman was gone that I wasn't looking for the 'checklist' type of woman. I was looking for a woman who was designed, shaped and molded by the forges of this world; its sorrows, its joys into a woman impossible for the times……and me. I figured I'd be as capable of finding her as making the Red Sea part on my own.

There was no such thing as a modern-day Esther.

Esther has always fascinated me, not only because it is the only book in the bible that doesn't have God in its story….at least in mentioning Him by name or utterance. It isn't the fact that here was a beautiful woman…..drop-down, awe inspiring, "Helen-of-Troy" trouble kind-of-beautiful woman……who was from humble beginnings that would guide her into the realms of power and influence because of her physical beauty. It isn't the fact that she saved the entire nation of Israel…..under decree to be eliminated because of one man's evil desires.


 

No, these things are the surface that anyone who can read and comprehend can understand about Esther…..a Jewish orphan who became the Queen of one of the greatest Persian Kings of historical times….Xerxes and who is forever attached to a time of Israel's deliverance from destruction……"a star" that shone in the Persian skies. That doesn't take into account her clear judgment, self-control and firm decisiveness that you see a step below the surface as you read one of the greatest sub-stories of love in the tome of the Greatest story of Love……..nor does it take into consideration the simple fact that Esther was a woman of discernment and prompt, deliberate, intentional action.


 

Esther is a woman who may have been expected to live under the context of her beauty and simply protective of her status as Queen, especially seeing how the previous Queen was quickly and quite effectively removed from that position…..but, above the love she felt for the King and the love she had for her life…..she had a connection with God and a determination to be His 'woman for times such as these….'


 

Her uncle tells her what will happen if she turns away and tries to protect herself, and there is no hesitation…….she goes to prayer, immediately……and promises action to be borne from that prayer. Even if the result was that she would die, after setting it right with God, she wouldn't hesitate……and as the story shows, she navigates love, heritage and faith with a complexity borne of discernment and grace through the Persian laws and traditions, bringing about Israel's protection from the genocide and visiting vengeance born of God's hand back upon the one who would have destroyed them…..with the reveal of her heritage and the protection of her love to the King.


 

A complex woman for the times she was needed…..forever linked to one of the most powerful, God-protecting moments in Israel's history…….


 

That is the woman for me. That is my Esther.


 

And, I think I've found her……….