God moment....

“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……”

This is my life....

".......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.

Tranquility….is not a sea on the moon

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A handy guide for helpers of the hurting

When I was faced with the daunting task of preparing both my dearest sister in Christ, her family and the congregation for the ending of her earthly journey, it was my first experience as a chaplain and I was woefully unprepared.

There is a wealth of denominational handbooks that speak doctrinal traditions, but there have been no concise, structured handbooks available that make this journey as a layperson, a chaplain, or even a pastor somewhat less daunting….

Barbara Roberts has put the wealth of her experience, tested and tried upon the field of ministry, into such a handbook. Less of a personal story of lessons learned, it is rather a precise and no-nonsense reference guide that anyone facing the call of ministering to those facing life's challenges can quickly read, understand, and then apply the support of the Holy Spirit to so that the expression of God's love can be realized in the midst of the heartaches of this world.

This is a 'must-have' for anyone called to go into the mess of life with the heart of the Savior so that the needs of the ministered can be met with Christ-like love and compassion. Lay-counselors, Chaplains and even Pastoral staff will find this a vital and welcomed help.

Uncompromised faith in a compromising world.

"But dedicate your lives to Christ as Lord. Always be ready to defend your confidence in God when anyone ask you to explain it. However, make your defense with gentleness and respect." 1 Peter 3:15 (GW)



"Research reveals that Christianity in America has become more diluted, more distorted, and less Christ-like with each subsequent generation," Josh McDowell writes. "So severe is the crisis that I dared to proclaim that if something serious does not occur in the life of the church, we may be witnessing the last Christian generation in America."

"Historically, Christians have been formidable in projecting this new and true interpretation of reality [the transformational shift in our conceptions of reality, self, human nature, knowledge, morality, and ethics] into every aspect of American life and culture," S. Michael Craven offers, "not by political coercion but through intellectual influence, missional activity, and compassionate outreach." But, in today's culture, where a candidate can be elected President through 'inclusive and universal' change even by those who claim Christianity as their religion, such formability has become systematically reduced to "religious ritual and personal piety."

As the world has become increasingly intolerant of its views and its mission, the Church has withdrawn into its beautiful buildings and subcultured language, symbols, and literature. It has strayed away from the very calling of its mission and ill-equipped those daring enough to venture into the culture of deprived and sinful world. It has become a victim of the culture, influences, and worldview of a society it was supposed to save.

S Michael Craven, president of The Center for Christ and Culture, is considered to be one of the leading cultural apologists in the modern world and offers those daring enough to engage in discussion a thought-provoking and challenging look at the crisis facing the movement started by Jesus Christ and the ineffectiveness of modern Christianity in meeting that commission given in his book Uncompromised Faith: Overcoming Our Culturalized Christianity.

"Empty-headed evangelism," Craven believes, is the "dumbed down Christian theology" that has created a generation of Christians who are afraid to engage in the hard questions that society uses to silence the witness of the followers of Christ, prevents effective discipleship, and has created a world where the immoral views of humanism are dominant. He calls for a renewed, biblical form of engagement in the battle for the lost souls of the world, in an effective and culturally changing mindset.

Missional apologetics.

A way of engaging the culture in a way that historical apologetics (classical, presuppositional, and evidential) has failed to do. In "addressing the ideas or ideological influences common to a given culture," and recognizing "social issues and their underlying ideas or worldviews," missional Christianity becomes more of a "rescue force that is determined to stay until all are rescued" instead of a hit-and-run commando force that is only here to harass the enemy forces.

"The missional Christian presses into the world wherever he or she is," Craven defines this 'new', highly trained warrior. "and pushes back the darkness with the love of Christ."

In Uncompromised Faith: Overcoming Our Culturalized Christianity, Craven not only challenges us to learn the way to effectively engage the culture that we have unknowingly allowed to affect our faith but he offers thought-provoking arguments on how those influences have brought a once effective and life changing reality to the former shadow of itself.

Post-enlightenment, postmodernism, and the persuasive consumerism of American culture have allowed "social acceptance of false moral perspectives" as culturized Christians have become increasingly unable to "articulate meaningful, rational, and compelling reasons" for the Gospel message of morality. Only 4% of American Christians use a biblical worldview as a basis for decisions, and even that worldview is more of an espousing of Christian tenets rather than a framework for 'analyzing, evaluating, and guiding' one's lifestyle.

Craven describes this necessity of having a "Christian philosophy of life….where men understand all of reality and its nature in connection with the revealed Word of God" for the effective engagement of a culture and society that has become increasingly anti-Christian. In looking at the effects of modernity and modernism, postmodernism, and consumerism upon our faith, Craven calls us to 'represent the Kingdom of God' through "distinct community…and serving the world through compassion and mercy in meeting humanity's needs and being just."

Reading his book, we are taken upon a journey of understanding the cultural influences and how they have changed the biblical context of God's grace, mercy and glory. We are offered a restoring and effective way to rejoin that unique and achievable goal of being part of God's redemptive work in a world gone crazy by understanding how the morality of our faith has been suborned by secularism. Craven looks at the cultural influences of our modern times, the social issues that plaster the landscape of American society, and calls us to engage that culture through 'demonstrating the reign of God within…authenticating community" with understanding and love.

"If we want to overcome our Culturalized Christianity to worship and serve the King of Kings; we must recover this broader understanding of our mission as Christians in the world. We must learn to properly analyze and intelligently engage the culture, and we must interact with each other and the world in a spirit of grace, love and charity."

Far from emergent, universal, and New Age spirituality movements that disengage God from life, Craven offers a means of understanding and being effective as believers in the cultural influences of our age with the effectiveness of Paul, the compassion of Peter, and the ultimate reality-changing and life-giving impact of Jesus Christ.

I would recommend picking up a copy of Craven's book and challenge you to develop an 'uncompromised faith.'