Some Thoughts With Christmas In The Wings

A shower of leaves fall as the cold wind snapping through the autumn air splatters about my office window.  A rust brown squirrel bounds along the fence and jumps up into the redwood tree staring across at me.  Christmas music bears in on me as I ponder the next move I will make in my head first plunge into trusting Jesus for everything.  I don’t really need any presents and my lifelong plan to be a successful something has dimmed even while I finish a book on why I need to be successful and why it is so crucial I gain favor in the quest for God’s consuming blessing.  Why is it so small, this urge to make it and make big?  Why do I miss the old days of wanting and needing and craving and pleading and missing and searching?  The good old days were ones of pursuit and action.  Today I pray and wait.  I trust God and it seems unnatural, sluggish, wasteful.  Have I lost my mind…or my soul?  What I am most comfortable embracing…frustration, worry and busyness are bywords for the pursuit of everything I wanted and hoped would be mine.  My heart could not contain my provocation at making good on my promise, my potential.  This is ebbing though as I bear in on Christ and He bears in on me.  I cannot stand the thought of wasting time sitting and praying when my mind is such an avalanche of activity and turmoil…but it is a day and it is time to wait…as success ebbs away.  I wonder what Mary thought as she succumbed to a God she barely knew and to a plan she never would have chosen, giving way to a failure she could not stop.   The virgin with a husband in waiting let loose her reputation and her portion with the secure and made God her home.   Elizabeth called her blessed.  I would too!

My Take On Philippians

I will begin posting from my commentary on Philippians.  Years ago I memorized the book and then began writing on it.  I hope this is a beneficial set of postings...

Chapter 1



1: 1



Paul and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus, To all the saints in Christ Jesus at Philippi, together with the overseers and deacons: NIV






Paul starts the letter in a unique way, at least for him. He refers to both himself and Timothy as servants of Christ Jesus. Usually he speaks of himself as an apostle or in Philemon, “a prisoner of Christ”. Anyone else he includes in his greeting, he refers to separately as a “brother” with the exception of his two letters to the Thessalonians. It would seem that there are two reasons for the alteration in his normal pattern of greeting. First, with the Philippian church, he did not have to assert his apostolic authority. The church was well aware of his standing with God and they greatly respected him. He along with Silas, Timothy and Luke was the founder of the church; his courage and faith were well attested. The Christians in Philippi did not have strong Jewish roots that could have confounded their opinion of Paul. His teachings weren’t in dispute. He was clearly the leader of this dynamic church.






Second, Paul wished to give equal status to Timothy. Timothy was not the co-author of the letter just Paul wrote Philippians. Continually through Philippians, the writer says “I” not “we” in speaking to the church. Paul in including Timothy in the greeting wanted to express symbolically the unity in the body of Christ. Yes some are apostles, others evangelists, pastors, teachers; others have the gift of giving or hospitality but all are one in Christ. Members of the body may disagree but there is no room for division in the church. Christ alone is the head-not Paul, not Timothy, not the overseers or deacons. We must all seek the voice of Christ and follow Him together. He is our Word---not personal opinions or preferences.

My Tribute

A Friend died
   Years have passed
      The days of time linger
           Stands taken
              Hands shaken
                  Demands forsaken


a .
   or --
      a ( )
         no  ?


but rather !


Gardens shake
    Hearts quake
         Desires break


But still the Three Winds stake
      a claim
          none can make
               and fewer take


Life holds
   the Tomb folds


Love lives within the Bold


"Not that I have already reached the goal or am already fully mature, but I make every effort to take hold of it because I have been taken hold of by Christ Jesus".  Philippians 3:12

Like or Love, Look or See, Be or Was

I am not quite sure when I realized I wasn’t good enough for something and no matter how hard I tried I couldn’t do it but that realization keeps popping up again and again now. I can’t run anymore. I can’t read small letters. I can’t dunk. I can’t make people like me. I can’t sing. Try and make me a good singer. You can’t do it. We can train all you want and you can’t make me a runner. I am never going to dunk again despite your best efforts. You can though like me. Despite my temper, despite my difficulty expressing myself, despite my negativity and despite my opinions that rile you, you can like me.


I struggle with my insecurities, struggle with my inner demons, struggle with my ugly attitude and sinful habits but one thing I never struggle with…being someone God made. Regardless of how badly I botch my opportunities and wreck my relationships, you can still like me and I can still like you. It is funny, this matter of being made in God’s image. Even the worst of us has something of Jesus about him and only the devil doesn’t like that. I was thinking today about how much I wanted to be in the mountains, around wildflowers and babbling brooks and trembling aspens with a squirrel or two chattering about me and a stellar jay calling to me in the distance. Instead I was around people…people who gossip, people who snap, people who pay no attention to what I have to say, people who don’t think much of my best effort.

Name one person who isn’t broken over something, who isn’t locked up about something, who isn’t afraid to cry about something. Your list would be pretty short. How can you not like being with someone just like you…someone who wants to be loved, someone who wants to be encouraged, someone who wants to have another shot at getting things right? It is pretty cool to watch a hummingbird flutter among the jasmine, emerald green flashing in the mid-morning sunlight but it isn’t the best. The best is holding hands with someone in the image of God, laughing with someone in the image of God, crying with someone in the image of God, listening with all you’ve got to someone in the image of God. Funny but I have never lost sleep over a rainbow trout and never dreamt about lazy raindrops but I have been caught by the whirlwind of distorted love and fractured likes. My kids can make me furious and my wife steamed but when it comes to love, a glacier can’t hold a candle to them. The image of God gets distorted, badly distorted at times, but it is the best we see here about us. If I held the sparkle of my son’s fear in my hand as tightly as God holds mine, I would be a happier and more contented man. Like even for a moment the meanest of us and you have found a keyhole peeping into the most holy place.

Spacemen and Zombies

Our four-year old son drew a picture for me yesterday. It had four circles in a vertical row on one side and next to them were two much bigger circles in a vertical row beside them. The two circles on the right had smiley faces on them and the four circles on the left were blank. For all those Freudians, here is my son’s explanation of his drawing. The four circles on the left were him and his siblings. The two on the right were me and my wife. We were smiling because we had just punished his older brothers and the children had nothing for faces because they were sad.


What do you do when you hear that? I was stunned for a moment. I glanced across the page and there he had drawn four hearts with the initials of him and his siblings in them and below two bigger hearts labeled “mom” and “dad”. So on this spontaneously sketched page was illustrated the terrible tension in every home…happiness and trouble, discipline and pleasure, separation and joining.

How can you smile when failing grades are brought home or towels are casually tossed about the room or rapid fire insults are swirling around the dinner table? Who grins contentedly when one child smashes another’s sword or milk is left dripping off the table for mom or dad to clean? It is an impossible task being a parent and yet somehow we do it. Sometimes I come home from work and immediately start hunting for the bomb shelter. My kids have one. Most people call it the bathroom.

Recently the four-year old hit one of his younger friends at church and we took away his dessert and made him have water for dinner. Brutal I know…but it had to be done. If our children were interviewed by reporters for the National Enquirer, imagine how the stories would read. “Parent traps son in torture chamber! Sends him to his room.” “Father humiliates son! Takes away his Xbox for the week.” “Mother berates daughter about grades! Makes her do her homework!” Parents can’t win. Kids probably feel the same way. I know I did. I still do.

Families are the crucibles in which all joy is squashed and all contentment is obliterated and yet we still get married at staggering rates and we continue to have children. Why? It is nice to have someone to pray with as you drop off for the night and no one can hold you like your husband or your wife. The other day Ben and I were holding hands as we walked together after dinner. He was wearing his space man costume and I pointed up at a planet and told him I thought it was Mars. He agreed and asked me a deep philosophical question. “Do astronauts really pee in their spacesuits? “ Perhaps it’s not so bad being a parent…

“Seek the Lord while he may be found; call on him while he is near.” Isaiah 55: 6

The Power of Pain

A friend of mine told me recently that he was talking with a researcher who was studying the effect of chronic back pain on the sufferers and discovered that over thirty percent of the patients dropped out of the longitudinal study prematurely do to death. They committed suicide. Ongoing pain shrivels your perspective. It gobbles up the cranial space devoted to thinking about sports teams, finances, dirty dishes and celebrity sightings. The housing market fades when a lower back spasms or a kidney stone passes. God and death have few rivals in the contemplative shadows where pain is roaring. The other day I saw a friend in terrible pain and she could barely acknowledge my casual greeting, let alone make much of it. I had broken into her pain and she could not make room for me.


My back is throwing a fit today and it forces me to listen. I can’t cry out to God for help…I just wait for Him. I have cried out before and found it was wasted effort. Listening for Him though does something, means something. Waiting for Him does even more. You learn a lot from those who suffer terribly. Job is one of the great teachers. He cried and cried and cried to God and battled his way with his friends until he had nothing left to him psychologically but death and God…and it was God who broke through. In the end it was the silence and the waiting that mattered to him most and made sense in pain. Trying to get at the cause of the pain, trying to scapegoat the pain, trying to slap away the pain and disregard its vigor only exacerbated the horror of pain’s continuance. God did break through and pain made Job ready to meet Him. Pain, of all the windows into heaven seems to open widest.

The saints who speak most clearly and profoundly of God are the ones who suffered most. Think of it. Jeremiah, Job, Paul, Jesus. My friend Duke. Pain makes love more than a seasoning, it makes it the meal. The most loving people I know suffer. They look you in the eye and care about you. They watch you to see that you are being honest about your hardship. They listen. They have time for you. I cannot judge with this but I know what I have seen. Love and kindness seem to be genetically linked to suffering. Friends come and go but it is the ones who have suffered who make the most of my own life and who celebrate with me when I have a little victory to share. The best counselors suffer. The best lovers too.

Zeros and the Great Beyond

I was once asked by one of my children what would happen if everyone in the world jumped at the same time? Would it crack the earth apart? Would it send our planet spinning off course? Certainly not. We are far too little, even all of us combined to pitch our earth one way or another. The insignificance of man in the swirl of the cosmos is a common philosophic thread running through the neo-ecocentric academic community. Man is less than a zero in the bigger scheme of things…if the bigger scheme of things means mother universe and Grandpa Darwin. It is funny that mankind either gets blamed for scorching the earth and wrecking the established order of eco-equilibrium or he is a shadow slipping about in the random bliss of the circle of life. He is not good though whatever may be said of him and his influence in the universe is either revolting or negligible for the philosopher duped into a Godless myopia.


Christianity is so different from the current philosophic view of man. Elijah was big enough to start a regional famine and then end it, Moses big enough to split a sea apart and Joshua big enough to stop the spin of the earth. Paul raised the dead. Adam infected the universe with sin and death. We may not be super nova large but people have been dramatically impacting universal outcomes since the beginning of time.

We are no small things when we pray. The entire universe is within our grasp both today and tomorrow. We can rework cultural systems, rebuild social structures and reboot generational links. Lions and Zebras and miniature plankton cannot change the course of history…at least not intentionally. We are, as people, artists of change. God hears us pray. He makes changes in what is happening in response to us. We are magnificent when it comes to altering the universe. We stop crimes. We put together marriages. We cure diseases. We halt floods. We heal wounds. God is with us and because of our prayers, He changes the way the universe is going.

Belief is not a theological proposition. It is a way of life. If you do not believe, you do not pray constantly for God to guide you, help you, rescue others, change the universe. God is with us and so we pray and God answers our prayers and makes it different. You became a Christian when you first believed God. So, why did you stop? Because God is bigger than the universe, there is not a bit of it we cannot reach and alter through Him. The only way you become a zero is if somehow you lost God and somehow He lost you. The philosophers may have lost God…but you haven’t. So pray. Change the world.

God Think

We have come to the end of the line or maybe the line has come to the end of us. Is the stuff of our lives that intoxicating that we think of Jesus just when the God tether ball wraps back around on us again? What great responsibilities do we have and what momentous activities engage our minds that thoughts of Jesus slip away from us so easily? We are what we talk about and we don’t talk very naturally about God. It is discombobulating for us to speak of Him in a normal, non-church conversation, our tongues clumsily trip over His name because he is not on our minds much.


The end is drawing near and all of us will either become completely wrapped up in God forever or we will boil in the stew of atheism—in either case, Jesus will be at the center of it and we don’t think much of Him. We may like Him, may even want to please Him but honestly we don’t think much of Him. We have perhaps grown weary of God being here…right here. God in a box is much more comfortable—God in Taiwan or hiding within the rainforest is even better. God with me, watching me, listening to me, monitoring my every move is disconcerting so I try not to think of Him. Like a shadow I can’t avoid until nightfall, God there is much too unsettling to bear. So I don’t bear…I think of something else.

Here is an idea. Take this day and think of Jesus again and again and do not quit on it. Say something about Jesus in a normal conversation. It may feel like belching at a formal dinner or wearing cut-offs to an opera but try it. God is there. He is within your mouth…buried in your brain and He loves you. Say it. Say Jesus in a regular chat with a friend. Make something of Him in your conversation even if it makes your nose twitch and your tongue pinch up against your teeth. Who knows? Maybe the most important part of all of life will improve your friend’s day and make him come alive. Maybe your God talk will clear your head and fill you with an unspeakable joy. Doesn't Jesus love you?  Don't you love Him?

Your mind is made for God thoughts because He is there. He is there in your head and the only way your thoughts come clean and alive is when you think of Jesus. Every other thought is a dingy, musty relic of a dying age—the age of Cain over Abel. Listen. God is there. He is there and He is crazy about you. Think about Him and regain your day. Regain your mind. 

Gratitude

I have started each day writing down a line of blessings. It has just been a three day discipline but already it feels like stretching out a bad back or flossing infected gums. I am not very good at it and it shows. My first day I could only write down two blessings; the second day I really improved and came up with three. One was pretty pitiful. I wrote that I was thankful that my car was repaired. Of course the repairs cost me one hundred dollars more than I expected and in the end, the mechanic listed two major problems my car has that because of its age and mileage are too expensive to fix. So, my repair gratitude was grudgingly added to make me sound thankful…or pretend I was thankful.

It cannot be simply a natural tendency to pessimism that makes gratitude such a strain. I just do not have the inherent talent to be thankful when I have a headache, the living room is full of clothes and toys and half the congregation is gone on Sunday. My gratitude list is far too short for someone living with Jesus and much too shallow for all I have been given. When I was in graduate school, my supervisor was providing an in-service on parent training. She talked about how difficult it is sometimes to compliment your children. She told of one parent, determined to say something good about her child blurting out, “I really like how your nose sits right in the middle of your face.” My prayers often have that same feel. “Thank you Lord for the air I breathe.” “Thank you Lord for the flu only lasting three days.” Thank you Lord that my car broke just forty-five minutes from the nearest mechanic.”

It is a stretch to be thankful but it is a stretch to cook dinner sometimes, a stretch to get up before dawn and a stretch to smile when your back aches but we do all these things anyway. The other day I was asked by one of the teens in our youth group whose idea it was to organize a hike up mission peak. Because I wasn’t sure if he was glad he went or angry he had to go, I hesitated before I answered. He did get to stand at the end on top of the world looking down on a billion city lights, look up at trillions of stars and breathe the fresh air of a cool breeze floating over the peak. I think I like life better when I think a bit more about the twinkling city lights than the sweat dripping off my brow. That alone may make gratitude worth the effort. I read recently of a beautiful young professional golfer who committed suicide. I do not know why she took her life but perhaps she missed the sparkling stars one too many times as she climbed the peak she was given. The Apostle Paul warned that in the last days there “will be terrible times…” He also said in the same letter, “I thank God…” The two can co-exist in one heart at the same time. Gratitude may be the most viable and definitive mode of expression limiting the progression of bitterness, pride and despair all in one fell swoop. Just one thankful comment can turn around a gloomy day…a cheap remedy that no elixir can match.

Sourpuss Faith

It seems like faith is mostly grim-faced determination. You gut out faith. Faith means you're not happy about something, you are tired of the same old struggles, grumpy about your difficulties. What if faith were happy, cheerful, more like eating Oreos and milk just before bed rather than carrot juice and a bowl of broccoli. It is funny in a tense and disconcerting way that Jesus' first public manifestation of faith was during a party. Laughter, feasting and pleasure filled the air as He made His faith mark. A collection of servants and friends scooped up 180 gallons of water in faith, blinked and had wine. If our faith was more like this, we would certainly be less tensed and angry. Faith and laughter seem to be Jesus' way of making faith a lifestyle. The other day I did something pretty immature. I prayed for my favorite baseball team, the Oakland A's to win. I know it is silly for a 53 year-old man with four kids to stoop to such theological lows but I wanted more laughter in my faith. Like salt on my chicken and sugar in my apple pie, it was tasty praying for the A's to win. They were behind and so I prayed for them. Imagine the goofy little smile that crept over my heart when I later logged on the Internet and found they won. Goofy faith is better than none at all. Better to have prayed for something silly and ridiculous than to keep faith balled up inside and have just grim faced determination and a stern solemnity that never walks on water.

What?

Last night I had a Christian song playing as Benjamin and I got ready to read a book together in bed when I switched the ipod to a smooth Miles Davis tune. Abruptly he jumped up and ordered, "I want to hear music about Jesus. Switch it back." Of course, being the good Christian man I was and the affable father, I responded, "No!" And that was that. We went back to the preschool book about stars and dad remained dad and son remained son. As I lie in bed, staring up to the ceiling while Ben snored softly nearby, I pondered my fatherhood, my priesthood and my life in the hood.

How much Christianity is too much? Why do I so often feel this great urge to take a break from 'religion"? What strange urges well up within me that make me cringe when told what to do, when to do it and how it must be done? Why do I hate it when my dentist tells me to floss and my doctor tells me I need to get a prostate exam and my son tells me I need to switch back to a song about Jesus. Am I that hardheaded that even the simple things that are right make me want to bail and the worst little corners of my head feel like home?

The other day I went back to reading through the Bible. I had given up this yearly tradition of mine in 2010 so I could work on memorizing the book of James. Both good and worthy of Christian discipline but one brought pride in accomplishment and the other had become a "task" demanded. It was as simple as that. I did not want to do what I should do...didn't want to be "told". I battle against the "do its" of life like a little Rocky Balboa fighting off Apollo Creed. Sometimes I feel like I am defending my very soul when I run through a yellow light rather than cautiously stopping and giving up on my rush to beat out a few seconds of drive time. Turn back to the Christian song and give up on Miles? What? Lordship is nothing if it is not submission to a "do it" you despise in the broken corners of your sin cringled brain. Oh, to love the "God of all grace". Lordship beyond "what?"

Running on Empty

For the second time in seven months my laptop has been stolen out of my car. The thief stole the quarters out of my ashtray, the cokes and waterbottles out of my cooler and my son's basketball. He even took the quarters out of my son's wallet lying on the floorboard. For five minutes, the laptop sat in my car in the church parking lot. It was 8:30 in the morning on a Sunday and absolutely no one was around...or so I thought. Why does Satan have to put so much thought into getting my laptops...not sure what his gripe is with me. This is the second laptop I have had stolen at our church. Another laptop was taken from my car while I was leading a Bible study...of course my car was stolen along with it. So why does Satan care so much about my laptops? Has he targetted them as a major force of power against his kingdom? Is he that interested in getting my sermons from me or those cell group Bible studies? Did he decide I was such a powerful warrior with the Dell laptop in hand that he had to break me free of my RAM and my Disc drive? Three thieves...three laptops...one master stategist fighting for his kingdom. I know it all sounds a bit melodramatic but are we really fighting against thieves and bad neighborhoods or powers and principlities in high places? I recently preached on Satan and his power in this world and so I shouldn't be surprised when he or his compatriots knock on my door but I am never really prepared for his blows. They are always so sudden, so maddeningly abrupt. You can never really prepare for them because they fit so perfectly into the commonalities of daily life and yet they are tazers that hit from your blindside...and they do hurt. Today a friend asked me to pray for her as she tried to make her jogging comeback. It felt good to return to reality. This is not our home and never will be. We live with the three realities crashing together. God is here, satan is here and my laptop just disappeared. It is a world of hide and seek...but it isn't a child's game.

The End of the Beginning

Today I was reading the history of the Baptist church where I was raised, baptized and ordained to preach. No pastor in its fifty years of existence served there as long as I have served Warm Springs Church and in almost forty years, no one has served as pastor at Warm Springs Church as long as I have served. Between two churches and ninety years of existence, I am the longest tenured pastor. Out of the thirty pastors who have served between the two churches, not one lasted more than eleven years. I have plodded farther than them all…

If term limits were enacted in either congregation, I would be long gone. My dog did not live as long as I have served Warm Springs Church, Haley’s Comet may have passed twice since I started, police officers retire quicker than my years of service, roads don’t last as long as I have, cell phones, blogs and chatting on line with babes all came after I began and Starbucks Coffee was nicknamed two bucks at my start.

Recently I have dramatically altered my approach to preaching after all these years and if the truth be known, I have probably reinvented my preaching three or four times since I came to Warm Springs Church. Perhaps I am the only one who has caught on to how revolutionary those changes have been…just like I might be the only one who has noticed the monumental shifts in gel applications I have made since I first began to retro 1957. But it doesn’t matter. I have changed and can see the difference.

Preaching is a lot like cutting hair. You snip and snap and buzz and blow and snip and snip again and regardless of how artistically you clip, you still are only as good as those who look at the new doo and like it or don’t. No one asks how many snips it took to get your hair cut, how tight the razor setting, how many cross parts you had attacked by the scissors. It is either a good haircut or a bad one and that is it. A sermon is either good or bad and there it goes.

That is why so many pastors are both exhilarated by the drama of preaching and repulsed by the adrenalin drop it elicits. Spend all week looking for the perfect story, the most crucial points, the stirring inspirational comments that produce the grand “ah hah” and it all comes down fizz of whether or not Mary Jones looked at her watch as you preached. Something happens between Monday and Sunday that is dreadfully corrupting. You want to matter. Because you want to matter, you suspend Mary Jones from your ceiling as you prepare and let the pit of your stomach rotate at the turn of her smile.

It shouldn’t matter what Mary Jones thinks of your sermon…but then it shouldn’t matter what you think of Billy Bob’s new haircut. Yet try as we will to turn it all over to God and His perfect grace, we still tumble off the side of the steps and land in the muck of thumbs up or thumbs down. Give me ten pastors who preach with only an audience of One in mind and I will give you 9.8 who have already resigned. You cannot exist without thinking about what others think of you and you cannot continue without switching out your gel application every so often.

I am certain that if I add a few more years to this specific ministry, I will become a bit more comfortable with the tension within my sideways glances between the two mirrors…as I shift between the expression on Jesus’ face and that on the collective who enters into my preaching. Perhaps I will even glance over at Jesus a bit more as I go along. However I resolve this bumbling stumble toward the finish line, I will doggedly pursue a determination. Each Sunday will be an energized attempt to make good on my promise to give it my best to honor my calling. However, regardless of how much gel I use or don’t, I am still dependent on the one who cut my hair to make it right.

We See What We Want to See!

I am more often than not a glass is half empty guy who refuses to quit. Just the other day I read once again Einstein’s famous determination that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again but thinking the results will change. The writer was using the quote to denigrate pastors who try the same tired strategies of church growth but with each mounting failure refuse to acknowledge the zaniness of their methods. Of course this was a successful and popular pastor who was passing along his success story to the rest of us who were clearly “insane”.

The use of the quote to burst my glass is half full bubble was infuriating not so much because the author might be so wrong in his assessment of me and my vocational myopia but rather because of his use of a deist’s philosophical musings to prod me to follow him along in his “God kissed” autobahn to success. I find it disturbing to put it mildly the assumption that every “successful” ministry is right and every “unsuccessful” one inherently flawed.

The trend for the Christian community to migrate toward large churches notwithstanding, is it reasonable to assume that every blooming branch bears good fruit? Is it just as fair to determine that every dried branch is a dead one? Take two extreme examples as a point of contemplation. Was Solomon a good fruit branch? If so, what makes us so certain he was? We could quickly point to his magnificent proverbs, his monumental expansion of Israel’s prominence upon the world stage, his brilliant observations and his gigantic building projects and justifiably call him a good branch….and yet…

The second example is Jeremiah who failed miserably at every turn. He never married, never parented successfully a single child, could not turn more than a few miserable souls around, was a pitiful orator, never put two positive words together in any sentence, had the most contentious relationship with God one could imagine and perhaps did not have a single day in his life that was even partly happy. Year after year he made the same predictable, pedantic prophetic mutterings and may have won a convert with his methods…maybe one. Insanity…

Is prayer insane if you never clearly hear God speak to you? Is faith insane if you miss out on life’s big bonuses? Is love insane if you are turned away? Is integrity insane if you are never believed? Is life insane if you die in the end? Is the glass half full if you haven’t yet gotten your drought from it? Is the world insane if success is the measure of every branch’s worth? I may wish I could be Solomon but honestly I would rather shoot hoops with Jeremiah. Is that insane?

Hitch-hiking Through My Brain

Twenty five years married and it is just a moment in a flash...Looking at the wedding book and pondering how antiquated even my glasses were, let alone the hair and body type and it seems like some couple from another planet made its way into our album. Taking a walk through my past sermons, old CDs and 70s voting habits and I seriously wonder if my brain blew up somewhere along the way. It is amazing to think that I was so mediocre in so many parts of my life...I may still be but at least I work more at mediocrity. I care about what I think, how I decide and what I do even for moments. The books I read must possess me and the movies I watch must have heart and hope...I cannot tolerate any more the empty entertainment I casually embraced and whether good or bad, I mark time much more. Can marriage mean more than this...to learn to love and stop the fool's gold panning that accompanies whispy relationships? Twenty-seven and I knew but now I ponder as I watch my family slip into know realizing that soon enough they will watch and listen once again. Get it right is the mantra of my moments now but even if I fail I will be thankful for the twenty-five years Mary Jo has given me to develop love and experiment with love and restart love again and again. I wonder what my hairstyle today will look like to my grandchildren tomorrow...Once again I will be a nerd I am sure but only nerds celebrate twenty-five years of marriage. Generally, only nerds have grandchildren and only nerds make a dent in the love deprivation facing our know satiated world. A new life? No, but a contained one, built upon the patience of Christ and the assurance of God to build what seems so mediocre into a real life only fellow nerds can celebrate and love.

I Quit...or Did I?

I am not sure why it is so tough to give up some things: cokes, nail biting, fear of failure, poisonous comments, critical self-righteous thoughts, phony posturing, confidence in JaMarcus Russell, coffee that costs too much, wistful reminiscing of what never came to pass, McDoubles, sweat pants... Yesterday I thought about how easy it is to say "stop" and how ridiculously hard it is to do it. Even the ugliest of habits cling to me like duct tape. I was thoroughly depressed by the attendance at our church despite the fact that I knew I had worked my hardest all week, did the best I could to prepare and used long stretches of time to pray for the sermon, made sacrifices that cost me and my family for the benefit of the church and enthusiastically entered Sunday with high hopes. And yet the afternoon froze into an amalgamation of doubts, frustrations and streams of bitter consciousness. I wondered why I still get upset by how things spin in life, why this habit of being impacted by circumstances weekly floors me. I recently read that in reverse order the following are what Americans say they cannot live without: 5. Haircuts/coloring 4. Discount stores for purchasing accessories 3. Cable/Satellite TV 2. Cell Phones 1. Internet So here I am on the Internet wondering aloud why I do not give up on those things that pain me most. Colossians 3: 7 inspires me that there are habits I have killed and for that I am grateful...You used to walk in these ways, in the life you once lived This week I will give up satellite TV...next week I will quit coloring my hair...Then I will stop texting friends on my cell phone...but after that...some habits are just hard to kill. Maybe nail biting will go...but I doubt it. Last night I looked out at the moon, full and lovely in its festive march across the sky and thanked God for a habit that hasn't yet quit...a light that shines in the darkness!

What Can Happen?

As the clouds roll in today and the heat wave dissipates, I am struck by how quickly our circumstances can shift. One day we are hot and frustrated and the next day a cool breeze siphons off our despair. What can happen within five seconds?
• An earthquake can level your home
• A stroke can leave you paralyzed
• A tractor trailer can swerve into your lane and flip over your car
• A scream can send you running for cover
• A bullet can sever your carotid artery
• A kiss can take your breath away
• A note can give you fresh hope
• A chance meeting can bring employment
• Eyes meet and you find your prince charming
• An inspired thought gives you purpose
• A prayer…
Elijah was a man just like us. He prayed earnestly that it would not rain, and it did not rain on the land for three and a half years. Again he prayed, and the heavens gave rain, and the earth produced its crops. (James 5:17-18 NIV)

While I Was Sleeping

The other night I was sleeping soundly and in the middle of a stirring dream when I was suddenly startled by a voice at three in the morning. My eyes popped open but I cannot say I was fully awake. The voice was resounding and quickening, as stark as a thick black line drawn across a pure white paper. All that was said was, “What is strong enough to pull a great weight and too weak to stand on its own?” Nothing more was said and no answer given in an audible way. Now this was a strange and maybe even juvenile riddle except for one rather provocative part of the moment. The solution came to me immediately and I knew I was right…A String.

Now what was the point of this odd “word” and did it mean something for me? Again I knew exactly what I was to glean from the riddle almost as instantly as it was given. “YOU are strong but YOU cannot stand on your own. “ God’s call to me was the demand that I pray and pray with MUCH greater fervency, for though I may do much, I cannot stand on my own. Admittedly this may sound a bit, or even quite odd when you read this but it was as certain a word from God as I can confess hearing and although it did come as I was sleeping, the voice was distinctly “audible” and unmistakable.

At What Cost?

My brother is a hero. His friend friend and partner Ian Leong is a hero. And so is Paul Starzyk, who lost his life a hero. All three are police officers in Martinez and while eating breakfast together they received a dispatch that there was an emergency situation at a hair salon. Felix Sandoval, estranged from his wife and locked in a bitter divorce dispute, filled with rage went after his wife, who owned the salon. With his hand, Sandoval smashed the plate glass window and forced his way into the locked salon demanding the patrons and workers there tell him where his wife was. Sandoval's own teenage daughter was working at the salon and begged him not to go after her mother. Unbeknownst to Sandoval, his wife had locked herself in a closet at the salon, trying desperately to hide from him.

Spying his wife's cousin who had tried to convince Sandoval's wife to leave him because of his erratic and violent behavior slipping out the back door with a customer, Sandoval went out the back after her. His daughter tried desperately to stop him but Sandoval would not be held back. Spotting the cousin in an apartment above where she had forced her way in to hide, Sandoval raced up the stairs with his gun, broke into the apartment and found his wife's cousin there. Inside the apartment was a mother and her three children. The kids were hiding in a bedroom and their mom along with the other two women faced the crazed Sandoval as he stormed into the apartment. Sandoval shot and killed his wife's cousin and then realized the police were coming up the stairs.

Sgt Paul Starzyk was the first up the stairs. Wearing a bullet proof vest, he came down the hallway toward the apartment with his partner Ian Leong coming from behind. Sandoval, hiding behind the apartment door, shot his arm out and fired down upon Sgt. Starzyk, hitting him in the neck and severing his carotid artery. Although dying from the wound, Starzyk fired back and shot Sandoval several times before he collapsed to the ground. Officer Leong courageously stood in front of the dying Starzyk and protecting him with his own body, shot into the door and the walls and at Sandoval himself, pinning him back so that he could not shoot at his friend anymore. This hallway of horror was where Leong remained, throwing down his own life in order to hopefully save not only his friend lying on the ground but also those held hostage in the apartment. My brother by now was up the stairs with his police dog and his dog shot out after Sandoval and attacked him. Seeing him move, and still perhaps a terrible risk, my brother also fired upon Sandoval and the killer was dead.

What makes courage so amazingly subtle and shockingly lovely is that courage is not forced and cannot be imitated. It springs out of a character honed to give away, even to the point that it costs your life. I hear stories of the common bravery of the men who stormed the beaches of Normandy and without cover, lost their lives without much thought at what was happening to them because they loved more than they wanted and it is too big a thought to adequately ponder. My brother and his friends are the fabric that makes a people noble and terribly lovely. Their courage was not exemplary, it was mundane...mundane in the sense that they did not ratchet it up, they simply did what was instilled in them. Protect, lay down your life, do not flinch.

Christian faith is not lovely because of what good is in believers. Christian faith is lovely because it is instilled by Jesus who knowing the brutality and horror of the Cross pursued it and would not flinch at it's crushing blood lust. Jesus died, knowing He was giving up on a future that He could hold to if He wished but longing more for a future He could give away. Jesus died as the ultimate Courage, killing off the deadly brutality of sin by staying hung on the Cross until His heart was busted open and His life ripped from Him.

And then He conquered.

I can never be thankful enough for Jesus dying for my sins and my meager statements of gratitude will not ever be much because I cannot comprehend in the least the immensity of what Christ has done for me. Eternity awaits us all and because of Jesus, faith in Christ holds a certain promise of joy forever with God. The Grace of God is not measured, it is too sweeping to mark. We live within Promise but not a promise far off, rather it is close, close enough to spot. The blood on the ground at the foot of the Cross holds the Promise too big for us to grasp, we can only faith it.

Glenn, Ian and Paul have blood on their hands, their own blood and it marks courage that cannot be measured. Courage like theirs is too big to pin down, it is the stuff of heaven and bigger than the human heart.

Across The Hedge Concluded

There were four indications that the Christians in Corinth were living anti-God lives. They were suffering from bouts of boiling anger. They were losing their temper and getting upset. They were quarreling with one another and wrangling over points of contention. They were doing what any Non-Christian might be able to do but nothing that revealed a legitimate dependence on God power. There was nothing unique about their actions that pointed to the supernatural handiwork of Jesus. In addition to all of this, these Christians were not able to recognize God’s hand in what was happening around them; they were attributing everything to some human explanation. In other words, there was not much about these Christians that looked, or sounded anything different than the Non-Christians surrounding them. Does this have a familiar ring to it?

I am not certain when a church crosses the line, goes across the hedge and has the look and smell of flesh but I think ours is there. What have we done lately that is supernatural, that only God could have made happen? What is there in us that indicates the Spirit of God is dominating our personalities and driving our actions? Do we have the fruit of the Spirit? Is there a craving for Jesus that is more fundamental than just doing what is right? Is Christian stuff one more chore of ours or are we filled with joy when we read the Bible, pray or do acts of service? What is there about me and you that could be pointed to as a sign that the Holy Spirit is dominating how we live and act?

If I said there was a way to get past flesh driven and man generated living and be truly driven by the Spirit of God and anointed by Him, would you bite? Would you be interested in having a Spiritual personality rather than a fleshly one? There are six basic steps to developing a Holy Spirit driven character. Each is as important as the other and not one can be lightly passed over. The first step to developing a Spirit personality is clear repentance. There are sins I have that need to be admitted and renounced. I must tell God I was wrong for my angry outbursts, wrong for my critical comments, wrong for my lustful thoughts, wrong for my refusal to forgive. No one lives Spiritual unless he takes a long hard look at his sins, particularly the ones others would dismiss as inconsequential and admits to them and renounces them to God as filthy and unacceptable.

I must decide to give up any sinful attitude or behavior I know I am doing. I must tell God I have been unable to give this up so far and need Him to crucify that part of me that wants to keep doing that sin. I must openly and publically make a profession of Jesus Christ as my Savior and my Lord. I cannot be filled with the Spirit of God if I am not a blatantly public Christian. I must surrender my will to that of the Holy Spirit and do whatever God says. A Christian once told me that God clearly told him that he was to be a missionary to China but never went. I cannot make these sorts of decisions if the Holy Spirit is to fill me and make me loving, kind and full of the joy of God. No Spirit filled Christian stays oppositional to God and His will for him. I must want to be filled with the Holy Spirit as much as a thirsty man in the desert craves water. "If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him." By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive. (John 7:37-39 NIV)

Not many Christians honestly want to be full of the Holy Spirit, anointed by Him. It is far too easy to just accept a rather superficial and incoherent form of Christian living. But honestly it is irrational to taste Jesus and then not want Him ruling over you and filling you with all of the joy and love and peace He has to offer. This is only possible by turning ourselves over to the Holy Spirit of God and giving complete control of our lives to Him. A hedge separates you from all of the blessings of God…a hedge of desire. How badly do you want the Holy Spirit filling up your life? How much do you crave His dominance over you? What are you willing to do for the fruit of the Spirit to actually be the nature of

Across The Hedge Part 1

1 Corinthians 3: 1-7 GJW
And I brothers, I was not able to speak to you as spiritual ones but as in the flesh, as to babies in Christ. 2 Milk, I gave you to drink, not solid food because you couldn’t handle it and even now you aren’t able to handle it. 3. For still you are fleshly ones for whereas there is in you boiling jealousy and contentiousness; are you not ruled by fleshly desires and walk just like men? 4. For when a certain one of you might say, “I myself am of Paul” but another, “I am with Apollos”, are you not just like men? 5. For what is Apollos? What is Paul? They are servants through whom you believed and only as each one of you were given by the Lord. 6 I myself planted, Apollos watered but the Lord was making the growth happen. 7 Consequently, neither the one planting nor the one watering is of any consequence but only the one causing the growth, God.


In our local paper the other day was a front page story about a set of neighbors who live in a peaceful little cul-de-sac, neighbors who have been friends for years. Their property is separated by a hedge one of them planted long ago as a decorative upgrade. They have watched each other’s kids reach adulthood, gone to one another’s parties and looked after one another’s homes during vacations. One of the neighbors recently put up a yard sign calling for a “no” vote on proposition 8. His neighbors in turn put next to the hedge in their yard a sign calling for a “yes” vote on proposition 8. Last week while his neighbors were gone, the one with the “no” sign went over and cut down the part of the hedge on his neighbor’s side and forced them to move their “yes” sign from where it had been placed against the hedge.

Now what could engender such rage and frustration that a friendship lasting two decades could be ruined by dueling lawn signs? The Apostle Paul would say it is just people being people. He uses a term that that is often found in his letters to describe the part of us that just won’t do what God wants, the flesh. Some refer to the flesh as our “sin nature”, others call it our “anti-Christ personality”. We all have it. The flesh is what pushes us away from God’s character and avoids anything that smacks of real holiness. Now it is not just Non-Christians who can be ruled by their anti-God personality, Christian people also are left leaning here. Paul calls us babies when we let our flesh take the lead in how we act and live.

Paul said that many of the Christians in Corinth were acting like babies because they were forming alliances and choosing sides. Some were for Apollos, others for Paul. The points of contention were irrelevant. It did not matter why they were disagreeing, the fact that they were clearly marked them as babies. Paul uses two terms to describe the approach these Christians had to their faith. The first is “sarksinoi” and simply means that they were flesh people; in other words, the tendency to think and live outside God was part of their character. But Paul takes his diagnosis a bit further by insisting that the Christians in Corinth were “Sarksika”; they were dominated by their flesh instincts. The anti-God personality was the operating system making these Christians who they were.
This created quite a problem for Paul as he tried to lead them. He was unable to speak to them through the Spirit of God. Now how does this sort of communication work? A person dominated by the Holy Spirit can talk of anything the Spirit directs and it is made clear to the person both in how they think but how they begin to act by means of the Holy Spirit. Coercion, guilt tripping and begging are not needed to bring about the needed change. The Spirit gets the message across and coordinates the new direction. Without the Spirit of God, there is almost no Godliness, little Christian love and peacefulness and not much interest in pursuing hard after Jesus. The fruit of the Spirit described in Galatians 5: love, joy peace patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control are anything but actualized…important maybe and desired but not rooted and grounded in the person.

A Political Politic

I have in the past few weeks become accutely aware of my need for the Holy Spirit to overwhelm me and dominate my interests and desires. It isn't that I just realized my personal poverty here, it is that I was brought face to face with my longing for God to saturate me with His Presence as I went through an unexpectedly provacative book, The Work And Presence Of The Holy Spirit. What startled me was just how casually I was treating the work of the Holy Spirit in me and how little real effort I was making to let Him rule over my psyche. I have recently entered fully into the political dialogue and I do not apologize for my views nor think I am off base in how strongly I feel but I must admit the election will not alter the most crucial issue. Without Christ aligning my life, I have little to say of any value. The fruit of the Spirit is not just an alternative lifestyle, it marks the one who does know God and lives in Him. The pursuit of the filling by the Holy Spirit is dominating my will and I pray that you and I will not wilt in our craving to be overcome and driven by Him. Pray and give up your will to Christ. Pray and refuse to submit any longer to anti-Jesus desires. Pray and state unequivocally your desire to let the Holy Spirit rule over you. It is a new day!

Transformation

As some of you know we lost our kitten Saturday. I have called this little creature Beelzebub for good reason. She greets me many mornings by clawing her way up my leg if I am lucky and across my back if not. One time she lost her balance on my bare back and dug in with all her might. I did not curse...a miracle of no small proportion. Beelzebub slipped out our door Saturday morning and escaped our many attempts to recapture her. I had to take Rachel out of town so we couldn't keep trying to coral her but the rest of the family was home. Unfortunately they couldn't find her and so she was gone.

Several times during our 2 1/2 hours of driving Rachel wanted me to call home and find out if Beelzebub had been found. I couldn't reach anyone and so my little girl's stress levels continued to rise. Meanwhile, both of us prayed fervently for that little troublemaker's return. We finally got back home at 9 that night and the first thing Rachel wanted to know was if anyone had found her cat. No. Off Rachel went with a flashlight trying to find her kitten but despite all of us searching, no sign of her. We left food out on the porch to try to entice Beelzebub back and went to bed.

The next morning was Sunday and without any signs of a kitten, we all went to church. All of us were praying for the return of that little kitten and with high hopes we returned home early in the afternoon to find...no cat. Rachel hunted all around and the rest of us got lunch ready. Because we had a broken pipe and our friend Robert was coming over to work on it, I ordered Noah into the back to pick up his half a billion Megablocks scattered all over the area where Robert would be working. With much grumbling he went back and started the reconstruction of his life. But guess what he heard as he worked. A cat meowing. Searching for the sound, Noah found the kitten under a building at the school behind our house. The space was way too small to crawl through to reach that little kitten child and so Rachel and Noah spent thirty minutes trying to bribe her out with cat food. Finally, out she crept, ravenous after her twenty-four hour adventure into the dark side. With a swift swoop, Rachel grabbed the kitten and wrapped her in her arms.

Snowball had been won back. I do not know who prayed more for that kitten, Mary Jo who tries her best to avoid her, me who has claw marks all over my body to testify to Snowball's affection or Rachel, who went to bed the night before with tears in her eyes afraid she had lost Snowball forever.

I am not sure what to make of all this except I do know that prayer is more than just a religious exercise. It is the lifeblood of our adventures. And our misadventures. How does a Beelzebub become a Snowball? I guess through prayer!

And how bold and free we then become in his presence, freely asking according to his will, sure that he's listening. And if we're confident that he's listening, we know that what we've asked for is as good as ours. 1 John 5: 14-15

News From The Good Old Days

From the newsletter of the radio station KFAX, I got this interesting list of facts about the good old days...
100 Years ago...

One home in seven had a bathtub

One home in 13 had a telephone

Infant mortality was 140 per 1,000 babies, compared to 6.3 per 1,000 today

Life expectancy was 47 years (uh-oh!)

6% of adults had high school diplomas

Colleges graduated 1.5% of the students they do today

The average workweek was 52 hours

Only 8,000 automobiles were registered in the entire country

One thing does remain the same though...


Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. Hebrews 13:8

Election

I am not convinced this election is over...We face perhaps the biggest internal crisis in over 50 years as a nation and the Christian community needs to make its presence felt. It is time we pray three times or more a day for the state of our country. Regardless of the side of the fence you sit politically, dramatic changes are in store for us and it is only the person locked in on the mind of Christ who will fathom what is happening and how to respond. Nothing good can come of all of this if we are passive as the body of Christ and just act according to our will. The accusations that are about to flurry around this political contest must be met with Spiritual resistance. Hammer away these next three weeks at determined prayer and make your life count for this nation and for the Kingdom of God.

How Do You Know?

With the election looming before us, the undecided vote is becoming smaller and smaller and yet the question, "How do you know" is legitimate. How do you know how you should vote? We rely heavily upon our intuitive sense, our opinion of things and the tilt of opinion around us but how do you know which candidate should be elected and does your opinion mean you are right in your assumptions? As I was reading through the text of 1 Corinthians 2, Paul makes a comparision between two sources of understanding...the psyche which means far more than just our psycholgical make-up but rather describes the way of life of this natural world, and the spirit, which is the working of the Holy Spirit. If there was ever a time when we need to be reliant not upon our natural senses but upon the Holy Spirit and His insight into God's mind, it is now. These are grave times at multiple levels and if there is hope for insight into how to move through this, it is revelation that God's people possess as they pursue the insight of God. We do not need to think as everyone else thinks. Only the Holy Spirit opens the door to a creativity that escapes the narrow boundaries of this world and its dying values. We have through our life in Christ, the mind of God.

Vision

Last Sunday our worship service attendance was forty. But...this past week as I was praying I was unprepared for the vision that came to me. I suddenly saw our church sanctuary full and overflowing. At first I thought I had fallen asleep and was dreaming but I immediately got up and walked into our sanctuary. The vision stayed with me as I looked out across the empty seats. The sanctuary was full and people were everywhere. Then just as suddenly it all was gone and I was left with the shocking and even a bit spooky sense that God had spoken to me in a completely new way. I am not given to visions or for that matter prophetic dreams so this was overwhelming and disconcerting. I wasn't sure what to do with what I experienced; whether I should believe it was from God or not. I went back to pray and was given a great peace about it all.

Lord, you establish peace for us; all that we have accomplished you have done for us. Isaiah 26: 12

I Get It Concluded

1 Corinthians 1: 18-25 GJW
18 For the word of the Cross to the ones being destroyed is foolishness but to the ones continually being saved, to you, it is the power of God. 19 For it has been written, “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise ones and the intelligence of the intelligent, I will push out of the way.” 20 Where is the wise one, where is the learned one, where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? 21 For in as much as in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, God took pleasure through the foolishness of the proclamation to save the ones believing. 22 And in as much as the Jews demand a sign and the Gentiles seek wisdom, 23 we on the other hand, we proclaim Christ having been crucified…to the Jews it is a stumbling block, to the Gentiles moronic. 24 But to the called ones, both Jews and Gentiles, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God. 25 For the stupidity of God is wiser than (the wisdom) of man and the weakness of God is stronger than (the strength) of men.


The wisdom the world does not possess and cannot acquire is the “word of the Cross”. The “word of the Cross”, is most bluntly, moronic to the world. Foolishness as it is commonly translated. It is not that the world misunderstands what we have to say about the Cross because it misinterprets the facts. Rather like the Gorilla trying to comprehend the stock market, the world has no shot at figuring out the Cross. Paul calls it the power of God but only to the ones “continually being saved.” For the others, those in a constant state of destruction, it is idiocy.

There are two ways the word of the Cross is power of God for those continually saved. First, it makes stupid every argument held against it. Verse 20 uses a term that describes a transformation; the change from being intelligent to being ridiculously foolish or more literally, moronic. Suppose we were to mix common baking soda and vinegar. The resulting chemical reaction would produce carbon dioxide gas and water. When you place the word of the Cross on the wisdom of the world, and combine the two with faith, the wisdom of the world becomes stupid. It no longer makes sense. I once thought when I was a child that I could as I grew stronger fly on my own power. Of course it hasn’t worked out but the logic of my argument as a four year old made sense then. But now, through the transformation of mental maturity, I realize it was a child’s dream, we are not made to fly that way. I once thought, before the word of the Cross, that there wasn’t enough evidence for God. Now, by the transformation brought on me by the Cross, I cannot imagine life at all without God. The logic is not in my clearer thinking, it is in the supernatural work the Cross does within me. I “see” what I did not see before Jesus made my thinking clear about Him.

As an insider to my mind, I think I came to the conclusion that Jesus Christ is Lord and Master of my life but the truth is I didn’t. The work happened supernaturally. It came by the word of the Cross. Nothing about Jesus and the life He brings makes sense outside this change. We bust our heads against a wall trying to convince people it is logical to belong to Jesus. It cannot be made logical because it is impossible to grasp. The word of the Cross alone has the power not only to persuade but also to make sense of eternal life. The opposite also is true. What seems so logical, the life without Jesus is morphed by the word of the Cross into utter stupidity. The time away from Christ becomes by that Cross a mess of foolishness and vanity. We are not convinced to follow Jesus, we are made by the Cross into followers of Him.

The second way the word of the Cross is the power of God for the ones being saved is that it is what continuously makes you saved. We aren’t saved by something we think or do but rather by the word of the Cross itself. The change has nothing to do with carefully crafted arguments or intelligent considerations. Eternal life comes by the word of the Cross and it alone has the power to make you, as Paul puts it, “continually saved”. No one is “argued into the Kingdom of God and no one convinced of it through logic. There is by the word of the Cross a literal transformation that makes me into something I can never in my own power or through any other power morph out of being. I cannot become a non child of God once I am one because it is not me that does it: it is by the word of the Cross.

Verse 21 is fascinating. It tells us that through the “foolishness of the proclamation” a miracle occurs. The nonsensical, “moronic”, idiotic if you will proclamation brings about the faith transformation. Just saying the “Christ having been crucified” opens wide a door that is completely closed, a door to an eternal life transformation. It is a bit mysterious this process because believing is not given as a means of attaining eternal life, it is the characteristic of the ones having it. It is like saying that all Walkups have big noses. I am not a Walkup because I have a big nose but there is not a Walkup running around without a big nose. Believing or faithing is what every single Christian does. It is the foolishness of the proclamation of Christ having been crucified that takes the soul into continual salvation. It is the power of the change. Believing is what you look like when the Christ crucified proclamation works in you.

Now I understand that the call of the Gospel is to “believe”. We believe though not because we get it or we think it through. We do not turn into Christians on belief. Belief is the response of the soul to the penetration of the message of Christ crucified. The power of it works in me and then I believe. This, the Bible says is grace…a gift. Romans 10:17 is a strange and near shocking twist on popular theology. It states that, “faith comes from hearing the message”. Literally, it reads that faith comes out of the hearing. We do not hear the message because of our faith. The message of Christ crucified delivers the faith into us. It is the power generating faith.

The message itself is a stumbling block to some (the Jews) and moronic to others (the Gentiles). But that doesn’t keep the proclamation of the Gospel from tearing into people and making their old unbelief completely illogical to them. Because the message of Christ crucified is sufficient in itself to make changed lives, we do not have to be skilled messengers. It does not need help from good, satisfying logic. It simply needs to be announced and then it bores in on the one being saved. Here is a scientific chemistry experiment for the church. Go before the Lord and ask Him to point out to you one you can proclaim the Gospel. Take a deep breath and then do it. Pray for God get the words out. Christ died on the Cross to give you eternal life. He rose from the dead and He is the one and only savior of your soul. The pray and step back. The proclamation is not held back by the wisdom of the unbelieving. It is corralled by the silence of the Church. One voice is all the Gospel needs. Why not make it yours.



Consequently, faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word of Christ. Romans 10:17 NIV

What's It All About Introduction

Corinthians 1: 26-31 GJW
26 Now look at your calling brothers. From a fleshly perspective not many of you were wise ones, not many powerful ones, not many well-born ones. 27 But God chose the stupid ones of the world so that he might shame continually the wise ones and God chose the weak ones of the world so that he might continually shame the strong ones. 28 And God chose the commonplace ones of the world and the contemptible ones and the ones who don’t seem to exist in order that he might make useless the ones who are 29 so that each living being will not boast before God. 30 But out of Him you yourselves are in Christ Jesus who became our wisdom from God as well as the righteousness and holiness and deliverance. 31 This is so that just as it has been written, “The one boasting, he must boast in the Lord.”


One of the most difficult parts of Biblical interpretation and teaching is the stretch required to get past one’s preconceived ideas about what the Bible says and what one thinks the Bible ought to say. We are programmed at nearly every level to think of choice as the pre-eminent right of every human being. We choose all day, choose what we will eat, choose who we will email, choose our TV shows, choose to exercise or not, choose what clothes we will wear and when to take our shower. We love the right to choose our representatives in government and although there are many who “choose” not to vote, we could never imagine giving up that right by choice. We even choose our religion and choose how we will practice that religion. We are choosy and choosers. No one tells us what to do!

The passage we are looking at today makes a mess of our theology. It is, as we can see, big on choice. Our passage speaks of choosing but not once are we the one making the choice. It talks about a calling but it is not us calling, it describes a comparative analysis but not by us and not in a way that makes sense. It simply does not fit at all the paradigm we have of choice and decision-making. It is not a “Christian” passage if what we mean by Christian is what we think Christian ought to be.

I have tried to render a literal translation so that the major themes Paul had as he wrote the Corinthian church would stand out for those of us used to reading the Scriptures without an eye for the important details. The first one that pops up is found in verse 26. Paul tells us that we must pause a moment and examine closely our calling. Stare at it. Ponder it deeply. Take time to think about it and how it came to you. Don’t just slough off casually the inception of your Christian life. It is crucial to consider if you are going to know much about God and yourself.

Calling is a funny word in a sense. It implies someone else doing this. The word invitation comes to mind. The calling Paul describes is not to some sort of specialized ministry, it is the calling to salvation. That is clear because he is writing the entire church, not a specific group of leaders. In fact, if we can take the liberty of saying it, the letter is written to us and not all of “us” have a specialized ministry but all of us have a calling to eternal life. Paul is telling us that we need to look at the part of our salvation he labels a calling…the invitation. We are Christian because God issued an invitation. My daughter went to her friend’s party because she was invited…my daughter did not invite herself to it. The starting point of this discussion is that each of us who are Christian received an invitation from God and that is how we got to where we are. Jesus underscores this in John 15: 16. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit-fruit that will last. (NIV)
To Be Continued...

A Needed Change

I am excited about my new journey of faith! My sister-in-law Kitty recommended a book that she and her family are using and it has already had a fabulous effect upon me. Today as I was praying through the material, God's presence struck me and I was a bit overwhelmed by what He did with me. There is so much I want to see change in my personality and it simply is not possible without a transformation by the Holy Spirit. Last night I was amazed by the work of the Spirit in our cell group as we talked about the Bible passage, sang and prayed. I cannot say the work had anything to do with my entering this new phase but it did happen at the same time. I even had the opportunity to share the Gospel and pray with a woman who approached me when she spotted my Bible at the table. Her son is in jail and her health has suffered some difficult disease. I felt she came to me because of the inroads the Holy Spirit was making within me at the very moment she approached. The book Kitty recommended is A Call To Die by David Nasser. It is a forty day journey into being crucified with Christ. It invites everyone to spend an hour a day going through the material and taking intensive personal inventories. There also is a call to a fast of some sort whether a fast from food or from the various media types. My fast is from sports reporting and broadcasting. I know it sounds like a rather trivial fast but it has concentrated my gaze on Jesus already. One thing that struck me is how easy it is to assume that what I need is a change in circumstances when what I really need is more Jesus and greater affection for the Holy Spirit living within.