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Archive of "Journal" Category
Some unformed thoughts on relationships
Relationships are like the vein that God has his people in right now. A vein because veins bring blood back to the heart. So much has been said and done in the name of God and the church that has moved a long way away from God’s heart. He’s using relationships as the vehicle – the vein – to move people back toward his heart. For example, I believe completely in God’s power to heal, transform, deliver, create – real world, real life miracles. I believe. But I believe the church has made such a sideshow of the idea of his power that any expression or attempt toward that power has moved a very long way from his heart. Jesus expressed his heart in Luke 19: “The son of man has not come but to seek and to save that which is lost.” Examine all of your experiences with “moves” of God’s power… is that what they were about? Really?
Relationships are bringing us back to his heart. They are moving the blood from wherever it’s been and bringing it back to the source. It will go in there and be transformed and purified and sent out to bring life to the whole body.
The relationships we have with people are the relationship with have with God. They do not “represent it” – they are not “impacted by it” – they are it. If I can’t be real with a person I call my friend because I’m afraid of what he’ll think of me then it is because I am not real with God for the same reason. I think I am fooling my friend with my phony attitudes and my attempts to control his perception of me just like I think I’m fooling God by my religious allegiance and strict adherence to the rules of my Christianity.
Jesus said that people will know we are followers of his by the way we love one another. Not by the way we claim to love him, but by the way we love one another. Our relationships with each other tell the world whether or not we know Jesus. John asks, “How can you claim to love God whom you have not seen if you do not love your brother who you have seen?” (1 John… I’m paraphrasing from chapter 4).
I want so much for people to like me. I do things and say things in hopes of making people like me. But the ugly reality is, I know everything about me and I don’t like me. This is what I do to God. I perform in hopes that he’ll like me… Right now, I don’t want to click “Publish” because I’m afraid that if you read this, you won’t like me anymore.
I am only beginning to have genuine relationships with other people when I accept that before I made my attempts to get God to like me, he was already loving me extravagantly… *click*
Finally Following
The majority of my “Christian life” has been spent acting as though Jesus is gone. Think about the original followers who heard him say, “Apart from me, you can do nothing.” Then he left them.
So how important must his presence be? Not what we usually call his presence – what I’ve allowed to pass for his presence for far too long – but his actual life-transforming right here-ness. The people he specifically selected and spent three years training and living with were not qualified or authorized or even capable of doing stuff without him and then he left them.
I’ve lived so much of my life as though I have to work around that abscence. It only now occurs to me to describe it like this. It’s like I’ve lived believing that since he’s not here and I can’t actually follow him, my time must be filled by many other things. As if by doing these other things, I’m showing Jesus how willing I would have been to follow him if I were around back then. Cramming my life with religious rituals and ceremonies took the place of walking behind him and listening to his words.
I have missed the fundamental purpose of the receiving of the Spirit – reunion with Jesus. He promised the Spirit so that we wouldn’t be without him (“He takes of what is mine and gives it to you… I will not leave you orphans…”). For the first time in my life I believe that I am truly following him.
I’m not referring to any specific thing I’m doing – it’s just that I know whatever I am doing, I’m doing it with Jesus – behind Jesus. Whatever I think he’s asking me to do, I do. And when I can’t tell that he’s asking me to do anything, I’m content to do nothing. When I get it wrong, he corrects me. When I don’t get it, I ask him about what’s going on.
Jesus us here. He is doing things everyday and I’ve finally accepted his invitation to come along.
Valley of Dry Bones
This is a full-length (40 min) message out of Ezekiel 37. I was going to talk about this and how it relates to resurrection while in South Africa during Easter this year but never actually did. “Turn to Ezekiel 37,” became kind of a running joke there since I kept saying but never did read from it or talk about it. A friend asked if I would give that message that I never gave there, so here it is. If you’re seeing this on facebook, you’ll need to click the “original post” link to get to the embedded audio player.
Receiving Spaghetti-Os
I’m learning a huge lesson from an experience over lunch with my six year old son, Luke. If you’re looking at this on facebook – it doesn’t pick up the embedded audio. Click the “View Original Post” link below and you’ll find the audio.
This One’s With Me
Another audio note – this one on the transformational value in realizing that God doesn’t distance himself from me when I’m screwing everything up. If you’re looking at this on facebook – it doesn’t pick up the embedded audio. Click the “View Original Post” link below and you’ll find the audio.
Jesus Had Friends
This is a thought I’ve been stuck on for quite a while now. Just a short audio note I hope that you get a little something from. If you’re looking at this on facebook – it doesn’t pick up the embedded audio. Click the “View Original Post” link below and you’ll find the audio.
This Is The Day
Here’s another quick audio note on a recent meditation of mine. Hope it does you some good. If you’re looking at this on facebook – it doesn’t pick up the embedded audio. Click the “View Original Post” link below and you’ll find the audio.
Putting the Computer Together
I’ve been thinking about posting some short audio files here and just trying to open the door to the things I’m thinking as we set out on this church plant. So in the spirit of ‘Git R Done,” here’s one. The audio quality is not great. Sorry about that. I hope it’s not too distracting and I’ll make some improvements so that it’s at least a little louder. If you’re looking at this on facebook – it doesn’t pick up the embedded audio. Click the “View Original Post” link below and you’ll find the audio.
Meditations
Most people with blogs that never update them don’t write because they can’t think of anything (I think). My problem seems to be that I’m thinking about everything. \n\nDon’t live as though you have God all figured out. That’s one of the things that I’ve been thinking about. I am amazed at how much I do that. About 5 years ago I was struck with the thought and began seeing people all throughout Scripture that had their vision of God blown away by The Real Thing. About 2 years ago I picked up a “glad that’s over” attitude on the subject – as if I no longer had the problem of living as though I have God figured out. Turns out, it ain’t over. I am revisiting these lessons and meditations. He is still unwraveling my assumptions and the falsehoods I’ve believed and the shortcuts I’ve taken in place of really knowing him. \n\nI don’t know yet how to really be free. That’s something else I think about all the time. Again, a few years ago a liberation started to take place. So I’ve looked around with compassion and sometimes angst at people who do not seem to realize that their religion has placed them in a cage. “You’re not in a cage!” I want to shout at them. But now I’m realizing that I’m like one of those animals that has been let out of a zoo. I am no longer behind the bars and I know it but I still pace back and forth. Only covering the same tiny space as my former enclosure. I know I’m free but I do not yet know how to live within the full space he has given me. \n\nIf all the props that I used to think connected me to God were removed would I have anything left with him? Would we have anything to talk about? This is an old one but another that keeps coming back to me and occupies my mind at night. I once read something from Irwin McManus about God leading a revolt against the religion that he started. What if that’s what he’s doing again? In our day. What if all the people that Christians think are “running from God” are actually being chased by him? Have we painted God into such a corner that the only way he can get to the people the church has left unaffected is to rebel against it? Maybe he is telling us “tear all this stuff down and I’ll build it again in three days.” And we are shouting “blasphemy,” and trying to find a way to get rid of him so we go back to “normal” and do things the way we like to. \n\nJesus had friends. I’m blown away by this. I can’t stop thinking about it. Given the severity of his misson and the scope of the change he needed to bring, friends seem like they would be a waste of time. With 3 years to spend, Jesus invested himself in a really tiny group of people. From Acts we might say that only 120 people really knew him. If we go by the Gospels, it would seem a lot less than that even. If God sent me somewhere with the task of bringing thousands to him I don’t think I would have handled it like Jesus. It seems that he saw a few authentic relationships with him as the appropriate container for the thousands that would come to know him through them. I don’t think he has changed his strategy over time. If you can get a few people togeher who are truly serious about knowing Jesus, those relationships can provide the structure for something that can grow infinitely large. \n\nThese are a few of my thoughts lately, not everything but I’ve got to save some stuff for 6 months from now when I finally post again
It’s Our Fault
Recently, I watched this video of a panel discussion / debate titled, Does the God of Christianity Exist and Why Does it Matter? It was sponsored and put on by a Christian publisher and it featured one atheist, Christopher Hitchens, author of god Is Not Great, and three Christian apologists (the only name I recognized was Lee Strobel). To say that watching the discussion left me frustrated is a severe understatement.
Mr. Hitchens, in answer to the first question posed to him, raised the issue of human suffering and specifically talked about the gut wrenching recent news story of the Austrian man who imprisoned his own daughter for more than 26 years, subjecting her and the children he fathered with her to unimaginable horror in an underground dungeon. The implications being, if there is a good and loving God somewhere up there, how could this evil inflicted upon such purely innocent people be explained?
I’m sure you know that each of the Christians on the panel had well thought and well articulated responses to the problem of innocent suffering and a loving God. I’ve heard all those before, and so have you. No one said anything I disagree with. In my opinion nobody handles the questions and complications of suffering better than C.S. Lewis in The Problem of Pain, and his infinitely more personal story of A Grief Observed. I’ve read both of those books more than once. So the guys on the panel certainly weren’t saying anything new and weren’t even saying it as well as I’ve heard it before – but that’s not what bothered me this time. I couldn’t escape the emptiness of the whole argument. Mr. Hitchens raises the raw human horror of a particular story and these guys start talking about free will and God’s desire to have people who “choose to love him.”
Is that it? That’s what we want the suffering and the innocent of this world to know? We’re sorry you were subject to such hell and evil but God couldn’t stop it because that would have violated your monstrous beast of a father’s free will? People, believe me when I say that if that’s all we’ve got on the “Christian side of the argument,” I’m out!
My frustration over this debate and my prayer and meditation ever since I heard the story of the Austrian has convinced me that this is not “all we’ve got.” But the consequences have been painful. Bottom line: These horrors have happened on our watch – on my watch.
1 Peter 5 says that the devil is seeking whom he “may” devour. He’s seeking for permission – for access. Who may I subject to agony and pain and unthinkable suffering? I’m coming to grips with my own responsibility toward humanity. We are Christ’s ambassadors – representatives given authority to establish his kingdom to the ends of the earth. In his kingdom, these things do not happen. But the keys of this kingdom have been given to us. We blew it!
I think that Nehemiah 1:6 provides us with the Christian response to suffering; “…Both my father’s house and I have sinned.” We have sinned. Access was given to the destroyer because the kingdom in which he has no power was not established in these places. The way we have been given of establishing that kingdom is repentance. Repent for the kingdom of God is at hand.
Hear me: I’m not saying that this horror took place because no one came to this Austrian and said, “Repent of your sins or you’ll go to hell.” Read Nehemiah again. I and my fathers have sinned. These horrors have occurred because I remain unrepentant. God has given us his kingdom in a mystery. I don’t know how my repentance establishes his kingdom, but I know that’s what does it.
2 Chronicles 7:14 “If My people who are called by My name will humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land.”
We do the humbling. We do the praying and the seeking. We repent of our wicked ways. Then he does the forgiving and the healing of the land. Instead of some academic debate about free will and God’s sovereignty, I long for someone to fall on his knees before Christopher Hitchens and say:
You are absolutely right! This is unacceptable. Please forgive me… on behalf of all Christians given the authority to establish Jesus’ kingdom, I repent as one who was taught to pray, “Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is heaven.” I confess that I have failed to establish God’s kingdom in this situation. This never should have happened. Evil should have never been given this kind of access. Please forgive me.
I don’t know if that would have made a difference to Christopher Hitchens or not. It might not have changed his outlook or his worldview at all. That’s not the point.
