morning reflections

this week has been a reminder of the brevity of life. i was reminded that i need to take better care of myself. i was reminded that we never know what tomorrow will bring.

last night as i talked with my dear friend, jerry newton, on the phone i was confronted with the reality that we aren't guaranteed tomorrow. jerry told me of how our good friend passed away wednesday morning. at one point i could hear jerry getting choked up and it made the tears in my eyes build up before spilling over the levee.

i sit here this morning watching the horizon change from a deep onyx blue to vibrant orange. as the color emerges revealing more vibrance, more passion in it's voice, the soulful voice of ray lamontagne sings a plea to the heavens,

"Trouble...
Trouble, trouble, trouble, trouble
Trouble been doggin' my soul since the day I was born
Worry...
Worry, worry, worry, worry
Worry just will not seem to leave my mind alone"

i reflect on my life...

for me, when death strikes close to my heart, i find myself wondering, "am i living the way God called me to live?"

is my heart's cry being answereed by my actions, by the relationships i build, by my daily focus?

or am i simply submitting to my selfishness, to what i think needs to be done?

am i living for God or for me?


am i investing time in people or stuff that won't last?

am i putting others before myslef or am i stockpiling material things for me and my family because i've bought into the lie that i deserve more than than the poor because i have an education or i've "worked hard"?

these are the questions that i ask myself today. i can feel the love of Christ move through them even when the questions are at their most convicting, i feel God's Love. the hard questions bring change; they bring rebirth.


what matters in the end?

it's not our bank account.

it's not the house we live in.

it's not our retirement plan.

it's not the cars we drive, or the clothes we wear.


in the end, will you be able to answer a resounding "yes" to Jesus when He asks you,

did you visit me when i was in prison?

did you feed me when i was hungry?

did you clothe me when i was naked?

did you love me when i was unloved?

did you lift me up when i was at the bottom?

did you take me in when i was homeless?


there is a skewed view of reality in the world we live in. we have been raised to think that giving our can of food to the food bank at thanksgiving is our duty. now please don't hear me say that giving to a charity is bad, it's not. the attitude i'm weary of is the attitude in which we give to a charity to rid ourselves of guilt. i'm not sure Christ ever said, "when i was hungry you gave food to the food bank and they fed me."

we shouldn't be indirectly effecting change, we should be direclty effecting change.

don't forget that we are to imitate Christ. we are to strive everyday to be more and more like Him. Christ was a servant. scripture points that out clearly. Old Testament prophets point to the Messiah as being a humble servant. then we read of this son of a carpenter emerging in the desert winds of the first century and He doesn't fly through the roman empire striking down all who get in His way. instead, He walks along the road with thieves. He eats in the house of prostitutes. He gives Grace to the beggars. He spends insane amounts of time with men and women we avoid at all cost.

if this is the lifestyle we are supposed to imitate, how do we fool ourselves into thinking we deserve more than anyone else? how arrogant have we become? how deeply is our idolatry with pursuing the american dream going to go?

for many of us we don't want to be confronted with our depravity, but we need to be. because without being shown what we are moving towards, we might never realize that we are traveling down the wrong road.

when issues like the ones mentioned thus far are brought up, we automatically think the writer or speaker is telling us that we need to give all of our money away and live as the poor lives. that's not what i'm saying, yet it is. i don't want you to tell yourself that I think less of you because you have much. i do believe whole heartedly that the more we have, the more we should give. i do believe that believers should live below their means so we can give more. i wonder if the first thing we think of is money, then maybe that's what our heart is holding on to too tightly.

maybe that's the one thing we know we can't give up?

guilt is not why i write this to you today. i share what God is calling me to share. i have been called to challenge believers to live outside of our lives of comfort, outside our lives of mediocrity and move to lives of risk, lives fueled by passion for Loving God, Loving Our Neighbor and Putting Others Before Ourselves.

we fool ourselves if we beleive that sunday morning is all God has for us.

we fool ourselves if we think that life is all about us taking care of ourselves and our family.

there is so much more that God has for us, but we'll never see it if we aren't willing to serve.

Christ, the humble servant He is, knows that if we put others before ourselves, change happens.

if we put others before ourselves, the misconceptions of the church go away because we are actually giving grace to people instead of condemning them.

if we put others before ourselves, the world changes, revolution begins.

what is your heart's cry for your life?

look deep with yourself... what is it?

forget money. forget power. forget comfort. forget retirement plans. forget your dream house.

remember that true religion is caring for the orphans and widows and keeping yourself from being polluted by the world. james said that.

don't forget that at the root of everything Love must exist. if we don't have Love as our foundation, then all is for not.

Love is the beginning.

Love is the end.

may we see that we are here for more than we ever expected.

may we realize that our life is not about us.

may we come to the full knowledge that everything is about Him. it's about God and nothing else.

may we be shown our brokenness and may that brokenness compel us to serve others; to put others above ourselves.

may we remember life is today

not tomorrow

not yesterday

life is this moment

this instant

may we not waste it.

peace be with you

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God Save The Queen

i would have to say that my favorite book in the Bible to read is the book of Jeremiah. it's emotional, it's raw, it's dark and hopeful all at the same time. the characteristics that i see in the heart of Jeremiah, in his words and his passions, i can identify with. it is in Jeremiah that i was given my call. it is in the God breathed words spoken and written by the prophet that i felt God say to me, "this is what you were created for."

feeling the presence of the Holy Spirit directing you specifically to something is a big deal, so my ears perked up, my mind sharpened it's focus and i listened.

in Jeremiah 2 there is an incredibly emotional word from God that strikes deep into my soul. it's as if God is looking at his people, after all he has done for them, and He is crying out to the nation of israel, "do you remember the days that you loved me? remember when you followed me any where i went? you were like a bride then. i protected you. i took care of you. i provided for your every need."

please hear this with the emotion that is coming through the pages of scripture. this is raw, emotional love. God is using the parallel of a bride and groom, like he does so often in scripture. He wants us to remember what we felt like when we first fell head over heels in love with our spouse.

He is asking His people to remember how that felt.


then God says to the people, "when did I lose you? we had something great going here. i provided for you, you did the same, so what happened? when did i lose you to these other idols? we were so connected, then you ran away from me? wasn't i everything to you? weren't we in Love? you have pushed me aside to pursue what? you had the spring of living water and you left it to go dig your own cistern. and the cisterns you have -- they're cracked, they don't even hold water."

this is a little too much reality for me.

it's too much reality for me, because of who Jeremiah is speaking these words to...Jeremiah is speaking to the religious leaders.

he is talking to the church.

Jeremiah was speaking to the church.

don't miss that.

God is using Jeremiah to tell His people that they have exchanged the one thing that gave them life, the very thing that sustained them, for something else. the people saw the water running, they had tasted it's refreshment and they said, "no thanks. it's good, but i need to do my own thing. so i'll dig my own cistern to hold water that i find elsewhere."

but the sad fact is that these religious leaders were so consumed with their own lives and providing for themselves that they didn't realize everything they were pouring in was leaking out. nothing they did lasted. all of their work, all of their worship, all of their prayers, just leaked out through the cracks. the tragedy is that the people didn't even realize it.

the church had become religious.

the people had lost their first love

and all God was asking for was their heart.

God was crying out to save His bride.

in the new testament a man by the name of Paul becomes a follower of Christ after a long, strict upbringing in the Jewish faith. we pick up with stories about Paul in the book of Acts, a book filled with God crying out for His people; for everyone.

an interesting point brought to my attention this week was who Paul approached first about this new way of life.

Paul went first to the religious leaders. he first went to those people who had exchanged God for their own ambitions, for what they thought was best for them.

Paul went first to the religious leaders.

but why?

"because he knows that if the church gets converted, the whole world will follow."

Paul is trying to help God call His Bride home.

far too many people who are faithful followers of Jesus have forgotten what it was like when they were young and in Love.

we (and i include myself in this "we") often exchange the beauty of our relationship with God for comfort, for convenience, for our need to uphold the lifestyle we have convinced ourselves we "deserve".

God is crying out for his people,

his church,

for you

and me

to come back to that relationship that looks more like a bride and groom's life together, than a boyfriend and girlfriend's on again, off again romance.

God is callin us back.

have we forgotten what His embrace feels like?

would we rather fill our own cisterns with worldly accomplishments that we spend years striving for, rather than serving others?

what does True Love look like?

True Love is selfless.

how can we be selfless today?

may God show us the beauty of walking along side Him in such a way that we can't let go of His hand.

may we stop pouring our lives into broken cisterns and be refreshed by the spring of living water.

may we be consumed with the kind of relentless Love that a bride has for her groom.

may we remember that we are the bride and Christ is our groom, our King.

God save the queen.

peace be with you


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one cross, three wedges

over the course of my 28 years of being in church i've noticed quite a bit about people who claim the name of Christ. some of these people produce great good for the kingdom and therefore the world, and others tear people down and cause massive chasms of division.

some of you might know that i started walking with Christ when i was 20, in January of 2000. at that point in time life was beautiful, there was nothing that could bring me down off of my spiritual high. nothing could stop me from growing.

and then one day, i walked away from all of it...

church

God

Christ

anything that had a religious label i pushed away.

a couple of weeks ago i was watching some stand up comedy, which i love to do from time to time. now this particular stand up featured one comedian by the name of dennis miller. i love dennis miller. he's witty, charming, honest, and quite often brash.

he made a comment that i've been pondering for the last couple weeks and then as i was talking to one of my college professors last night, he said something that solidified my thoughts and where they were going.

dennis miller said that we always seem to make the small things out to be bigger than they actually are, or they actually need to be.

so, the past two weeks my mind has been on this thought pretty frequently. during this time, i've been preparing to help lead a discussion on one of the most debatable issues in christian thought -- war. what made the past few weeks terribly difficult is that God has begun to change my mind on a couple of issues dealing with the topic of war, and it has been a tough pill to swallow. i began to write down all of my questions and answers this week that came from my study and i felt myself thinking "how could i have thought this way for so long? have i been wrong the entire time i've been walking with God?"

last night i get an unusual phone call from my professor and mentor (he probably doesn't think of himself as a mentor, but he was). he began to encourage me about thursday night. we had been corresponding this week about the topic, which definitely helped in the preparation. i won't tell you all that he said but one of the most influential things he said was to not allow the topic to get people out of sync with the heartbeat of God because once our conversation has gone away from Him, we've no point in talking.

he also told me that people are all at different points in their journey with Christ. if our walk was marked by "points" and each point was a letter in the alphabet, some are at point "C" while others are farther along the path at point "Q". and perhaps these issues that people at point "Q" understand and have had the time to sift through, pray through, and come to a decision on are there because they've had the time, life experiences, etc. that are needed to get them to such a point. on the other hand, those believers at point "C", might not be ready to hear that argument yet. their faith might not be strong enough.

so is the person at point "Q" considered "right" and the person at point "C" wrong, because they are each able to come to a biblical decision based on where they're at in their journey? i don't think so.

too many times people debate, argue, fight, and in cases of history, shed blood all in the name of Christ over interpretations, thoughts, ideas. for us today, we don't think of shedding each others blood, we just tear down the church from the inside out; we cause division.

caleb rosier sent me a quote from the screwtape letters by c.s. lewis, in which a senior devil is talking to a junior devil on how to cause destruction of the human soul, and it basically says that if they (devils) can get people to be preoccupied with our ideas to such an extent where we then fall into the cycle of letting our "faith" play the role of supporting an idea, then they have us. at that point where our faith becomes the agent to back our small mind's ideas that we deem best, we've lost God and our religion of being "right" has become idolatrous.

i stepped away from God after i became a Christian. isn't that weird. it was the time when i was supposed to be diving deeper into His Word, Loving my neighbor, and caring for the ones who can't care for themselves. i stepped away because all i saw was christian men and women arguing with great conviction and passion that one side was right and the other was wrong.

it wasn't over issues that determines someone's salvation. it was over calvinism, arminianism, baptism, homosexuality, alcohol, war, music, books, movies, smoking, worship style, healing, tongues, prophecy, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. what i saw happen was christians becoming enraged at other christians over topics that have been debated for centuries and yet they thought their view, which was based more from their upbringing and culture rather than scripture, was right.

but the cherry on top, so to speak, was when a local church in our area split because people within the church body spread talk that eventually drove a giant wedge in the church and that was all that was needed to divide.

i wonder how much of our time, or how much breath could be saved if we sat down with others and talked through issues instead of running away from them or getting so worked up and convinced we are the ones that are "right".

what if we decided to do the Biblical thing - humble ourselves, sit down with a person and discuss our grievances. or what if we simply walk alongside them, loving them, rather than trying to convince them that we're right and they're wrong.

we might actually come to find out that this "giant" issue that was once a massive wedge divinding us, keeping us from serving God together, was actually something so small we could flick it away like an unwanted bug crawling on our arm.

what if the big issues really aren't that big?

what if the debatable topics that are keeping us from serving together as one body, one community, aren't that important in the grand scheme of things?

what if we become less concerned with being "right" and more concerned with Loving others?

may we not be the one that creates division

may we see the world through Grace-filled eyes

may our hearts desire to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, love the unloved, and visit the imprisoned.

may we love those around us with the Love and Grace of Calvary.

peace be with you

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