A Modern Day Pilgrim's journey.

Balance

2011-08-07T11:58:00.000-07:00

“Some of you would like it if I said we were going to find a healthy balance between unhealthy extremes……..when we are referring to God, balance is a huge MISTAKE. God is not just one thing we add to the mix called life.” Francis Chan, Forgotten God: Reversing Our Tragic Neglect Of The Holy Spirit. (Emphasis and italics added)

I can remember back when I thought I had achieved the pinnacle of God’s purpose for me. It was a frightening time……the two weeks before I was set to give my first ‘sermon’ as an certified Community Chaplain at Meadowbrook Chapel in Novi Michigan. This was Mark’s chapel, a dear friend of mine whom had passed after an accident a few months before I called his dad to see if I could help out with the chapel ministry. And, as Reverend John had told me when I called, specific prayer had been said continuously for months for me, not just someone but me, to come and assume the chapel duties. Pretty high expectations, even with the ones I have always put on myself especially when handling God’s Word.

So much so was this heavy feeling of expectation and rightful fear that the completed sermon was about twenty-five pages thick…..complete with commentaries on the specific verses, combinations of various translations of the verses and some ‘filler’ material from some of the top theologians (properly attributed, of course) in case I totally BOMBED, which in my eyes was a definite probability given the deliverer of it.

As my children will loudly and swiftly declare, I am very seldom late for anything. If there is a fault with me in this area of my life, it is that I am chronically and almost embarrassing (definitely if you talk to my kids) extremely early for events and meetings. Needless to say, I showed up at the extended care nursing facility where the chapel was held about an hour early. I ran up to Dunkin’ Donuts to get a cup of coffee and came back…..still majorly early. So I did something that would become a tradition with me ever since; I took out my book of my sermon and proceeded to pray over it.

And I realized that I wasn’t going to preach that Sunday.

Its where I got the nickname from some of my congregation there at Meadowbrook of “Toilet paper chaplain.” Because, as I began to pray and seek out God’s true plan in the service that was to be my first (at where I perceived my ‘high spot’ in purposed living to God’s kingdom building plans), the gentle and teasing voice whispered to my heart saying “Nice preparation……now are you prepared for My material?” and so on, a Father’s proud and steady voice whispering His satisfaction and joy at this son’s stepping into uncomfortable ground for the sake of the Purpose. The forty-five minutes that I was ‘early’ for the service went by quickly, it seemed. Towards the end of the prayer time, God directed me to three specific verses.

All I had to write on was a piece of toilet paper that was in the backseat (why I don’t know).

Hence, the nickname, for it wouldn’t be the last time. Not by a long shot. Most of the time, I would listen to God’s gentle and sometimes not so gentle prompting and come in with a flimsy piece of toilet paper (yes, I kept a roll in my car from then on) that had some scribbled verses or comments on it. I realized as the chapel service I was committed to progressed beyond the ‘four month trial’ period I had agreed to into six, then eight months. Through Easter and Christmas and the death of one of the original saints who had ‘built’ the chapel (and prayed specific prayer for me to be the chaplain). Through my ordination in January of 2008 and up to my hiatus from the Chapel that became permanent months later due to other events in my life.

“….do not worry beforehand about what to say. Just say whatever is given you at the time, for it is not you speaking, but the Holy Spirit.” Mark 13:11b NIV

Before the first New York Mission Trip to the Bowery Street Mission, I jotted down several verses that God had impressed upon my heart for some (at the time) unknown reason. I was apprehensive about the NYC trip because it was far from home and I had realized by that time in my journey that when you walk into situations where God is, you are going to meet up personal and close with Him. And my ‘natural’ dislike for the homeless (due to personal impact and experience) made me nervous about properly ‘displaying’ God to the men and community that I would be immersed in for a week.

Then the leader of the group found out I was a chaplain (I found out later I was ‘ratted’ out).

I gave one service that year, spending an hour in one of the staff’s office seeking God’s direction among the scribbled verse references that I had stuffed into my bible. And I began another ‘tradition’, closing my eyes and envisioning not the words I would say or the dramatic prose I’d seek to emulate from other great speakers I have been blessed to see and witness. No, it was envisioning the, well, flow for the lack of a better description. Seeing how the tide of God’s word would surge upon the shoreline of the world and regress back out to sea only to come back stronger and with more power before it again swept the unprepared back out to the vast ocean. For that is how the Word of God hits me and impacts me……..like the waves of the ocean hitting the beach until I have lost my grip on my faith and my pride to be swept into the immensity of Him.
I had a small piece of paper in which I outlined my ‘sermon’ and as soon as I opened my mouth to speak, promptly skipped most of it.

The next year, I was ‘prepared’ better since I knew I was going to give the majority of the sermons (six in all) during the week. The paper I carry up to the pulpit was less, more of a scribble than a step-by-step outline to follow. It is always great to see the impact of God’s Word when He is allowed to speak, allowed to overcome you and use you to be His voice, His love and His conviction to those whom He has gathered to the place to worship, find and understand Him.

I could never give the same sermon twice and would probably be hard pressed to recall the specific examples and conversations that were given during its pronouncement.

But in every opportunity where I gave the Holy Spirit His due and His desire to speak through me, to use my hands and my feet to carry God’s Word to those He had purposed to hear it, I always had someone come up after and tell me how it spoke to them or to a situation…..how genuine and impactful it was and how it was evident how much I was in that spiritual ‘sweet spot’ that God uses to show us the miraculous and promised joy of being ‘on purpose’ for His plan.

It wasn’t a collaboration or a regurgitation of some private time between me and God. It was a transparent time in God’s Word where there were others who, at their own choosing and the Spirit’s opening their eyes, would share in the Word that God wanted to speak into our lives.

And it seems to extend for me outside the purpose of being a chaplain in charge of Chapel Services. In everything that I am uncomfortable in, or would rather not do, there comes a comfortable replacement when I get myself to let go after I step into the circumstances or situation and allow the Spirit to be the voice, the movement and the focus.

Totally out of balance……..All God.

The perfect way to be in God’s purpose.

I am sure....

2011-07-31T14:28:00.000-07:00

“If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men. But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead.” 1 Corinthians 15:19-20a

In Adam, all have died….corrupted from the original design by the original sin of Adam and Eve. There’s simply no way around it, there’s no smoothing the brutal truth of that fact.

We have been condemned to die because of the introduction of sinfulness and rebellion against God, just as Lucifer has been before us. But, unlike the continued demand of Satan to be a god and to be given more than his due, we have an opportunity to turn from the corrupted nature of our humanity and become secured in the righteousness of Christ. There is nothing we can do to change our lot as those alienated from God, nothing that we can entice God closer with and definitely nothing that we can bribe ourselves into His Holy of Holies with…….there are no shadows in which we can hide in to cast our eyes upon God’s wondrous Holiness without Him knowing. There is nothing we can do to sneak past His righteousness and hide in the alleys of Heaven’s streets.

We come to a place where we come face to face with the great I AM and either are destroyed in our evilness or transformed by the blood of His Son’s holy and perfect sacrifice.

Some are blessed to be broken enough, humbled enough and wide-eyed enough to realize the magnitude of this experience. These are the like of Piper, Chan, Mueller, Mullins and others, some well known and others, many others, who will never be world widely proclaimed but whom have inspired a few who have inspired a few who have inspired a few……and so on, like Lucy, The Robynsons, Rings, and Barlow. (If you want some background, buy Francis Chan’s Crazy Love).

Honestly, how much do we live in the ‘fearful’ shadow of those we have raised into idol status, even at the antithesis of those idolized, and limped along inside the protective walls of our communities that we label with inspirational names and gaze out the doors with blind eyes to those who stand outside the walls and reinforce an image of who we are with inadequate (or unfortunately, correct) information on ‘those Christians.’ Francis Chan quotes a friend who said, “Christians are like manure: spread them out and they help everything grow better, but keep them in one big pile and they stink horribly.”

We either brutalize the leadership of the church in our criticisms or we are ignored by the leadership of the church for our criticisms, there is no middle ground for those who would call themselves Christians. I have done so, and when I speak of the problems of the church –I used to speak of it in terms of ‘they’ and ‘them’ rather than ‘us.’ It has been a long journey away from that, because when I have done that, even when I have spoken truth in what I said, I have limited God and ignored what He has called me to do. It is funny, He never said that I’d walk in the door of the many churches or ministries that I have been blessed to experience and find the validation of the Call immediately or even a few years down the road. He simply said “I want you to do this for me” and then started to work on preparing me for that service.

Funny thing is, it wasn’t to ‘fix’ His church or to correct the nature of humanity to corrupt instantly anything that God inspires.
Nor was it to convince through action or deed my credentials to perform the fearful work of speaking God’s word to those of the family, and to live it to those outside of the family.

Abraham, Isaac, Joseph, Moses and Paul didn’t need specialized training to do what God called them to do, nor did they suddenly have theological degrees in the hermeneutics of Gospel presentation. They didn’t micromanage the churches they were part of or even founded, demand support and adoration from the people who followed them. They weren’t perfect in all aspects, but constantly broken in recurring aspects of their humanity over and over.

It wasn’t to lead in areas that I am told to lead or to emboss my weaknesses in other areas to resemble strengths. It wasn’t to seek affirmation or acknowledgment of God’s ‘Hand upon Me” or to find that someone that had enough clout to make things happen. It wasn’t to do a wide variety of things simply to be doing those things. It wasn’t to seek a niche and defend it with tenaciousness.

It was to do what He had purposed me to do, to seek His will in that place and to step out in a crazy, audacious and totally insane way of trust into that place where I was totally not comfortable and totally afraid so that He could step in and do through me what He wants to do.

Pretty humbling when we think about how often we don’t do that stuff that He’s given us to do.

We worry about the church and how much it has lost its effectiveness in the world that is growing more and more immoral and separated from God each and every day. We have those of us who have the conviction of their own twisted theology that take it upon themselves to inspire hatred of Christians through their hatred of those who are not, and others who can turn a phrase sweetly and with honey dripping from the periods who have dramatically gutted the reality of Christianity to be more conformist to the other religious movements that man has inspired to compete with God.

We look at the pastor who doesn’t speak as eloquently as another, or leads a congregation smaller than a popular four-campus church pastor and even demand a level of perfection in those who aspire to follow God’s prompting with structurally-generic goals that may be impossible or incorrect for them to overcome.

We give these things as excuses to not do what we are called to do because of the messiness of the ‘church’ and its attitude towards us.

We live in the foolishness of man rather than the impossibilities of God.
And the world pities us because of this disconnection.

If one Christian, one who lives what Francis Chan calls ‘thinking biblically rather than conventionally’ and being part of a body ‘where radical living is becoming the norm’, then we no longer have to fear what the church has become, because simply the church that is of man’s construct (business model, seeker model, model of the model) is changed by the Church that is radically living in eternal sight regardless of its inhabited spaces. A Church that is inspired by, convicted under and transformed in Jesus Christ.

Francis Chan walked away from a ‘mega-‘ to start a ‘plant’ and has never been happier. Even the mega was transformed by his willingness and genuine pursuit of a God who met him a few steps into that passionate pursuit with a relentless will to transform him into a warrior without a home, country or membership outside of His identity. Chan isn’t the only one, there are others who step along the road to that selflessness desire to be radically transformed.

Some end up wandering into the rock-hard soil where their own skills and passions (or wounds) have lead them into hardened ground and have misled thousands and others have been brutalized by their very own congregations because of their crazy schemes to follow God’s will.

I’ve stopped worrying about what others say to do, or what others refuse to let me do because of some scrapped together goals of the Christian leader. I have realized when I am in purpose, when I am doing the work that I don’t feel I can do justice to and living in the fearfulness of disappointing someone I seriously love, that then I am doing those things that others say are lacking here or not seen there. It’s why I desire to be there, to do that work, and struggle with my pride and insolence when I have to leave it behind because……..

I need to convince no one of my ‘calling’ to God’s purpose, nor do I have to fight for the right to do such things. As I grow in trust, inspired by love and girthed by grace, I can simply walk into the opportunities of God’s provision; still struggling with aspects of my faith that may never truly be satisfied this side of Heaven, and watch God show up to make His will be done, His inspiration known and His pleasure at the participation of His son in the work at hand.

There is no set model, no definite structure or required training that fits each and every one of us. There is the absolute Truth and its fruitful pursuit that is evidenced either in great or small ways in our lives as we no longer subscribe to limiting God to our standards but inspire to conform to His.

We belong to a God who so radically loved us that He GAVE us His ONLY Begotten SON, that no one who desired the gift of Salvation should perish but would know everlasting life, not in the future but in the realization of living radically in love with a God who shows us that life in real ways each day.

That is what I know for sure…….as Michael W. Smith sings…….

“I like to think about the new creation/Things that God will do/So every now and then I stop and close my eyes/I enjoy the view/And the heart grows strong/And the fear grows weak/And I cannot wait for the new world to come to me/And while I dream/Oh, I pray for you/'Cause He wants you to go/I know"

And I will live my life and my faith like I believe.....in the suretity of His authority, truth and love.

Something of substance

2011-07-28T20:03:00.003-07:00

“Little children, we must not love in word or speech, but in deed and truth; that is how we will know we are of the truth, and will convince our hearts in His presence, because if our hearts condemn us, God is greater than our hearts and knows all things. Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us we have confidence before God…” [1 John 3:18-21 HCSB]

“When you are truly in love, you go to great lengths to be with the one you love. You’ll drive for hours to be together, even if it’s only for a short while. You don’t mind staying up late to talk.” Chan writes, “Walking in the rain is romantic, not annoying. You’ll willingly spend a small fortune on the one you’re crazy about. When you are apart from each other, it’s painful, even miserable. He or she is all you think about; you jump at any chance to be together.”

Coming back from a journey, I got into an argument of sorts with the woman I was dating. We had spent the time in the ‘field’ doing God’s work and enjoying the blessing of His provisions in the ‘chores’ that He had called us to do for His glory. It was a great time to see the awesome desire and passion that this woman had for God’s work and to be able to support and join in that simple expression of God’s love. The argument was over my statement “I love you” that I refused to either confirm that I had said it or deny that I had. It wasn’t that I was trying to retract what I had said or that I didn’t mean it. It was because I didn’t want her to feel the requirement to feel the same. It is one thing that I have realized in the journey to here, that when I said “I love you,” it was something that I could never take back…..even to this day. No matter what the other person felt, no matter what happened to the relationship in the future. When I uttered those words, they were meant for forever and not just until the moment it ended. I have come to realize that it is why God tries to tell us about the covenant of marriage, of love, that is unbreakable and unending…..because we truly were meant to love only one as intimately as a wife or husband so that we could love everyone else with the intensity that Christ loves us…..even as He hung battered and wounded on the cross we nailed Him to.

God shows us throughout the Bible how to love. Pastor Chan points out that we need God to help us love the right way.

I can remember when I first felt God’s love for me and how it energized me, drove me to great lengths to ‘make time’ just to be around Him and how consuming that love became in all aspects of my life; jumping into the community of the church, spending most of my time and my family’s time in the church doing something, being something, or working on something for the sake of ministries and requests. Being desperate to dive into ministry when God placed that call on my heart and the agony that the last six years have been when I have been denied the ‘authority or ability’ to do what God has shown me is my purpose to do….and the utter that consumes me when I am doing that purpose to which I’ve been set aside and the passion that I have once I’m done for the moment to jump on the next opportunity.

George Bernard Shaw, the famous playwright, once wrote, “This is true joy in life, the being used up for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.” (Crazy Love, pg 109)

You can ask anyone who has had a love affair that has lasted the lifetimes of those two involved in it…..the familiarity that is offset by the inadequate amount of time that they have together, even in the moments when they are alone and the world revolves quickly outside the door of their home. The frantic worry that happens when something unusual happens to the other; whether it is simple (a flat tire makes them late) or whether it is complex (they discover they have cancer) until you can see them with your own eyes and gather them into your arms again. Whether it is to comfort or to embrace joyfully, it is that embrace that means more than the paycheck you make or the opera show you wanted to go see.

It is an affirmation of your value in the other’s eyes; spoken without words and undeniably true.

Why don’t we think of God that way?

With that kind of love, we’d be driven to the kind of things that the church that He left in our hands began right off the bat and saw droves of people come to the faith.

It is the kind of love that would speak the truth of homosexuality being a sin just as one being angry at another is or the fact that it is not a matter of being ‘right’ that drives us to speak the absolute truth that Christ spoke in regards to any other man-made religious movement that has consumed the world’s attention.

It is the kind of love that drives us to dream impossible dreams and become frustrated when we are told they are foolish, irresponsible dreams that God surely wouldn’t endorse.

It is the kind of love that sent Jesus Christ to the cross, cut off from the love and presence of His Father.

All in or all out, there is no middle

2011-07-21T21:34:00.000-07:00

“The LORD says: ‘These people come near to Me with their mouth and honor Me with their lips, but their hearts are far from Me. Their worship of Me is made up only of rules taught by men.” Isaiah 29:13

Through the first three chapters of Francis Chan’s book “Crazy Love: Overwhelmed by a Relentless God,” I was in a love-struggle relationship with this pastor. I loved the things he said that affirmed my opinions and thoughts about Christ, God, Christianity and the Church and struggled with some of the challenges he laid out in his videos and chapters of truly seeking to understand that God.

Then I hit the fourth chapter of the book and immediately I wanted to dislike or even be mad at Chan because it wasn’t simply a challenge nor a idea, he threatened my faith and dared me to jump off the cliff to grow deeper. “The American Church is a difficult place to fit in if you want to live out New Testament Christianity.” Francis Chan writes in the chapter entitled “Profile of the Lukewarm”, “The goals of American Christianity are often a nice marriage, children who don’t swear, and good church attendance.”

This I agreed on and Chan sucked me into the deep without my realization.

I didn’t even get off that page when Chan dares me….”Would you describe yourself as totally in love with Jesus Christ? Or do the words halfhearted, lukewarm, and partially committed fit better?”

It is interesting, as I grow more and more in my understanding (which is by no means ever going to be complete) of God’s identity…..which is the same as it was in the beginning of time, the more it seems I have to spend my time in dialogue with those who believe in the false religious systems of this world and man’s making correcting not the theology of following Christ but the incorrect usage of language, dialogue and logic.

Too often, what Chan says is the commonplace default of any Christian church, “worldly tolerance.” As I stall in the chapter 4 of Chan’s book, Crazy Love, I wonder if the church has become a breeding ground of ‘lukewarm Christians.’

And if I am in serious danger of becoming one myself with the season I’m experiencing.

It is interesting that God, being everything I know Him to be, is in no danger of being overwhelmed by the mystical religious systems that humanity has created throughout the ages; Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism and so on…..so many, even those who hide underneath the guise of ‘Christian’ faith but break the connection between God, His Word, His Spirit and His Mission….like the end-time professors who mislead many or the hate-filled protestors of the country’s heroic military at their funerals.

But He calls us to be ready to speak what we believe, to defend it, with kindness and love and the authority that we have as His children and Christ’s co-heirs. Often, we do it with an agenda of our own, to fill our pews and to prove we can handle the work. But, is that truly what it means and looks like to be engaged in the work of the great I AM?

It is easy to deflect from ourselves the attention of the verse above……but are we also ‘far from God’ in our hearts? And what does that look like?
I won’t break down what Francis Chan wrote in Chapter Four; the characteristics of the lukewarms, but they all point to a simple point.

You are either all in or all out.

There is no other religious system that creates such demand in such a way as Christianity does or readily exposes such middle ground straddling. You can separate most of the other human made and defined religious movements by the differences in the same theology that is exposed, but the universal (catholic…not to be confused with the Roman Catholic) church has foundational doctrines that cannot be ignored or altered but must be believed.

Dogmatic differences might exists but these are often on topics that go beyond the text that we know. I can walk into any biblically based and believing Church and find those foundations even if the worship and style of preaching is radically different from what I am used to. I can go to a different city and state, or even country and find the welcoming arms of family (extended eternal version) even though I have never met them.

Because we are all in, all pressing forward with a intensity and drive passion to pursue Christ and make Him known to those who engage in those false systems. With loving intensity and pure passion.

Not relying on our own opinions and agendas, but presenting the Gospel without alteration or abbreviation and then baptizing those who believe and training them in the faith. It’s not a hit and run, believe what you wish when you wish, but a mentorship that is for a lifetime. As we are grown, we turn and help others to grow.

There are some who this is a natural or God-given ability of discernment for finding those to disciple and those who are discipling them. For others, it is not. Do we leave those whom the natural ability to step into this discipling role has never been developed or do we arrange situations or point to people for them to engage and become invested in?

Are those who are weak in the discernment of disciples to mentor somehow lukewarm in their passions and love for the Messiah and God?

If I’m wandering from topic to topic and it doesn’t seem to make any sense or be connected in any way, I’m sorry. The last month has been a blend of all these various things and it seems to be culminating in Chan’s descriptive of ‘lukewarms.’ Which is why I’m stalled here.

I am challenged to things I am not feeling God’s demands on, but is it because of my own lukewarm desires or because I am passionately engaged in where God is leading. I am being questioned about the authority of my beliefs, as based on an authority beyond my own, and my willingness to speak them but am I doing it out of a sense of superior righteousness or resounding love? Am I truly following with everything I am or reserving the best for the lean times?

These are things that have me stalled and have me burning the campfire late into the night.

Even Francis Chan admits his characterizations aren’t all-inclusive or even a litmus test of whether or not we are truly Christians or simply ‘lukewarm water.’ As he points out, the bible tells us to examine our faith and test it. Pastor Chan says “We are all messed up human beings and no one is totally immune to the behaviors [of lukewarms or any other characterization in other chapters].”

“However,” he continues, “there is a difference between a life that is characterized by these sorts of mentalities and habits and a life that is in the process of being radically transformed.”

After all, Jesus didn’t follow His Father’s will in a lukewarm way and He doesn’t offer us that option.

He tells us to “Take up your cross and follow Me.”

You are no longer a child

2011-07-18T17:03:00.000-07:00

““Ah, Sovereign LORD,” I said, “I do not know how to speak; I am only a child.” But the LORD said to me, “Do not say, ‘I am only a child.’ You must go to everyone I send you to and say whatever I command you. Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you and will rescue you,” declares the LORD. Then the LORD reached out His hand and touched my mouth and said to me, “Now, I have put My words into your mouth. See, today I appoint you over nations and kingdoms to uproot and tear down, to destroy and overthrow, to build and to plant.” Jeremiah 1:6-10

It has been a harsh couple of weeks as the job searching becomes more and more defeating each and every day. The ‘dream job,’ that one outside of full time ministry, seemed to be in the basket as I had applied to the posting and actually, for once out of the 500 some odd job applications to the State of Michigan, received a call back. I was set for an interview for Monday, July 11th at 11:00am in Jackson Michigan and was really looking forward to knocking the socks off the panel I would be going before. This was a position that the Veteran employment assistance officer told me on our first meeting was made for me, with my chaplain background and other service-related skills. It was a position that she introduced me a few months back as “this is the guy” to the state-level director and the area-director of the Veteran Affairs Department of the State of Michigan. It was, to borrow the phrase….”in the bag.”

Someone I knew was in the hospital, shockingly hit with some complications that even they didn’t expect, and I was on the way to see them. The Area Director for the Northern Michigan Area for the Veteran Affairs called me and asked the question that would destroy everything…..”Do you have 60 college credits?” Turns out he couldn’t even have them interview me without them, which I only had 24. The ‘dream job’ was gone. And then I received a text from friend informing me that my family and I were asked not to come and see the hospitalized person. The combination, more complicated than what I’ve alluded to here, was enough to send me in a tail spin. My post on Facebook said it all,

“Tomorrow I go and pick up the suit that I was dry cleaning for the interview I no longer have because of the 'paper' requirements I cannot fill. My life, my testimony and my faith are all based on my experience and experiences that I have had in the forty-three years I've lived. Does this mean that my faith, my testimony and my life are useless?”

The LORD sent my brothers to my defense; to comfort me and to give me the moment I needed to get my breath back. Funny thing is, most of them I’ve never had the opportunity to meet. We have been friends on Facebook and a few other men-ministry websites. But they didn’t hesitate to come to a brother’s aid and surround him while he was gasping for air.

A few days later I found out that another job was denied me because of a DUI I had received some 15 years ago. The supervisor for the contractor who provides the bus service for the Ann Arbor School District, among others, said I was “Jeffrey Fieger” lawsuit material if something were to go wrong. Jeffrey Fieger is a well-known and somewhat flamboyant lawyer who has defended or prosecuted several high profile cases as well as a failed attempt at the Governorship of Michigan. I couldn’t believe it.

Apparently God is the only One who forgives and wipes the slate clean. Yet, He put humans ‘in charge’ of His church and even they said I wasn’t ‘qualified’ to be a full-time minister in its hallowed walls. To say I’ve hit the lowest point in my life, especially since my eternal one began that February day, would be the understatement of the year. Even when I was homeless, even when I attempted suicide and even when I found out that someone who ‘loved’ me also gave that to someone else…..nothing compared to the blows that have hammered me the last few weeks.

R.C. Sproul is quoted in a book that a dear brother in Christ sent me with the admonishment to ‘underline, pray, think and write about’ what I would read. Sproul says, “Men are never duly touched and impressed with a conviction of their insignificance, until they have contrasted themselves with the majesty of God.”

“Crazy Love; Overwhelmed by a Relentless God” written by Francis Chan (with Danae Yankoski).

Some books capture your attention and draw you into the path the author desires….and you feel happily fed as you stroll along the journey. Others leave you empty and lost, wondering if you’ll ever get the moments you spent on the dribble back or if its simply lost in the sands of time. Then there are the books that you wish you hadn’t picked up because the truth exposed leaves you fearful, delighted, worried, happy and so many other gambits of emotion that you are exhausted just reading it…..

and that’s only by chapter three.

Chan doesn’t apologize, for that is his very intent to bring you to the point where you identify with the secondary title…..overwhelmed. He even says, “This book is written for those who want more Jesus. It is for those who are bored with what American Christianity offers. It is for those who don’t want to plateau, those who would rather die before their convictions do.”

Those who are overwhelmed by a God who is relentless.

I have discovered the improbable, impossible and predictably unpredictable dreams of God’s purpose for me. I have faced the impossible wall of human rejection of what that dreaming produces. I have come to realize that life will never be comfortable on a human level pursuing a God-level purpose. And it has brought me to my knees; in fear and in overwhelmed awe.

Chan expressed my crippling disappointment in the job market, the ministry field and interactions with those who are as human as I……

“This dissatisfaction transfers over to our thinking about God. We forget that we already have everything we need in Him. Because we don’t often think about the reality of who God is, we quickly forget that He is worthy to be worshipped and loved. We are to fear Him.”

A humbling in this place. But even now, as the forces array against me and my brothers, even as the sky darkens in the tempest of the storm and even as my strength flees me, I know. I am no longer a child, no longer swayed by foolish things and foolish thoughts. I don't serve myself or man, I serve a mighty and awesome God.

And He is worthy of all praise.

The Palms

2011-06-27T21:56:00.000-07:00

“And not only that, but we also rejoice in our afflictions, because we know that affliction produces endurance, endurance produces proven character, and proven character produces hope. This hope does not disappoint, because God's love has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.” [Romans 5:3-5 HCSB]

From where I sit, I can hear the waves crashing against the shoreline….the ebb and flow of the sea speaking to my sailor’s heart, beckoning me back upon her surface. I can see, even in the darkness of the night their foamy tops piling upon the cooling sands of the beach. I am thankful for the ability to sit out here on the balcony of the condo that Trinity has rented (a series of them for the whole group) for the week. We arrived without much fanfare around 4 o’clock and were introduced to our berthing quarters and ‘bunkies’ for the week. Four of the teen age guys are in my condo apartment and they already share an easy rapport with each other. Me, I’m the unknown in their equation.

But then, I am for the whole group. We all just met each other yesterday at 8:00 am in the morning and then spent the next 24 hours or so travelling in a bus through Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee and Alabama to get to the coast. We lost a tire on the trailer to blow out in Kentucky and then the trailer to a broken tongue in the upper part of Alabama. I have driven over a thousand miles and have spent twenty-two hours in the driver’s seat of the Bluebird.

We have experienced a lot already to get here and even some difficulties after we arrived.

With the way traffic is in this place and the necessity to get the group five miles down the road to the Wharf Arena, I’ve decided to hang with the group during their ‘camp’ experience. I can already feel God challenging me in this place.

The interesting thing the Pastor said tonight during the first session was……… “Christ is better than………..”

It was an very good sermon, though I do have to wonder at some of the things he’s eluded to and how I (along with the others) will react to it.

Even as I wonder the intelligence of coming on this trip with a bunch of strangers, I can see the answer to that question about Christ and how the verse fits into the overall uncomfortableness of the week just begun. I can marvel at the way, once again, that Christ ties in everything that seems to be challenging me lately and how He brings the assurance of the path He has prepared for me to take, if I would be willing.

They are a great bunch of teenagers, I can tell that by their leaders and how they handle the rigors of the trip.

Even in this place, far from the comforts of my life I can be devoted to Christ in such a manner that my service to these Trinity students and their leaders is reflective of that character and that hope that does not disappoint. Not for my sake nor even for theirs but because that is what Christ would have me do….live the Gospel and use words if necessary.

And to look with eager eyes to what He has laid ahead of my footsteps with delightful anticipation, for this week and the weeks ahead!

Does her banner yet wave...........................

2011-06-14T14:42:00.000-07:00

Today, in addition to the ‘birthday’ of the United States Army (of which I served as a MP (Combat) 95B), it is the United States of America’s celebration of the adoption of its flag.

On June 14th, 1777, Congress adopted by resolution the design credited to Betsy Ross, though there is some uncertainty who designed the first flag; "Resolved, That the flag of the United States be made of thirteen stripes, alternate red and white; that the union be thirteen stars, white in a blue field, representing a new Constellation." In 1916, President Wilson issued a proclamation declaring June 14th officially Flag Day. It is not a recognized federal holiday.

Today, throughout the social media on the internet, Flag Day notifications abounded with the one simple question being asked…..

”What does the flag mean to you?”

What does the flag mean to me?

It stands as a symbol of a sacred trust; from the earliest of those colonists who ventured forth upon the sea to find a country where they could worship as God-fearing, Christian followers to those who are embattled today under the guise of ‘tolerance for all.’ It is a symbol of a multitude of personalities and desires that have been woven by the stitches of patriots and dedicated free men and women who wanted not a dictatorship or a monarchy but a land where the brightest and noblest of the country stood in positions of power and authority over all for the common good of all but who were bound tighter than the strongest chains to the phrase “of the People, for the People, by the People.”

It is a piece of cloth or nylon, true, that is burned in foreign lands and even sometimes its own but it never disappears, never fails to rise above the tempest of the storm that may engulf its people as a beacon of an idea formed so long ago.

It is young; a flag that was developed when there were only thirteen colonies and has grown to fifty states. It has been torn apart once in its history when the citizens themselves pitted themselves against each other because of a way of life that needed to be abolished.

It stands as a rally cry over the sorrows of Pearl Harbor and of Europe, has seen action in the Halls of Montezuma all the way to the shores of Tripoli, and has come to the aid of many older nations in their times of need borne on the shoulders of sailors, merchant marines, airmen, marines and soldiers. It has fallen in the jungles of Vietnam and stands in a land divided by a DMZ in Korea. It has seen its young trample on its stripes in protest and endured the sorrow of misuse and abuse throughout its young life. It has gone to Kuwait and Iraq, seen war in Afghanistan and the Persian Gulf.

It is the last symbol of a nation I served when I leave this earth that will adorn my coffin.

We saw American flags flying from windows, antennas and flag poles freshly impaled into the lawns across this land after 9-11 and saw even more rallying to the ‘flag’ by joining the Armed Forces to ‘give some back.’ I didn’t see very many flags flying today…..neither from the window mounts of vehicles flying down the highways and byways to work, home, family and ‘things.’

We see the flag-draped coffins of our service members who have given the ultimate sacrifice, whom we just paid homage to on Memorial Day, coming from the transports that bring them home to their native or adoptive land. We see citizen-lined streets ‘escorting’ our fallen heroes to their final resting place in hearses carrying those coffins with the crisp, clean flag adorning their souls.

But that isn’t what the flag is supposed to mean; a simple nod to those who have sacrificed on its nations behalf or to nationally mourn a terrorist attack on our home soil.

It is a symbol of a land that dared dream of a Republic of government, where freemen and women would lead their peers into a bright and promising future. It was built on the foundations of Christian beliefs, even as it refuses to allow that to be forced as a requirement for its benefits. It is recognized as a nation that will defend itself and the downtrodden at great sacrifice to itself because of those freedoms and a nation who will answer the call when it must. It is fifty-two stars, thirteen stripes and bleeds red, white and blue.

I am the Flag
by Ruth Apperson Rous

I am the flag of the United States of America.

I was born on June 14, 1777, in Philadelphia.

There the Continental Congress adopted my stars and stripes as the national flag.

My thirteen stripes alternating red and white, with a union of thirteen white stars in a field of blue, represented a new constellation, a new nation dedicated to the personal and religious liberty of mankind.

Today fifty stars signal from my union, one for each of the fifty sovereign states in the greatest constitutional republic the world has ever known.
My colors symbolize the patriotic ideals and spiritual qualities of the citizens of my country.

My red stripes proclaim the fearless courage and integrity of American men and boys and the self-sacrifice and devotion of American mothers and daughters.

My white stripes stand for liberty and equality for all.

My blue is the blue of heaven, loyalty, and faith.

I represent these eternal principles: liberty, justice, and humanity.

I embody American freedom: freedom of speech, religion, assembly, the press, and the sanctity of the home.

I typify that indomitable spirit of determination brought to my land by Christopher Columbus and by all my forefathers - the Pilgrims, Puritans, settlers at James town and Plymouth.

I am as old as my nation.

I am a living symbol of my nation's law: the Constitution of the United States and the Bill of Rights.

I voice Abraham Lincoln's philosophy: "A government of the people, by the people, for the people."

I stand guard over my nation's schools, the seedbed of good citizenship and true patriotism.

I am displayed in every schoolroom throughout my nation; every schoolyard has a flag pole for my display.

Daily thousands upon thousands of boys and girls pledge their allegiance to me and my country.

I have my own law—Public Law 829, "The Flag Code" - which definitely states my correct use and display for all occasions and situations.

I have my special day, Flag Day. June 14 is set aside to honor my birth.

Americans, I am the sacred emblem of your country. I symbolize your birthright, your heritage of liberty purchased with blood and sorrow.

I am your title deed of freedom, which is yours to enjoy and hold in trust for posterity.

If you fail to keep this sacred trust inviolate, if I am nullified and destroyed, you and your children will become slaves to dictators and despots.

Eternal vigilance is your price of freedom.

As you see me silhouetted against the peaceful skies of my country, remind yourself that I am the flag of your country, that I stand for what you are - no more, no less.

Guard me well, lest your freedom perish from the earth.

Dedicate your lives to those principles for which I stand: "One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."

I was created in freedom. I made my first appearance in a battle for human liberty.

God grant that I may spend eternity in my "land of the free and the home of the brave" and that I shall ever be known as "Old Glory," the flag of the United States of America.

It is a symbol of what we, as American citizens have forgotten….the sacred trust of all the generations before who have walked, lived, died and bled for this land called America that has been handed down generation to generation for preservation and prosperity of the freedoms that were once guaranteed by its Constitution and enforced with patriotism by its elected statesmen and women. A nation who wasn’t formed by God but because of His mercies and who’s Constitution bore the hope of generations.

Unfortunately, as you look back on this day and remark about the absence of the flags that would have once flown from neighborhoods far and wide across its land, it is becoming a too vivid symbol of what we Americans are, no more- no less. A nation of forgotten ideals and dusty traditions destroyed by those who have forgotten the sacred trust we were forever to be vigilant with; the title of freedom and the principle of liberty that has been corrupted by those who would be dictators and despots by our elections and our sleeping at the helm of accountability.

The flag, that once stood for the American Dream, and still flies above the land that once bore such extreme hopes now lies limp in the heavy skies of intolerance and liberalized despots who ignore the laws and control the citizenry. Who allow those who are not of native birth sell its heritage bit by bit and piece by piece to the highest bidder in the pack of wolves that have always hounded its shores. Whose politicians have become the elite; controlled by no laws and governed by no accountability and who enslave a people who are fearful of defending the nation that “Old Glory” once flew so proudly over.

It flies tonight over the land “of the free and the home of the brave” though the land lies in eternal shadow and the brave have quietly shut their doors against the raging storms where freedom is no longer what it was because of the weariness of the patriots who once guarded its health.

And though it is dark throughout the land of the American people and the wind howls through the barren landscape as if to cry out “Where have all the brave ones gone?”, there is a beacon of hope still fluttering in the lamps of generations that have come and gone disturbed by the whispers of patriots yet unborn in the history of this land.

And it may be soiled and sullied, frayed at the edges and bear the marks of a war silently fought. But as Frances Keys Scott once put down into words on a page……..

“Does that banner yet wave, o’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?”

It does if we chose to make it so.

So when you see “Old Glory” flying somewhere in the course of your day, stop and reflect on the freedoms that you still enjoy, the process by which you can ensure those freedoms continue for your children and the men and women who serve under its gentle breeze to give you that right to do so.

Regain the sacred trust once a heartbeat of the citizens of this nation.

And recapture that “indomitable spirit of determination” it stands for.

The American Flag.

What does it mean to you?

Standing Stones

2011-06-13T05:18:00.000-07:00

“After the entire nation had finished crossing the Jordan, the LORD spoke to Joshua, "Choose 12 men from the people, one man for each tribe, and command them, 'Take 12 stones from this place in the middle of the Jordan where the priests' feet are standing, carry them with you, and set them down at the place where you spend the night.'" So Joshua summoned the 12 men selected from the Israelites, one man for each tribe, and said to them, "Go across to the ark of the LORD your God in the middle of the Jordan. Each of you lift a stone onto his shoulder, one for each of the Israelite tribes, so that this will be a sign among you. In the future, when your children ask you, 'What do these stones mean to you?' you should tell them, 'The waters of the Jordan were cut off in front of the ark of the LORD's covenant. When it crossed the Jordan, the Jordan's waters were cut off.' Therefore these stones will always be a memorial for the Israelites." The Israelites did just as Joshua had commanded them. The 12 men took stones from the middle of the Jordan, one for each of the Israelite tribes, just as the LORD had told Joshua. They carried them to the camp and set them down there. Joshua also set up 12 stones in the middle of the Jordan where the priests who carried the Ark of the Covenant were standing. The stones are there to this day.” [Joshua 4:1-9 HCSB]

At my Berean Bible Church brethren’s small group we ‘happened’ to be in the area for this weekend watched a VHS tape about the ‘standing stones of Tel Gezer’ And it was this verse, this ‘faith lesson’ that hit me the most. I could feel God’s nod as He saw my heart open to what He would have me learn not just from this video, but how the whole weekend was a progression towards this ‘faith moment.’

A blessing from a brother in Christ didn’t come in the mail as expected so I went to see this man of God whom I had never met before but have connected (like many others) in the larger ‘electronic’ community. The hour I spent with this brother listening to the understanding of his gifting from God and have him pour into my life with the observations of what he had watched in my walk with Christ over the internet was a blessing above the blessing. I walked away from that meeting feeling truly blessed. Since I was in the area, I felt led to go over to my dear Berean family and visit with them for a while at the E.A.C.H. block party they were having. I was blessed by some friends to go and get my son (my daughter didn’t want to come) from his mom’s and bring him back to the event so he could have some fun. When I arrived back, a dear brother in Christ whom I had a powerful friendship in the church community where I was saved was there. We hadn’t seen each other in eight years. But it was like yesterday.

The day ‘over’, or so I thought, I dropped my son back at his mother’s for the rest of the weekend and headed over to a sister-in-Christ to help her with the PowerPoint presentation for a ministry idea she had to present to her seminary class. It was a blessing to sit down and see this idea fleshed out since her idea was a special needs ministry. Though we didn’t get the presentation done that night, we got a majority of it completed. A brother in Christ from Berean called, apparently my son had forgotten his hat at the event and we stragetized how to get it back on his absent-minded head. It worked out that my brother was having a small group at his home, a few miles from where I pick up the kids from their mom.

Sunday morning had me waking up to see my Mosaic A2 community for worship and instruction along with a Potluck afterwards. Good food and fellowship again were the theme of my day. I returned to my sister-in-Christ’s home to finish up the PowerPoint and head out to gather my children and visit with some dear friends in Christ over some bible study.

It is here that I realized God’s lesson for this weekend. Standing Stones.

Standing stones, translated from the Hebrew word “massebah” means ‘to set up.’ This was something that the Israelites did when God performed supernatural acts on their behalf. They were to be a reminder of the event that took place and to serve as a ‘talking point’ for those who came upon them to ask about what event had transpired there. Several of these ‘standing stones’ were erected in the nation’s history (to name a few), like the ones at Bethel by Jacob to commemorate the reaffirmation of the covenant between he and God (Genesis 28:18-21, 25:14-15), by Moses at the foot of Mount Sinai after receiving the Ten Commandments (Exodus 24:2-4), to remind the nation of the renewal of the covenant at Shechem (Joshua 24:27) and the commemoration mentioned in the verses above (Joshua 4:1-9) where the nation crossed the Jordan river into the Promise Land.

We no longer have to erect silent and mysterious stones to highlight the effect of God moving in our lives and it is Peter, the foundation of the Church, that calls us to be something more than stones weathering silently on the landscape of our spiritual walk home. In 1 Peter 2:5, he uses this imagery to call believers ‘living stones’. In today’s world more so than not, we need to boast of our God and His mighty mercies. We need to show as much excitement for the things that mature us and grow us and draw us closer to God as we do the latest techie gadget or car improvement or even the promotion at work.

As we walk in this faith journey towards home, much like the Israelites did into the Promised Land, we need to erect standing stones along the path…..a formation of stones that our friends, family and unsaved pedestrians that walk in our lives have no choice but to give into their curiosity and ask…..”What does this stand for?”

And then, either as simply as giving your “Two-Word Story” or speaking of the mighty blessings that God has given, you can bring the Gospel to life with a testimony of your God’s love and blessing.

This weekend is a standing stone for me. February 14th, 2004 is another, when God’s knock on the door was answered and I saw a man with pierced hands and feet weeping with joy at my answer. Another was October 20th, 2004 when I heard Him say, “This you will do for Me and My glory” at Hybel’s church in Chicago. There was my son’s acceptance of his salvation, Easter 2005 and the events of Feb-Mar 2010 and 2011 in the Bowery Street Mission in New York City.

These are standing stones to moments where God did supernatural things in my life, transforming and maturing me for the purpose He has set aside for me……. They aren't by any measure the only memorials that I have in my life and my testimony that show God's favor, mercy, love and grace. And I doubt as I walk this journey towards home that they will be the last or the greatest momuments of living testimony that I'll have to give.

His blessings and mercies are new every day.

What are yours?

Tomorrow.....

2011-06-08T07:29:00.000-07:00

“You don't even know what tomorrow will bring--what your life will be! For you are a bit of smoke that appears for a little while, then vanishes. Instead, you should say, "If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that."” [James 4:14-15 HCSB]

It is quiet, Casey and Sara are asleep and I’ve watched another of those Lifetime shows where adversity is overcome with a dramatic flourish and once again, the hero (or in this case, heroine) is triumphant in the victory. I look around at what I have, the house that is far from clean and cringing at the thought of Casey’s bedroom and Sara’s as well as my own. I think about the water problem and the washer/dryer issues….the lack of the basics that most families have. I wonder where the strength of overcoming, where the triumph over this adversity is set to dawn.

I wonder where the hero is in this story……in my children’s stories

I can remember that day, back in February of 2004 when that persistent knocking upon the door of my barricaded room finally was ‘annoying’ enough for me to open it and ‘confront’ whomever was on the other side. No drama, no epic music greeted my eyes when I opened that door. Just a simple man in bloody clothes, punctured head, pierced hands and feet.

The door never would close again.

With fading memory, I can remember the course of emotion and awe that flowed through me that afternoon session at Willow Creek Community Church’s “Acts 2” conference. It was the first “Christian” conference I had ever been too. Gene Appel, a veteran pastor of ministry, was casting vision for WCCC as its new lead pastor…..and I got lost. In the visions of impossible dreams and daring challenges. Sometime that I thought was from God, a conversation we carried through the woodlands of the campus for several hours. A life simply destroyed that merely hoped for the grace to stumble to the finish challenged to become a champion sprinter.

That life would never be simple again.

In the movie Gladiator, Proximo the Gladiator ‘business man’ said “Ultimately, we’re all dead men. Sadly, we cannot choose how but what we can decide is how we meet that end, in order that we are remembered…….as men.” Many people view the Christian walk as a journey through sunlit hills and sloping valleys with fruit practically dripping from the trees and water so sweet bubbling in the gentle streams as to delight anyone’s sweet tooth.

Manhood is often viewed as a quiet, gentle and almost feminine spirit that moves throughout the land as if a ghost, never touching or impacting women, children or others in this mighty and vast world. Manhood was power built to bless, to move into chaos and challenge its very nature so as to bring order and structure to an insane world. They are only half of the equation that when brought together brings us into a complete image bearer reflection of a Creator God. But it is a struggle and a battle to get there and remain there and to move on from there….this world doesn’t want us to be remembered as who’s we were but what the corruption of sin started us out to be from birth. We cannot chose many things in this life, with principalities and powers against the chosen of God there will be conflict and sorrows that we were never meant to experience, but because of sin’s embrace we have come to know too well. All we can do is decide on how we will “meet that end”. And know that God will get us there.

I chose to meet that end as a godly man, at least die trying to be.

We cannot know the future; the epic failures of those who have tried the breath of human existence should tell us that. Yet we try desperately to make flimsy structures again the blowing winds and huddle around those things that bring us a semblance of comfort and fleeing joy. We don’t dare dream larger than ourselves for the cost may be too high for too long for us to want to pay. And yet……..

We have the promises and the direction of a God who created the planet we live on and the very air we breathe. Who gave us the capability of dreaming of heroic deeds and epic battles? A God who could simply name and claim us once we accept the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. But He doesn’t, because we are ‘destined to do greater things than these.’ The E.A.C.H. campaign has wrapped up and the headlines have moved on to the more ‘blasé’ things of this world. And yet, we remain. We can fade back into the world we were called from, retreating once more behind those solid doors of our sanctuaries and steeples. We can call this just another battle in the war of the forces arrayed against God and us. Or we can look at life differently so that we can (as Dave Ramsey would say) live differently.

A life lived in response not to “What should I do?” but one resounding “As the Lord wills…..”

That is where the hero is, one who dreams impossible dreams in this complex world and dares to declare all surrendered to God because of what he knows masculinity to be........

A life obediently using its power to bless.

The end of the world as we know it.....

2011-05-19T10:31:00.000-07:00

“In the future, there is reserved for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will give me on that day, and not only to me, but to all those who have loved His appearing.”
[2Timothy 4:8 HCSB]

Reverend Harold Camping, founder of Family Radio Worldwide, is saying that the world is coming to an end on a calculated date of May 21st, 2011 which is coming this Saturday. On Syracuse.com (as well as other sites) Reverend Camping is quoted as saying….” "Beyond the shadow of a doubt, May 21 will be the date of the Rapture and the day of judgment."

This is a familiar ‘rant’ from Camping who miss-predicted the end back in 1994. This time, Fiji and New Zealand will get hit with earthquakes at 6pm and Christ will gallop across the sky to reclaim His followers right after.

The end of the world process will be complete five months later on October 21, 2011.

This has spawned so-called ‘rapture parties’ and ‘looting gangs’ on the social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter.

And many Christians are joining in the ‘fun.’

Ysolt Usigan posted an article on CBS.com “End of the world, May 21, 2011? Whatever, it’s funny” and remarked “Well naturally we though[t] that was kind of funny,” (apparently grammar wasn’t important to Usigan) in reference to Reverend Camping’s second prediction, “But we weren't the only ones.”

Usigan finishes the brief article with a link to ‘favorite rapture tweets.”

WendySparrow claimed the top one of the 20 with the remark, “I really don’t have time for the world to end this weekend. Plus, the weather is supposed to be crappy.”

GottaloveCYD says, “The only way I would believe in Judgment day is if Morgan Freeman came up to me and told me I was god.”

Nzcspaul quips, “So the end of the world coming on Sunday while I’m out of the country? Better pack my electric thumb and towel.”

Whether these samplings are from those who express a claim to be Christians or just atheists and agnostics who want to have some fun with such familiar doomsday preachers, Usigan is unclear and doesn’t specify.

A certain amount of ridicule from the non-Christian believers is to be expected and obviously will be used by the mainstream media to heap doubt and intolerance upon the end-time doctrine of the universal church.

It is common in this world, even as those very people question the validity of it and in backrooms often try to ‘buy some insurance just in case.’

We cannot predict the day or even the hour of Christ’s return…..we are instructed to live as if He’s coming tomorrow and keep watch to the skies for His eminent return. Reverend Camping’s prediction is presumptuous as it is ‘mockable.’ Of course, it won’t be portrayed that way, as another failed human attempt to define and predict God’s ways and timing, in the media…..it’ll be just one of those ‘fanatical Christian sects’ who were ‘wrong again.’

There are several sites debunking Camping’s prediction from the math he used to other data anomalies that skew his dating. Others are pointing to the fact we’ll not be able to watch the end of “Dancing with the Stars” or other ‘important’ events that ‘sweeten’ our lives.

What bothers me is the amount of “Christian” people who are jumping on ‘looting’ bandwagons and ‘before-rapture’ parties saying that they’re going to have a ball either as the 21st draws to a close and the world begins to end or jumping on the looting for that big screen TV after everyone has disappeared.

And then just answering posts against such comments as “lighten up, we’re just joking.”

The most important event in Christianity since the Resurrection is a joke?
Whether you believe in pre-trib, mid-trib, post-trib for the reclaimation of Christ’s followers from this world before He returns the whole of creation to its intended and original state, Christ warns us about ‘mocking’ God.

Proverbs 9:12, Isaiah 28:22, Obadiah 1:22 to name a few.

The biblical text is replete with what happens to those who do. But honestly, what does the mockery we are making of ‘end-of-times’ predictions say about our biblical beliefs about this event?

“About the times and the seasons: brothers, you do not need anything to be written to you. For you yourselves know very well that the Day of the Lord will come just like a thief in the night. When they say, "Peace and security," then sudden destruction comes on them, like labor pains on a pregnant woman, and they will not escape. But you, brothers, are not in the dark, so that this day would overtake you like a thief. For you are all sons of light and sons of the day. We're not of the night or of darkness. So then, we must not sleep, like the rest, but we must stay awake and be sober. For those who sleep, sleep at night, and those who get drunk are drunk at night. But since we are of the day, we must be sober and put the armor of faith and love on our chests, and put on a helmet of the hope of salvation. “ [1Thessalonians 5:1-8 HCSB]

How do you live your life?

If you have to live by the ‘predicated’ end-of-time hoopla that comes and goes with the marching of this world towards its true end, it would be nothing but a mockery on the public square as you silently (in the darkness of your own home) ‘make an insurance bet’ on such utterances.

If you don’t believe in the gospel, well you’re going to establish such enterprises as “Pet care after rapture” and “Estate planning for the raptured.” You are going to live your life the way you want, assured of the day coming after that will allow you to get ‘caught up’ on those things that you didn’t do today or you make jokes about finally getting that big-screen TV that was abandoned by the raptured folk or looting the grocery stores.

You participate in the world’s madness or the world’s mockery of this ‘beginning of the Kingdom come.”

If you live with your eyes towards the sky, sobered by the fact that we cannot know the day or the hour of His return, only that we can remain ‘awake’ assured of its guaranteed happening, then such predictions are a method of answering the brokenness and sinfulness of the world desperate for God’s salvation.

You stand upon the biblical truths of this event and you use the mockery of the world to speak truth……”We know not the day or hour, but we do eagerly look to the sky for His coming.”

We live with the realization that tomorrow might not come and therefore the importance of what we do becomes relevant to what we believe. We hear the din of the battle waging and we grow not weary in our fight for the souls of the lost and the redemption of the worldly.

We no longer ‘panic’ when such predictions are uttered because we know regardless of truth or falseness, we are destined for home…..in God’s time. But we ‘panic’ about the abundance and overwhelming amount of ‘work’ left to be done under a timeframe we are not privy to.

There is no doubt that the end of the world as we know it is coming the 21st of May, 2011…this Saturday……..because we will know either the folly or the accuracy of Reverend Camping’s prediction.

Christianity will be proven right in the finality of the world or mocked again because of the misguided theology and predictions of one who claims to know God’s timing. Either way, the world changes. It will become more worldly or have judgment passed.

Either way, how are you living?

As I posted on the page on Facebook promoting a ‘looting party’ after the rapture day,

“I won’t be looting but preaching the Gospel to those of you who are.”

As I will do today……

And tomorrow……………

And the next day……………..

Until I see my Savior galloping on a white horse across the sky.

Waiting

2011-05-08T20:22:00.000-07:00

“However, I have let you live for this purpose: to show you My power and to make My name known in all the earth.” [Exodus 9:16 HCSB]

The complexities of life sometimes overwhelm me and the simplicity of ‘waiting’ on the Lord becomes a painful reminder of how unworthy and inadequate I am for any cause or purpose that He’d put into my fragile and weak hands to carry. In every aspect of my life, every bump and resultant bruise that happens along the bumpy road of this journey, there is struggle and painful realizations of how accurate the ol’ song is “If it weren’t for bad luck……”

I’ve come to realize just how broken and lost my life before Christ had become, not by some simple measuring stick that I’ve come across in the Bible but as I’ve faced the situations that have left me grasping for air, struggling for understanding and agonizing over the feelings of being left behind again. As I face on a daily basis that major wound of community, with which I’ve been told I’ll never be able to find acceptability of my purpose within the family…..I’ll forever be the crazy old uncle or brother or friend who runs on the outskirts of the family muttering crazy things no one listens to.

Gone are the illusions of those who spoke edification into my life as if deranged themselves about me being some mighty leader on the front lines with lines of faithful standing with and behind me as I race over the hilltop screaming the battle cry “For My God and King!” (yes, someone actually said that to me years ago….) Gone are the assurances that sometime, in God’s time, such realized purpose will suddenly burst upon the landscape of this world like an atom bomb…..like a revolution of the Gospel speaking salvation into lives once as broken as mine. What I once saw my life as, not as completely in that moment of this imagined call as it had morphed and developed over time, is not what I now see my life becoming.

A friend of mine sent me a post via that great social media called Facebook all the way from the country of England (known as Great Britain or ‘our cousins across the pond’ in some circles). It’s not Mother’s day over there in the enlightened lands of the Brits…..but I digress. I’ll just print what the ‘gist’ of the post was:

“[Message] was on "If we are humble": Shepherds were detested by Egyptians; Moses, having been raised as Egyptian would have known that his kind didn't become one, became shepherd for 40 yrs, during which time he may have thought his being used by God wasn't really going to happen; God was teaching and developing Moses to be humble in tough times so he could be used in later good times.....”

No, I don’t suddenly see myself as a modern-day Moses…..born into slavery and sneaked into royalty until the realization of his birthright drove him to ‘connect’ with his ethnicity in quite the wrong way and he suddenly became a fugitive from both cultures after 40 years of the ‘good life.’ For one, I can’t recall ever having the ‘good life’ (though I am sure there are some who would dispute this fact with me…..) and I definitely screwed up my life well before my 40th year.

But Moses fled and spent the next 40 years in the wilderness tending the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian around the wilderness of Horeb (the mountain of God). A Shepherd, something the Egyptians despised (at least according to one pastor), is the very thing that Moses became…..apparently without argument or fight. He marries, has a son and doesn’t even have his own wealth….rather he protects and nurtures the wealth of another, his father-in-law, for 40 years. A royal, trained to lead a nation and educated in the methods of the time, puts his staff in front of him and pulls his body along after the sheep. Hard times? Indeed…..hard times that become so commonplace that he doesn’t recognize the hardships anymore.

I have come to learn the purpose of family by the hard road of having treated my family so loosely that I didn’t seek a covenant marriage in which to grow one…..I am blessed with three great kids; one of whom I have just been back in contact with since he was twelve (he’s now sixteen) and two who are living with me, struggling with the broken family that such foolishness of my actions caused. The ignorance of the Gospel only serves as a excuse and not a very valid one at that.

I have come to realize the power of intimate relationship in the brokenness of the many I thought I had before; where I thought I was a contributor and not a destroyer. Where, with God as the true center, there is glorious blessing and where God is put into a makeshift temporary shelter, disaster strikes as you try to make blessings of your own manufacture. The reflections of my earthly relationships have driven holes into the shallow relationship that I have with my Heavenly Father. I have come to realize the truthfulness of the trio of a relationship being sacrosanct….you, the other person and God. I have also realized that I’ll never open the door to that possibility again…..some things are best left in the rearview mirror of our departure, for everyone’s sake. Some would call me a coward, but I realize some wounds will never heal and if they cannot be identified…..the soundest course of action is inaction.

I have seen the good and bad of community, both within the larger context of the universal family of God and in the smaller context of earthly communities where I have spent my time as a resident and an outsider. I see how hard it is for that community to break from the stagnate stillness of the protective walls of its ‘society’ and I’ve seen the harshness that comes from the ‘inbreeding’ that takes place when such a community is so isolated. I have seen communities who struggle successfully despite disadvantages and achieve the type of fellowship that God intended for His bride and be brutally attacked by the world and even other Christians, myself included. Of course, I am one of those who wander in and out of community because my opinions have been said with the intentionality of murder, like Moses and the overseer while others have been because there are those who wonder by what authority I proclaim what I do……like Moses and the Israelites in captivity.

I realize that my life, wrought with pain and trials and suffering and sorrows, has not been worthless or in vain…….the very pain in my joints and the brokenness of my mind have existed because of the road I once walked and that beckons me from over the treetops of this path is nothing more than part of the journey I have been on since I was first gasping for breath in the harsh light of this cold, cruel world…….

We tend to look to God and expect as He has performed open heart surgery that we will recover quickly and completely…..new creatures who simply skip through this world with joy, joy, joy in these newly beating hearts with nar a sorrow to revisit. We find rather quickly that some of us are born for the adversity and others for the nobility of our Father’s kingdom. Some will struggle forever and some will find healing in the morning light.

Saint or Sinner. Noble or Shepherd.

All serve His purpose.

Financial Peace......maybe for my children

2011-05-04T20:26:00.000-07:00

Tonight, at the 'worldwide' headquarters of the Mosaic A2 Church offices, I sat down with some friends and some yet-to-be friends and listened to Dave Ramsey, the celebrated Financial Guru talk about how I need to seek the hard road to financial freedom.

It all starts with savings.

It is heartbreaking to see the charts of compound interests and how to effectively use them, knowing that if I would've started in the darker years of my life (19-27) just saving a measley 2,000 a year how much of my life would be different right now. Of course, if I had that kind of financial responsibility back then, life would indeed be so much different right now. Ramsey has learned from his mistakes that took him from a 4 million dollar empire and left him with a wife, a home and the clothes on their backs when he was 30.

For the next ninety-one days, one night a week, I will sit down with my cohorts in this endeavour and face the realities of financial bondage as we learn how to be realistic about finances. "Money is not the root of evil," Ramsey reminds us, "It is the LOVE of money that is." Not only is Ramsey going to show us how to 'beat debt' but actually turn the tables and make some wealth to be debt-free for the rest of our lives.

A wise and important process to learn, especially in a college town where many of the very future of this country are already indebted by heavy expenses for the education they are pursuing.

I don't know if Ramsey's process of focusing on the hard road to financial freedom is going to be able to transform my life; I have no unemployment to rely on and am laid off of my temporary position for at least the next three months with only enough to keep the family in a home and with electricity for this month alone. Back in the search for employment, even if it makes me nothing more than the 'working poor.'

The fantastic idea of having an emergency fund AND six months worth of living expenses is a fantasy that I might be able to fool myself enough to get to sleep tonight but not a realistic way to face the scary future to come. These are ideals that I never even thought of when I was young.

Ramsey might be a genius on the financial market but he isn't a miracle worker.

But looking at the effect that 'credit' has had on my life and the destruction of living beyond the average 'paycheck-to-paycheck' mentality that afflicts most Americans, I have to do my best because it is not me I hope to save from the hardships that are ahead, but my children....one of whom is coming up closely on that 'magical' 19 year old mark. Amid the fact that I won't have a car in a month (its dying) and am behind the proverbial 'eight-ball' with too much needed to even start off at the basement level of living, I have three children that are looking at our situation and wondering how they can do any better.

This is what I believe Dave Ramsey can teach them and through the process of attending and struggling through the classes, this is what I hope to teach them; something as valuable and freeing as anything else I can bring to them....biblical principles of money management in a practical format for the realities of this world.

You can go to the daveramsey.com website and look up other classes that are beginning or underway in the Ann Arbor Area and begin the adventure of reclaiming your financial freedom from this life through the realistic teaching of Dave Ramsey. You can do this as a single person, as a married couple or a family......but until we, as the American citizen, reclaim this area of our lives, we will always be victims of the ill-advised "American Dream" of stuff.

And if we start teaching a generation to live financially free maybe, just maybe, we will create a generation that will become those statesmen and women of the Federal Government who will reclaim for the country its own financial freedom from the debts that we have allowed to be incurred in the name of democracy.

Maybe in this process, you'll learn to reclaim your lives from the financial bondage that has gripped many American families in the declined economic market and then we can, as a country, reclaim our government from those who have indebted generations to come.

One 'baby step', as Dave Ramsey would say..........

Begins the journey towards its reality.

Have you seen them?

2011-05-04T08:22:00.000-07:00

“Joseph, a Levite and a Cypriot by birth, whom the apostles named Barnabas, which is translated Son of Encouragement, sold a field he owned, brought the money, and laid it at the apostles' feet.” [Act 4:36-37 HCSB]

Some people say to follow the fruit back to see what spiritual gifts you have been given by the Spirit to use for the sake of the Kingdom and the mission of all of those in the family of God. It is in the evidence of what has been done that what can be done is visible to expand upon and grow into an orchard of fruitful trees. They often use that in justification of the mega-church or multi-church phenomenon that has overtaken the Western Christian faith in the postmodern world.

We love successful things, tangible and concrete metrics to measure the effectiveness of our God’s investment in our lives. And it makes great business sense as well, which is the typical ‘structural’ integrity of our church system, whether it is fundamentalist Baptist, nondenominational bible-believing, missional Protestant or Roman Catholic. What chaos would ensue if we didn’t follow a successful model?

We want it in our leaders as well, that unblemished and unaltered image of success; pews or seating filled to capacity, a worship style that has them swaying in their seats and clapping out loud and a sermon that fits the needs of everyone without offending anyone. It’s a condition of the American dream; success. We don’t want those who aren’t successful by the standards set or at all to ever be in charge of something as important as the church we’ve worked so hard to establish. We fracture, angrily lash out or are heartbroken when one of the “leaders” of the universal church falls or goes off into unbiblical grounds.

We defend those who preach a gospel absent of total, absolute truth like Rob Bell and Joel Osteen "because its not hurting anyone" while crucifying those who have been isolated to the accountability of brothers and sisters around them to the point of falling into sin "because they've fallen from grace". We cheer and clap as those who have committed sin daringly stand in defiance of Scripture and proclaim themselves healed and yet keep underfoot those who openly struggle with worldly things……for they aren’t allowed to speak God’s word.

Makes me wonder if there are any Barnabas’ left in the postmodern Westernized Church of Christianity.

I know there are, because I have seen them. They aren’t the ones who grace the leadership team, spending 65% of the church’s budget to pay for their salaries and those of the rest of the team. They aren’t the ones who typically lead the ministries that are customized by the leadership to reach the ‘maximum’ people. They aren’t the ones who are visible in the church social functions or outreach events or tithing accountability.

They aren’t the ones who sit in the pews, nod at the appropriate times and dutifully clap when a worship song is done particularly well. They aren’t vocal in church dissension and don’t usually argue their cases before the authorities that be. They are silent, unassuming and dedicated to a cause that defies church walls and is unrealized by social circles.

They are the ones who are always there in the church, always doing something within its walls to encourage those who are in power positions to thrive, to do the job right that God has graced them to have and to make the mission of primary and utmost importance. They are the ones who never say no, even when they would rather take a break from volunteering and maybe be served for some time instead. They are the ones who step up when stepping up gives them nothing except a heartfelt thanks.

They are the ones who encourage those who are in better positions than they to keep on when the going gets rough and who impart the knowledge gained from their own failures for the sake of someone else’s triumphs. They very seldom sit down in a meeting or silent during discussions.

They wear their hearts on their sleeves and their lives on their shoulders. They take slights and insults, bear misery and denials and grudgingly give up on God inspired dreams when faced with opposition. They allow the lives they themselves would rather have to be lived through those who are in better positions to live them and yet they never say a word to anyone. They struggle in their weaknesses and acknowledge them for the benefits of others to avoid or draw comfort from them while encouraging those who struggle with things that aren't as bad (on the human scale).

Barnabas, the Encourager, was still active in the Lord’s work in 55 A.D., though we are not told what or where he is. Church tradition says that both Barnabas and John Mark “continued their missionary work and Barnabas became the first Bishop of Salamis, his native city, where he is said to have been martyred and secretly buried by his cousin Mark” (Meinardus 1973: 11; Acts of Barnabas). Barnabas was active in ministry in Rome, Alexandria in Egypt and Caesarea in Judea, according to The Recognitions of Clement (1994: 78-80; Zahn 1907: 459, footnote 2).

To the west of the ancient ruins of Salamis there is a Greek Orthodox monastery dedicated to Barnabas and a tomb in the surrounding area that is said to be his.

Dr. D. Edmond Hiebert notes this about this man, “Barnabas stands out as one of the choicest saints of the early Christian Church. He had a gracious personality, characterized by a generous disposition, and possessed a gift of insight concerning the spiritual potential of others. He excelled in building bridges of sympathy and understanding across the chasms of difference which divided individuals, classes, and [ethnic groups]. He lived apart from petty narrowness and suspicion and had a largeness of heart that enabled him to encourage those who failed and to succor the friendless and needy. He did have his faults and shortcomings, but those faults arose out of the very traits that made him such a kind and generous man – his ready sympathy for others’ feelings and his eagerness to think the best of everyone” (1992: 52).

Do you know someone in your church fellowship who is like that? Who stands firmly in the shadows of those who need or have to shine brighter for the sake of all those who stand in the darkness? Can you see the weaknesses that they have being a part of who they are valued as?

I know a few Barnabas’……

They don’t grace the stage on Sunday, power the glorious worship in the beginning or even drive the ministries in the Church walls or without. They are there, they are unseen mostly but always sought out when things need to be supported with prayer, with time/money tithing or even physically. They never quit even when they long to be encouraged.

They are our safety net in a world that would abuse us.

They are a reflection of God's desire for us.

And that is more valuable than any success we could have.

God....so much more than that

2011-05-01T18:53:00.000-07:00

"He stretches out his heavens over empty space. He hangs the earth on nothing whatsoever. He holds the water in his thick clouds, and the clouds don't even split under its weight. He covers his throne by spreading his cloud over it. He marks the horizon on the surface of the water at the boundary where light meets dark. The pillars of heaven tremble and are astonished when he yells at them. With his power he calmed the sea. With his insight he killed Rahab the sea monster. With his wind the sky was cleared. With his hand he stabbed the fleeing snake. These are only glimpses of what he does. We only hear a whisper of him! Who can understand the thunder of his power?" (Job 26:7-14)

I don’t write like I used to.
I find myself being sidelined or even pushed out of the way, it seems. Everyone tired of the same old weary repeat of my life being a struggle or a fight to even breathe sometimes. No one wants to listen to a story that is crawling along, seemingly without merit, in the drearily pre-morning gloom before the dawning of the sun. The Christian life is supposed to be one of salvation, struggle and then achievement…..the overcoming of the many strongholds that complicate our lives.
When someone brings up the fact that Christ struggled, many times in His ministry time on this planet, they are shooed quickly out of the picture. God doesn’t want us to suffer, He doesn’t want us to feel the bitter pain of abuse or neglect or hatred, and no, no, no--- He doesn’t send things our way that seem usually harsh and full of sorrows. He is a gracious God, a good God and would never deliver upon us difficulties that we, as our bodies are lashed to the main mast of our ship, are not sure we will survive. That would be evil, and our God cannot do evil.
Funny thing is, no one said God does.
We struggle with who this God is, what He is about and how we can fit Him into our understanding. So we come up with highlighters and go through the Bible marking each and every love phrase that we can possibly contrive such feeling from……and when we hit the hard ones, the ones that bring us face to face with the realistic image of God….a complete image of Wrath, Anger, Love and Compassion, when we hit those we stumble and twist them around to try and fit our image of who God is. We try to bring God back down to earth on our terms.
And we fail.
Once upon a time, when this was all new and fresh to me……you know the time I’m talking about, when God’s voice remained fresh in your ear as if He had just whispered “I love you” in them. Where you can still feel His hand upon your shoulder as He displays all of His glory for you……in that time, I believed the powerful, magnificence and beautiful authority of my God when He spoke those words that sent me into a wild frenzy of denial and hysterical laughter. I believed when, as I finally surrendered before Him yet again, that He would do what He had planned free from the constraints of my past and my future even as He walked in my present. Believed that, in Him (not through, because or even for Him) that I would do what He wanted because it was His plan, His ideal and His life to do with what He would do. I gave it to Him that February day, because I thought anything less was not showing my gratitude for the gift of mercy that He gave me.
Me. Chief of all sinners (as Paul would say).
Even as I started on the systematic journey of demolition to my life, (you see even the joists in the floor were rotten) I was still walking on the proverbial cloud nine….God would, God could and therefore God was going to do what He wanted in my life to prepare me for the purpose that He had presented to me that October day. Oh, there were plenty of moments in the midst of the pain, in the heartache of the disbelief and the discouraging, that I would wonder why, why this God would even bother with this mess called humanity. Why He wouldn’t simply just erase and repeat with a better design. I questioned even as He presented the next part of the journey, the next desert experience and those late night campfires in the wilderness of despair. I wondered why me and pondered the divinity behind the call, the purposing behind the purpose.
I have been uncomfortable since that day in February and completely lost without a clue of my direction since that October day even as I’ve grown comfortable in His provisions and focused only where He would have me go rather than the journey to get there. I have argued, cried and begged just as many times as I have calmly thanked Him for the limitations, healing and discipline that He has introduced into my life. Even as I’ve realized how far I’ve come, I realize how far I yet to go with the likelihood I will never get there this side of the White Throne.
But in everything, even this journey towards the Home I’ve never known, I guess the ‘honeymoon’ phase has to come to an end and the mundane of just the daily walk come to a collision point and the mundane takes over. Like an ‘old’ married couple, the Christian settles into an easy kind of life where things turn into blessings on a dime and your steps become a graceful gliding sweep through chandeliered ceiling halls and beautiful ordained gardens. Struggles become those moments at ‘tea time’ when the cupcakes aren’t perfect and the tea a bit tart.
God becomes this great guy who wants nothing but love and is willing to do anything for us to get us to love Him. Why wouldn’t He want to ‘bless’ us with more money than we can spend in one lifetime? Our tithe of 10% would be so much more if we had more money to take care of everything else too. Why wouldn’t He want to fix our wounds, binding them tight with His healing mercies? He doesn’t want to have us experience pain or sorrow.
What we fail to realize, what we don’t want to understand and what we dare not think is that God is not us. And He ‘owes’ us a lot less than we think we are due, even if we are simply grateful for His gift of Salvation. And He is God, unlike us in every way.
His own Son, three-in-one/Fully God-Fully Man/Messiah, felt the struggle of despair and sorrow. He experienced the harshness of death and the silence of hatred. In the Garden, the night before His death, He wept tears of blood and was broken in the despair of what was to come. But He did it, not because of love but because of the commitment He made to His Father’s will……He doesn’t say in the night before that He was doing it because of love, though love was surely one of the motivations He felt. He did it because it was His Father’s plan, because He had to.
And God, in His way, turned His back upon His only Begotten Son as He was draped with the sinfulness of the whole of mankind in disgust and shame as He died. He despaired for this lost Son even as He waited for the plan to go forth to its conclusion for this part……
That sounds like a Father of Love to me.
He owes us nothing more than the penalty for the sinfulness that we have, even these ‘crystal-clean’ Christians. He is more than justified to reach out and strike us all dead as He did the generation in the desert who made the Golden Calf idol rather than redeem any one of us. The greatest of us, the ones without many sins, are just as guilty of the punishment we deserve as those like me who have more than a lifetime full of penal labor to try to start paying for the price of our admission in Heaven. He has more than a right to demand our lives in servitude and withhold judgment on whether we are getting into His mansions or even the grounds of His kingdom. Just because He desires that all would be saved, He doesn’t force everyone to be saved.
He doesn’t have to remove the penalties of this world upon our lives or instantly change all the imperfections that we develop over the life spent in the darkness; the bruised knees and shins, the bleeding cuts and scrapes or the bumps rising on our heads from the collisions in the night.
We have but a whisper of who He is and what He is capable of.
It would take an eternity to understand who God is and what He thinks about the struggles in our lives or the sorrows that come our way. Part of our Heavenly eternity is going to be the eternal opening of our eyes to His wonders anew and the deep awe of how far off we were of His grace in view of His power, His wrath and His righteous anger towards our sinfulness.
But the church isn’t all bad, as Pastor Will from the church plant group I attend every other Sunday was pointing out today. Far from being understanding of our lack of perfection and highlighting what is good and right in this warfare that is taking place on this world. We aren’t prone to divorce more than non-Christians nor are we lacking in charity or other works. We are not perfect and it is that lack of perfection that hazes the image of God. We are told we’re constantly screwing up when it is not us who do the real work anyway. But we become complacent in our worship, bored in our walk and fade away from the fellowship…a fellowship we vitally need, if the stats that Pastor Will showed us tonight are truthfully as best they can be.
Connection with church and the fellowship helps us be better followers and the fruits that come from our faith are exponentially greater in the community of believers. But I digress…..
As we grow closer and closer to this God we cannot get a ‘full picture’ of because of our humanity, our humanity is more conformed to what God intended us to be in the first place and we become less combative about ideologies that are wrong and more interested in enticing them to grow in those ideologies to the point where they realize the emptiness of the religious movements by humans. We become less bitter about the deliberate wounding by the world, those who are in league with the enemy and those within the family who stumble along as much as we do. We seek as a community, as a family, to gather our understanding of God together and dialogue about the mysteries that are revealed in the discussions about our Father and His Son and His Holy Spirit. Then we become a even great force for the glory of the Kingdom’s King and less marked by the world’s culture because we are the ‘dominant culture’ by our effectiveness at love with accounting, mercy and grace.
And when the stories of struggles, trials and pain come into the repeat mode of life, when a brother or a sister struggle with an addiction, disease or mental fatigue yet again or a once-dedicated and effective warrior for the Kingdom is tricked and swayed by the enemy’s lies when they shouldn’t have been, we don’t hesitate to step into those lives and see the glory of God working itself even in those places and by our rejoicing in the struggling well of our family member they are empowered once again to rise back into God’s grace and be repurposed in His plan for them.
And it no longer becomes a game of ‘when are you going to be ready’ but a life of dedicated ‘we will get you ready’ for what God has in store for His people.
So, if your beliefs are so fragile that you cannot dedicate the time to a family member in the body who has been struggling well, but struggling long or you look with painful sorrow upon a brother or sister who was once of prominence in the body but has fallen from the isolation of leadership or the whispered lies of the enemy that have opened those old wounds……then I would ask God to strengthen you for the primary duty of this Body, to love one another and strengthen one another, accountable in love. Because when we focus on what God calls family with what God tells us the characteristics of that family, we live that life as undeniably God’s. We stop worrying about a 'definable' progress, check marks on a list of things that we cannot control in a general sense and become more specific in our personal dealings with someone else.....we seek God's will not our own definition.....we worry less about our agenda and more about His.
This is why I don’t write so much anymore…….I really don’t know if anyone is listening anymore. And this is why part of the adore of the call has faded into the background of the din of battle……
God is so much more than what we can even imagine and as Job says, we have glimpsed but a whisper of His thunderous power…….He is so much more than the simplicity of love and more wrathful than our worse and darkest anger……
He is our God and jealous for us…….
With just the glimpse of His power and character, I’ll stand steady for Him on the mysteries I have yet to become revealed on….
Because of what I’ve already seen, He is worthy of my praise and justified in His plans for me, whether sorrow or joy, peace or chaos, pain or peace……
God is god, and I am not, and He is not limited by my lack of understanding.

Understand if you've made it this far in this blog, I am not saying that God is capable or even willfully involved in the evil works of the enemy. I am saying that in the definition we use of what bad and good is, we must realize that we are using our definition and not necessarily God's. For if what we once thought was a bad thing (mislabeled as evil) actually brought us closer to God or disciplined us to be effective warriors for the Kingdom, isn't that a good thing?

Just my thoughts.

You are involved in a conspiracy bigger than anything in history

2011-04-29T17:14:00.000-07:00

It’s a tale of epic portions that defies even the logic of the multiple shooters in the John F Kennedy assassination, the Moon landing hoax or even Barrack Obama’s birth certificate cover-up. It reaches into the deepest halls of power and authority in human history and you, dear reader, are a part of it. Yes, you! In The Greener Grass Conspiracy, our co-conspirator Stephen Altrogge takes us into the darkest and biggest conspiracy known to mankind, the conspiracy to steal our happiness that we have through Jesus Christ. Our hearts, along with the world and Satan, have come together to make us perpetually discontented.

Pastor Altrogge, using personal experience and biblical wisdom, carries us through our own cohabitation with the enemy in the “perpetual [manufacturing] of idols”, our foolish attempts to be God and other factors of the GGC to bring us to a point where we can fight the conspiracy within and find the contentment that God provides for us on our “side of the fence” rather than be continually enticed by the belief that it is truly ‘greener on the other side.’

Through though-provoking questions at the end of each chapter and a steady, easy-to-grasp style of the profound, Altrogge takes us through the journey to realize that the grass beneath our feet is the best in the world because our God has provided for our contentment regardless of where we are. But unlike other authors, Altrogge doesn’t stop at the end pages of the book but offers to continue to the discussion in his blog, www.theblazingcenter.com , and his connection on Twitter (twitter.com/stephenaltrogge) and Facebook (Facebook.com/StephenMAltrogge).

After reading this easy and thought-provoking book, you may want to take him up on his offer of continuance.

Altrogge is a Pastor at Sovereign Grace Church of Indiana, Pennsylvania leading worship and working with college students. He is an accomplished song writer with worship songs on the Sovereign Grace Music label and has authored another book entitled Game Day For the Glory of God: A Guide For Athletes, Fans, and Wanabes, which was published by Crossway Books in September 2008 as well as his latest offering, The Greener Grass Conspiracy: Finding Contentment on Your Side of the Fence.

You can purchase The Greener Grass Conspiracy: Finding Contentment on Your Side of the Fence at Crossway.com

Movement

2011-04-17T10:44:00.000-07:00

"The Lord is Spirit and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty." 1 Corinthians 3:17

It is something that escapes the attentions of most people that travel to the downtown area of the biggest city (or what was once so) of the region, Detroit. It is known, especially when we win a hockey championship or a baseball championship or if we ever will win a football championship because we drap it with the jersey of that team. It is in the news when we have to pay for the restoration of its visage or when the newies are outside the Coleman J Young building (City of Detroit offices)and use it as a backdrop to whatever they are covering.

No one knows, or at least I believe they don't (due to lack of complaints by atheists and other religions), what the symbology is or what is inscribed on the wall behind the Spirit of Detroit. My friend was surprised by the fact that there is a Christian biblical verse behind the statue....a powerful and direct verse that speaks of the God, I AM, and cannot be transposed to 'substitute' for any other religion's god. It is what the city once stood for and what it wanted its spirit to be.

And it was what 20,000-30,000 Christians came to Comerica Park in the rainy early morning hours yesterday to reclaim.

The Spirit of Detroit is a city monument, created by Marshall Fredericks for the cost of 58,000 back in 1955. It was dedicated in 1958 and is 26-foot tall. It held the status of being the largest bronze sculpture cast since the Renaissance. It was restored in 2006 by private and foundation funds.

In its left hand, the large seated figure holds a gilt bronze sphere emanating rays to symbolize God. In its right hand, is a family group symbolizing all human relationships. A plaque in front of the sculpture bears the inscription, "The artist expresses the concept that God, through the spirit of man, is manifested in the family, the noblest human relationship."

As one of Detroit's most identifiable landmarks, a sketch of the statue is the central element of most of the logos of Detroit's city departments and services and is used as an image on the "Spirit Of Detroit Award" that is issued to a person, event or organization being honored for an outstanding achievement or service to the citizens of Detroit.

One of the most important aspects of the event that gathered Christians downtown yesterday wasn't the 1 million hours of community service that the E.A.C.H. movement wants to achieve with this collalition of churches, para-church and individuals (though it is a very important part of it) or the fact that the faithful gathered to pray for Detroit. It was simply said....

Where God is, where God would come and do His work and miracles and restoration; such a place has to believe in Him for it to happen. The Christians of Southeast Michigan gathered in Comerica Park to declare a moblization of the faithful to fight that disbelief and bring the Gospel message...THE GOOD NEWS....in an impactful way, through the investment of their lives into the city and surrounding suburbs. To join with the family that lives and worships in Detroit and join the toils of their hands with efforts to live the faith among those who do not believe, not for the sake of forcing the Gospel upon them but to show the faithful execution of a life given to Jesus Christ.

To beckon the Spirit of the Lord to come to the city of Detroit, a city where the world is watching what happens, to bring LIBERTY!

And that is something worthy of our efforts. And what the most noblest of all human relationships, the family, is for.

Let's do this!

Cuckoo for Christ

2011-04-12T03:48:00.000-07:00

“[Jesus said] “The One who sent Me is with Me. He has not left Me alone, because I always do what pleases Him."” John 8: 29 HCSB

It always comes back to the example set by Christ for those of us who are compelled by the evidence and the convictions of our lives to reevaluate and rediscover the tenants of our faith, the rock of our belief and the reasoning/logic behind the realizations that drive us to great dangers, perils, toils and snares because of who He is and what He calls us to do. We don’t always have to ‘like’ the answer that comes to us in these quiet ‘campfire’ moments off the trail in the dark night of our fears.

We don’t have to always be satisfied but we do have to understand why we are where we are and what is our motivation to rise in the coming morning, don our backpacks and pick up our walking sticks and step back onto the path that is leading us home.

Because we will meet those who question our right to be on the path, those who wonder about our direction and those who squat on the sides of the path in the squalor and filth of this world and jeer at us. Sometimes, they’re not off the path but on it.

This verse hit me hard these last few weeks as I have thrown down the backpack of my calling and hunkered down in the middle of the path in, to put it politely, a temper tantrum.

In the last seven years since I received my calling to the ministry, I have met with one demand for my obedience after another from those in authority over me. I have stepped into some of those demands to find them as empty as the reasoning behind the demands in the first place and others where it didn’t feel the right thing to do, the right direction that God was leading me to do.

I have begged and pleaded for discipleship and be left wanting in some places, challenged in others and always…..always left with the feeling that it wasn’t to shape me to a purpose I’ve seen but rather to be fitted into the round hole even though I am very square…pun intended. There have been very few Barnabas' and even few Pauls in my life.

To be a pastor, I am told, I have to be a leader. In every aspect of my life, above reproach and without blame. And then I am directed on how and where I should lead.

To be a part-time, full-time or any time minister, I am told I have to be on a staff of a church and then I am told that I am ‘not quite the person for a staff position.’

Every time I think I'm heading in the right direction, the path either abruptly ends or fades into the jungle, marsh or forest that surrounds it.

It has lead me to believe that maybe I’ve gotten it all wrong and therefore have wasted seven more years of a life already destroyed by my own ambitions, hatreds and missteps by the foolishness of my own delusions of grandeur.

Why would God put this drive, this passion and this energy in me to be constantly in motion to its realization if it wasn’t what He called me to do? Why would the greatest moments where I feel Him with me, relish in His pleasure and joy in me and be the closest to Him in the most uncomfortable place I could go if it wasn’t for His purpose to which I was formed, known and set aside for? Why am I such a challenge; not only to myself and my destructive self-image but to those who ‘are helping’ me along the journey…..at least, in the direction they feel that I should be going. Some with intentional malice or fear and others with the simple desire to be accountable and correct in their mentorship. Why, for the last seven years, have I never been comfortable? And always driven outside my protective zone into a place or places where I know I’ll be hurt, discouraged and handicapped by the ‘examination of your life in directional relationship with how God operates.’

A seven year journey of exposing my limitations, my motivations and my prideful sinfulness that are never fully His....but grow more and more obedient to His as I've journeyed.

We wonder why people think we’re hypocrites and foolish. It ain’t just a verse in the Bible.

It always leads back to the example that Christ set for us in the simple three years He was in ministry on this earth. Three years that have left an impact, a direction and the standards to which we, both as believers and the body of Christ (the Church), should be pounding into our heads, hearts and minds far beyond the ‘business’ models we have adopted in the sake of expediency.

To be honest, this ‘yoke is easy’ and ‘burden is light’ mantra of the Christian faith has never been something I’ve truly believed in because of the way this ‘born-again’ life has been. I was better in the immediate being ‘fat, dumb and stupid’ in my dealings with the world and this religion of Christianity. Yeah, I was dying….already dead in my sinfulness, but at least I was able to ‘numb’ the pain of its haunting reminder. I was foolish, reckless and intentionally dangerous….all in an effort to make this ‘God’ realize the mistake He had made in making me. And I was successful, even though I didn’t have to do all that stuff I did to make Him turn my way. He was already at the door, waiting for me to open up.

It is why this verse hits me so deeply…..completely in context and without alteration. Because Christ was who He was meant to be, both fully-human and fully-God, and living in the highest level of connection with the Father God. He wasn’t apologizing for His life or where He came from in relation to the human aspect of His identity but rather pointing to the effectiveness of what He did; His Father’s will.

How often does that drive our motivations, our conversations and our decisions? To the degree that we are crucified on our cross of someone else’s confidence we are insane? To the degree that we drive ourselves crazy with frustration, with battering ourselves against the walls of our cells in the prisons of this world and come back to the same convicting vision of what God has called us to be?

Alot of us claim to have 'God's purpose and love' written on our hearts and we default to our own protective natures, running business models and the American dream in our lives that are contrary to God's vision simply because 'the alternative is scary and makes us uncomfortable.' The yoke is easy, the burden light.......

It drove every aspect of Christ’s life. He needed that connection with the Father to get through the day and never strayed from the direction He was given to go…..even when He asked for the cup to pass from His lips.

Someone told me on the bus last night a profound truth that makes me wonder at its simplicity. “They don’t know what to do with you.”

And for once in my life, since I’ve been reborn, I have to admit that I don’t know what to do with myself anymore either. Maybe I’m just supposed to encourage and motivate others from where I am (which I have been doing and will always continue to do) and therefore fulfill the ‘demand’ that I be a leader to be ‘greater things.’

Maybe in the moments and minutes where I am given the honor of speaking God’s word into the lives of those who have come to listen, the treasure of the moments with God are the warmth of the fires that keep me in the dead of the cold nights upon this path and nothing more.

Maybe the talents I have been given, my testimony, are merely to be recklessly and intentionally spent in the quiet opportunities before others to speak of what I was and who I am now and then quietly fade into the background noise of this world as others who have been more purposely equipped and have better ‘foundational’ bases from which to launch can step into those moments after and carry the baton further for the kingdom.

If that is the case, then fine. Let me be crazy for those moments that come and frustrated in the hours that follow them. Let me continue to express the words that drive others to question and ultimately find their answers in the Bible as lead by the Holy Spirit and convicted by the Law to a redeeming Gospel.

In those moments where the fire is dying down and the coldness of the winter creeps into my awareness as I lay my head down for some rest, when I cry out to God with the whys and the why nots, I will trust that my last thought before sleep claims me is simply that it is His will that is to be done and not mine.

It is His kingdom I work for and not some glory of my own that is fleeting. It is because of my love, my desire and my passion for a God who sent His only begotten Son to pay the price on my sinful head that I drive myself crazy with frustrations and delusions of great works He has purposed me to. That even as I cry out for this to be removed from me that I pick it up in obedience to Him and continue on.

Because I want to do what is pleasing to the One who sent me on this journey in the first place.

The Ultimate Gift

2011-03-30T05:44:00.000-07:00

“We understand what love is when we realize that Christ gave His life for us. That means we must give our lives for other believers.” 1 John 3:16(GW)

We often dramatize this verse…..giving our physical life into death for another believer. We pat ourselves on the back and think we’re doing something wonderful if we have that moment in which our life becomes forfeit for another….in that situation. Then we continue on about our day, ignoring the brothers and sisters struggling to make ends meet and having disasters visit their doorstep. We will help so long as it doesn’t create for us any inconvenience or trouble. We will do outreach with our churches only if several conditions are met; our funds have covered our building and salary expenses and it fits into our ‘free’ time. We will do anything and everything so long as it is in our best interests and meets our desires.

Look at the verse again.

Christ gave His life. This life did not start at the age of thirty, when most theologians believe He started His earth-bound ministry. It didn’t start in the height of royalty or wealth. We look at the end of Christ’s life (and reasonably so) and forget that He lived a life from birth to death that spanned thirty-three years. Now read that verse again. His life, not just the end of His life or a moment or two. He gave His entire life to the love that He holds for each of us. Before we were even born.

The Ultimate Gift, we call it.

Now how does that reflect in your life?

Two people recently stepped up to me and blessed me with some things that were needed in my life, both of them were inconvenienced somewhat by their blessings. They gave a part of their lives so that I would be blessed. They stepped out of their world and into mine, with the intentionality of making a difference for me. It would’ve been easier to just let the moment pass by. They are still alive, living life on this broken world…….but I would say they’ve exemplified this verse.

How have you reflected your love in this way to those around you?

How have you been an ultimate gift to those who believe like you?

purposed? Purposed!

2011-03-29T06:38:00.000-07:00

“May He give you what your heart desires and fulfill your whole purpose.” Psalm 20:4 HCSB

I realized, as I was giving my testimony to a group of “Gideon-like” men, that I have come to a point in my story where the focus has shifted from where it was….mired in the details of reliving it all and has become freed of the muck and grime of that living into a place where I am glad for its adventurous tales, whether of woe or joy.
My story defines me. It is who I am, who I was and who I was never allowed being and who I never let myself become. It is a cherished thing, growing in detail and purpose at each retelling; never embellishing or stretching the tales to be told but bringing life to the deaths that occurred in its long and winding road.
Someone once told me that I have to ‘get beyond’ my past to realize my future. I have to heal the pains, close the wounds and release the past in order to be able to embrace the wonders of the future. It’s part of the Christian experience, I’ve been told, a part of ‘becoming that new creature.”
I think the message has gotten confused and it’s the main reason why we ‘lose’ the children as they grow up into the college-aged people who have left the church or redefined it tossing out the biblical text in favor of a more postmodern ‘peace’ that reflects an unfocused, ‘get-along’ attitude of a worldly nature. It is what is necessary to counterbalance the pain of this world…..for that is the ultimate goal of many of us. A respite from the pain.
Christ never promised exemption from the pain, but rather seems to tell us that it will get worse before it gets better. We are comfortable in our homes, so comfortable that the homeless that wander the streets of our downtowns are a nuisance and eyesore that we face confused at ‘how to handle the problem.’ We refuse to release our holds on funds to simply be the Church and Christians, rather following a ‘practical’ model of business that negates challenging the status quo. We refuse to risk, even with the ultimate risk-backer Jesus.
He faced death for us, coming to the point where He asked…no begged…for the reasoning behind His Father’s rejection as He died. He stood where we do, He did what we can do, and He challenges us to do ‘greater things’ than He did on this world.
It takes us rejecting our comfort and ‘bottom line’ and dealing honestly and lovingly with those struggling in the darkness and lost in the woods. It takes those who have been broken in those places to return with a vivid memory of the dangers and the pains so they will not fall and they can love even when love hurts.
I don’t wish for the events of my life to disappear. If I had a time machine, I would give it away or destroy it because I do not wish to go back and change my life. For each sorrow, each pain, each heartache and loss, each mistake, each sinful disobedience that I did….they have a part in the story that God started before I was born and watched with loving sorrow and joyful redemption as I’ve walked this world. It is a story of disobedience and loving purpose and it is part of my Father’s story for those still lost in the dark woods of this world.
I am a bard in my Father’s court, telling the tales of a life redeemed.
I have the desire of my heart: release from the mire of my past and the purpose of my life: to testify of the life restored and a life lived.

Man of Valor

2011-03-27T04:57:00.001-07:00

“On that day it will be said, ‘Look, this is our God; we have waited for Him, and He has saved us. This is the Lord; we have waited for Him. Let us rejoice and be glad in His salvation.’ For the Lord’s power will rest on this mountain.” Isaiah 25:9-10 HCASB

The verses before speak of the “Feast of the Father” as labeled by Timothy Keller in his book, Prodigal God, which I have spent the last few months going through with some brothers I’ve joined on Wednesday nights at Knox Presbyterian Church in A2…just up the street from my home in the Orchard Grove Community. Though the feast is of great importance to us, all of us, as believers, it is the following two verses immediately after that seemed to hit me after this weekend experience.

Because of the generosity of a brother in the group, whom I shall probably never know, I was able to attend a 24-hour seminar with the larger community of Knox men at a Retreat at Camp FoHoLo (Faith, Love, Hope) in Grass Lake Michigan. It is the Knox Men’s annual retreat, dating back to I believe 1996.

One of the greatest sorrows in my life has always been the lost of the community of men that I have been blessed to be in fellowship out in Troy, the M3 and Able Men under the leadership of Scott Engleman. When we moved out to A2, I left that community which had become further physical and spiritually from me in hopes of finding another with the same fellowship and impact that had shaped me into a man questing after God. I haven’t been blessed to be immersed into such fellowship, though I have a good ‘communal’ relationship with Mosaic’s Men’s Fraternity group and have come to cherish the time with the group under the leadership of Lewis Clark at Knox’s Wednesday night. I even appreciate the fellowship of several ‘long-distance’ brothers whom I have shared a cyber connection to in several online communities.

In this season, where God seems to be waiting upon me to take up the mantle of what He has purposed and called me to, such loss of deep committed fellowship is less than problematic as it is dangerous. A mentor once told me that I would know when God was truly prompting me to go when I started ‘gathering’ a team to hold me accountable, edify the call and ensure support (spiritual) in the path ahead. To ‘jump the gun’ and charge in would be to invite human fragility to become the dangerous ingredient and ultimate reason for my demise.

Bowery this year left me very unsettled, because I saw what God can do and the difference of my obedience and my disobedience to the purpose. I also recognized ‘key’ players in my life; some that were even unaware of such designations and probably never will know. I recognized too, in a renewed sense of clarity, the realization that my call did not support my ‘desire’ to fix the church that has gone off mission in several regards but rather, focus on the purposed calling of my anointing and leave the church renewal to those who have been so purposed by God to do so.

Pastor Chuck, the Lead Pastor of Knox, talked about Gideon…that ‘weakest of the weakest’ warrior who led 300 against 135,000 and saw victory. We all know of this little man of Manasseh told in the pages of Judges 6-8. I’ve written about Gideon as well, http://chapel-michigan.blogspot.com/2007/10/but-i-am-least-of-least.html . But, as I have discovered in my years since I’ve answered that still small voice’s question that overturned my soul, God works in layers of His Word, helping us discover in the same passages new meanings for the seasons of our life here on this world. And Pastor Chuck brought this hero alive once more. And God challenged me to accept His vision of who I am even as I struggle to believe its truth.

Gideon, weakest of the weakest, was a little man who was hiding in a winepress trying to ‘eek’ out a living in an oppressed land. And the Angel of the Lord came to him and called him a “mighty man of valor.” Gideon signed on for the mission and immediately engaged in it. At the end, in chapter 8 of Judges, it is interesting to see how the defeated and captured Kings of Midan told him he …..”resembled a son of a king.” From the weakest of the weakest to a son of a king.

Being a man of valor doesn’t mean we have some exceptional skills or opportunity. We don’t have to be Upper class or even middle class. We can be the poorest of the poor and weakest of the weak and yet, when we step into the mission purpose that God has given us….putting on the armor and protection of our King……..mighty deeds are done through the strength He’s given us by the Spirit.

And I saw a lot of Gideons at the Knox Men’s Retreat yesterday……..mighty men of valor!

Living in love

2011-03-22T06:32:00.000-07:00

“As the Father has loved Me, so have I loved you. Now remain in My love. If you obey My commands, you will remain in My love, just as I obeyed My Father’s commands and remain in His love. I have told you this so that My joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.” John 15:9-11 NIV

“We can beat our heads against the wall,” a friend wrote me in a little novella when I asked her for feedback, “Or be open to other directions...”

A pastor once told me to jump in to the volunteering in the community called church and let God lead you to where He would have you be what He has designed you to be, purposed you to become and equipped you to work. I am a j-o-t (jack of all trades) with enough knowledge to be dangerous in many things and good at a relatively few select ones.

February 14th, 2004 I surrendered to Christ. October of that same year, I was so involved in the community that was my ‘home’ church that they invited (and paid) for me to go to a conference for “Acts 2” churches at Willow Creek. I’ve told the story of my calling so many times and yet, I can still feel the energy in the air, hear the reverb of the microphone as Gene Appel spoke and the gentle, wave-like murmur of the conferencees talking in quiet tones around the sanctuary. Much like I can when God finally got my attention on that February day.

In the moments where God is revealed….even if it is His back we are able to glimpse (like Moses)….these stay with you forever, engrained upon your soul and picked apart in the darkness of isolation when it seems to be nothing more than just a dream that happened to someone else.

We pull them out in moments when we are afraid again……for comfort, for strength and for affirmation.

“Maybe God is taking you in a direction that may have never even considered,” my friend continued. (As I told you, she wrote a novella. Aspiring writer?)

My sweet spot, that place where I ‘pound my fists’ in passionate debate or fevered oratory, is and will always be preaching and ministry. What began as a simple, “This you’ll do for Me” picture of Gene Appel on-stage preaching about the neighborhood ministry he does has developed as I have been developed and discipled to be a Men’s pastor to the homeless, specifically Veterans (I am one). It is with this realization of why I’ve come to Ann Arbor, who has a larger-than-most concentration of homeless veterans who are men because of the location of the VA Hospital next to the University of Michigan’s hospital complex.

Of course, as seems to have been the case on all aspects of my “God moments,” it seems He’s only given the vision to me and hasn’t dissimulated it down the ‘chain-of-command’ of the organism called Church.

Its enough to make you want to throw it in and walk away from the whole mess. After all, why bother bloodying yourself upon the wall of disbelief for the purpose of nothing more than to be bloodied?

“The Enemy will whisper to you that you are not wanted...and having gone through some of the rejection you've endured in your life...” my friend writes, “it touches a wound for you.”

Part of my rejection of the whole corporate concept of the western church, far beyond its pretty modeling of how to ‘do church and succeed,’ is the uncomfortable feeling of isolation I have standing in the community that ebbs and flows within its brick and mortar walls. For some reason, I have never felt at home there surrounded by those who profess the same foundational beliefs as I do even as we stray from commonality with some doctrinal discussions. I crave this community and yet haven’t found a community that is ‘strong enough’ to endure my ‘integration’ into its life. I fear the rejection that has always come, and continues in some ways, in that community that I crave for the most.

Maybe the Hutterite or Mennonite communities would be a better choice for me to seek the aspect of community, or the strength of the same, that I crave for even as I realize the loneliness of being a loner. There, life is lived in community in all aspects and the health of the community is dependent on everyone who calls it home.

“You are a good man Jim...” my friend concludes her missive, “You are not your mistakes and failures... You are not your wounds...you are not your past. yes they are a part of you..but they are not you. Also you are not your expectations or the expectations of others...you are God's and His expectations are the ones that matter.”

And until God’s expectations are realized by those He’s equipped to send me where He would have me go, I’ll be chaffing at the bit. God continues to compel me to realize a life uncomfortable and as I remain uncomfortable, He moves further into the purpose He realized and set aside before I was born to be done in His strength, with His grace and through His mercy.

Learning to live with the rejection of those who can’t see it is something I’ll continue to learn how to deal with.

As I have all other things God has brought me through thus far.

I will never be a servant who hides the talents his Master has given him to be increased…..

I dare to dream impossible dreams, because I am loved.

Yes, I am worthless and fragile. I am destined to failure and prone to defeat. I am invaluable and useless. I am a broken piece of pottery and ugly. I am completely without merit and have rejected the wealth of my father's house. This the devil knows to be true, and in all honesty I cannot deny it. For I was all this and still am.

But through the grace of God and the love of His Only Begotten Son, I am not those things. I have been redeemed and strengthened by His sacrifice. I have a destiny to greater things than He Himself had done and the assurance of success. I am a King's son, adopted and inheritance-bound, and purposed to do the work of my Father's kingdom vision. I am valued beyond the wonders of His creation and looked for along the hills and valleys of the approaches to His home by He Himself. I have been restored to the wealth of my Father's lands and have found favor in His eyes. This the devil knows is true as well. This is what I am and what I was meant to be.

I will dream impossible dreams, because of who I was and who I was meant to be.

Courage begets honor

2011-03-22T05:08:00.000-07:00

"‘Forward, the Light Brigade!’/Was there a man dismay’d?/Not tho’ the solider knew/Someone had blunder’d/Theirs not to make reply/Theirs not to reason why/Theirs but to do & die/Into the valley of Death/Rode the six hundred/Cannon to right of them/Cannon to left of them/Volley’d & thunder’d/Storm’d at with shot and shell/Boldly they rode and well/Into the jaws of Death/Into the mouth of Hell/Rode the six hundred."

Alfred, Lord Tennyson wrote this poem to memorialize a suicidal charge of British light cavalry against Russian forces. It is the same war that propelled Florence Nightingale into renown for her battlefield nursing.

It is the poem that comes to mind when I read the devotional for the E.A.C.H. 33:3 preparation campaign.

“If you want favor with both God and man, and a reputation for good judgment and common sense, then trust the Lord completely; don’t ever trust yourself. In everything you do, put God first, and He will direct you and crown your efforts with success.” Proverbs 3:4-6 TLB

In the movie, “The Blind Side”, Michael Oher writes about the charge of the Light Brigade in the final essay of his senior year that drives his grade point average up to the point where he qualifies for a college sports scholarship and then into the fame of the NFL. He writes, “Sometimes it is best to shoot for courage and hope for honor.”

247 of the 637 British soldiers to charge the Russian position were killed or wounded, just over a third of the whole unit lay on the battlefield because of the mistake of someone who was in charge. Courage caused them to spur their steeds onward, honor kept them pushing forward. Honor, in that circumstance, is indeed something you find in the midst of the chaos and it is something that requires the courage to seek it within yourself.

A friend of mine told me that someone had once told her that one should take on the responsibilities of a desired role before actually attaining the title of that role. In the early church, there was a preacher, a teacher; proclaiming and confessing Christ as Lord.

Maybe that is why the Light Brigade and the verse have set off such a deep feeling for me. In all things, it is what you trust in (the men around you, your training, the leaders above you) that drives you to take courage and seek honor.

Even when the leadership tells you that the direction you see God calling you isn't the direction He's calling you. Courage to seek God's vision even if there's those who don't see it. Risking the cannon fire of those who can't dream so large. Taking courage so God can forge honor in the fire of trials.

That is all the success I hope for in the battles for the Kingdom; to be honorable for my King.

We have met the enemy.....

2011-03-20T11:52:00.000-07:00

"You are the light of the world. A city situated on a hill cannot be hidden. No one lights a lamp and puts it under a basket, but rather on a lampstand, and it gives light to all who are in the house. In the same way, let your light shine (your light must shine) before men, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven." Matthew 5:14-16 HCASB

"The church was intended to be a movement of changed lives," was one of the two points that Pastor Marshall Mobley of Mosaic A2 declared today. If you get the opportunity, you should go to www.mosaica2.org and download the mp3 to listen to it. Mosaic is part of the E.A.C.H. movement that is underway in SE Michigan to give E-veryone A C-hance to H-ear the Gospel. You can go to www.eachtoday.com or www.2wordstory.com for more information on joining this revival. Mosaic is currently into the third week of the 'why' of the story and it hosts small groups who are going through the 'how' of the story telling.

I would drive it deeper though....."The church was intended to be a movement of changed lives changing lives in a community of fluid, organic living, rather than being a stagnant, wall-dwelling operational base that sends out search-n-rescue parties to 'shock and awe' the enemy." We have a tendency to bulid a church wherever we can find the space and ignore the community around it, separating ourselves from them in huddles of 'saved' and the 'needing to be' categories and limiting our outreach in the community to vivable 'returns.' We live with an agenda God did not give us, of forcing transformation rather than living transformed lives to entice and teach others how they can live such life themselves and letting God deal with the 'heart, which no man can know.' I am glad I wasn't built for the brick and mortar, for now I understand why I don't feel the most comfortable there. It isn't the community that exists inside those walls, its the community that exists outside those walls. Pastor Mobley helped me realize some things like that today. And it isn't to say that the community within Mosaic's walls or the community within the walls of some other 400 churches that I know of that are part of the E.A.C.H. movement are not involved or trying to engage their communities that lie around the locations of their assemblies, too many are or are seeking real and heart-driven ways to live the Gospel in them, not in spite of them.

For too long, we have allowed the passion of the Church to be 'shock and awe' inspired attempts at 'community building' with the intentionality of 'congregational' building that we have lost the effectiveness of the mission; to be a community within the community reflecting God back into it to transform lives by our community of transformed lives. We have trained our pastors to be 'nice' with the Gospel and the Christian experience so as not to offend and incite the 'insurgents' against the mission of the Church and have downplayed the real meat and potatoes of the Gospel. We overlook the intent of God's plan for the Church and the development of its members; all members of the same family if the biblical truths are their foundations.

We have become a 'seek-n-rescue', 'hit-and-get' mobile group of guerrillas who never stay for long and consider our rapid success in surface transformation to be an inspired and God-led thing when the enemy leader, Satan, is simply waiting for time to come to his aid and negate our limited, fragile message of 'love, love, love' and 'joy' to be weathered away by the sands of this world. It is the intention of the E.A.C.H. grassroots movment to change that 'shock and awe' into the realistic and heartdriven intention of community building by living in the community and showing the Gospel truth in the life lived.

Paul showed us how to do it in Acts. It never was his intention to go somewhere and simply preach, erecting a few tents here and there for business sake (since he was a self-employed preacher) and then move on when either the community or the message ended. He preached, led others to Christ and then followed God's lead in the community there to create the bedrock of a church plant. Then he would move on to the next location God compelled him to. We are not 'preaching' something new and haven't had anything new to say in some 2,000 plus years. The message is the same, as Paul taught to the Athenians in the Areopagus, "what you worship in ignorance, this I proclaim to you." (Acts 17:23 HCASB)

We are attracting those who are coming to realize the emptiness of the pursuits of this world and answering the questions with the honesty of the Truth. As we do that, lives are being transformed and then discipled in the reality of the Gospel mission.

That is an army I want to be a part of and a mission that will not be over until the King returns!

Spiritual attack or indigestion?

2011-03-06T14:55:00.000-08:00

“Timothy, my child, I am giving you this instruction in keeping with the prophecies previously made about you, so that by them you may strongly engage in battle, having faith and a good conscience. Some have rejected these and have suffered the shipwreck of their faith.” (1 Timothy 1:18-19 HCSB)

I will write this post and leave for once my personal opinion out of it as much as possible. What happened is either spiritual warfare or simple self-piety…..or coincidence. You decide.

It was Thursday evening, the day after an amazing experience chasing after God for the entire day. It was an humbling experience to have God remove me out of the picture and then impose a ‘gag-rule’ by those in the team with me. I think that’s the longest I’ve ever been quiet since I learned how to make sounds into speech. He was faithful to show the wondrous plan He had made with Joan Bernard’s sermon and the effectiveness of her testimony….that coupled with the wonderful sounds of the Worship crew…and I thought it was a awesome worship that Lydia led as Nellie gave a sermon around a song she had written and Sarah added her voice to the echoes of God’s Word in the hallowed halls of the Bowery Chapel. Thursday morning was our final chapel that we were ‘responsible’ for and the whole house echoed with the men’s disappointment about that fact. Our time in the Bowery was winding down, so much more quickly than I realized.

The worship by the Mosaic Team and the Bowery Team went over and with Nellie’s sermon and Sarah’s the time rapidly disappeared……and it is very important as we have learned in our Bowery experience that everything end on time…they have listened to worship and service and are ready to eat. I passed on my ‘verse’ that I was going to read. I was a little upset about it, but realized that was selfish in nature and gave it to God. There really was no way to follow the powerful impact of Nellie’s gifting and offering. Which is why God ended the service as He did. I had spoke to Joan about my feelings and had them validated, that being a little jealous was not honoring to either my friend Nellie or God.

But for some reason I felt intense displeasure towards the evening and literally ran out of the Bowery Mission into the streets of New York’s lower Manhattan. I didn’t realize it then, but God removed His hand from me and left me to the wilds of the streets because I was burdened with self-doubt and uncertainty about my purpose and gift. Even if this is what God called me to, I didn’t feel equipped and purposed enough to do so, even though I was told I was more bold and confident in the pastoral end of the Bowery responsibilities than last year. Even though several members of the team expressed that they were blessed with the sermons and had been told by others in the Bowery the same.

A few nights when the duties of the Bowery were done, I wandered the streets of the area looking for homeless to invite to the shelter or to give some McDonald’s or to speak to so I could be immersed in the culture, the society and the experience. I felt it was important to God for me to do so so that I would be totally a servant to those who He had sent me and the team to minister to in the Bowery and the community who were served outside of the Disciple program that the Bowery runs. I was burdened heavily by the attitude of many New Yorkers towards the homeless; they were something to be ignored outside the community of the homeless shelters, something to be used for a sick type of entertainment in their environs and abused by those who were uncomfortable in the comforts of their lives that the homeless exposed as false satisfactions. It hurt and broken my heart to see these things. As Pastor Shannon said today, this is some of the things that cause me to pound my fists on the table with passion. I learned a lot about how the homeless perceive the ‘help’ and the ‘truthfulness’ of what they receive……………and some take advantage of while the core of them are simply surviving in grace.

One, constantly a source of amusement for both patron and employees at the McDonald’s across the Hudson Bridge I never got his name. He was one of the mentally challenged homeless that are scattered across the concrete environment of New York and a easy source of feeling superior to those around him. He was always being kicked out of the restaurant because he wasn’t buying food. He would sit there hunched over and very quiet, not muttering or making disturbing comments to patrons or even panhandling. But without fail, the employees would sent out the biggest and meanest looking among them to shame him into leaving. And the New Yorkers who were gathered there to enjoy their happy meals would watch. I approached him this night and asked him if I could buy him a meal….as I watched the employees gesturing and smiling at the thought of beginning the nightly eviction process. He swung around and pulled a switchblade knife on me. I guess I wasn’t too disturbed by it and we quickly resolved the problem. I bought him a meal and the employees hovered until he was done, promptly evicting him. Into the night he disappeared and I was never able to find him….I had followed him out as quickly as I could but he was enveloped into the darkness.

I wandered the streets for a while and came across one gentlemen who was hiding in the recess of a doorway. There was nothing unusual about this man, his dress and posture spoke of nights spent on the streets of New York and he made no threatening gestures or words to me. I simply said hello and felt the hairs on my neck stand up as he whispered a few words that I hadn’t heard in years…..”So, pretty boy, wanna play?” It was a phrase I had heard in several bars in several cities over the years when I was unsaved and they were the harbinger of a fight. I quickly turned and headed back to the Bowery, but the feeling of peace didn’t return and I tossed and turned all night long. Maybe, I reasoned as I woke up the next morning, it was simply coincidence and nothing to be upset about. I was invited to go out with my friend Mantell to do outreach in the Bronx with ‘Drew and I jumped full-heartedly into such an adventure. We dropped off extra donations at a small church in the South Bronx and over near Central Park where Will Smith filmed the movie “I am Legend.” We dropped off the rest of the bread and took some coolers with wheels over to the “Rescue Bus”, a ministry that travels from New Jersey over to New York and parks at various areas in the city with soup, hot liquids and occasionally clothes. It was our intention to see if some of the men wanted to come back to the Bowery in our empty truck and get showers/clothes for themselves. We had fifteen takers. In the clothing room back at the Bowery, one of the guys had problems finding a jacket. I emptied my pockets and gave him mine. He refused, until I offered to ‘trade’ him his windbreaker for my new coat. He finally agreed…….once the showers were over, the guys left the Bowery equipped with a Metro card to get them back to the areas they wanted to be. It was in the clothing area that the second ‘coincidence’ happened.

Several of the community homeless, those who were not in the Bowery Disciple program, were getting into verbal fights as they fought over the meager offerings of clothing at the Bowery. We managed to control the situation to a degree, with the calming influence of our teammate ‘Drew. But there were a couple that shook me to the core and I fled in fear from the Bowery’s clothing room. They were trading verbal abuses and I told them they would have to stop or they would both have to leave the Bowery. This is the rules and the homeless whom the Bowery serves are knowledgeable of them. One looked at me in the eye and said, “So, pretty boy, wanna play?” and made a gesture like he was going to ‘come at me.’ Maybe this was something surprisingly simple, but to me it was a full blast from my past down to the very gesture. My nose in slanted to one side because of the experience I speak of…..I still get migraines from the broken piece of my skull bone that lies in the indent between my eyes. It wasn’t the ‘blast from the past’ that caused me to flee, but the feelings familiar to those days of my past life that were suddenly in full force………I wanted to respond with the force he ‘threatened’ me with.

Maybe I’m making too much of a simple thing, mixing in my feelings of insecurity and my burdened heart about the insensitivity of communities all over the United States about the homeless. But the unusualness of the events and the feelings that they invoked make me wonder.

Spiritual warfare or something else?

Opportunity knocks.....

2011-03-02T06:44:00.000-08:00

“And it happened, as Aaron was speaking to all the congregation of the sons of Israel, they turned toward the wilderness. And, behold! The glory of Jehovah appeared in the cloud!” (Exodus 16:10 LITV)

God presents us with opportunities, opportunities in which if we step into the unknown and follow that one small voice. We spend our ‘due diligence’ in preparation for the service that we’ve surrendered to God and it is our best presentation. But, if we bring our best to the table, it will never be enough. We are a broken, disbelieving people even as we trust in Christ to deliver upon the promise that He has made as His hands were stretched out and nailed to the Cross. Even then, as we walk into the life of disciples following Christ, growing in faith and obedience, we are at our best a broken and fallen people undeserving of the best of the Gospel promise but given it the same.

In those opportunities, God takes our best freely and fully given to Him and amplifies it to become something far beyond our abilities to deliver; something so special that we can recognize the presence of the Spirit wherever it occurs. It happened last year at the Bowery Mission and it happened again today at the Bowery Street home we share with the men of the Bowery.

Two weeks ago, I was prompted by God to go up to Joan Bernard and tell her, “You are going to preach one sermon at the Bowery.” No ‘please’, no ‘would you consider’ but rather a direct ‘command’ from God. She agreed and it has been a blessing to watch the transformation. When we got to the Bowery and I was given our ‘chapel responsibility’ schedule, I gave Joan the choice of when she wanted to do her sermon. She chose Wednesday afternoon.

But God had other plans.

Last night, after my sojourn of eight miles through the ‘wilds’ of New York, I came back with my cold in full effect to the point where I was losing my voice. And anyone who knows me knows there's not that stops me from talking….except losing my voice. I tried to get some good sleep and medicated myself as best I could. I even went to sleep earlier so that I’d get extra recovery time. And when I got up this morning, it was better but not good enough apparently for God’s work.

So I was given an opportunity to literally step out of the way of the work that God was doing and allow someone else He had selected to be the momentum to His glory; Joan.

And was able to sit back and watch God glorified.

As a daughter of the most High King and a son of the same walked into the leadership roles He had prepared for them to glorify His name. John stepped into a leadership role in the worship, singing the song “My God” and I knew my stepping back into a supportive role was God-designed rather than self-imposed, because as Joan stepped up to the pulpit and began her sermon…..God walked in the room and joined the Spirit which had come in during John’s presentation of worship.

And, as we well know, God rocks the house.

Once again, as I sat there praying over Joan’s service God showed His pleasure in His daughter by amplifying her best and making it the awesome and inspirational presentation of His word. And the glories that arose were all His.

Of course, He gave me an affirmation of what He had planned all along….for what Joan spoke of this morning, God’s given me the ‘closing’ statement on it for this afternoon.

Powerful indeed are the works of the Lord.

A lesson in humility though, first, before I can present God’s word this afternoon. The team, concerned for my voice, have imposed a ‘gag-rule’ on me until 12:15 when chapel starts. I cannot say a word, giving my voice a period of time to rest. I am not worried, though about being silent…….

God’s provided me with enough paper to ‘speak my peace’ well into the afternoon.

As they say here at the Bowery, “God is good!” All the time, everytime!!!

Boldness

2011-03-01T11:32:00.000-08:00

“Then having such hope, we use much boldness.” (2 Corinthians 3:12 LITV)

Its been hard trying to get some time since I walked through the Red Doors again for the Bowery Mission 2011; in terms of wind-down time, no Wi-Fi access and Bowery living. It makes me glad that I’ve got the opportunity today to sit down at the Central Library, just down from Central Station and rest my very aching bones and feet with some ‘modern conveniences.’ When we arrived at the Bowery after 14 hours of busing, walking, train-riding, walking, subway-ing and more walking, it was with delight that we found the volunteer rooms had undergone transformation. Installed were blinds (nice ones), and painted surfaces with some modern looking and feeling metal bunk beds with extra thick mattresses. Bill, the supervisor who was such a great friend last year, was on duty and couldn’t stop grinning from ear to ear. It was the beginning of the process for me, opening myself to the wonders anew that God would present here at the Bowery Street Mission.

Of course, our arrival in New York wouldn’t have been complete without Ray’s Pizza…….as a group we trouped back up Prince Street and sat down inside the tiny little ‘to go’ part of the business. 15 people quickly claimed that space as their own.

My heart has been broken anew even as my eyes are opened to the things I missed before, the very humanism of the Bowery and the dynamic flexible intense relationship it invites and demands of us all. The all too real agenda side of some of the members of the community here and how it is dealt with with the disciples of the community…..not in anger but with patience and understanding. It is not the perfect and ideal place, rather it is a place where God walks and is dynamic and fluid and attentive to those who would listen and that specialness is lost on those who refuse to see it.

I miss having Shannon Carey here because I could decompress and unwind with her, discussing those things I’ve seen and the experiences (yes, it has been ONE day) that I have been confronted with. The discussion of the preaching on Monday morning, the first time I’ve ever seen anyone preach with Ali, one of the supervisors of the program there, and just the connection of two men who shared only a cup of coffee had with bringing the Word to the Community. It was as if we had discussed the balance and synergy of the preaching to use---it was that blended and supportive of each other with the power to drive one of the disciples in the program up to surrender the rest of what he was holding back to the community. Sheldon, gentle warrior, got it all. Since that time, Ali has been walking around calling me “Pastor” even after I spend all day yesterday telling him no, I’m just Jim. But there is a boldness about my steps and a big grin on my face. I am indeed 'home.'

Speaking with boldness, expecting without timidity and demanding in earnest that God break me again and again in His wisdom and direction here.

We went to Tromley Park for outreach yesterday with my dear friend Mantell who was a student last year when I was here and now is a supervisor of Outreach for the Bowery this year. It is the first time that a volunteer got to drive the Bowery Outreach truck and I must admit that I kept the experience as true to the original I had last year as I could. Hearing the exclamation “I’m airborne” after we headed back proves that I got it right. There is nothing like New York roads and New York Drivers……and giving the keys to a Michigan boy probably isn’t the best idea they had. :D

This morning I was introduced to Pastor John who was delivering the message at morning chapel since we were off for the day. When we went into chapel, Ali insisted I sit up on the stage with Pastor John and he ‘because you are one of the leaders in this house this morning….’ I was told. When I remarked that I wasn’t, that Joseph was, he laughed and pointed to the chair…..

Tomorrow morning and afternoon, we’re responsible for the Chapel and Thursday morning as well and that will conclude our chapel ‘responsibilities.’ Please keep Joan Bernard in prayer as she shapes and molds her sermon for Wed. Afternoon carefully with prayerful insight and questions. Keep Nellie in prayer as she expressed some need for some time on Thursday’s service to answer God’s call. Keep Jay, Casey and Sarah in prayer as God shapes and leads them this week….they were the first God called to be prayed over by the group at our meeting last night.

When I woke up yesterday morning, it hit me like a ton of bricks……”this is home.”

Oh, not the Bowery Street Mission or even the environs of New York City…..

But living in the intensity of God’s work, being a small part of the larger picture He calls us all to join in as His children, His redeemed and His saved.

This morning, after serving breakfast and helping the Bowery guys clean up, we headed out to a restaurant to have some breakfast before we departed as individual groups to our planned (or in my case unplanned) outings. It was a great time of fellowship.

But then I got the ‘hair-brained’ idea to go with one group down to the Statue of Liberty at Battery Park. After the group was ‘settled’ in, Drew and I spilt from them and headed out……..

From Battery Park to Central Library.

Can someone come help me get back to the Bowery???

I don’t think I can walk anymore………..

God's calling......

2011-02-26T02:11:00.000-08:00

“Coastlands, listen to me; distant peoples, pay attention. The LORD called me before I was born. He named me while I was in my mother's womb.” (Isaiah 49:1 HCSB)

I can remember last year at this time, tossing and turning in my bed as I pondered the question presented to me, “Why do you have to go to New York to work with the homeless?” I can remember finding the answer to that question behind the Red Bowery Doors in lower Manhattan, near Ground Zero and the Statue of Liberty, in the land of the ‘no-eye-contact’ people and cast systems that defy even the logic of their own thinking; Upper East Side, Bronx and so on. I can remember that special someone who helped me stay the course and travel to a place I’d never would've gone on my own. I remember and am humbled by her strength.

Shannon helped God awaken in me a realization of a future where the work wasn’t quite what I had thought and is definitely more extreme and more challenging and more terrifying. By encouraging me to go into that place, far from where I could effectively and quietly escape, she helped God present me with His purpose, His challenge and His mercy. And as much as I’ll miss sharing that teammate feeling with her and will miss the energy that consumed her and all those around her while we worked in the Mission last year, I look forward to the new teammates that are undertaking this adventure to be a part of the work God’s doing in the Manhattan bough of New York City.

I have a charter to do for the University today, a short three hour shift and then its off to collect a donation to support this trip from my Pastor of the church plant I attend on Sunday night . After that, its off to see my children for a few hours since they’ve been gone visiting their mother during their spring break and I’ll not be seeing them for another week as I go off on this mission’s trip and they get an extra week off work because babysitting didn’t come through as expected. Then I’m going to explore the relationship that I left hanging with Vineyard Church by participating in their “Rotating Shelter” for the homeless of Washtenaw. After I get home, I’ll pack the borrowed bag I’m getting and get a few hours sleep before I go to Trinity to ‘catch the bus’ over to WCC to get the rest of the team with Dino and Joseph, the other two drivers and teammates for this journey.

In a little more than twenty-four hours, the Mosaic A2 team will depart the environs of Ann Arbor Michigan for the distant, coastal lands of New York State. Some are old hands; Joseph, the team leader and Dawn, a few others. The majority are ‘newbies’ who bring talents and skills to this year’s team that make it as unique and God-designed as last year’s was.

Keep us in your prayers, both for the trip there and the arrival.

I think I hear the faint call of God beckoning me to those Red Doors.

Team Mosaic Bowery bound

2011-02-24T11:06:00.000-08:00

“Call to Me and I will answer you and tell you great and wondrous things you do not know.” (Jeremiah 33:3 HCSB)

It is three days and a wake up call before the Mosaic A2 group departs the Michigan boundaries for the great state of New York and the lower Manhattan bowers where the Bowery Mission is to serve for a week in the homeless program there. Last year, being the ‘naïve’ innocent I was, I wasn’t ready for the impact that God would deliver in that place…..where I was confronted with His love, grace and mercy in such ways that I was humbled and broken by the time I left. This year, knowing the power of God to transform lives and hearts makes me nervous and challenged.

“Be the change you want to see in the world” was nicely stickered on the back of a vehicle in front of me on the way from the VA. It’s a quote from Gandhi, that Indian Philosopher that is celebrated for his non-violence doctrine and is oft quoted in context to Christians about how he likes Christ but not Christians since they are so unlike Christ. I think most of the time we are more focused on the change that we don’t realize that we have to be an embodiment of that change before we can vocalize it to the world. I have spent most of my Christian life arguing against the establishment of the human church to be a voice in the work that God has called me to. There have been those who have heard my ‘cries’ and seen the anointing and there are those who look first for a piece of paper and then the ‘signs’. I have given up arguing, for there is plenty of work to be done even without that calling.

Lately, I’ve just been stepping out in confidence that whatever God wants me to do, He’ll provide the proper credentials to do it.

‎"Such is the confidence that we have through Christ toward God. Not that we are sufficient in ourselves to claim anything as coming from us, but our sufficiency is from God, who has made us competent to be ministers of a new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit. For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life." 2 Corinthians 3:4-6

I have written a few posts about the Bowery and the verses that God is laying upon my heart, knowing with anticipation that these are the things that He wants me to broach at the chapel sessions and totally clueless yet on how He wants me to do it. All in due time, my God is a God of last minutes because in the last minutes is where I tend to give up the reins and let Him do His work with my hands. After all, I am fully aware of how man can screw up even God’s handiwork. If you don’t believe me, look at His bride, the church.

We are leaving this year without a few of the dynamic personalities that made last year such an impacting trip but we carry with us new faces that have accepted the challenge of God to go into this place and be His ambassadors. We have no chance of repeating the major impact that the team had last year at the Bowery on that Thursday night chapel service where the walls were shook and the foundation quaked. Nor would I expect our team to do so. No, I expect that God will make a bigger and more personal impact on the lives and direction of those whom we come into contact at the Bowery and the team mates who are serving with me there. I am eagerly anticipating how God will shake a city block and rock the foundations of all who reside there.

Saturday night, I will be serving at the rotating shelter that is at Vineyard Church this week. Then its home to pack up and get a few hours shuteye before I go to pick up the bus that Trinity is letting us take to travel to New York to meet the team at the WCC for a departure of 7am. We’d love to have those who are so inclined either begin to pray for us or come to WCC to pray us off as we depart on this grand adventure for the Kingdom.

Maybe this time I’ll even come back with all my clothes……..

A noble work

2011-02-22T20:44:00.000-08:00

"This saying is trustworthy: "If anyone aspires to be an overseer, he desires a noble work." An overseer, therefore, must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, self-controlled, sensible, respectable, hospitable, an able teacher, not addicted to wine, not a bully but gentle, not quarrelsome, not greedy-- one who manages his own household competently, having his children under control with all dignity. (If anyone does not know how to manage his own household, how will he take care of God's church?) He must not be a new convert, or he might become conceited and fall into the condemnation of the Devil. Furthermore, he must have a good reputation among outsiders, so that he does not fall into disgrace and the Devil's trap." (1^st Timothy 3:1-7 HCSB)

These verses were given to me to ‘chew on’ and seek some answers to some questions prompted by my mentor. The thing that hits me first is that anyone aspiring to be an overseer (pastor, elder, leader in the Christian body) is seeking a noble thing, something that is of worthy note and trustworthy to say of those whom have this ‘affliction of the Spirit.’ And, that prompts me to ask the obvious question of who wouldn’t want to pursue ‘noble’ work in the community of Christ. It strikes me though, as I remember the reading I’m doing of Timothy Keller’s “The Prodigal God” that sometimes our intention in doing the ‘noble work’ is nothing more than a ‘what can I get’ elder brother entitlement.

Of course, immediately around this corner of praise for the desire to do ‘noble work’ comes the roadblock I’ve dealt with most of my life; the ‘above reproach’ or ‘blameless’ in other translations. I am far from being blameless in my eyes; I still struggle and commit sins (I will never be totally perfect). I am far from an ‘ideal’ overseer if this is the case, well beyond my ‘nobility of purpose.’ And it depresses me. The Free Dictionary defines blameless as an adjective meaning free of guilt and not subject to blame. The Thesaurus adds inculpable, irreproachable or unimpeachable to the words similar to blameless. Vincent’s Word Studies give what I think is the best definition…. “without reproach: one who cannot be laid hold of : who gives no ground for accusation.” Can I say that I have given no ground for accusation? There is a difference between being accused and giving a reason to be accused.

The husband of one wife is an easy one, even with the divorce in my life from my ex. I am grounded in biblical basis for the divorce and that is enough said. A friend has asked me if I saw a reuniting in the future, ever, and I had to disagree because of the differenting paths of belief that we’ve both taken since that time. But I believe that God can do all things and right now He has shown me in powerful ways the idol I have made of an intimate relationship with a woman that destroys His rightful place in my life. So, I can feel relatively ‘safe’ in meeting the requirement of being of ‘one woman.’ There isn’t any.

It is the continuing list that has me alternating between ‘respectful yes-s’ and ‘shameful no-s.’

Thinking about this verse, and the ones that are usually ‘thrown’ up with these in support (see Titus 1:6-9), just makes me wonder why I bother and why I even seem to not learn to stop beating my head against the wall of improbability and impossibility when it comes to the vision I have been given and the vision that many other see that doesn’t even come close. Why do I dream of lofty places when most people think I belong down in the valleys? Not saying that my mentor does, but that’s the context in which these verses have been presented to me in the past.

I am not overseer material, apparently.

I do not dream of buildings with my name upon the entrances, plaques strewn about the hallways of commerce or avenues of merit. I don’t think of books with my names on them that become the literary staple of college courses. I don’t dream of millions upon millions that lift my name up as the one major factor in realizing the hope of their future, the joy of their life and the meaning behind the mysteries that float in the skies of their dreams at night. I do not envision a multi-sited, mega-sized and incorporated entity bearing my character in its motions and meetings.

I dream of nobility.

When I think of a noble work, I think of a soup kitchen line of hungry people clad in clothes that are too threadbare and worn to be considered for sale at the Salvation Army and the greatest honor of being able to ladle food on a plate with a smile and a kind word. I think of clasping a new friend on the back of the shoulder, the prelude to a hug (for brothers don’t shake hands, they hug). I think of faces breaking into cracks as smiles light up their faces because they have the inescapable feeling that they are loved, that they are cherished and that they have been seen.

I have been there, where the people of the Bowery Mission are and what they have faced. I have seen addictions like they have, I have experienced sorrow so deep it transforms a life once so full of joy as they have and I have been homeless as some of them still will be. I have been at the wits end of my life, trying suicide to stop the pain and watched the world gang up on me to consume me and I have swallowed the bitter pill of realizing that I cannot even do that. I have been where they are living and what they have going through.

I dream of them experiencing the hope I have found and seeing the transformation of the world as I have through the eyes of a Savior. I dream of seeing the hope renewed daily in their eyes as they feel the big, hairy and massive arms of a Father wrapped around them as His robe is thrown over their shoulders and a fatted calf is sacrificed for a big party.

I dream of standing outside the Pearly gates of Heaven and smiling as they pass by to feast at their Father’s banquet, not for some recognition in their faces or a kind word in passing but to see them once again coming home to their Mansions and no more wants. I dream of rattling off their names; Raymond, Cuba, Johnny, Peter, Marvin, Chris, Jose, Joshua, Irvin, Bobby, Ernie, Carl, Sory, Allen, Ezequiel, Cyde and Johnathan and seeing that hope dawning forever in their faces as they are greeted by Jesus and surrounded by those who love and cherish them.

Titles and positions can be thrown into the dirt over the chance to do such noble work. The rest is relative.

A canvas

2011-02-22T06:09:00.000-08:00

“But you are our letter, and you are in our hearts for everyone to read and understand. You are like a letter written by Christ and delivered by us. But you are not written with pen and ink or on tablets made of stone. You are written in our hearts by the Spirit of the living God.” (2 Corinthians 3:2-3 CEV)

The time grows closer when I’ll be returning to New York’s lower Manhattan to be part of the continuing work led by Tom and the people of the Bowery Mission to reach out to the homeless community in the New York area. I grow alternately excited and nervous, joyful and fearful, as it approaches. There will be friends made from last year still in the program there and there will be new faces flushed with the acknowledgement of God’s hand upon them. Some of the community that is served at the Bowery will be the same, a year older and worn by their experiences on the streets and some will not be returning…..their time on this world having passed. That is why I experience such range of emotions and feelings.

When I am praying at my desk, pondering over the words that God has given me today or the thoughts of a mentor, a friend or the words of my children; I stare at the red apron displayed on the wall above it. Listed are the names of the workers and the men in the program and some of those in the community who were served during our time at the Bowery last year. Joshua, Martin, Marvin, Jose, Cuba and so many others. The apron, which only had “The Bowery Mission: Rebuilding Lives since 1879” on it, is covered now in black marker with very little space left to display only red cloth. It reminds me of the sins redeemed by the blood of Christ, it reminds me of the men and women of the Bowery community who have begun a journey towards home and it reminds me of one other thing……a canvas, a blank sheet of paper and a empty picture frame.

An artist friend of mine in Australia doesn’t see a blank, white canvas before her when she begins to transform it into a work of artistic expression (I hesitate to say “work of art” because she tends to disagree, but they are). The ‘emptiness’ that stares back at her isn’t something that needs to be filled with nonsense, it beckons her to bring its unique expression out for those of us ‘blind’ to the wonder of its art to see. It is the artist’s talent and passion that brings it out with clarity for us to appreciate. In much the same way, the photographer doesn’t look at the picture and select any old frame to put it in but rather looks for the unique and most complimentary frame to surround the picture to which it has been selected to hold. Not so that our eyes are drawn to the frame to express the appreciation of its borders but to draw our eyes inward to the picture and the story that it tells.

To a writer, the blank page (lined or unlined) is not simply something in which to write randomness on, to draw simplistic renderings of the world around them but to write a story…a letter to those whom they know of a beautiful story of events, people and places to take the reader upon a journey into that story so they may enjoy the beauty and splendor of it as well.

The beauty of the canvas, the blank sheet of paper and the empty picture frame is that once they are filled with the essence of what they were meant to convey, they can be viewed by anyone and the expression of the joyful story explained by the artist is open for everyone to enjoy.

I don’t go to the Bowery to write my own story of what is going on there in the boughs of Manhattan….I go to read the story of God’s redeeming love and grace as expressed on the canvases of the community there.

To be transformed, to be humbled and to be challenged by the writing hand of the Father.

A Letter Home

2011-02-20T05:36:00.000-08:00

Dear God,

It was great to get to spend time with You last night, just You and me one on one. It is always a delight and a growing experience to me to sit at Your feet and listen, to be totally immersed into what Your visions cast and Your words bring to life. It is always with a heavy heart that I have to get up and watch You go on Your way. I know it is unusual for me to write a letter to you, what with the instant communication that we share nowadays, but I wanted to express in writing like I used to my appreciation for our relationship. A permanent record of what I feel for You and what You are doing in my life, through my life and with my life. Much like Your record of love letters You've written to me that I call the Bible.

Remember all the times You told me that I had to be ‘like a child’ in my pursuit of You? That such simplicity would be the only way I’d enter the Heavenly gates? I’ve never really understood that until tonight, as You spoke to me through the “Letters to God” movie. Tyler was both physically and spiritually a child in his relationship with You. A child dying of cancer who had lived more than I have as an adult. Although there was no indication of Your answering him, in the end lying in front of him on that stage were the results of the work You had set his hands to and it was beautiful. It is there that I realized what You meant by ‘as a child.’ The simplicity of faith in a world that denies it unless it is instantly proven.

You have brought me far on this journey home and there is not a moment of true depreciation that I’ve ever experienced, though sometimes in the darkness after the campfire burns low and the night falls silent I may have quailed before the enormous size of the task at hand. You have shaped me and molded me into a warrior with a cause, a special operations member of a team designed to fight in the darkness for those lost. Help me, my Friend and Mentor, to have that simplistic faith of a child in the tasks You are preparing for me.

You know those momentary distractions that keep me from a focus totally on Your work; the financials, the family and the daily minuet that carries my attention away from the true dance of the redeemed. You know that I trust in You to provide what my family and I need so that we can use what we’ve been given to reach out to those who don’t know you. That line from the Cars movie echoes in my head, “I elicit feelings in others that they themselves don’t understand.” I would trust that those feelings that my life and my words elicit reflect You and brings those people to Your gentle knocking on their doors for a relationship such as the one we share.

There are many things we talked about last night, my dearest Friend, and many grand adventures You and I have left to take upon this earth if what You said was true (and I have learned You never not tell the Truth). There are many titles that people will give me; Chaplain, Pastor, Friend, Father, Brother, Fool, Idiot and Disillusioned Man. Some will believe and see Your Spirit anointing me anew into the purpose to which You have set me to. Some won’t. But, just as they did with You, calling You many names (Savior, Messiah, Fool, Fake), I trust that You will carry me into the Will and Purpose of Your design as our Father in Heaven carried You.

You told me that You have enabled me to do greater things that You Yourself did while You were here on this earth and my mind cannot grasp at the sheer audacity of such vision. You said that You were molding me for that purpose set before I took my first breath upon this world and I still wonder if I am worthy of such grand dreams. You mentioned that there is still work to be done, still souls to be saved and that time is growing short.

I humbly submit all that I have, am and will be to You to use as You see fit.

I look forward to our next time where I once again can sit at Your feet and just hear You speak the Truth into my life to the point of overflowing so that I can in turn be a source of its utterance into a world gone mad with its own reality.

I am, and always will be, in Your service.

Love,

Jim

The Prodigal Father with two sons.....

2011-02-09T08:37:00.000-08:00

“The younger of them said to his father, 'Father, give me the share of the estate I have coming to me.' So he distributed the assets to them. Not many days later, the younger son gathered together all he had and traveled to a distant country, where he squandered his estate in foolish living……….But [the older son] replied to his father, 'Look, I have been slaving many years for you, and I have never disobeyed your orders, yet you never gave me a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends. But when [the younger son] of yours came, who has devoured your assets with prostitutes, you slaughtered the fattened calf for him.' (Luke 15:12-13, 29-30 HCSB)

I knew this parable, now correctly identified theologically as “The Story of Two Sons”, as the Prodigal Son and have written on my blog about it. The worst thing in the world I ever heard was, “You are just like your father.” The first comment caused me, when I left home at the age of sixteen and turned my back on ‘The Church” to hate looking in the mirror because I was reminded of whom I looked like. Granted, my father was no saint and did a lot of things that were wrong but I understand him more and the wounds that he himself carried in the darkness of this world. Indeed, we were very much alike.

I left home at sixteen, boldly telling both my fathers (earthly as well as the heavenly) that I was done with them and would be a shining example of the problematic son that would only bring grief in the telling of who’s I was. A majority of my testimony I’ll probably never tell in one sitting because of the places I went and the darkness I wrapped myself up into. Much like the younger son, whom squandered the inheritance, I was for the majority of my life. I even squandered the financial inheritance my father sent me a few months after I left home. I was, in my opinion, everything my earthly father hated in one of his offspring. What I didn't know is that everyday my heavenly Father looked longingly down the road for my profile to crest the hill.

The greatest thing I ever heard on this earth was, “I was never, for one minute, ashamed of you.” I can remember sitting down in the living room of my earthly father’s trailer on the farm in Gladwin and telling him I had traveled up there to ‘bury the hatchet’ for my own sake, if not for him. I was tired of running away from myself because of who I reminded myself of and I was sorry that I had been a son of whom he was ashamed. The shock on his face, along with the words he spoke, was not what I had practiced for or expected. We didn't suddenly become close, hugging and weeping in each other’s arms and when he passed away a few months later, the intensity of the sorrow was partly for that lack of intimate love a father and son should have had…..but, that step was part of the journey I began to take to understand the man I knew as my father. To this day, I look in the mirror and thank God for the memory that presents itself to me of the man known as Ronald Lawrence Hutson.

I thought my connection to this parable ended there, but my heavenly Father taught me something in the last year that had me realize that this was not true.

Against my heavenly Father, I have been an older son too, especially in regards to the pursuit of His purpose for me. It has been a struggle, fighting the wounds of the past and dealing with the circumstances of my sinful life. I am very much older, physically, than my chronological age because of the abuses I once visited upon a body I didn't care for and the emotional scarring that was allowed in the darkness to tighten and limit my mental health. Much of the last year has been a ‘quieting’ of the ‘What about me?” syndrome that has haunted the lessons and discipling that the Lord has put me through, at my request, because I have surrendered all I am to His shaping. It has been hard, this redemption of my mind and soul, because I've struggled with the concept of love and mercy and grace…..and why, if I was ‘doing so well’ I still faced the struggles I did. Much like the older son, I wanted the bigger portion because I had done the ‘bigger’ growing.

The greatest thing I've ever heard from the Heavens is “"'Son,' he said to him, 'you are always with me, and everything I have is yours.””

As always, I have learned, it is a choice that you have to make; both initially and continuously, whether you will remain outside the party in anger at the celebration of sibling or go inside to raise your heart in praise at what the Father has done.

And that is a prodigal move either way.

God moment....

2011-01-23T13:26:00.000-08:00

“God, Your faithful love is so valuable that people take refuge in the shadow of Your wings. They are filled from the abundance of Your house; You let them drink from Your refreshing stream, for with You is life's fountain. In Your light we will see light. Spread Your faithful love over those who know You, and Your righteousness over the upright in heart.” (Psalms 36:7-10 HCSB)

It is not that often, gathered with the immediate members of the vast family of God, that my mind wanders and my thoughts drift away from the course of the message being given or the lesson being taught. Because I so love to listen to the virtues of the Word and the imagery that He’s given to someone about a particular passage or thought that is being expounded upon. I used to be, in the earliest of my new life, particular about the whole ‘functionality’ of the pastorship and those who are put (or put themselves) into positions of leadership for a congregation simply because it was MY ears they were reaching and it was MY family in which they were ‘in charge.’ I’m probably not alone in that, and it is a sad state of affairs that the body is so fractured because of the human side of the equation…..we still tend to elevate those in pastoral, directorship and even elderships into extremely isolated pockets were only the godly can walk (or so we assume) and the righteous lounge without fear of eviction (or so we believe).

It is not that often even absent of the fellow believers that I know (even if they don’t know me) that I wander when approaching the manner of being in the Word. There have been only a few times, and a few choice places, where the ‘fortunate’ occurrence takes place….without my noticing, at least in the beginning…

I call them ‘God-moments’ because the clarity and profound peace that I feel during them can only mean He is very near……..molecules of air close…..

Worship was heightened for me today, I just couldn’t seem to stop smiling even as my heart was carried away by the essence of the songs…the words both meaningless and profoundly impacting, even though I’ve heard them before. The worship band, led by Marshall Mobley, performed both as they normally do (exceptional) and with an apparent brush of the divine whispering amongst the chords and strums, beats and depressions made on the musical instruments and interspersed among the amplified voices of the singers. It wasn’t that Nellie Fowles was helping or even that she gave a powerful reading from the Word, stepping boldly into a powerful song with a heart dripping with the passion brought on by the Holy Spirit…something I’ve seen her do, miles away behind some dark red doors in a environment called New York City.

Maybe it was her voice so burdened with a heart for God that tripped the ‘God moment’ for me, or at least started the turning of my world into the mystical, peaceful and charged place where God sits in the Holy of Holies. If so, I owe her a debt of thanks.

Maybe it was the heartfelt prayer before service, where I asked to be emptied of the blessings given before that moment so that all could be filled with an overwhelming, overfilling amount of the Spirit so that we were driven into the streets burning with the flame of the redeemed.

Maybe it was my son, as they read off the announcements today and the Bowery Street Mission trip was once again mentioned, who tugged on my arm and whispered as I leaned close, “You’re going there, Dad!”

Most likely, it was simply a matter of God’s success in getting and securing my attention beyond the realm of the physical and the mental. A firm grip on the hand of His son, a moment where the world was put on hold as we sat together and He displayed the wonders of the plans that He set aside for me even before the world I know began. A simple invitation to “Come, worship Me.”

I know it wasn’t Shannon Nielsen, the lead pastor for the church I go to called Mosaic A2, and his need today to expound upon the minutia of the story of Jacob, Leah and Rachel that is the central focus for the topic today from Tim Keller’s book, Counterfeit Gods….. how marrying your cousin and marrying more than one wife was not the ‘truth’ of the Bible but rather humanity’s customs at the time that bothered me to the point of drifting, though I was bothered by the necessity that seemed to overwhelm the meat of the topic today, “Love is not all you need”, by a defense of what was being read. A momentary thought of annoyance drifted in my mind and was gone, as was my centering on the voice coming from the stage.

I spotted Shannon Carey sitting down in the seats on the main level (I have taken to sitting in the back upper level, off to the side) and I was filled with a happiness for her, a certain and expressed ‘knowing’ that whatever God was facing with her, whatever dealings He whispered in her ears as she swam the mighty oceans of His Word or whatever prompting He was gently prodding her with was a great and mighty thing that is leading her closer and closer to the ‘sweet spot’ He’s reserved for her even before her world was begun. I would’ve loved to be a part of that, just to watch it unfold in the life of such a special daughter of God, but that seems to be a momentary, selfish wish that isn’t going to happen. Maybe it was meant to be but was altered by the wounds of this world, but I think it wasn’t meant to unfold other than the way it did. Still, I know our paths will cross again someday as God draws us both into the paths He would have us walk as we journey towards home. And in the end of it all, that is what matters. Today, that was a moment glimpsed that God gave me to settle a part of this life.

There were others in the group, this band of members that I fellowship with silently among the borders of their community, where I felt a heightened sense of “blam, there He is” or “Hoooray, He walks there”….. some that I have known and been known by and others who, though part of the same family and community, have never crossed that invisible line between seen and being known. But each seemed to glow with a certain light or a different posture that whispered “God’s there” to me.

For me, I was ensnared by the picture I carry in my bible from the Bowery trip last year, one of many that are stuck in the zippered outer compartment of my bible pack……..one of the Red Bowery Doors and nothing else.

I want to go back to behind those doors, I realized today, with a very intense and powerful desire. Tim Keller tells us to think about what we daydream and what whispers in the darkness of our sleep, for there are what the gods of our lives reside and drawn their enslavement of our hearts from. Even good things, born of a desire that shadows out God and replaces our relationship with Him for the objects hidden behind our mind’s eye. It is not my desire to go to the Bowery Street Mission because it’s a week away from the kids, family responsibility and a chance to travel; nor because I want to be preaching again at the famous Bowery Chapel where Presidents and other notable figures have stood and given God’s Word to the community there. In the intensity of the God-moment today, it was simply one reason and one reason alone.

To be joyfully broken by my God.

To be used as an instrument after being crafted again at His hand, to embolden and incite a community and to be a piece of the work that is being overseen by the Holy Spirit and those God has emplaced in that city to be His eyes, ears, hands and feet to a people who would turn from His salvation for the lack of experience.

The money needed to go will come, the ‘babysitter’ for the kids will be identified and the experience of the Bowery will once again grow me further and farther than I have been in a week for in the midst of the desire to be an instrument for the caring of His people, both the lost and the found, there is the welcomed opportunity to be shaped and molded by walking alongside Him in the work He is doing.

As the service wound down and the moment that I was given to walk hand in hand, step to step with my God faded into the backdrop of this reality, all I could do is whisper;

“Wow, what a great and mighty God is He……”

The night He burned those idols down

2011-01-17T10:32:00.000-08:00

"He knows what He is doing with me, and when He has tested me, I will come forth as pure gold" Francis I. Anderson "Job: An introduction and Commentary" Job 23:10

(as quoted from Timothy Keller’s book Counterfeit gods: The empty promises of money, sex, and power and the only hope that matters.)

It has been a long and difficult 2010, not because of the events that have happened along the way. No, the things that have made 2010 difficult haven’t been consequences, though they definitely were felt; haven’t been the deep disconnection that has come from the breakup with Shannon, though I must admit to being deeply wounded from that departure; hasn’t been the difficulties with the job search, one year and two months (and counting) or the opinions that surface as the time moves on and opportunities fail and chances are missed; hasn’t been the health aspect of my physical body (back in braces for the hands, taking high blood pressure medicine, high heart rate medicine, high cholesterol medicine) and increase in weight gain. It seems everything that has transpired has brought me to the place where I needed to be so that God’s sculpting could commence with purpose.

Keller speaks of the sin beneath the sin, the foundational cement upon which idols are set, unconsciously worshiped and pinned for, to the absence and rejection of God. It is that sin, the one I recognized in my life for the past year, especially the first six months of the relationship I was blessed to experience with Shannon, that drove the consequences and results into the mire of my despair and why God has brought me back to this place I thought I’d never see again. It is a place where I know I’ll have to come time and time again as I journey into the purpose He has set for me, however He decides to work it out and how it is envisioned by the Holy Spirit…..for even as I get closer to home, the danger of erecting similar idols will increase for I know where He would have me go is not for the faint hearted.

The cold bitter wind blows hard in this place, so hard I am surprised I can breathe. It is impossible to light the fire here; there is no fuel for it anyway. I can only shiver in the numbing cold and pour my broken, bitter and angry heart out to a God that I turn away from even as I call His name…. the idol of my sin blocking my sight of even His distant light.

As Paul says in Romans, God has ‘give[n me] over to the desires of [my] heart….” (Romans 1:24). It wasn’t a corrupt thing but it was a thing that was meant for something good and beautiful that became corrupted in my greed for it. My thoughts, my hopes and my dreams entangled by its thorns, my day dreams full of its ‘successfulness’ and my dreams at night enraptured by its enticements. It became, well before even Shannon entered into the picture, an idol I would build daily and wail before as the darkness loomed. It started well before Kristy, though the tale is woven with the same results and the others that I sought to be in a ‘intimate’ relationship with both before and after my salvation accepted. This idol has lived and breathed in the moments of my life with the sickly-sweet odor of its succulent petals and bled me upon the harsh prick of its thorns.

Keller breaks it down into three distinct ‘idols’, but I believe I wrapped them all up into the one called love.

The love of approval, comfort and control that would give me the desire of my heart; someone who would never reject me, chastise me or hurt me.

But it wasn’t something I believed, even in the dark days of my life, that this so-called God of Jacob, this great I AM, was capable of delivering. After all, I had the life to prove that god’s incapability in such matters and so I built that idol out of the gold in my life to worship as I controlled it, demanded of it and heaped condemnation upon even as I groveled for its favor. So God released me to its deaden worship, even as I faced the depravity of my sinful nature and begged His eternal mercy and grace.

This mighty God will not demand our worship, though it is His to do so. This God will not beg our worship, even as His heart breaks to allow us our freedom to idolatrize the desires of our hearts. No, He releases His hands ever so little as we struggle against Him and His loving grip.

That idol was ignored when I was in New York and doing the Bowery Mission work with Shannon… the happiness and joy felt there was far removed from the simple quest for its appearance in the life we would return to once the week was over. It is there that one of the truths Keller speaks of, that the removal of idols can only happen with the increased closeness to God was evident and true. Once New York was gone, the idol was re-erected and love corrupted by its worship.

Six months and three weeks to the day, Shannon told me that she didn’t want to be in the relationship anymore. The idol had failed, again.

I have been forced, in the last six months as I have sat here in the bitter dark cold of this place, to face this idol and look in disgust at its visage. Streaked with the dark stain of sin, it no longer glitters or entices or even attracts me anymore…..for if its existence is the one thing that God requires to take away in His demanded sacrifice of my desire, then I have journeyed to my Mount Moriah and laid the desire of a love that bleeds approval, gives comfort and controls only the beating of its life onto the altar I’ve built there. And offered it to the cleansing fire that comes from the only hope I have. I have gone from needing this, desperately wanting it and manipulating my world for it to seeking Him in all of its beauty and glorious honor it brings its Creator.

“And Abraham named that place The LORD Will Provide, so today it is said: "It will be provided on the LORD's mountain." (Genesis 22:14 HCSB)

There are many things that were damaged and destroyed by this idol. Shannon walked away from the relationship we shared six months ago because the idolatry of its existence in my life corrupted a beautiful wonderful and potentially dynamic thing that it would’ve been if I had sacrificed it upon the Mount Moriah altar even before we began. I used it to justify turning my back on the impossible things God called me to do, I used it as an excuse or a sheepskin upon the thrashing room floor as a test of God’s purpose. With the impossibility of the future dying upon its golden table, I begged cajoled and controlled this idol…..the altar upon which this idol sat burned day and night with the desires of my heart….for God had surrendered me to it.

In the end, the idol failed to deliver as it had failed to do so in the annuals of my life’s story. It hurt more this time for one simple fact; I learned to dress this idol up as a facsimile of what I thought was God. I fooled myself with its enticements and imagery and called it God. I sat as David upon the castle top and gazed upon this idol with lust instead of stepping back into a role of a godly man seeking God’s will in it and all things that my life was bringing.

I have sought her forgiveness and worked on my own. I pray for her and the marvelous things that God has given her to taste in this world, events that have lavished her in His love and tender mercies and prayed for myself, that I would even as I failed to be in the relationship a true friend even in the twilight of notice.

Now the Bowery Trip is coming back up and I hesitate to go; because God wants me to be part of His work there and I’ll be going with the full realization of what I’ve lost in the worship of the idol of my need to be loved by someone other than God. And I realize that He brought me here, by allowing me the desires of my heart, to this place where I am single and potentially will be for the rest of my life but where I am fully reliant upon His grace, mercy and love to do what He gives me to do.

As I sat here thinking of writing this, I opened my bible study program (E-Sword) and this was the verse that it opened to:

“I call for my servant, but he does not answer, even if I beg him with my own mouth.” (Job 19:16 HCSB)

Oh, there are many idols that I have erected in my life, some hidden in the shadows of this darkness among the trees and valleys of this place. The fire’s gone cold and the wood damp with the despair of this world….and yet…..and yet

He calls me to burn those idols down and come to Him empty, a vessel to be filled once more with His love, purpose, grace and mercy.

Overfilled, so that I may pour it out in service of others that I can empathize with.

‎"People who have never suffered in life have less empathy for others, little knowledge of their own shortcomings and limitations, no endurance in the face of hardship, and unrealistic expectations for life" Timothy Keller, Counterfeit Gods

"If I go east, He is not there, and if I go west, I cannot perceive Him. When He is at work to the north, I cannot see Him; when He turns south, I cannot find Him. Yet He knows the way I have taken; when He has tested me, I will emerge as pure gold. My feet have followed in His tracks; I have kept to His way and not turned aside. I have not departed from the commands of His lips; I have treasured the words of His mouth more than my daily food. But He is unchangeable; who can oppose Him? He does what He desires. He will certainly accomplish what He has decreed for me, and He has many more things like these in mind. Therefore I am terrified in His presence; when I consider this, I am afraid of Him. God has made my heart faint; the Almighty has terrified me. Yet I am not destroyed by the darkness, by the thick darkness that covers my face.” (Job 23:8-17 HCSB)

These verses are the essence of burning those idols from our lives......

My reason for my seasons

2010-12-30T12:27:00.000-08:00

"I have become a fool; you forced it on me. I ought to have been recommended by you, since I am in no way inferior to the "super-apostles," even though I am nothing." (2Co 12:11 HCSB)

It just gave God’s word to the seasonal theme of this time; not just the unemployment or the move to a different city or even the loss of someone that I truly loved but also the events that have carried me from that moment in October 2004 until now……bits and pieces of the work that He began way back in February 2004 until today that I thought were seasonal changes of my journey. As I sit here and stir the campfire in the dark echoes of the night, listening to the nocturnal creatures of its inky blackness, I have realized that there has been only one season since the end of the cold winter that began that February day. It has been a long journey and there are some who would say that I am no closer to the ‘goal’ than I was that October day in Chicago. Others would say I’ve become a ‘burden’ to the cause. Some will say I’m about as ‘godly’ as a addict or as ‘saved’ as a person drowning. Others, that quiet majority, have said that God is amazing in what He has done in my life, to this point, and the direction they perceive Him to be taking me on.

It has not been easy; this journey in the deepest heat of the summer past. It would seem for the majority of the trip so far, it has been through swamp and murky bogs….attacked by mosquitoes and pursued by bears. Always on the defensive, always working on wounds and new hurts and old recurring nightmares, grasping at peace and running to try and capture joy. Pursuing what I perceived God to be only to find that He was nothing like what I had thought. Seeking that direction to achieve the purpose He has set within my bones, that desire that seems to ebb and flow with the beating of my heart only to feel mislead by the directions and opinions of those who have come into my life. I have proclaimed the purpose He has called me to and been laughed at…..told to stop being foolish and do the ‘responsible’ thing. In several ways, by several people, for several different reasons.

I have been defensive in some of this season; fighting the perception of those both right and wrong, those who are lovers and haters and those who truly want what God is doing in my life, around me and through each of us. I have been offensive; fighting for the development of the purpose, seeking the ‘in’ to the ‘inner sanctuary’ though all the doors seem locked. I have argued, cajoled and calmly interjected. I have written, I have preached and I have volunteered. I have experienced the fullness of many opportunities and shied away from others. It has been a long, tiring and unrealized journey through this season.

And it boils down to what a friend said to me that I believe these verses speak from God’s own mouth. “I should…be…act…think…” has to be replaced with “God is” and that is enough. No longer, from the moment of my salvation can I expect myself to achieve, but (and he said this was from a seminar he went to) I have to consistently put myself in situations where if God doesn’t show, He’ll look foolish. In the absence of our own abilities and skills, where there is no rhythm or reason to the success of the struggle, the goal or the dream….in that the only thought that can be given is that God has done the work. We are merely the putty in His hands, shaped and fired to meet the requirements of the vessel for the Holy Spirit to fill.

I presented myself to the Church as a candidate of calling; there are those who have seen it and those who have not. There are those who, checking off the list of ‘requirements’ have forgotten the one sole requirement God has given to them…to disciple and further God’s cause in the call. The rejection of the Church has been a damaging wound to my life, but I have realized there was never a ‘Church-requirement’ of approval in the things that God has purposed me to do. Only my obedience and movement towards Him.

There are those who say I’m foolish to still dream, to still question whether or not God has called me to go into fulltime ministry……. If I am foolish for the impossibilities of God, then so be it.

So, now as the unemployment runs out and still no job on the horizon…..as the last of the money is poured into my gas tank for fueling the car…..and I face the coming New Year without apparent prospects, I wonder and trust in the provision of God for me and my family. I am awed by the questioning of my heart to pursue His big, audacious and hairy dreams for me or to sulk into a job to ‘just get by’ if I can.

As a pastor challenged his readers in an blog he wrote about “Daring to pray this prayer,” I can only bow my head in supplication and raise my hands in adoration…….and pray this prayer for 2011. For this is what God has taught me in the theme of this season…..He will have me where He wants me to be.

"Two things I ask from you; do not refuse me before I die: Remove falsehood and lies far from me; do not give me poverty or riches, feed me with my allotted portion of bread, lest I become satisfied and act deceptively and say, "Who is the LORD?" Or lest I become poor and steal and demean the name of my God." Proverbs 30:7-9.

It is my only resolution for 2011. What is yours?

Grasshoppers in the land of Nephilims

2010-12-10T06:49:00.000-08:00

‎"To ourselves we seemed like grasshoppers, and we must have seemed the same to them." Numbers 14:32b HASB

Men’s Fraternity, the Men’s ministry from Robert Lewis, broached the subject of life with the metaphor of a football game; the first and second halves and how to live a great adventure successfully in both. It is Lewis’ contention that men tend to live one or the other ‘well’ and looks into the Old Testament book of Numbers to find a biblical character who has lived it well in both halves to win the game of life.

Caleb, which means “dog” in Hebrew, but in Akkadian (an extinct Semitic language, part of the greater Afro-asiatic language family, that was spoken in ancient Mesopotamia) it means “Loyal vassal of the King.” Lewis tells us that Caleb is a ‘half-breed,’ either by birth or adoption, because his father is Jephunneh the Kenizzite (Joshua 14:6). Kenaz, the ancestor who the Kenizzite people is traced, was the son of Eliphaz (eldest son of Esau) and one of the twelve rulers of Edom. The people were not Israelite, and by the patriarch’s history with Isaac (Israel), the Kenizzites were most likely enemies of the Israelite nation…it is known that they lived in the land of Canaan, the land which God had given to the Jewish people. Yet Caleb is becomes an example to God’s people. He advocates with Joshua, another one of the twelve spies sent into the Promised Land, that the people should take the land given to them by God, that the abundance and wealth can be theirs despite the inhabitants. They are almost stoned.

It is that phrase that is left at the end of that tale, given by the ten other dissenters from the encouragement of the two spies that hit me between the eyes today as I left the study. And it was one of the men there that caused it to ‘stick in my craw’ as I stumped down the stairs into the snowy ‘wonderland’ that Michigan is today. “Grasshoppers among Nephilims” Insects among giants.

The man in the group, younger than I by probably ten years, the head of a young family said that he respected me and the testimony I had, the fact that I was willing and full of a passion to mentor other men and pursue God even in the darkness. I was stunned, and as I thought of the biblical verses that we studied Caleb in today during the Fraternity, I keep coming across the woeful attitude of the ten…..grasshoppers among giants.

I am surrounded by good and bad Nephilims (in relation to the size) and the ‘good giants’ that I know don’t even know how small I am….and honestly, even with the good ones, I’d like to keep it that way. Usually when I bring notice to my size, I’m trampled quickly.

Be it the giant of Acute Depression, Financial failures, Unemployment, Wounded Fatherhood, Desperate Manhood….to name a few of the giants that haunt my landscape, I am but a tiny insect….unnoticed until I begin to disrupt the living of those giants and then I become a pest to be destroyed by the ruler of that land…beaten by the voices that echo the fears in my head before I can even sit in wonder at the bounty of the Promise that God has set before me……

Wow……

In my younger days, I lived with a Joshua….even though I didn’t know it at the time, for the giants were dominating even then and I have watched others in my life react like the ten…scared and in denial of what God has given (for I have lived life like them too). He was and is a powerful man, both in the spiritual journey God has taken him on and in the world, my brother Larry J Hutson. His wife and he are missionaries with the Navigators over in Germany, ministering to the troops of the Air Force that come through the base there. He is a Joshua, who came back from the spying expedition into the land of Canaan with the overwhelming report of “Conquer, it is ours” and he is the one who leads others into the Promised land. But I digress. With the holiday season upon us, I tend to be a bit reflective. I realize now that my brother wasn’t the Nephilim I thought he was in my younger days, but rather a Joshua who would’ve contributed so much more to my life than he was allowed.

The Father of Lies will get you every time.

Caleb, a young man, points his compass to the “north star” that God is and follows through with a ‘raw faith’ to claim the ‘promise life’, according to Lewis and in the ‘older days’ some 40 years later, demands the right to seize the ‘high ground’ with a ‘fresh faith’ rather than settle in the lower lands. You really have to read the story of Caleb in Numbers and Joshua to understand the parts of his life that Lewis talks of and go through the third year of Men’s Fraternity to see how it fits into a man’s journey…..but Caleb influences another generation by his life, and influences us as well.

Caleb and Joshua, enticed and excited by the land of Promise that God has shown them aren’t confused or frightened by the giants that stomp through the land. They are consumed, fully surrendered to the future, desperate to begin the claiming of what God had set aside for the people of Israel. It would take them many years to realize that, but they stayed committed. Forty years later, Caleb takes the high ground of Hebron and dwells there with his clan…..inspiring another to defy the giants of their life later.

As I look across the river Jordan into the Promise that God has set before me, being told by some I’m nothing more than a grasshopper facing the giants who shall surely finish me off like a pest, do I step into the process of being a Caleb…..empowered and enthused with God’s work that was begun in me and continues on the other side of this place or do I whine like the other ten and say they simply are too big and the land too harsh for me to continue.

Dare I be a grasshopper…….protected and empowered by the might of a giant God?!?!

Want

2010-12-07T19:48:00.000-08:00

“People cannot live without hope. Everyone hopes for something; most people hope for things they can see, or, at least, have seen.” T. M. Moore writes. “ - a good marriage, a better job, more material possessions, a successful retirement, and so forth.”

I hope for a job, but not just any job. I want to provide for my family, but not just the material things. I can remember back when my children would ‘oooh’ and ‘ahhhh’ over the catalogs of toys that leaped out to them from the glossy pages. Christmas was filled with the joyful sounds of carols and music as people greeted each other with “Merry Christmas” amid rushing to Christmas pageants and plays…..and the “I need this” or “I want that” from the buried heads of my young ones. They couldn’t understand why, when they asked Dad what he wanted that ‘anything you make’ was more desirable than the latest “G.I. Joe” or “horsey.” What they ‘hoped’ for under the tree on Christmas morning would be a mixture of what they needed (clothes, etc.) and what they wanted (toys, electronic gadgets). I was the same way as a child, wanting the latest gadget or game to satisfy me.

This year, they have grown up a lot and understand that such gifting isn’t a necessary thing to celebrate the season, or the Christian reason behind the celebration. Oh, they have thrown out their ‘wants;’ a laptop, an IPOD touch and an Xbox….along with some ‘practical’ things like winter pjs and clothes. But they understand that there are more beneficial and worthy wants; a home, food, clothing and each other.

As I sat here, thinking about the needs of some friends that I’ve stepped forward to meet, the things I’ve done in the quiet of my community that hasn’t met the eyes of others (and never will), and the needs of a few organizations like www.homefronthugs.com and www.avets.org that are hoping for some donations to send our deployed troops some home loving during this holiday season they are once again (in most cases) away from home, I was hit by the realization of what we should really be intensely wanting and hoping for this Christmas celebration……and how often, in the discussions of the Church during this time, such is ignored.

Oh, we speak about the Christmas story in our pews and defend the use of “Merry Christmas” in advertisements and greetings. We put on elaborate plays or simple skits to bring in the visual learners in the crowds. Most church attendance swells during this time, or at least on the day of, as a country and a world come together to recognize the universal time of giving. Some of us have the additional ‘joy’ or ‘burden’ (depending on how you view it) of having a winter ‘wonderland’ of snow to help us in the memory department……though I don’t think Jesus and His family had to contend with snow in Bethlehem (so I don’t know why I have to…..). We have office parties with ‘secret Santas’ and family gatherings for gift giving with bountiful meals. We are lighter in the pocketbook during this time; not only for the family but reaching out to those who are struggling through this time. We smile as we ask our family, friends and co-workers what they ‘want’ for Christmas and calculate it in our head as to where and how much such a gift is…..balanced against the joy and pleasure of the smile that comes from obtainment….

I wonder what the ‘wants’ were in the beginning…..as shepherds lay watching their sheep and a world slept in a midnight clear. As the King was born in simple fare, being born into this world to the bleating of sheep and the chomp of the camels, I wonder what the dreams that danced ‘like sugar plums’ in the heads of the young ones and the practical wants of their parents. Was the wants of the Magi who travelled to ‘yon distant star’ more practical as well, seeking why a star rose in that spot or less ‘worldly’ in its scope? Israel was under the bondage of Rome, its national life dictated by the demands of a distant government with iron fists.

There were those, for sure, to prayed each night that the promised Messiah would come blazing across the early morning sky with a legion or two of Angelic host to bring the mighty Roman Empire to its knees like was done in the olden days to Egypt. The want for a release and dismantling of the yoke of slavery and oppression that dominated their lives even as they celebrated the Passover and other Jewish remembrances, surely these things were never far from the minds of those who thought them…..and not just for a certain season or day.

They wanted what something that they could handle, touch or use to wipe out the things that they had to deal with in this world. A Messiah to lead them to defeat their overseers, as we hope for the fulfillment of wants for a good marriage, job, home and other such things. We want what we can handle, to acknowledge that we are loved, cherished or at least ‘tolerated.’

In today’s economy, I know there are those who want to break the yoke of unemployment and the unwelcomed reliance upon the ‘handouts’ of the government even as there are those who want to rest of the laurels of others. There are those who resent those on unemployment insurance payments, some that are entering their second year. As Christians, we hope for that which we cannot see with our eyes or grasp with our hands. We hope in an eternal perspective for that which has been promised; a glory that defies even our more elaborate and glorious dreams of what we want on this earth. In this world, our wants are piety, self-serving and damaging layers of protection that serves as a salve between the pain of living with other human beings. The Israelites felt it back then, Christ paid the ultimate price for it, and we have learned nothing in the practice of celebrating the birth of our King in the years since.

What we should want every year under the tree that most of us put up in the living rooms, basements or lounges of our palatial homes (in the standards of the rest of the world) is nothing more than the simple picture of the glory that await us when the birthday boy returns…..a gift that far outweighs anything in this world and one that we, the celebrants of the birthday boy’s birth, could ill-afford to pay. But we are guided by lesser hopes, which are the wants of this world, and by the deception of the needs that aren’t really needs when they cannot be filled. We seek satisfaction in lesser things that cannot satisfy, demanding obedience and ‘improvement’ from those who we perceive are less engaged in the culture war of want and need.

That is what I want this Christmas; not presents for the kids, nor for myself. I have been blessed with more than I ever deserve by those who now seem to believe that their gifts were wasted on me. I don’t need the approval of those friends, though understanding would be a garnish on the tree that would shine in the dark. I don’t desire sympathy or pity from them either, for such offerings are merely a covering of their own insecurity over what they are judging me about. I want the hope secured that comes from the moment in time that began on a midnight clear in the little town of Bethlehem in a manger filled with swaddling clothes and the baby that lay within. That hope that was secured in the moment thirty-three years later upon a cross of wooden pain and torment. A hope that lies in my heart regardless of what my friends claim to know is right and what I believe is true. A hope that will be born out in my life for His glory, regardless of the circumstances.

Do you have this hope?

Veteran's Day

2010-11-11T16:18:00.001-08:00

“All the believers kept meeting together, and they shared everything with each other. From time to time, they sold their property and other possessions and distributed the money to anyone who needed it. The believers had a single purpose and went to the temple every day. They were joyful and humble as they ate at each other's homes and shared their food.” Acts 2:44-47a (GW)

I don’t often attend Veteran Day ceremonies. I am not one of the veterans who have seen combat nor am I one of the many who stay in the services until they retired. My older brother, Larry, did retire from the military and is serving as a missionary in Germany with the Navigators. My younger brother saw combat and just reenlisted again.

It is days like today that I wish I had spent my time in and retired from it. It is days like today where I realize what is the very essence of community and who does it better than anyone else. The community of veterans; those who served in combat, those who trained for it, those who were stationed in ‘hot’ spots and those who spent their time stateside developing the tools of war….this community takes all who wear the uniform and honors them as brothers and sisters. Today is not just about the fallen, because in this community the fallen are never far from the thoughts of those still alive. Today is about the living, the combat-seasoned and the trained, coming together to have a nation that they served with their honor and with their sacrifices serve homage to them, patriots who tend the tree of freedom.

Today at Concordia University, I was honored to stand next to a WWII veteran, a Vietnam veteran, a Persian Gulf (combat) veteran, a Afghanistan veteran and a Iraq veteran. Most of them from the Navy, but a few Marines to round out the group. We talked about our experiences, whether combat or not, and the camaraderie that existed between us flowed not because of our openness but our understanding of the ‘experience of the uniform’ that we shared….not because we’ve known each other before but because we honor the fellowship of the American military member.

It doesn’t take a gathering like the beautiful ceremony offered by Concordia today for Veterans to nod and shake hands, nor does it take a day to be honored by those who are fellow citizens. All it takes is the knowledge of the membership that is conferred upon each and every military member the moment they take the pledge to serve and step from the world of the civilian into the world of the military. Once crossed, you don’t ever go back.

Oh, you grouse and complain…..you bicker and grunt under the load of the environment of being in the military…you struggle to live in two worlds, one shrouded by the protection gained from the other….you worry in the combat zones of your loved ones at home even as they worry about you in the combat zone…..you aren’t asked to sacrifice, because it was asked of you when you pledged to defend the Constitution, to go where your country sends you and to obey the lawful orders of those in leadership over you……it is expected that you will honor your pledge, and you do.

In the end of it, some serve quietly and silently reabsorb back into the world that continues on even as a new class of military men and women take the pledge to serve…..some come back, broken and bruised, having experienced the worse of combat. No matter where or how, the military member comes home changed, for better or worse and they will never be the same.

Today is the day where the citizens of this nation come together and recognize those who have ever donned the uniform of the Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force or Coast Guard…. Active duty or Guard or Reserve. Today the fellowship of the Uniform is recognized under the flag of freedom by those who live under its shadow. Today, today….this nation gives back a little bit of what it took for the service rendered under the green, the blue, the white and the grey.

Today, my fellow Americans, is VETERAN’S DAY!

Uncomfortable mutterings...

2010-11-09T06:55:00.000-08:00

“I will remember these things as I pour out my soul: how I used to walk with the crowd and lead it in a procession to God's house. “ Psalm 42:4a (GW)

I went to my blog today to add a blog of the Senior Pastor of Vineyard Church of Ann Arbor, which I’ve interacted with on an occasion of serving the homeless shortly after I had returned from the Bowery Mission in New York with my-then girlfriend and ministry partner, Shannon, who led me to it. It was shortly before I moved to A2 myself with the family and so the city was totally new….but the ministry to the homeless, ingrained by the impact of the Bowery, wasn’t. Things have changed since those days of March.

In many aspects of my life, my faith and my direction.

When I arrived at my blog, there was a ‘unmoderated’ comment by a young woman from Virginia whom came across my blog posting of the Bowery Street Mission in Lower Manhattan, New York. That, in and of itself, is not new…. Somehow in the course of investigating various topics and interests there have been those who have been directed to a comment I’ve made or a blog post I’ve written. I’m not saying that to boast, it’s just the nature of the research engines to bring odd things to the surface as you search….or not, dependent on your engine and your ability/desire to dig. She had experienced the Bowery too, an unique connection that defies age, culture, and location. Once a Bowery-changed person, always a Bowery-changed person.

She left a nice comment and I went to her blog. After reading it, I posted it to my list of blogs and sites (renamed from Sites I visit). I recommend, even if I don’t always agree with what’s posted, these blogs….. we are a vast, unique and wide body within Christ’s family and I believe none of us have everything fully right except for the foundational truths that binds us together as brethren under the blood.

But that’s not the energy that runs through my fingers to write about today…… Not even the Bowery Mission, which is forefront on my mind each day as I sit down at this desk because of the apron displayed with the signatures of the men I met my first time there that my eyes fall upon as I ponder the Word, think about God, and feel for the direction He wants me to take in my humble offering called posts. Anthony Johnson……Marvin Campbell….Cuba Edy….some names written big, some small…..like the Constitution of the United States signature section at the end. A connection to a world that I skirt the edges of each and every day as the unemployment continues.

“I may have glanced in a mirror at the man who walked between those two red doors if I had but known that I would never see him again. Then again, I may have not.”

I think now that I wished I had, glanced in a mirror at the man who walked in the doors of the Bowery so that I could compare him to the one who walked out. I don’t know if I would’ve still willingly, though with some reluctance, walked in those doors because the course of my life was inalienably changed that week and even as I walked away from it with new feelings in regards to those I loved, those I was responsible for and those whom I would’ve counted strangers in the weeks before……I didn’t know the path I would be traveling and the havoc it would play upon my emotions, my feelings and my faith.

I walked in the doors of the Bowery uncomfortable because of the painful connection it had, even in its total newness to me, to my life that lay in devastation behind me……. I walked away from the Bowery uncomfortable in the perceived direction and emotions that lay exposed in my life….. and as I sit here in Ann Arbor, I realize in this moment as I think again and again of the past year that I have been unemployed, that I have never been comfortable since.

And I fought against it like a horse against the reins or a child against the rules. Which made me more uncomfortable, which made me more uncertain and which made me sit at the campfire in the darkness of this journey far too long because I didn’t want to answer the questions posed by the stirring of my uncomfortableness or listen to the only Truth that such questioning could bring. God has ebbed and flowed in this place, much like a faithful friend who coaxes you from the safe and the comfortable by walking away and comes back when such efforts don’t seem to move you. My beliefs have cried out for untapped boundaries even as my faith quails in failure to support such reaching….. I have been driven both by my human fear of the unknown impossibilities of God and my spiritual fear of God, the push and pull of the tide of my beliefs bringing me to the point of drowning in the immensity of God because the lifesaver of my faith fails to support the dead weight of my body.

I don’t believe I was meant to be single, but singleness is the only seemingly constant in my life……….

I believe I was meant to preach, but the inadequacies and impossibilities of such an endeavor seem to be insurmountable…..

God has called me to impossible heights of His glory and grace even as I realize that I am not worthy (and never will be) of such elevation……..

I want to be comfortable in the environs and community of the Family of God; to be respected, to be loved, to be a powerful force of truth and change even as I am changed by association. I want to be everything that I am supposed to be within His purposes and His kingdom………..the talents lay in my hands, the gift of my Master as He departs for home to prepare for His return…….

To invest those talents means to live on the edge constantly and forever uncomfortable even in comfort, joyful even in sorrow and loving even in the painfulness of community.

I remember those times when the world would wander away and God was real and present with me at the campfire……those times when the gifts given were used for Him in the immense uncomfortableness of doing what He has called and purposed me to do……..

In the duality of living for the King…….uncomfortable in the comfortableness of His embrace, working alongside Him as He prepares the world for His coming.

Bailing.....

2010-11-03T06:32:00.001-07:00

“I will look to the LORD. I will wait for God to save me. I will wait for my God to listen to me.” Micah 7:7 [GW]

It grows closer and closer; not just for me, but for the wealth of America’s workforce that has been idled by the economic downturn that started years ago (whether you believe it was during the Bush era or started earlier with the Democratic demand of mortgage funding of high-risk is immaterial.) My year of UIA funds cease on the 13^th of November and the future is as uncertain as the political landscape anymore. Many, frustrated with the big government and the politicians who promised ‘change we could live with’ failed in their attempt to convince us that their answers didn’t work. Now, many ‘non-traditional’ political candidates have gained entry into the political machine that has ground the future of this country into depravity. Whether they can redeem the system or become it’s victims remains to be seen but the American people for the first time in years, voted their displeasure at the typical political campaign of self-protected and demanded representation from the elected. There are those who, so disappointed with the process that they claimed ‘its broken’ and did not vote, that led to the victories of those who do believe and brought themselves to the booths.

The pundits say that the vote was made in anger; I would say it was made part in declaration and part in fear. Fear that those who are hanging in the job market and struggling to meet the increased demands in their positions because they fear unemployment will come knocking on their cubicle. Fear to become like those like me, struggling day to day to be a provider to their family and the frustrations of slowly sinking despite the bailing.

We demand from our politicians and our American way of life the assurance of being ‘entitled’ to the right to provide for our families in the manner we want to. We should be able to go to a job that makes the money that is necessary to provide the funds that pay for the utilities, the mortgage and the car with enough left over for the ‘fun’ things, the ‘development’ things for our kids and the ‘professional improvement’ for the job so that we can increase our material wealth to be on the ‘next tier’ of the tax bracket.

And we demand that from God also.

When such things aren’t provided, we reject that which hasn’t brought our ‘salvation’ from such depths of despair and seek to embrace the promise that is dangled by those who want [whether honestly or not] to give it back to us. We leave God on the sidelines when we do that, because sometimes the requirements of God don’t fit in with the rest of the package that comes with the ‘change.’

I know that I used to; clawing through the electronic ‘want ads’ and running around filling paper after paper for the employer of the moment. Discarding the dream of Seminary and getting that hard to obtain waiver for the pursuit of a Master of Divinity degree and/or pursuing some degree program at a college to get those ‘high-end’ jobs. Applying, as I have for the last six months, to anything and everything that comes close to what I know I can do, think I’ll be able to learn quickly to do, and some that I don’t even fully understand how to do. Bailing even as the water comes up to my neck, bailing because that is all I can do.

Except my mouth moves in rhythmic waves; speech they call it in the higher realms of the academic world. Prayer, sometimes desperate….sometimes joyful…..sometimes angry…….sometimes broken; prayer bubbling from my lips sometimes without conscious thought, communication to a God I believe in and have found my faith desperate inadequate to trust in even as the ocean laps against my chin and my shoulders ache from the constant bailing.

There is no illusion sustainable here.

The reality of the cold wetness of the water and the shivering of my body from the absent of warmth……the visual sight of the deck beneath the waves and the mast slack from the lack of air to move the sails. Nothing here speaks of a future, nothing here speaks of continuing. My mind locks into the rhythm of ‘stop, it’s useless to continue’ that wars with my heart’s declaration that God is here, He is on the horizon and He is even in the waves and I cannot give up because He’s promised me so much more of a future than this, promised me things to do to bring Him glory and has a plan for me which He has the authority and the power to deliver.

So even as the waves threaten to overwhelm me and I sputter with the occasional swallowed water, my prayers continue and my hope rest not in the overcoming of this disaster but in the ability of the Lord my God to do what He will even in this place…….whether I sink or swim, rise from the depths with the ship afloat with full sails or lie on the bottom of the ocean deep……even then, it is for the glory and honor of my God.

There’s a song in my heart awaiting to burst forth either way, as I hear the promises of my Lord and Savior and await His guidance.

Until then, I’ll continue to bail……

And bail well.

The year

2010-11-01T08:33:00.000-07:00

‎"As I saw the ship staggering and plunging among these roaring caverns, it seemed miraculous that she regained her balance, or preserved her buoyancy. Her yards would dip into the water; her bow was almost buried beneath the waves. Sometimes an impending surge appeared ready to overwhelm her, and nothing but a dexterous movement of the helm preserved her from the shock." Washington Irving, The Sketch-Book of Geoffrey Crayon.

I’ve tried for the last week or so to write this blog. For some reason, I get going on it and then look at what I’ve written and hit the delete button. I’ve done that often lately as I’ve tried to write for the blog…..if you are reading this and notice such things, my numbers have truly dropped off. It’s funny, with being unemployed for the last year, as of Nov 13^th, you would think that I’d have all the time in the world to write and some people would say that’s all I’ve probably done instead of being hard-core job searching and willing to take anything to be employed again. As with salvation, the proof is in the fruit and there has been no fruit from the writing tree in months.

It has been quite a year.

I thought I had found a ministry partner and found out that ‘love’ is fleeting unless it is really true. I have watched two communities of believers react in different ways to the situation my family has struggled through in the last year since the call on the phone telling me that my job was no longer there. I have had friends struggle with the situation; not wanting to ‘enable’ me to be lazy but also not wanting to be cruel in their accountability of supporting me in the job search. I have experienced sorrow and joy, peace and discontentment and disillusionment with insight. And, it has (as in all journeys) brought me here. And, as in all things human and fragile, here is not where or what I thought I would be.

I love the sea. I think that it was part of my genetic makeup that went wildly out of control. My grandfather was a Navy vet of WWII. He had entered the service as an enlisted man and they commissioned him as soon as they discovered he was a Detroit Diesel Engineer. They put him in charge of a PT training squadron out of Florida. My grandmother said she would look out to the sea and see the squadron on maneuvers, knowing as soon as they turned into the canal that she could start dinner because he’d be home by the time she was finished with it. My father, a storekeeper, was in during the Korean war and served as a driver for the Director of Navy Intelligence in Japan. I served in the Navy myself as a Damage Controlman.

It has been a difficult year.

My image of myself; that core-ness of who I am took a devastating blow that November day last year. A shot amidships right at the magazine storage. And, despite my best attempts in the days that followed I slowly sank lower into the waves and took on water. No longer was I heading toward a destination but I was in a fight for my very survival. Far from land, far from assistance and well into the locker of Davey Jones……I truly gave up for a while. Oh, I floated up the dream of Seminary and finding the wealth of support that would get me and my family through the three years or four (max) that it would take to get my Masters of Divinity degree that would ‘legitimize’ my calling in the faces of those in charge of the human side of church. Or going back to school to get that degree that was the reason for my demise.

But in a world where my future was traded in the past for the moment of survival that I gained, such were only mere momentary measures that failed almost as soon as they were implemented. And, as each attempt was stripped away, the hardened ‘image’ of a visceral man who has survived for so long….even despite himself, was shaken and wiped away layer by layer. Soon, the young boy who had set sail so long ago in the passage of time was the only thing left.

Standing waist deep on the deck of the ship in the sea.

Love….a endeavor I was ill-equipped to undertake and a temptation that I thought was conquered that merely was forgotten in the dailiness of being upon the sea of this world. Community, that strange island passed on the port bow full of the rumors and tales of a strange people so outrageous that it had to be impossible. Future?, a mere moment-to-moment thing devoid of any grace or grandeur. Merely a teasing distraction to the water filling the cracks and crevasses of the hull, a temporary filling of the sails fallen to the deck and a fractional movement forward.

A boy standing on the water-filled deck facing the impossibility of overcoming the storm, alone, knowing that all that he thought was real was simply an illusion of his sinful and depraved mind.

Often, when we are faced with such complete and utter destruction, we beg whatever we have to and promise whatever we have to and grab whatever hand we see presented to get ourselves out of the situation at least for a moment so that we can breathe and ponder its immensity so that we can face what we have to do to never come to that place again. I know, because I have been here before and I have done the same thing.

Add to that the picture of the rest of the crew, incapable of doing the work themselves and relying on you to see them through……picking up on your fear and your isolation that causes them to pull away from you and cling to those who can give them peace in the troubling winds…… that moment comes when the house of cards that is you falls apart and scatters to the floor, trampled on in the urgency of the situation.

A boy standing on the water-filled deck up to his neck.

Not exactly the future I had envisioned staring out of the second story attic of the world of my childhood as the sounds of Johnny Horton extolling the tale of the Bismarck. Not exactly the man that I envisioned myself becoming in the glories and battles of the open sea.

There was no sudden ‘salvation’ on the horizon this year, no sudden insight that enabled me to bring about victory from defeat or a miracle born of ingenuity that would make you shake your head in the amazing simplicity of it. No, merely a little boy frightened beyond his days slapping at the waves that threat to overwhelm him and a deep-soul burden cry of disillusionment and fear shouted to the unseeing sky.

And in that moment of my despair, where I have realized that I cannot do what needs to be done by myself and the pride that once made my backbone so ramrod straight was imaginary and useless; then…….

We moved out of my family’s house that was stressing everyone and moved into a place of our own…….friends providing the funds to buy and renovate it.

We are settling into school and healing from the wounds we have caused each other in the dark of the storm………

And my faith, once that jewel that adorned my crown, has been discarded in the light of its uselessness……………………..

Even in the reality of being guided by the hand on the helm of my life, that God/Man that commands the seas to calm or rage, hasn’t shaken me as much as losing my faith.

It brings me back to the moment in time when I was strapped into a harness with a thin, two inch piece of rope wrapped around the metal mast of the ship and told to climb the 40 foot thin pole that was jokingly called a main mast to replace the top running light on the port side arm. With the sea tossing it in a two to three inch arc through the air. It took me a half an hour to do what the deck hands, the Bosun Mates, would’ve done in ten minutes.

Fear caused my limbs to freeze, the nearness of danger my heart to race and the impossible heights that I was called to go making me wish to be someplace else……..

That moment, each and every step I took or movement I made, where I overcame the fear, danger and uncomfortableness to reach the next rung, the next jump of the rope or to reach over dependent only upon the support I had judged inadequate……..that moment I am reliving today.

That moment in-between the flight of dreams and the reality of gravity……and the realization that you’ve reached it.

God is passing by and my eyes fear to look up, even if it is only to see His back…………

God has given me a bucket and the sheer foolishness of bailing the entirety of the ocean with a five quart bucket makes me want to cry……….

But I bail because I have nothing left but the reality of who God is and the promise that He has made to me and you………even in the neck-deep water that has washed over our gunwales………..

Whether the ship slips beneath the cold waves and disappears from the air of this world……..or some miraculous salvation comes over the horizon……..

I bail….

Because from the helm comes the chant of promise, the declaration of love and the eternal future……..

“I know the plans I have for you…..plans to prosper you and not to harm you………”

“Plans to give you a future and a hope….”

So, even as I bail the depth of my depravity and sinful temptations that have sunk me so low into the world……..

Even as I struggle to fellowship with the community of God and have those who are so inclined to walk alongside the truth in my life…..

My belief in God grows stronger even as my faith weakens…..and my heart sings……

‎"Make music to praise the LORD, you faithful people who belong to him. Remember his holiness by giving thanks. His anger lasts only a moment. His favor lasts a lifetime. Weeping may last for the night, but there is a song of joy in the morning." Psalm 30:4-5 GW

Dreaming......

2010-10-20T08:04:00.000-07:00

I sit in silence, encamped around the campfire in the wilderness of this journey in isolation and singleness. Nothing seems to penetrate this inky blackness that surrounded the feeble light coming in waves from the fire and the fuel upon which its consumption demands seems strangely absent…. As if it were fed by an eternal source rather than a secular one. There are no sounds in the darkness, no ravenous beasts lurking outside the boundary of light and no echoing cries of gathering among the creatures that dwell in the darkness waiting on the prey of lost souls and foolish mortals who dare to carry their torches into its jaws.

God is here. Whether in the darkness or the light, He is here. My eyes cannot discern His image in the flames nor in the lukewarm light that is cast from its swaying bulk. I cannot see beyond the boundaries of the circle of this light, flickering as it does. But I know He is here, even as my heart cries out into the silence for Him to come and my eyes strain once again as they scan the surrounding darkness and light. I know He is here, but where…. That I do not know.

I have been sitting here for much too long, so long that my dreams that have me walking into the darkness with sword and shield in hand to take on the beast of the enemy for the sake of the souls that are being consumed in the teeth of these things seems so real to me that it is like an electric shock when I wake from them and see myself still sitting by the fire and draped in the dust of immobility. The epic adventures of being a man of God, of being a husband, father and preacher all disappear like wisps of shadow that clear from my eyes upon waking. And my heart sorrows once more for the continuance of this place, this fire, this isolation.

But I know He is here…..I just don’t know what He wants from me.

Or do I?

Within this circle, crowded into this circle I should admit, of light is my tent, my cooking materials and my large backpack all stuffed with the things that I both needed for the journey and the things I have picked up along the way. All my fears, phobias, illnesses, and pains packed neatly within its bulk, so heavy that it makes its own imprint in the ground. The financial chains that have burdened me for so long still nicely wrapped around its body. The fear of humanity laced into the bindings and the agony of this world filling its insides for padding. My comforts, those things that I wouldn’t dare leave home without lie in my tent, it’s walls the assurance of keeping the weather at bay (mostly an illusion) and the comfort of the sleeping bag calling me to remain within its warmth and cushiony cocoon rather than coming out to sit by this fire again. Some days, I remain lost in its siren call….. but most days I escape with a sorrowful sigh from its embrace and come out to petition the God whom I cannot see. Have not seen for some time.

Companions come and go by this fire, most seem like fleeting shadows themselves…..I register their presence only after they are gone, their ability to sit in this place with me as temporary as my dreams. Whispers hang on the air until I sample them, unfamiliar images and words casting a vision that I cannot understand and therefore reject as real because of the unrealistic nature of their casting. Can I tell if they are of God, the companions that come and go, or the damaged parts of my heart that cry out in anger and woundedness for what they have never known but what they needed the most? No, I cannot tell where these words, these images, and visions come from. They sit there in the still, thick air until I touch them and then they are gone. The feelings of hope, trust and dreaming that they elicit fade just as quickly and I am left with the emptiness once more.

I sit in the filth of my immobility, caked in the dirt of my creation and the grit of my human sinfulness……. Even as the water that has washed me clean rains down from the heavens and cleanses me once more, wakening in me a desire to stand and go…..unburdened by the depravity of my humanity and unhindered by the chains of my consequences. A desire to grab the sword and shield and rush out into the darkness uttering from the depths of my being that battle cry that lies consuming my soul in the pit of my stomach. I want to be free of this place, doing glorious things for the God I know lies both in the light and the darkness and reaching to those who lie in the filth of isolation and despair like I have been, in the darker places without fire or provision. To be nothing ordinary but to be extraordinary in the purposes to which my hand has been matched and my heart written with.

To be a source of glory rather than a source of sorrow.

Yet, even as I stand and feel my heart beating harsh and strong within my chest as my hands grab the sword and shield at my feet and raise them high…… even as I look around this campfire and nod as if in silent goodbye…… even as I turn, feeling the war cry building in the depths of my being and bubbling up through my throat and tingling at the gateway of my mouth…… even then, the doubt lurks there and I wonder if this is yet another dream beginning to which I will wake in the morning sorrowful at its departure.

But even as the despair begins, I step out and into the vision cast before me.

Epic battles are fought in this twilight and glorious victories are surrendered before the King, my God whom I know is around me even as I cannot see Him. Souls are saved, mercies are given and hearts are transformed in the visions of my dreams, even as my humanity corrupts their continuance and beckons their end.

I awake once more cocooned in the warmth of my sleeping bag, the mist of the dawn which I cannot see dusting the walls of my tent. And I begin once again the battle to escape the embrace of the reality of a corrupt world and step out into the eternal truth of the God that waits outside the tent flaps for my obedient movement into the shadows where I cannot see.

One day I will step out into the new world that He has promised, complete and fulfilled by the promises that He has completed as He has assured me He would.

On that day…… on that day, I will be able to see His face.

Until then, I will continue to struggle to be that which I cannot understand and hope for the glories that are promised by my dreams.

Unlosable Salvation.......unforgettable faith

2010-10-04T20:49:00.001-07:00

“My sheep give ear to my voice, and I have knowledge of them, and they come after me: And I give them eternal life; they will never come to destruction, and no one will ever take them out of my hand. That which my Father has given to me has more value than all; and no one is able to take anything out of the Father's hand. I and my Father are one.” John 10: 27-30 BBE

It has been one of ‘those’ weekends, where the defining line between hope and despair are dimmed and the reality of the impossible faith becomes see-through in the light of day. And in ‘that’ weekend, I typically consume myself and wonder if I am some kind of cosmic joke to God….a checker moved about a board of real harsh reality, at the whim of the pleasure and amusement of a God that doesn’t care……that has predestined me for the scrap heap rather than the treasure pile.

The furnace isn’t coming on as it should have and it’s getting colder.

It is funny how quickly the fabric of my life unwinds under the pressure of living. Seems there is always a crisis to overcome, a moment in time that bears some pain and the continuing saga of struggle against something; sin, financial insolvency, depression, or a host of other things. I have a huge electric/gas bill, a ‘penalty’ bill from DirectTV and no gas/non-food money for a while….at least two weeks, until I can start working as a cab driver….which I need really to get some glasses to make it easier to read street signs and a dentist to help with some tooth pain.

Money can’t buy you love but it is the currency for everything else.

Pastor John McLean, the former Elder Pastor of Berean Bible Church was giving the sermon at church last Sunday, to which I had arrived late because I ran out of gas on the way into church….ironically outside another church that was meeting at a local middle school on Hix road…..two people blasted past me at the entrance to the school and walked into service. Guess there’s nothing like being late for service?! Pastor McLean was giving a sermon on 1 John 5:18 ff about how to identify a Christian.

Always of interest for someone in the position like mine.

One thing that struck me that he said was that a Christian will always struggle against the tendency to sin…..the temptation if you will…..to allow the old nature to supersede the new. Daily we have to face that old nature, that lives within ourselves, a duality that seems to be impossible but isn’t in the reality of this place. It amazes me that there are those who claim to be sin-free in this world, who walk a clearer path, truly, but still face the temptations and the slippery slope of sinfulness. In their denial lies sin.

We claim to follow Christ and yet, in the very basic structure of that we lose the meaning of following Him….of being made righteous in His sacrifice and brought instantly into perfection because we are a linear people, unable to project ourselves into that reality even as we struggle in this one. Christ walked the earth in a dual nature; fully God, fully Man. I’ve often wondered why that was the case, why God….one of the Trinity….would have to suspend His Godliness to be human so that He could save the whole of mankind. Oh, I understand that He had to stand in for each of us, to be a substitutionary payment of the sins that have kept us from God’s relationship, the perfect Lamb without blemish taking on the blemish of the world. Without reason, without right…..we have the ability because of the part of God that is within us (faith) to claim that sacrifice, that payment, as ours and become co-heirs with Christ.

But in that duality of nature; where Christ was fully God and fully Man, it brings a greater and more meaningful understanding why He came to live among us, to save us and stands waiting for the time when He will come again to claim what is His and His alone. A lesson, a promise and the methods to which we can walk in the duality of our own nature as He did….being true followers, disciples, of the Lord God, our King and Redeemer. We will never lose this old nature that has been harbored in this corrupt body and we will never be free of the sinfulness of the world that has decayed along with the rest of creation as it waits for mankind’s redemption. We can’t, for in the realization that we are corrupt lies our salvation, in our realization of the depravity of ourselves we find the ability to turn to Him and see where the truth lies, where the hope is born and where the righteousness of the Spirit embedded in us from the moment of our salvation resides. We find our abilities, our works, and our moralistic ‘goodness’ paled and worthless in the light of God. We realize that we cannot, will not, and are not able to walk with God by our own strength.

“When the soul discovers this divine influence, they leave aside all their good works, practices of devotion, methods, books, ideas and spiritual persons in order to be guided by God alone, entrusting themselves to that purpose which has become the only source of perfection for them.” Father Jean-Pierre de Caussade, The Joy of Full Surrender.

As George Mueller related to us, it is at that moment where we reach the impossibility of ourselves to do the work and purpose to which we have been designed, endowed and set aside for in the perfect and glorious plan of God for the permanence of His kingdom here on earth…….when we realize beyond that shadow of a doubt that we cannot be the person needed for that job…..when we face the depravity of our nature and realize it cannot be in the same room as a holy and righteous God, at that moment

We become free.

Because we can face the depravity of our old nature with the dominance of the new because God is in control and God has the power to overcome the sinfulness of that nature and bring us towards the righteousness we have already be imparted with. His elect have been already identified and He is shaping each one of them to pick up their crosses at the time of His perfection so that they become the mighty warriors the Kingdom has to fight against the evilness of the lost one and his minions.

We are sheep…… moving at the sound of our Shepherd’s voice and gathering together under His protection for the promised safety, the imparted comfort and trust that comes from surrendering ourselves to the authority and power that lies within us because of the impartation of the Holy Spirit. We accept the brokenness of our nature, our bodies and our world, surrendering it all to the thrashing floor of God’s house…….we become journeyers without a map, guided by a pillar of smoke in the day and a column of fire at night.

Restless souls longing for home at complete and utter peace as we journey on.

“God’s action is forever new.” Father de Caussade writes, “It never retraces its steps, but always marks out new paths. Those who are led in this way never know where they are going. Their roads are to be found neither in books nor in their own minds. God’s action moves them step by step, and they go forward only by His leading.”

That is the duality of living that Christ showed us, while He was fully God yet He surrendered Himself and His path to the will of the Father and brought His fully human nature constantly under the mantle of God’s control. He walked in the truth because He surrendered Himself to it and never strayed because God Himself cannot sin, God Himself cannot commit evil and if God Himself is in control, how could Christ do wrong?

Once we accept Christ as the Savior who died for our sins, confessing with our mouths and being baptized in representation of His death and resurrection as a public declaration of who’s we are……we can never be shaken from that salvation.

The rest of the journey is developing the faith we have been given to the awesome and inspiring heights of glory for our God through the divine influence of His power, perfection and sanctification.

And it is when we have reached those plateaus of doubt, where belief cannot survive and faith requires us to accept that which we cannot understand…..at that moment, we become the greatest weapons in our Father’s arsenal.

For the greater glory of God.

On the edge of faith and belief....

2010-09-30T18:53:00.000-07:00

“God works through different people in different ways, but it is the same God who achieves His purpose through them all” 1 Corinthians 12:6 (PH)

It is not the job I expected, nor one that I suspect that I will particularly excel at, but it seems to be the job that God has made me wait for eleven months for before presenting it to me late one night as I perused Linked In, one of my network sites, and discovered a fact that I had missed in the ten months of really working the networking syndicates….they have a job section. I send in the ‘online’ application, honestly answering that I couldn’t pass a street test if required for employment (I have been in A2 since July and still am a newbie). They called the next day and we spend the rest of that day and the next chasing each other on the phone.

Thursday, phone interview….Tuesday, meeting with the Hiring Manager and a race to the Secretary of State for a Chauffeur license and driving record copy….then dropping the application off, with the quickly snapped ‘passport’ quality photos, at the “Taxi Officer” of Ann Arbor Police Department, Officer Clock….

Monday, a call from Officer Clock saying he needed my chauffeur license copy. When I brought it in, he asked me to wait and came back with my application approved. A paid cabby license later and I’m officially licensed to be a taxi driver in the city of Ann Arbor. Tomorrow I call Betty and let her know I can attend training starting on Monday coming.

This is not what I was expecting…..ministry job aside.

There is no grace period here, no cushion of mercy that should I fall upon this ‘face for radio’ mug that will not cause further damage. I spend all of my funds on the licensing, running around and such…..I’m literally 180 miles from empty and there are some mighty bills due by mid-month. I had to go out and get pick through some ministry’s clothing bank for some work pants….they didn’t have any shirts…..and I can only hope the car maintains for a few more months until I can get it fixed. If for some reason, any reason, I can’t make this job work…….it is going to be a pretty big crater when I crash.

Not the beginnings I expected either……..dreaming aside.

It is no surprise to me how my secular life has followed my spiritual one. As one continued to fail, so did the other. I have come a long way from where I was six and a half years ago, when on Valentine’s day, God truly opened my heart and all the nastiness that a dying heart can gush out. He started me on a journey that day, a journey that has not ever worked out the way I imagined it would from the moment I surrendered; one that still twists through the valleys and the swamps of this wilderness with amazing dexterity and suddenness. Some would say I appear to be no further along that I was on the blustery February day, but I know that’s not true. Some would say that I’m worse off now that I ever was way back then. Maybe, but then one could say that Christ felt the same way when He hung on the cross and cried out to a Father that turned away from Him. Maybe I am worse off, but then that simply makes me that much closer to the prize.

As I have learned to subsist on a meager shadow of what I once earned, I have mirrored a meager fare in the spiritual life as well….slowly wearing off the edge of desire to be in ministry service in God’s church. As I have let go of those things I wanted above all else when I was employed, I began to give up those things I wanted above all else in the spiritual as well.

I should not be here in this place…….in all honesty.

As my beliefs have strained to the breaking point, both in my professional and spiritual abilities, I have let them go…..snapping them against the cruel taskmaster of faith and reality…..and they haven’t come rebounding back. I stand here on sheer ice, in both worlds, waiting for the breaking tearing that will signify my doom where my faith dies and my professional ability prove inadequate to the task.

I am at a point where I cannot encourage, sustain or support myself anymore, both in the spiritual and the secular world.

I am at a point where God has the clear opportunity to use this ‘different’ job to show me a ‘different’ work to do for Him…..

The job has changed, the life has changed and even my faith has changed……

But He stayed the same.

How many times.....

2010-09-26T18:57:00.000-07:00

“Then Peter came to him and said, "Lord, how many times must I forgive my brother who sins against me? As many as seven times?" Jesus said to him, "Not seven times, I tell you, but seventy-seven times!” Matthew 18:21-22 NET

“How many roads must a man walk down, before you call him a man?”......the great Bob Dylan croons in his song, “Blowing in the Wind,” “How many times must a man look up, before he sees the sky?”

It is the answer that we may never know the answer to, yet it came up in the conversation earlier this week with a dear brother in Christ over coffee.

“How many times,” he asked, “is enough before you consider ‘due diligence’ to be done?”

My mind immediately conjured up Matthew’s verse….”How many times??”

Common teaching in the day was that you have to forgive someone three times before you can ‘ethically’ call it quits and be considered exonerated in the community. Peter added a healthy number, a little over double, to his quip figuring he’d ace the exam before he even got the question. And he failed, miserably. Jesus basically told him that he wasn’t in the ballpark; far from it……there is never an ‘end’ point to forgiveness.

You forgive as many times as you have to forgive, without fail.

Otherwise, the limitation you impose on another is the same you’d have imposed on you, which we all know is not even close to the necessary ‘coinage’ to buy our way out of the debt of repetitive sin.

Even the definition of ‘forgiveness’ implies that it ‘resets to zero’ so that we would in effect be forgiving for the first time whether it was for the third or fiftieth time. Forgiveness is a decision to relate to another as if the wrong done to you had never happened.

And too often, we fail at even coming close to true forgiveness.

But isn’t that how God has forgiven us? Isn’t that how we are called to forgive others? And, if the possibility of being redeemed by the blood is IMPOSSIBLE without forgiveness, isn’t it safe to say that forgiveness can be switched out for the ‘other’ fruits of the spirit or characteristics that Christ tells us to expect in our faith, in our homes, in our communities and our congregations? Things like love, joy, peace…..”

How many times are we to exhibit that to our friends, neighbors, congregational members and community?

Seven times?

We should only love our neighbor seven times before we ‘give up’ on them and mark them off the evangelism list?

We should only love our spouses through seven rough times before we feel justified to withhold that love?

We should only bring joy to a widow or a single parent once or twice before we consider the resources of the church to be properly expended for them?

We should bring peace to the restless a handful of times before our mission is fulfilled?

We should only be in relationship with someone until it is no longer convenient to our lives?

After all, the Great Commission says, “Go and preach the Good News for a few days, making a few disciples of all you’ve been taught……”

Doing that which is good is not good in excess, right? And, after all, we only get a few opportunities to live sin-free before we are discarded into the ‘mistake’ pile.

Unfortunately, the current and the past church models (read post-Acts church here) are inherently human and therefore run with human assumptions and expectations. Many of these fall far beyond the scope and the breath of the Gospel intent and description.

Seven times anything in the modern church is a very hard thing to see replicated in anything that requires forgiveness and restoration, or entry into the messy lives of people repeated times.

Oh, don’t get me wrong, the models used are working…..churches are building grand buildings in which to house the worship, educational, outreach, children’s, youth and various vehicles and conveyances that once hauled everything to and from a temporary rental location.

They have acres of land cultivated and amazingly tranquil for those long walks pondering the visage of God.

The church down the road from me, a mega-sized church across from another denomination’s mega-church, is like a beacon in the sea of nighttime darkness…….spot lights and other lighting blaze against the night as the church lies locked up, waiting for the staff to arrive in the morning and be about the Lord’s business.

The Crystal Palace……Saddleback…..Willow Creek…..Mars Hill…….

Hundreds of thousands flock to these leaders and hear the Word preached, sometimes it’s even the Word of God rather than a remix of their own version of what the Bible says in the postmodern, emergent sense.

And yet, when the multitudes walk out of the doors, they are blind to the very mission field that starts inches from its thresholds.

But, my opinion on the state of the ‘Christian’ church and the leadership isn’t something new, it is the same as it was a year ago and a year before that.

What’s changed is my opinion of the human factor in the model of God’s church. When humanity comes to do ‘God’s work,’ it is instantly corrupted and hopelessly flawed.

The best intentions last for a while, the purpose and mission statements are actually believed and lived for a time. Then humanity takes over and we get the success stories of Willow Creek, Northridge, and others. Even then, some of these megas seem to stumble along in the truth somehow for a time….but the corruption of establishing and implementing a business model for a God-endeavor always gears the heart towards human ability and God leaves the building.

But, you forgive seven times seventy and fight alongside the remnant to bring the congregational body back on task for what God has purposed the church and its members for.

You forgive the slights, the disappointments and the hurts because you realize that humanity even in the corporate sense of the word is corrupted even in the best of circumstances and we all are limping towards the prize, the final destination of those who believe and have confessed that Jesus Christ is Lord.

Maybe that is where I’m hung up at and why in this desperate and frightening time, I want to tuck into myself and curl up in my room, far away from the world and its darkness, far from the sinfulness of those whom claim to be perfect and isolated from the one thing I know is truth even as my faith struggles with this fragile humanity…..that God is God and I am not, that Christ is King and died for me and that the knowledge imparted of the Absolute Truth of the Way cannot be denied.

Seven times Seventy.

Forgiveness, loving, hoping; any fruit of the Spirit I believe can be inserted in the place of forgiveness….and still the verse and intent is the same.

And yet, we question how many times we have to ‘endure’ something before we can escape it; love, relationships, heartache, pain, suffering and a montage of other ‘things’ that plague us in this life.

We never question however, how many times we can ask forgiveness for our sins.

Maybe I’m just not cut out for this whole ‘Christian community’ thing because I’m one of the broken, the stupidly confused that just don’t ‘get it,’ or that 'needy' one that just won't ever be happy with what comes his way.

Why?

I’ve hit the brick wall one too many times and finally brain damage has set in. Slamming my head against the wall, confused by the old nature that quails before the new and frightened by the decisive alienation that has happened too many times in "God's Church" where it is a judgment before mercy, condemnation before grace. Where the counter is going over into double or triple digits in the bean counters clickers.

Community is the greatest thing I fear in this ‘family’ of God-fearing people because it is that very ‘community’ that has caused me the most damage. Or maybe I’m just too damaged for such a community and invariably trip over their well-intending feet.

You leave yourself transparent, you are beggin' for a hurting.

George Mueller said that when God is ready to invite you into the things that He is doing in you, around you and ultimately through you, you experience a ‘crisis of faith’ where the beliefs that you have existed with for however long suddenly aren’t enough to reach that next step and so, in the absence of supporting evidence, you have to stretch yourself out on faith and faith alone.

A few of my friends say that God is doing something in my life, prepping me for the next major step in the purpose……

The majority say I’m neglecting my responsibilities; to my family, my community and my God.

And I want to throw in the towel…….

How many more times am I going to be at this place; between the reality of my beliefs and the impossibility of my faith, a finely sharpened point that I can balance upon ever so briefly before I fall; one way or the other…….

It is possible that Dylan was part prophet when he lamented that “the answer my friend is blowing in the wind….”

Fading......

2010-09-19T14:00:00.000-07:00

As I look back upon the last forty-three years of this life that I have lived and step into the forty-fourth, I am amazed. Amazed at the meandering path that hasn’t ended well before now despite the pitfalls and crevasses that have spanned its girth……amazed that the life lived wasn’t truly lived, or least felt like it was truly embraced in the warmth of living, until six and almost a half years ago.

Amazed at how much further I have come in that shorter span of time lugging the baggage garnered from the lifetime of living. Amazed that, as I have come close enough to the fire to be forever burned in its flame and still have that desire to love, in the language of the poet, “without knowing how, or when, or from where…straightforwardly…..”

There has been far more darkness, sin and shame in this life…..yet I am mostly aware of its joys and graces, interlaced with the mercies and hope that makes the twine of its length stronger than the sorrows and broken dreams that lie coloring its outer surface. There has been more disappointments, not only in others but in myself (far less in others than myself, I should probably say). There have been too many opportunities ruined by my own selfishness than properly utilized. There have been more relationships squandered than ever were properly grown.

Yet that pesky hope remains, driving me into the sure folly of human interaction and into the realm of assured rejection. Yet it remains.

And once again in the ignorance of that hope, I grasp for the straws of those things that I desire for eternity; love, faith, joy and peace. Knowing even as I grasp them the assurance of their departure once more at the end of the day when the light passes into the horizon of the day and once again the night of human depravity once again grips at the strings of my soul. Even though, it is the infusion of that hope, unblemished yet by the touch of humanity but still fresh with its ordained Godliness, that propels me into the daylight that once again breaks the inkiness of dark night that has bound me in its arms for another time.

I should cry all the time, speaking sorrows untold and unknown in the polite circles of this world, and prove beyond the shadows that hide momentarily in the corners from this sun the reality of humanity’s hopelessness. I spent too many of these forty-three years doing so, proving it to be something more than mere humanity can hope to overcome, and yet, I stand here, forty-three and two days into this foolish journey and ease my weary bones down to the fire….as twilight falls and the shadows begin their play, telling stories that need to be told in the darkness that bore them life and the harsh glow of the light that brings them into sharp focus.

“In this part of the story I am the one who dies, the only one, and I will die of love because I love you, because I love you,”

We have made love to be a foolish, mortal thing even in the arms of the church, of the faithful who gather around its tepid firelight against the coming darkness of the world.

We have arranged the love of its Chief Priest to be an exercise to be discussed and strategized in the quietness of the hallowed halls of our sanctuaries and devices of faith so that the enemy cannot hear them. Yet ignoring the fact that the enemy knows our plans outright, well before we can even reach for the shuttered doors of our hidden places and throw them wide to greet what we think are the tired masses waiting there.

We discover to our dismay a landscape devoid of life, no masses waiting there for our reach and only the crickets to sing praises for our arrival.

Love is not a static thing, nor does it hide beneath the trappings of our fragile attempt to emulate it. It cannot, for if it did, it would not be love but a wraith of the shadow it casts upon the landscape without light’s touch to throw it. Love has to be lived to be able to love, love without the living beat of its loving is a sad carcass of humanity’s failures and broken dreams.

Love wasn’t meant for such things, limited and sorrowed. Love is impossible, improbable and totally foolish in its dreaming. Love is everything, even in the absence of it. Love is there.

When we reach that point in our existence where love has become a wraith of what it once was, even in the poorly drivel of human’s excuse of it…..when we arrive there, we find ourselves at a cliff, staring down into the dark abyss of eternity. It no longer motivates us, but haunts us…….It not longer challenges us but beats us in endless repetition…..It not longer warms us but burns us with its touch.

When we arrive, it is there where love punishes us the most, with a haunting lullaby of enticement to believe it will come again. And we do, even as the haunting laughter of its rejection echoes in the background of our despair………

In the absence of love, what is there?

Love drove a man, a very special and important man, to leave behind the trappings and authority of His being….to deny Himself….to come to earth to live among us petty and foolish humans as one of us, with all the handicaps and hang-ups that we have…and yet, love drove Him to be the shining example of its expression in such fragility. Even as the world assaulted Him and trod upon His purer version of love, it was that expression and intimate knowledge of love that drove Him forward. It is that love that turned a Father’s eyes away from His Only Begotten Son, whose love drove Him to take on the sins of the world to become His and lose the favor of His Father as it covered Him.

And it is love that made that man, that god-man, rise from the Dead three days later………….

If you stare at the abyss, looking down into its depths and watching the swirling inky blackness caress the sides of the cliff……………look well and look long, for it is that which is what love is when love is absent and dead…..dark, and cold.

Love borne of a woman, treasured and caressed into sustained life by her breath and warmth may never be mine to visit with for a time upon this world and such sorrow is not sweet or manageable…..it is the lot I’ve drawn.

What makes me fear the most is that realization that what I thought was true love was nothing even close because it is that love that I attributed to my Savior and if that image of true love was true, then He cannot exist, He cannot be who He says and there is no love there.

So I struggle for the first time in this journey, among the broken mountains and foothills of this landscape, to pick up my feet and head…..to journey on. Because for the first time, I am afraid of coming to that crevasse where I’ll stand upon the edge and stare into the darkness beyond

And despair…………….

For love will have passed me by………..

This is my life....

2010-09-07T19:30:00.000-07:00

".......shame of face belongs to us today—to every individual of Judah, to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, to our kings, to our rulers, to our priests, to our prophets, and to our ancestors. We all have sinned before the Lord and disobeyed him. We have not listened to the voice of the Lord our God, to walk in the Lord’s commandments which he laid out before us. From the day that the Lord brought our ancestors out of the land of Egypt till this very day we have been disobedient to the Lord our God. We have acted carelessly, not paying attention to his voice. Clinging to us to this very day are the misfortunes and curse which the Lord prescribed to his servant Moses on the day that he brought our ancestors out of the land of Egypt in order to give us a land flowing with milk and honey. We have not listened to the voice of the Lord our God as given in all the words of the prophets whom he sent to us. Each one of us followed the intent of his evil heart by serving other gods and by doing what is evil in the sight of the Lord our God." Baruch 1:15-22

Just a little historical note before we continue, Baruch is from the Apocrypha...books of the Old Testament included in Roman Catholic and Orthodox Bibles, considered deuterocanonical (added to the eariler canon). It is not certain why the term which means 'hidden things' was applied to these texts but they are considered less authorative than the other biblical books due to their late origin (c. 300 BC to AD 100). They are not included in the Hebrew Bible and most Protestant Bibles.

Some thirteen books comprise the Apocrypha: I and II Esdras, Tobit, Judith, the Rest of Esther, the Wisdom of Solomon, Ecclesiasticus (which is also entitled the Wisdom of Jesus the Son of Sirach), Baruch, the Letter of Jeremiah, the Additions to Daniel, the Prayer of Manasses, and I and II Maccabees. At the Council of Carthage (397), it was decided to accept the Apocrypha as suitable for reading and in 1548 the Council of Trent recognized the Apocrypha, excepting I and II Esdras and the Prayer of Manasses, as having unqualified canonical status.

Many early Church Fathers, Augustine among them, put these books on a par with the rest of the Old Testament and quoted them equally, even Jerome (who wanted to exclude them from the Latin bible he was commissioned to translate) often quoted the Apocrypha without distinguishing it from the Hebrew canon.

"Scholarly biblical criticism has shown the presence of the same literary forms in both proto- and deuterocanonical writings." D. H. Wallace concludes in his article Apocrypha, Deuterocanonical Books, "The Apocrypha have something in common with what came before them and with what followed them; they therefore act as a link between the Old and the New Testaments and so help us to understand both."

I just thought the warning that Baruch gives in this apocrypha text was accurate for what the Christian church has become in the world today. It strikes me as prophetic in its utterance.

We have wandered far from our God and the blessings that He would have bestowed upon this nation and its people. We have sought out compromise and 'tolerance' to all things but those things of God and have developed an almost fearful adversion to addressing the sin in our lives and the lives of those around us rather than culturizing a 60s version of a lovefest in religious circles today.

But I'm not going on a discussion about the church and its problems; the church will alway have problems so long as there are humans in charge of it. When, and only when, we step back and allow God to be the focus and Jesus Christ the Head of the Church, then will the Church achieve the level of missional thinking and relational love that it needs to be an effective and power arm, leg, hand and feet of the Lord Jesus Christ, as it was meant to be.

Why bother? The Church will continue to do what it has done throughout the ages, progress further and further into a relationship with the world that has little revelance and truth in what God has said and did in this world.

I wish I could say that I've walked away from the disappointment that always haunts any dealing with humans, but I haven't. I've come to accept that there is no church truly following the dictates and lessons of Christ, for if it was......revival would be a state of condition not a mere word in the language. I've come to acknowledge that I will never be full accepted in whatever God has called me to do in that fellowship.

It no longer matters.

People will tell you they love you, no matter what, but then leave you in silence as you battle through the week. They will tell you that they want to be your friends, yet reject the help you want to give in the trials of their lives as they struggle. They will tell you that they will pray for you and forget as they grasp the hand of another with a connection that they need or want.

I can stare at the limitations that I have in my life and agree with those who say I shouldn't pursue a pastorship or utter a word on the stage of a church...for surely they, knowing my imperfections, would stand up and walk out of the 'hallowed' halls of the church of their making and declare me a hypocrite. I can look at my situation, missing the opportunities to be obedient in what God has provided me to do in His purpose, and declare myself unfit to do anything for God. Or I can take a page from Screwloose's lectures and apply it.

"It is in present time that a human's life is lived, and his ethics expressed in action. It is in present time that the human will must operate, choosing 'now' acts which set the course of his future life." (Will: Practical Paralysis; Screwloose lectures)

As I fail in some aspects of my life, I can be trapped in the sorrow of the moment and held nailed to the cross of other's makings by the decisional impact of their words. I can proclaim their version of me to be the most accurate and dispose of God's more pure, more honest assessment of me that I have become in the new life given to me under the blood of Christ.

I can listen to Christ's words and decide to follow them, even as I struggle to realize the full impact of being the man He wants me to be, the impact for the kingdom that He has equipped me to be and the warrior that He has provisioned me to be.

"If you continue in My Word, then are you My disciples indeed; and you shall know the Truth and the Truth make you free." John 9:31-32 KJV

My faith will never be arrogantly secure in what it thinks it knows and my beliefs will never be the single most motivation for what I do. It is rather simple, when I look at it through the eyes of Christ......in obedience I will walk even as in my humanity I fall.

I will continue to strive for that goal that is set before me, in the heavenly planbooks of the Almighty God. I will face trials and disappointments, rejection and selective love. I will hurt, I will bleed and I will sorrow.

And in that, I will know joy and peace, comfort and happiness, and love so complete that to realize it will mean to never let it go. It is my choice, it is my desire and it is my intention. Surrender of my will to the One who saved me and follow into the darkness where He would lead for the sake of those whom I was meant to testify with the brutality of my life.

As Switchfoot sings......

"This is your life. Are you who you want to be?"

That is who I want to be, a disciple yoked in the identifying yoke of my Messiah.
Following the Truth in my imperfection, perfected in the trials of this life.