Contemplations…

Did you ever just have to leave your house? Have to get out? It happened to me this morning… I, somehow, allowed my television to linger on the worst thing ever… “The View”… I feel my blood pressure starting to boil as I write the words….

I am a pretty accepting and easy-going guy… but, there are a few things that just crawl up under my skin and completely irritate me… “The View” is one of them… Today’s line up was “Whoopi, Joy, Sheri Sheppard, I am pretty sure, and Elisabeth”… Somehow they get on the topic of religion… and how you raise your kids… and of course Whoopi and Joy get on the “innocent, yet leading” questioning of dear sweet Elisabeth… Thank God they have her on there… I don’t know how she puts up with the crap (not the word I really wanted to use) that they throw her way…

Now I realize that I could have turned the channel, or turned the TV off, but I am out of my favorite home brew, so I needed to go get my coffee fix, and I do a better job of reading at the coffeehouse so I went and did my reading for my small group…

I got home and started reading around the blogosphere and saw one of my faves, eugene cho, someone I dearly hope to meet one day… he is just a cool guy, from his blogs and my interactions with him online… he is in my blogroll… faithseekingunderstanding… He has posted a comment about another blog with a seemingly offensive title… even made me go… huh… but, you can go and hunt it down if you are that curious…

It got me thinking about how incredibly constricted we are by our language… the simplest demonstration of this is in the word “love”… I am not sure exactly the number, but I feel like it is around 12 different words in the Greek language that describe different aspects of love… but in English I can say any of the following with the same word:

“I love pizza”

“I love my Mom”

“I love reality TV”

“I love The Office”

“I love God”

“I love Jesus”

How is it possible that the same word exists to express all of this… because despite how much I truly love “The Office” or “Pizza” or even “My Mom”… they do not compare to how much I love my God and Saviour…

I don’t know why I am so negative today… I am actually in a great mood… I got my coffee and got to read… and I am working tomorrow so I am taking today easy… I guess I get frustrated with things that get in the way of me expressing my love… and things that are birthed out of ignorance…

Have a great weekend!

I am still reeling from this Sunday’s message… it was dealing with the heart of the matter…

I have always felt that it makes a lot more sense to stand for something, rather than against others… It follows a part of the philosophy, be a part of the solution, not the problem…

I was in a meeting last night where someone was making some observations of what the organization didn’t need to do anymore, because in his opinion it didn’t work… so, I asked… “well what should we do?” There wasn’t an answer…

I was raised by my parents to only bring criticism or raise objections if you also were willing to come to the table with suggestions or options… It is easy to sit and say… “you are doing this or that wrong”… it is easy to judge other people’s decisions… I would gladly love to have someone come to me with a suggestion of what I should try doing differently… but, to just tell me I am wrong, really doesn’t help…

Somehow in my head these topics go together… The artist that I work with is adopted… and I have become very aware of a lot of the topics that go along with adoption… but, when starting out his career, he made it very clear that he wanted to be pro-adoption… that was really his only platform… he wanted to make his ministry about what he was worth fight “for”… not against…

I get that people have strong feelings about their beliefs and it might lead them to stand up against what they believe so strongly in… but, I really think that we need to evaluate where our heart is… is our heart fighting for something or against something… I know that there is a level of splitting hairs that says, if you are for something, than by default you are against something else… but, I think the bigger issue is the attitude and condition of your heart as you “fight for” what you believe in…

I was sitting in church this weekend and hearing a message taken from the Old Testament… I am not a huge scholar on the Old Testament… actually, if you looked at my transcripts you would realize that I am barely a scholar at all… I just made it through my OT class… I have always had a hard time understanding the cultures and believing the realities of the grand stories… As I have grown older, somehow I have started to find them easier to understand and believe…

I have heard a few messages in the last two days… talking about King David, whose life at time looks like a total trainwreck… and then Sunday the message was out of Judges.. and it was full of wretched things…

I thought to myself… if the Bible was a television show… it would have to be TV – MA… The topics and the plot lines are mature… Definitely unsuitable for children… and honestly, there is a little conservative old lady in the back of my head that gets a little offended when I hear a preacher talk about some dirty things… There is something very unnatural about talking about prostitutes, whores, concubines, warriors, war, beheadings, and brutal murder while in church… and yet… these are central themes throughout the Old Testament…

It is hard to relate and get the message through all of this sometimes for me… It is hard to relate because I don’t know that I know any prostitutes… We don’t live under the old covenant, and so the idea of sacrifices is also hard to wrap my head around… and despite our country being “at war”… it seems like a pretty foreign concept to me in my little safe-havened bubble…

Despite all of this… the principles that come out of these stories… are so incredibly valuable… and if you are a fan of drama… if you are a fan of great plot lines… you need to check out the Old Testament…

It has been a while… and I apologize, my writing inspiration has been coming in spurts… and usually when I take a break it is because I either get too busy, or I start reading or listening to a lot… I was watching DVD series of one of my favorite teachers, Andy Stanley… and all that I was thinking to write about was what he was teaching, and fearing that I would just steal what I had just learned…

This week was another killer message from my amazing new pastor and once again I found myself writing notes like a college kid in church. It was a message about the condition of your heart… It was amazing and convicting.

I got thinking on a little rabbit trail…

Here is a shocking confession (said tongue in cheek): I have not been in a serious relationship in a while. I forget what it feels like. I forget what it requires. I have had relationships, but, it is getting further and further in my distant memories.

I am wondering if this lapse in relationships effects how I approach my relationship with God. One of the things mentioned in the message this weekend was “God wants to be in a love relationship with you.” I always get a little weirded out by that language, but if I am being honest with myself; I believe that to be true.

I used to teach junior high students and when we would ask them to describe their relationship with God, they would come up with things like: He is my best friend… He is always there for me… He is like a big brother always watching out for me…

I would use this same language to challenge the students about what they were bringing to the relationship. I would say, if you treated your actual real life best friend the way that you treat God, would they still be your best friend? If you only spent a little bit of time with them, ignored them when they were talking, didn’t read their notes to you, etc…

I guess in all of my teaching of this principle it fell on my own deaf ears.

I found myself asking “if I treated a Love-interest the way that I treat God, would I be in a relationship at all?”

If I were to take the real life example of what it requires to be in a love relationship and apply it to my relationship with God; I would have to admit that I am a horrible lover.

The good news is that my lover; accepts my faults and is still waiting for me despite all that I have done wrong. No matter how poorly I treat God, and abuse our love relationship; He is always there for me, loving me with a love that surpasses my earthly understanding. Who you choose to be in a relationship with is the most important part.

I thank God that He still loves me.

I have been struggling with wrapping my head around apparent dichotomies in life… I had a Theology professor once tell me that if you can accept conflict that you will do well with Theology…

One of the dichotomies is the fact that the cost of salvation is free to us… but the cost of discipleship will cost you everything… This comes out of a conversation this weekend about how you view grace. When you realize that all you have to do is ask for Jesus to come in to your life… the process of acquiring salvation is fairly simple… more simple than most would imagine… But, if you look at what it costs to truly be a follower… “take up your cross” and leaving everything behind comes to mind…

It is what makes me think that being a Christian is the easiest and hardest thing to do.

The next is one that is even harder for me to wrap my head around… but I was watching a show on TV, it was one of the magazine format news shows… and they did a feature on a preacher who had come to the realization that the Gospel was totally inclusive and that there was no such thing as Hell… I heard him out, and respected that he really believed this, but I can’t from where I sit and read… believe that this is true… He was harping on about trying to wrap his head around God coming to save the whole world, and God being such a loving God… and on and on… While it is one of the hardest things to accept, the idea of serving such a loving God also being what is referred to as a just God, is really hard for me to accept… the fact that there is a place called Hell and that it is real and that people who don’t know God will go there is hard to accept, but… It is what I believe…

This world is finite… this world is not eternal… this world is not spiritual… and so it is hard to even have the language to intelligently discuss these things that truly are infinite, eternal and spiritual…

I had a professor who used to quote the scripture about “knowing in part”… and would say… the other part is what we don’t know…

I look forward to a day when I know in the fullness of being in His presence… I am ready to go home and not have to deal with these worldly dichotomies…

so, I sat down with my favorite store bought blend of coffee… a treat… I usually home brew, but felt like getting out early today…

I thought I will go home and finish up my blogs from the message I heard this weekend at church… when I realized that I kind of finished up things on the message in the last post… and honestly, yesterday’s post was one that is worth reading twice…

I know I have a few regular readers… and so, for those of you that come to see writings and musings here… I don’t have one today… other than to say, last night after an exhausting trip and a long day…. I settled in to my bed and flipped through the TV… and I found the DCI 2007 championships were on ESPN2 and I caught it in time to see the top 4 performances including my favorite corp, who won… I know this is somewhat old news, but congrats to the Blue Devils on your 12th unprecedented Championships… it was very very refreshing to come home and be able to relax and enjoy something I miss dearly…

soon and very soon I will be back to blog more…

thanks

Continuing on the message from my church this week… the second point on giant-killers is:

Giant-killers see what can be – not what is.

One of the huge messages here that I find terribly encouraging, and was in a conversation with a new friend last night about, is… It is not about what you don’t have to offer; it is about what you do have to offer…

If we look at the calling of Moses… He fights with God telling him all of his inabilities and all of his shortcomings, but when God calls us… He knows what we are capable of accomplishing through Him. How differently would the history of man be if Moses, or Abraham, or David, said… no… I am just a this or that… I can’t…

I think that it requires us getting to a place of saying “I can’t” for us to realize that it isn’t about us… it isn’t about our abilities… the statement where God shows up the most is “I can’t, but God can” One of the statements my pastor made was hard to swallow and process at first; he said “God is not trying to tell the story of your greatness; He is telling the story of His greatness”

To me, this is true worship… a few years ago there were a lot of songs being written that had the imagery of satellites in them… the concept being that we were to be reflecting back the images of God’s greatness to others…

In the end, don’t we truly want others to see God and His greatness… point others to Him? If people look at my great accomplishments and see me… I can’t save them. If what I do points others to God, He can.

Once again I come to you telling you how amazing my church and my pastor is. I am so blown away by the healthy signs I see at my church community. It has been a major blessing in my life.

We are in a series of teaching right now called, “Man vs. Wild.” This week was the topic, “The Power to Overcome.” Our pastor used the story of David and Goliath to illustrate his points. It was really great. It was a powerful service from start to finish. I think I am going to share the points to the message in separate blogs… but the first of the points is

Giant-killers live with the perspective of preparation.

My pastor was telling us that one of his favorite sayings that he uses over and over in life is that “You live a life of preparation for a moment’s notice”… David had been preparing his entire life for the moment’s notice that he would need to battle a giant. He didn’t know that he would be battling a giant, but he was none the less preparing. He was a shepherd, and he was constantly having to battle off vicious animals.

I look back at my life and I see several moments in time where God was leading me through a life of preparation and I had no idea. Pulling at just one example would be the fact that when I was a teen I got really curious about how sound equipment worked… I taught myself a lot, and then had pursued a job where I was taught the “right” way to do a lot of professional audio. Little did I know that I would come to a point in my life where it would be a part of what I do for a living. Even with my current job, I don’t use professional audio every day, but the days I need it, it is a great tool to have in my back pocket.

In those moment’s notice is when we truly see people’s character. If you want to know someone’s true character, be near them when things in life go horribly wrong. I will try to tell you a story that conveys this point. I will try to make this brief…

I had a roommate in college who was a great guy… He fell in love with this girl and they were inseparable… as soon as he graduated they got married… I think I actually sang at his wedding, (the only time that that ever happened) We kept in touch while I lived near the college after we were out of school, but when I moved away, we lost touch with each other… until one day, I had lived in Nashville for about 3 months and I was working one day and someone transferred me a call from a “Noah”… I didn’t have any business associates named “Noah” so, I figured it must have been him, but couldn’t place why he would be calling me, and/or how he got my number or any of that info… I picked up the phone and heard my old roommate… who sounded normal… and my mind was racing… “why is this guy calling me at work?” he said to me… “well you know that we were pregnant…” I started calculating and thought, “Oh, it is baby time…” so I prod the conversation along… “Oh, yeah… what’s the news?” … the tone of the call turned sharply… noah continued very slowly… “well, we lost the baby… the baby was stillborn”… I know that people talk about being speechless… whatever is one more, or beyond speechless is where I was… I was paralyzed… no where in our Bible College education do they truly prepare you for this moment, or what you say… and so I think I let the line be silent and I don’t know that I said anything… probably stumbled onto something like “oh, man, I can’t believe that… I am so sorry…. how is Wendy?” Then he did what I still believe is the unthinkable… he said well she is right here… and before I could interrupt him, I was on the phone with this precious little young mother-to-be whose dreams had just been crushed… In my conversation with Noah and Wendy, I heard from them more maturity and Godliness than I had ever seen demonstrated by a young couple… I hung up the phone stunned and encouraged…

The way that Noah and Wendy had lived their lives and all that they had been prepared for came called in on a moment’s notice. Theirs is a glorious story of the proof of character. I have had fewer moments in life that I have been truly proud of my friends and somewhat jealous. I started to think to myself, had that been me… where would my perspective be? and I fear that I would not have come through that time as Godly as my two friends.

I tell you that story to encourage you that in the mundane of everyday life, we might not always see it, but God is preparing us… and we need to be prepared, but life will come at you with only a moment’s notice.