It Matters...It Matters Not

My friend is on the verge of completely rearranging his life through a career move and I could not be happier for him. How do we end up here or there, befriend him or her, have this child but not that one, marry her but not her or her or her? And then when it all is, we call it a life. We circle the wagons and try to defend this choice or that, squeeze this wish out of God vs that one and make a go out of finding happiness. Last night my son almost crossed home plate...but didn't. Should he have prayed more and forced his way past the catcher through God force or better yet, bowled him over? One cancer cell in the liver and we are battling into death, one lovely chance meeting and we are barreling into marriage. I have never been more in love with Jesus than I am now and yet more reluctant to try to plan my way into success or happiness or comfort or peace. I just finished Surprised by Joy and if there was one theme that bopped me more than any other in C.S. Lewis' book, it was this. all that is good is that we are in Jesus...Cross home plate or not, find a new house or not, get a more comfortable job or not pale in comparison to living within Christ. The stuff of it all...the encouraging conversation, the rolling waves, the cozy book, have a place to this life but never are the home of it. In Christ, we are home...

The Life We Know And The Life We Don't

Psalm 25:21 NIV
May integrity and uprightness protect me, because my hope is in you.

Recently the wild child Lindsey Lohan was in the news because she was named in a lawsuit alleging she stole a fur coat from a friend whose party she was attending. Now, the most important question for us is not whether she did it or not but whether that same sort of absurdity is in us too. Of course it makes no sense whatsoever for this multi-millionaire actress to go about stealing coats. But is she alone in her fractured state? Is she the only one of us who does things that don’t make any sense, who say things we can’t believe we said, who act nothing like we are? The other day I was driving along and someone cut in front of me. This little housewife when she made her lane change easily could have slid behind my car but must have decided in some dark part of her soul that it was crucial she take from me my lead. Angered by the idiocy of her act, I did an equally absurd thing. I swiftly changed lanes and made my move to get back my spot on the road. Of course I immediately got trapped behind a slow moving truck and was forced, if I were to make my left turn, to cut in front of the woman immediately behind the person I was trying to conquer. This infuriated the woman I cut off, and after I slipped into the left turning lane, she, as she passed by me cocked her head back to give me the evil stare down. The idiot I sought was now the idiot I was.

There are several Lindsey Lohans in scripture that acted absurdly. In the Old Testament is the barely remembered servant of the prophet Elisha. Gehazi was Elisha’s right hand man and the witness of spectacular miracles. But it was one of those miracles that was his undoing. When the Aramean, Naaman came to Elisha begging for a cure from his leprosy, Elisha gave the general a perplexing prescription. “Go” he told the foreigner, “and dip your whole body into the Jordan River seven times and your flesh will be restored.” Naaman thought Elisha was clueless and at first refused to do what he was told, despising the soupy Jordan. But when Naaman’s servants advised him to give it a try, he trooped down to the Jordan, dunked himself seven times and to his amazement came up out of the water totally healed. Stunned and eternally grateful to the prophet, Naaman and his retinue returned immediately to thank Elijah for what he had done Gehazi the servant stood by in shocked silence as his master Elijah turned down Naaman’s offer of a million dollars in gold and silver as a gift for the healing.

Faithful servants don’t often betray their masters but Gehazi could not stare down all that gold and silver without making a go of it. Surreptitiously Gehazi slipped out and chased down Naaman.and lied to him that his master Elisha changed his mind and actually did want some of the silver and two changes of clothes. Naaman immediately obliged and Gehazi rushed home with his cache. Finally returning to Elisha with his treasures safely hidden away, Gehazi was shocked to learn that Elisha already knew about his covert trip to Naaman, knew about the story he made up to get the silver and clothes from him and knew he had his loot hidden away at home. Gehazi’s punishment was swift and heavy handed. The leprosy Naaman had just escaped fell upon Gehazi. Could Lindsay Lohan top that?

A second Lindsay Lohan is actually a pair of them…the infamous Ananias and Sapphira. We know their story all too well. When many of the early Christians were selling off property and giving the proceeds to the Church, one of the couples in the group thought they would join in the extravagance. No one told them they had to give anything; there were no rules about sacrifice and generosity in the Church. But Ananias and Sapphira decided they also would sell a field and give the proceeds to the church. The catch though, was that they wanted everybody to think they had given all their profits when in fact some of the earnings they were keeping for themselves. Again, there was no rule that said they couldn’t do this, keep part, but why did they lie about it. It was a disastrous Lindsey Lohan moment. God immediately struck each of them dead when they lied to Peter about their charity.

A third Lindsey Lohan is the Apostle Peter himself. When the Christian community made its thrust into the non Jewish world and started winning Gentile converts to Christ, the Jewish Christians were thrown into a tizzy. What kind of expectations should be placed on these Gentile believers? Should they have to keep the Jewish Law too? Would they need to eat only Kosher? What about the Sabbath and circumcision and Feast days and morality? What were the requirements for good Christian living if you weren’t raised Jew? Finally it was settled that only four Jewish restrictions would remain. No eating meat of strangled animals, no drinking blood, no feasting on food offered to idols and no sexual immorality. That was it. The sum total of Jewish requirements Gentiles had to keep to remain good Christians. Peter though still had friends who thought this wasn’t enough. Gentile believers really had to be Jews if they were to be accepted. On the other hand, he had good Christian friends who were Gentiles that thought the entire Jewish legalism thing was rubbish. When Peter was with them he was fine with the freedom of Christian faith. But then Christian Jewish legalists came to town and Peter slithered away from his Gentile friends because he was afraid of what his Jewish friends thought of them. A Lindsey Lohan moment!

What is the point of connection between these three incidents? Each time someone did something ridiculous that was completely out of character and totally unnecessary. Gehazi needed neither the silver nor the clothes, Ananias and Sapphira didn’t even have to sell their field if they didn’t want to do so and Peter had no reason to be afraid of the opinions of his Jewish brothers. Integrity is not just moral character; it is defined as wholeness, as unity, as the state of being complete. The Greek word most often translated integrity in the New Testament is “alethia”; it describes the condition of truth, or trueness within. It is what the Pharisees, who were trying to trick Jesus into condemning Caesar’s taxation, had to say of Him…Jesus was a man of “alethia” or trueness. Integrity is more than simply doing the right thing; it is true character spilling out into common activities.

Integrity is a frequent theme in the Old Testament, often found in the Psalms and Proverbs. The word most frequently used to express integrity is the Hebrew term “Tome”. It describes completeness, fullness, simplicity and innocence. Tome is a state of maturity that develops into a lifestyle of innocence brought on by a whole-hearted walk with God. David spoke of integrity as a source of protection, a sort of castle where he could find safety. May integrity and uprightness protect me, because my hope is in you. Psalm 25:21 NIV Integrity is etched in God. You cannot divorce the two from one another. A person without God is a tangle of turmoil, of competing values and concerns. The one housed in God, living within Him has wholeness, purpose, direction. Proverbs 10:9 expresses this perfectly. The man of integrity walks securely, but he who takes crooked paths will be found out. Literally, the one walking within integrity walks peacefully and confidently but the one taking crooked paths is made known..or uncovered.

Integrity is not what you do, it is who you are. It is a state within rather than a set of actions without. And yet, one is never a person of integrity without the straight paths being taken. Now the mistake many make in trying to lay out a plan for taking up integrity is setting a list of rules or standards that plant you in a moral Christian box. Integrity is not cheating on your wife, not stealing from the 7/11, working hard and earning your salary, avoiding gossip, living up to your promises, paying your taxes and setting high standards of what you watch and read. Integrity for most is a do list that if you are reasonably successful gives you permission to rip anyone else who isn’t your moral equivalent. It is the Christian equivalent of the Hindu caste system.

Now lest you think I am implying that integrity means a sort of free-wheeling whatever goes Gnostic moralism, that is not so. Integrity is a change in me that is unmistakable and discernable.
But it isn’t me making me. It is God reshaping my life into His image. Let me share a scriptural example. When Solomon insisted that we aren’t to go around righting all the wrongs done us, he wasn’t just talking about personal revenge. He was describing a revolutionary way of life that lives by faith. Do not say, "I'll pay you back for this wrong!" Wait for the LORD, and he will deliver you. (Proverbs 20:22 NIV) The Lord is insisting that whatever you need to be secure will be done by Him to you….The key to this is that God does not promise to bomb blast your enemies, your problems, your messed up work plans. He will instead rescue, or better, save you. Take matters in your own hands and you might quite well blow up your enemies and everyone who aggravates you but there will be no deliverance, no “saving”.

There is one more scripture that defines integrity. All a man's ways seem right to him, but the LORD weighs the heart. (Proverbs 21:2 NIV) This may be one of the most disconcerting verses in scripture. It insists that every road we take is a straight one to us…we see nothing crooked in our ways. But God knows what it really is in us. We can be and often are terribly misdirected, thinking we have gotten it right…what we’ve said, how we have reacted, what we decided, but we have veered horribly off course. Imagine taking a trip to Hawaii in your million dollar boat and winding up in French Guyana or Manteca. Worse yet, being there and not knowing you aren’t even close to Hawaii. That is what each of us do day after day, year after year with our integrity because we don’t know our heart nor the real force behind our actions. Without the heart being straight, the integrity of the journey is crooked and will land us nowhere and anywhere both at once.

How do I stop being a Lindsey Lohan, having rational, logical explanations for nonsensical behaviors? My heart must be shaped by God. Proverbs 19: 1 is a bit of a twisted, unbalanced verse if you don’t get what integrity is. A literal translation is, “Better a poor man of integrity than a dullard of twisted speech.” The contrast would seem to be the poor man and a rich man or a wise man and a fool but what we find is that neither is true. The opposite of a fool is one made poor. Not every poor man lacks money but every poor man lacks. This is the fundamental rule behind integrity. Integrity is built by me being made empty and letting God fill me. Why is it so crucial that I don’t try to fix those who frustrate me, settle matters with those who harm me and square off all the difficulties I face and avoid them. It is because when God makes me poor, whether it’s through what others do to me or through circumstances that make life hard, I am developing integrity. Integrity is God, percolating within me and giving me a rebuilt heart and will.

There are four commands that seem completely unreasonable to the crooked man. They are: do not divorce, do not fight back , do not hold grudges and do not judge. All four are a direct assault on self-will and the crooked heart. All four require I give up my right to do as I wish and require I trust God to make right my messy life. There is a fifth hub though within integrity. A heart can not ever be made whole unless it stops complaining about what God brings.

There is a fascinating little vignette in Job 2 that is unfortunately most remembered because Job’s wife encouraged him to curse God and die. Yet the most important part of the entire two part dialogue is her question to him, “Are you still holding on to your integrity?” Job’s response is most enlightening if we too want to have whole lives, if we want our inner heart to be free of Lindsey Lohan urges. He asks pointedly, “Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?” Here is the key to integrity. The Hebrew word receive is rooted in the idea of being led by. The gist of this is that integrity flourishes within us when we let God lead us with the good things, the pleasant things and we also let Him lead us with hat we deem evil, ugly, unpleasant, sometimes even unbearable things of life. Integrity is built in us when we refuse to jump off the train God has made us His passenger. How do we do this? We don’t rip those we find frustrating, we don’t leave those who make our lives hard and we don’t make pain the worst of our enemies. The question before us is the same as Job’s question for his wife. Shall I be led only by God if it led is pleasant and not when it pains me? The straight path turns crooked when one is abandoned for the sake of the other. It is both the good and the bad that God brings my way, that keep my road straight and sure.

The Facts Of Life

Weddings remind us of priorities...that it really does matter we love, hold hands, blow bubbles in the wind and laugh. Sometimes I miss the details because the big picture fails me. Get the sermon finished, hold the cell group, write, talk to people. But sitting at the reception next to friends and laughing and talking about silly things like "Lost" and wedding cermonies gone bad, I was brought back to living. It is not having converstations so that I can "build community" or "grow the church", it is having conversations because that is good, friends are good and cracking up is good. Love isn't the easiest thing we do and enough of the time doing something about it is a chore. But when we laugh and breathe deeply together..and drink vanilia milkshakes out of the same germy straw, the rough edges of being smooth out a bit...rough edges like the big picture...like making our kids right, our wife or husband right, making our friends right, our cell group right, our church right, ourselves right. Thanks Will and Erin for another chance at life. It was fun.

But may the righteous be glad and rejoice before God; may they be happy and joyful.
Psalm 68:3 NIV

What is Lindsey doing now?

The other day I got trapped in the internet by a Lindsay Lohan crash and burn account and after I finished reading the gory details I felt like I had taken a bath in a slime pool. Then yesterday I came across this side note by C S Lewis in his book Surprised By Joy.

"Even in peacetime I think those are very wrong who say that schoolboys should be encouraged to read the newspapers. Nearly all that a boy reads there in his teens will be known before he is twenty to have been false in emphasis and interpretation, if not in fact as well, and most of it will have lost all importance. Most of what he remembers he will therefore have to unlearn; and he will probably have acquired an incurable taste for vulgarity and sensationalism and the fatal habit of fluttering from paragraph to paragraph to learn how an actress has been divorced in California, a train derailed in France and quadruplets born in New Zealand."

How much reality are we missing because we dive too deeply into the absurdity of pop culture? If Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie turned out to be just an invention of People Magazine and they didn't actually exist, would we be worse off? Our friends and family make integrity real and love real and joy real. But Jesus is the capstone of the entire Temple and He is where all of reality lives and has meaning. I wonder what Paris Hilton thinks about this?


Psalm 25:21
May integrity and uprightness protect me,
because my hope is in you.

Three Legs

While Dan and I were praying together,the rather bizarre thought came to me (I should never admit this) that I do not know of multiple generations of three legged men. For that matter you hardly ever see multiple generations of two tailed dogs or cats passing along the trait of three ears to their little kittens. The entire premise behind evolution is that rather extraordinary changes in body composition occur in species which result in entirely new species...a lizard with feathers becomes a bird...a rhinoceros develops skinny legs and a mane and turns into a horse...fish sprout legs and are shellless turtles. Of course cloning seems to be the scientific way to recreate evolutionary processes (if they ever existed) Wouldn't it be cool if suddenly we had a baby born with a functioning eye on the back of her head. Clone that child and you suddenly have perfectly adapted parents. Of course it would be even better if those eyes could extend out and follow your child to school. Then you might really have something. Imagine greeting your son when he comes home by the offhand comment, "I saw what you did in the lunch line" and be able to mean it...
1 Peter 3:12
For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous
and his ears are attentive to their prayer,
but the face of the Lord is against those who do evil."

Noah Part Two

Last night Noah had a Little League game and he had been slumping pretty badly. He was striking out and seemed to be drooping a bit. Last night he had his second straight game getting two doubles in three at bats. He scored three times and it was his hit that started the winning rally for his team. As we were getting into the car, Noah told me what he thinks turned things around for him. At the beginning of the season he was hitting pretty well and he said he had been praying whenever he came up to bat. But in the middle of the season, he stopped praying. He was, he told me, "too proud". The last two games though he started praying again. That, Noah insisted, was why he was doing better. It is pretty funny but just before the game, Noah got a pretty noticable haircut. I heard one of the coaches tease Noah about his haircut being the key to his success. Noah sees it a bit differently!
"Ask and you'll get,
Seek and you'll find,
Knock and the door will open." Luke 11:9

Too Many Babies

Yesterday a friend told me that the biggest problem with the United States was overpopulation. California has doubled in size and the United States as a whole will soon reach one billion in population I was warned. My friend then asked me rhetorically why people are so stupid to not realize that we have to stop having so many children. You must understand two things. First, this was a friend who genuinely likes me and doesn't think I am stupid. Second, my friend knows I have four kids and just met one of them the day before. I was asked where we will put all these people we are producing and importing. I responded that Arizona and Texas seem to have plenty of room. My friend just gave me a blank stare as if Arizona or Texas were mere Republican black holes. I guess if I had mentioned the command in Genesis to multiply and fill the earth I would have lost all credibility. I never asked if my friend's parents should have followed the program of zero population growth. I think I would have received another blank stare. Long live baby producers! We all had at least two. Well honestly, if you take Genesis 1 seriously, it takes three to tango!

Passion

1 Samuel 13:14 NIV
But now your kingdom will not endure; the LORD has sought out a man after his own heart and appointed him leader of his people, because you have not kept the LORD's command."

Now, of all the compliments we find in scripture, this is perhaps one of the most extraordinary! God looked about and of all He considered in Israel, there was one person who was “after His own heart.” As far as I can tell, no one else is described in such a lofty way. There are others in scripture that are praised but none to this extent. Now as we attempt to unravel the gist behind the Lord’s accolades, the Hebrew does give us a few extra clues to best understand the comment. Before we go any further, we must point out that it is young David, the eventual second king of Israel that God is referencing. Saul, the king being addressed by the prophet Samuel, has just failed miserably in God’s eyes with his kingly vocation. As a consequence, the Lord picked out someone else to take his place as king. But not just anybody, it was an after his own heart king.

There are two key parts to this characterization. The first has to do with the seeking. There are two ways to look at this Hebrew verb. The first is that God went out on an intensive search and frantically looked high and low for someone who could replace Saul as king. The implication is that the Lord has to figure things out, sort through things…as if he went out among all the Israelites and checked each psychic resume before stumbling upon the right man for the job. The second way this verb can be read is that sought to make the right person ready for the task before him. God sought to secure the will and character of the future king and that one became a man after God’s own heart. For obvious reasons, this seems to be the better reading of this. God made David who he was. It wasn’t David’s marvelous make-up that convinced God he was the one. God secured David and got him ready to be a man after His own heart. What else were those attacking bears and lions that threatened his little flock intended to do but steel his character? And what of those “few sheep” his brother Eliab derisively characterized David’s chief vocation? Why did God saddle him with such a lowly career when David was good enough to be king? That too was God’s “sought”. The family he had, the village where he was raised, the dusty fields where he worked all became God’s seeking.

The second part of the characterization is the “after his own heart”. What does this mean? Heart is the Hebrew word for the inner parts, the part of us that we are inside…our soul, our personality, our mind, our emotions. It is us. “After His own” indicates as is. In David, God said He had someone just like Him. That David is like me! It is just as if you watch your daughter do the exact same thing you would do in a situation and you go, “Wow! That was me!” But then you might respond, “So what?” How does that change my life? Of course this doesn’t. But there is something that does. How was David just like God in who He is and what would I be like if God said the same of me? That is an intriguing question.

There are many traits of David that could qualify. He was courageous…But for courage there must be something that makes you afraid and how would God get there? Perhaps it was the cool way David wrote praise songs….of course that wouldn’t make sense other than maybe the adoration he offered God warmed the Lord’s heart to him. Was it his adultery with Bathsheba…that was a joke! Could it have been his warrior persona? Now I think we are getting somewhere. He was told that he couldn’t build the Temple he so badly wanted to construct because he had “shed much blood.” So it wasn’t that he killed lots of people in battle. But, I do believe there is something in the way David went out and conquered that made him a man whose inners were like the inners of God.

Everything about David exuded passion. Whether it was the way he was undaunted by Goliath’s height or girth and insisted he could lick the big “fella” or his ability to rally a crowd to join him when he was an “enemy of the state: David was passionate and it rubbed off on those around him. Several stories come to mind. The first is David’s response to the bravery of his soldiers who broke through enemy lines to grab some water from the well at Bethlehem. It was a foolish risk of life but done out of deep love and respect for David. When the men returned, despite his clear craving for that well water, David poured it out on the ground “to the Lord”. Embarrassed by his selfishness, he responded almost bizarrely. No one would have faulted him for drinking the water, particularly since it could have been misconstrued as disrespecting the efforts of his men to bring it to him. But the passion of David could not be swayed by his concern with propriety. Far be it from me, O LORD, to do this!" he said. "Is it not the blood of men who went at the risk of their lives?" And David would not drink it. (2 Samuel 23:17 NIV)

Of course we are well familiar with David’s near erotic dancing before the Lord as he led the procession bringing the Ark of the Covenant into Jerusalem. His wife Michal castigated him for his passion, calling it an embarrassment to his office. But David did not care what others thought of his behavior. He was deeply in love with God and could not stop the effervescent flow of affection bubbling up out of him. Listen to some of the Psalms he wrote. Sing to him a new song; play skillfully, and shout for joy. (Psalm 33:3 NIV) My lips will shout for joy when I sing praise to you--I, whom you have redeemed. (Psalm 71:23 NIV) Not only did he shout for God, he also shouted happily for his friends when they got it right. We will shout for joy when you are victorious and will lift up our banners in the name of our God. (Ps 20:5 NIV) Something tells me, when I reflect on David stripping down and wildly dancing in front of the Ark all the way through the streets of Jerusalem, when David said that he would shout…scream if you will with joy when you were victorious…he meant it. Passion

There is one other lesser known example of David’s passion that caught my eye. When told that he would not be allowed to build the Temple himself, David was saddened but undeterred. He gathered 3,750 tons of gold and 34,500 tons of silver for the construction of the Temple he would never live to see built. Listen to David’s detailed concern that the Temple his son would construct be precisely correct in every way. He gave him instructions for the divisions of the priests and Levites, and for all the work of serving in the temple of the LORD, as well as for all the articles to be used in its service. He designated the weight of gold for all the gold articles to be used in various kinds of service, and the weight of silver for all the silver articles to be used in various kinds of service: the weight of gold for the gold lampstands and their lamps, with the weight for each lampstand and its lamps; and the weight of silver for each silver lampstand and its lamps, according to the use of each lampstand; the weight of gold for each table for consecrated bread; the weight of silver for the silver tables; the weight of pure gold for the forks, sprinkling bowls and pitchers; the weight of gold for each gold dish; the weight of silver for each silver dish; and the weight of the refined gold for the altar of incense. He also gave him the plan for the chariot, that is, the cherubim of gold that spread their wings and shelter the ark of the covenant of the LORD. (1 Chronicles 28:13-18 NIV)

Honestly, if this was a friend of ours, who in old age made such elaborate instructions for so many almost insignificant details, we would think he was at best a bit anal. Why would David care in the least how much the serving forks in the Temple weighed? He had psalms to finish, governors to instruct, generals to manage, wives and children to correct and take on vacations. Really, what did it matter if the table was 12 pounds of solid gold or 11.8 pounds? The answer is found in the next line of 1 Chronicles 28. All this," David said, "I have in writing from the hand of the LORD upon me, and he gave me understanding in all the details of the plan." God gave David the details down to the minutia for the construction and he refused to deviate even an inch from what he was told. That, my friend, is passion.

Let us now turn to the most important person in our life, Jesus. What can we say about the passion he exhibited? Perhaps the most enlightening passage found in scripture outlining the psyche of Jesus is John 11. Three details catch my eye. The first is His devotion to the lost sheep of Israel. Jesus certainly puzzled many by His actions but perhaps the most surprising…at least from the standpoint of His friends was the way he responded to the news that His buddy Lazarus was sick. Hearing of it, He dawdled where he was an additional three days. Rather than panicking and immediately taking off in a rush to heal Lazarus or at least reassure Lazarus’ two sisters who had to have been worried sick, Jesus kept up His ministry with the people across the Jordan river. Now, John tells us it was very successful ministry as “many believed”, but did that justify Jesus’ leisurely response to the deadly illness? What is intriguing is that Jesus’ enthusiasm or should we say “passion” for the people coming to Him trumped His concern for his friend’s condition. Perhaps one day dawdling would be seen as enthusiasm for the work, three days has to be labeled extreme passion.

The “b” part to this entire account is Jesus’ response to either the weeping of His friends, the hopelessness of the crowd or some other aspect of it all not explained. Jesus, at the moment He was going to raise His friend from the dead, burst into tears. There is another word for weeping which is for more often used in the New Testament to describe the response to sorrow but the specific word chosen is a derivative of tears. Now, I ask, why did John, as he pondered what happened that day, not use the more normal term for weeping rather than the one that emphasized tears? I think it is because the Disciples were caught off guard by how many tears Jesus shed, the sheer rush of them. As John look back nearly seventy years later, he still could not shake the picture of Jesus bawling. The passion of it stunned them all.

Move now to the “c” part of Jesus’ psyche. When Jesus called Lazarus from the tomb, we are told that He “shouted”. It is the same expression used to describe the uproar of the crowd when it screamed for Jesus to be crucified. Again, it is the same phrasing to express the passion of the voice from the throne (Jesus there also) shouting the end of time as we know it and the crushing of death along with the completed reign of Christ in heaven and earth. This is the shout of the stadium when home team wins the championship of the world and the fans jump from their seat in spontaneous uproar. Jesus could, and did scream with joy.

Now, let’s consider the passion of the Father. I realize most of us think of God the Father as the austere, subdued thinker who is a bit overwhelmed with all the responsibilities of running the universe that He doesn’t get overly emotionally involved with most of us. We are there, but so are the other six billion out there. But Jesus, who should know what the Father is really like described Him as a Father who has a missing son…you and me. When that son finally comes to his senses, (and yes it feels like an eternity to the Father) repents of his sins, and comes home, God the Father rushes to the boy in a mad dash, throws himself upon him and affectionately kissed him. There is nothing austere about this description of the Father. It is embarrassingly goopy passion.

What do we make of all this? I think we are most like Jesus when we shout more about him, are openly wild in our affection for one another and when we pump fist more often even the tiniest of steps forward we fellow pilgrims make in this plodding journey of faith. If you look at the bad guys in all three stories, whether it is the account of David’s passion, the story of Jesus’ passion at the tomb and the Father’s passion for his returning son, it is always the sour puss observers who think it beneath their dignity to overlook flaws, revel in God and shout out loud about the kindness and mercy of Jesus. I have never been very comfortable expressing myself loudly…perhaps it was the way I was raised, maybe my own personality but I am completely in love with the way the Father greets us on our way home. If there is anything the Christian community can do to make us more like God, wouldn’t it be nice if we threw our arms around one another more often and made fools of ourselves. And what if, somewhere, someplace, we would every once in a while fist pump the air and shout a praise to God that was as bold and brave as David dancing before the Ark of the Covenant. .

A Frightening Seminar To Lead

I have been asked to lead a seminar on sexual abuse at a local church and it frightens me. It has been more than 20 years since I last worked actively with abused children and I honestly wonder what I have to offer. Yet I have dealt with numerous adult women who were victims of sexual abuse and rape and the devastation they suffer still continues to astound me. In the chapter on Darkness in Transformed I touch on it but in a vague and illustrative way only. The darkness rape or sexual abuse brings is perhaps the worst I know. Nearly every woman I have met who came to me for counseling because of profound difficulties in relationships or drug abuse was as a child molested. I can almost sense because of the symptoms I observe as the discussion deepens that a woman has been sexually abused before she begins to hint at it. The numbers of women who have been traumatized, in some cases irreparably by rape or sexual abuse is mulitplying at a frightening rate and I think this is the frontier the church has been most afraid and poorly equiped to enter. Let me illustrate the problem for us. A child is molested at your church by an adult that everyone loves and trusts. The little girl has no mechanism for expressing what happend to her and so she stuffs her morbid re-living of the event into her broken little heart. As she grows into adolescence, her damaged sense of self and her corrupted view of church work in conjuction to create a young woman who is poisoned by guilt (she must have caused the molestation because the man who did it is too nice a Christian to be a bad man) and tries mightily to love a God who did not stop the abuse and lets her remain in constant pain over what happened. Combine that with a deep mistrust of men and an inability to form lasting love relationships outside a very tiny circle of trusted people and you have a splintered psyche that finds almost no solace in prayer, barely if any comfort in marriage and a scrambled love/hate relationship with her own children. I am praying that I can enter into the discussion so that at least a few churches in our area can not only watch for sexual abuse among the kids they see but also be a home for young women (and men) who are breaking apart their own homes because they are so wounded that they perpetuate their pain by not being able to receive or express the love they so desperately long to hold. I hope I can be of help in a small and very limited way...

Mercy Mercy Me

Hosea 6: 6 NIV
For I desire mercy, not sacrifice, and acknowledgment of God rather than burnt offerings.

Mercy has never been the way we think of one another, it is how we act with each other. The question before us is not, “what should I do to be merciful”. It is rather, “who should I take into my life and mercy”. I used to think I had to feel sorry for someone if I were to be merciful. I don’t believe God feels sorry for any of us and yet He is our standard for mercy. He does not look in on my thoughts and grimace over how bad I have it or how poorly I am treated. He looks in on me and despite how nastily I have treated Him and how warped and self-centered my outlook, He dies for me. In a sense the crucifixion is over but in another sense it never is. Jesus was for a moment in time bound within hours and minutes but He is eternal and the crucifixion is lived out in Him forever too. There is that part of God that we fail to recognize. Time is always now and in that sense, He dies for me today just as certainly as He did the moment two thousand years ago Jesus hung upon the Cross next to two warped and corrupted thieves. Mercy of God is now. Who can you mercy today? Happy are the merciful for they shall receive mercy…

Birthdays And Dreamscapes

Tomorrow is Hannah's birthday. When she was born, I thought she was the most beautiful baby I had ever seen. Of course it wasn't like I was an obstetrician or pediatrician so my sample size wasn't in the thousands but she was as perfect a baby as was possible. Nineteen years later Hannah has cleared the way to become a vocational missionary and it seems as though she is the obvious and desired compliment to what can come of years of praying, loving, training and encouraging. It is true that you can become a mechanic or cab driver and have God's heart but few mechanics and cab drivers sought Jesus when they turned to those vocations but almost no one becomes a Christian missionary without an earnest pursual of Jesus. Which brings me to Hannah. All of us should have our birthdays celebrated; certainly someone should be remembering us somewhere and it would be great if we all were mentioned in blogs but with Hannah, I think of everything I once dreamed would be my point as pastor and see it wrapped up in this niece of mine I do this pastor life because I am certain God called me to it but what drives me in it is the thought that from the womb a child can be carried through the church into something noble, something that truly makes our parts of the world more lovely. Can we say it? More Christian. Hannah is kind and generous and bright and certainly godly but she is more than that. She is one light shining who has been lit by a forgotten class...the praying faithful. Hannah's name is Hebrew and not so surpisingly means prayer...or more specifically mercy prayer. Whatever God does with you Hannah, you are set apart but not moved apart. You are within this big family that dreams even bigger things for you than you are capable. No need to try to make anyone proud of you because we all love you more than that and besides missions isn't your goal, it is your being. Follow your calling Hannah but wherever your mission field is, it will always be within your home! Happy Birthday Hannah!

Core Values--Courage

Ps 91:5 NIV
You will not fear the terror of night, nor the arrow that flies by day,


There is a divine purpose every person possesses that makes the coward courageous and it is this. God makes our most feared moments have eternal value. Jesus died we all know for one reason. His death rescued us from the brutality of death brought by the sins we each have cursed God by committing. Nothing we do matters a whit if Jesus does not that moment rescue us from Hell. Everything dies with us and nothing lives that we do, think or say. But if we put our faith in Christ for our everything eternal, then something new emerges. A purpose for everything we fear to do. One example and then we decide what to do with this. Last week I thought about asking the manager of Wal-mart if she would let me sell my book at her store. I dreaded the conversation. My self-esteem was pretty shot, my conviction that anyone would buy the book was pretty low and I was not at all certain I had a good reason that could convince her that she should put it on her shelf. The book after all is a religious book, it is not bound yet so it looks worse than plain and I have no publisher to back what I am doing. But one thing was certain. I had to bring my book to her. So, as I was driving down to the store, one thought kept coming to me. What if this one store manager actually read the book and it convinced her to follow Jesus fully? Would then my conversation with her matter? That is the point. What if the things that frighten us are in fact crucial to God’s plan and key to getting done what must not be stopped! Courage is not bucking up my emotions and doing what I dread doing. It is having a purpose that screams past this life and doing what the Enemy makes seem the worst of outcomes. I die to self and live for Christ. That is courage.