unconditional love

i found myself browsing through the familiar isles of my past, both figuratively and literally. When i was in high school my Latin teacher worked nights and weekends at an eclectic bookstore. My close friendship with her daughter and her influence on my life often led me to stop in at this particular purveyor of printed wares. It was odd to walk through the shelves again, things still were they where years ago. It was like i had stumbled back in time, only now i am thicker in the middle and thinner on the top. Memories flooded through my mind, books i had bought from there, discovering a series of children's books that featured Carl - the uber friendly Rottweiler, carrying boxes for my teacher, arguing with friends, taking dates there and watching them totally miss how magical the store really was (fellas, unless they read: DON'T take a girl to a bookstore, what was i thinking?). With the memories something unexpected invaded my heart, a weight.

It was almost a sadness, like some secret chamber of my soul was mourning the loss of years that are now forever gone, grieving over moments that will never be relived again. A friend of mine, well really he is more of a mentor to me, often says, "We will never be together again, exactly like we are together right now." There is a lot of truth wrapped up in that statement. The book store isn't the same. Sure, they still sell books. Still have a great selection. It's still the most unique bookstore in the Roanoke Valley. But, across the counter there isn't heartfelt conversation, only transactions. My friends aren't sitting in the floor of the children's section, flipping through the best and most unique children's books even though we were high schoolers. It's no longer "The Meeting Place", it's just a place.

But the weight was more than just sadness, there was a certain joy hidden in the weight. i had real experiences there. Experiences that shaped me into the man i am today. It was there that i interacted with people who knew me and cared about me. On some level isn't that what we all want? To be known and still loved. Not loved for what we do. Not loved for being the "right" way. For someone to see all our warts and wrinkles, our temper and depression, our phobias and foolishness and still say to us, but not so much with words, "You have value to me."

It was my Latin teacher who first demonstrated unconditional love to me. No matter what i did she still accepted me. She believed in me, pushed me, corrected me... like no one else probably could have. Because of my friendship with her daughter she really got to know who i was, and she said, "You have value." i spent hours last night online using every trick i could concoct to nail down her current whereabouts. My search was not in vain and i spent the next hour composing a letter, one that i am about to take to the post office and put in the mail. A letter that, at the heart of the matter, carries a simple message: "Thanks."

i first saw that unconditional love in a teacher, but i have found it again. i am reading "The Organic God" by Margaret Feinberg right now. In the book she tells the story of a friend who started a church, the church was running around a hundred people, now here is the kicker, seventy five of those had come to faith in Jesus through the ministry of that church. Thats 75%! She asked her friend how he did it, he said that he spent time where unsaved people were. Once he had really gotten to know them, the way he would bring up spiritual matters was with a question: "What do you love about Jesus?" If somebody asked me that question i know my response: "He knows me, really knows me, all my ugly dark parts included, and He really, really loves me."

"We love because God loved us first" 1 John 4:19

"Thank You" & Doubt

Some friends and i wound up in Raleigh NC last week. Thanks to the new age of internet directions we made our way to within a 10 mile radius of our destination without incident. But like most trips undertaken with the aid of map-quest (or any of their competitors) that 10 mile radius was about all our instructions were really good for. So as we barreled down Capital Boulevard, missing our turns at near light speed, my co-pilot Rob yelling things like, "You need to turn…. BACK THERE!" a voice from the back seat said, "My stomach is gnawing on my spine." Punch that into babelfish and it will translated into English as, "I am hungry, you two morons are lost, stop this car or I will strangle one of you with your own seatbelt." The voice had emanated from Shelia, Rob's loving spouse. Rob sprang into action, "There is a Jersey Mike's subs, turn…. Right back there!"

i did what any rational man would do, i preceded to drive another eight blocks before turning around. Eventually i did manage to veer my vehicle one hundred and eighty degrees and head back towards the sub-shop in question. Another three wrong turns and, what was in my opinion a skillful if clumsily executed maneuver in a parking lot that had us sharing a lane with an oncoming car a'la London traffic pattern (read that as: me driving in the left hand lane), we made our way into the fine eatery known as Jersey Mikes

If there is one male stereo-type that i break on a regular basis it's that i am not afraid to ask for directions. But, alas none of the employees of Jersey Mikes had a clue how to tell us to reach our goal via the web of streets that are known as down-town Raleigh.

After completing my order for a fine sandwich with a surfeit of bovine flesh piled into the middle of a sub roll, i scanned the patrons. Nearby sat what appeared to be a friendly couple, I decided to take my chances with them. After explaining our dilemma; that we were from out of town, where we were headed and how hopeless it seemed that we would arrive there using only our own resources, i asked for directions. The gentlemen explained that he knew where we were headed but was unable to help us, he couldn't remember any of the street names. Then he began to gesticulate rapidly, his hands a blur of activity. He was relaying our plight to the lady at the table with him via signs. She was deaf. He asked me if i had something to write on; she was going to write out our directions for us. Snatching the semi-worthless internet spawned directions from Rob i flipped the paper over to it's blank side and slid it across the table to her. She scribbled out a series of street names, communicating details through her dinner-mate. As she passed the paper, once nearly valueless and now made precious by her efforts, back to me a feeling of gratitude filled my heart. i raised my hand towards my face and placing the fingertips of my open palm against my bottom lip pulled it down in an arc till my open hand was extended towards her, the sign for thank you, while simultaneously saying, "Thanks, so much."

But what happened in that instant was mind-boggling. i don't know much sign language, i can finger spell and say a few words, but I do know a little. Yet, at that moment, that instant, i was nearly overcome by doubt. "Am i saying what i think i'm saying?" Visions of crude hand gestures that are similar flooded through my mind... What if i only thought i was saying thank you? In the end i was able to conquer my doubt, well mostly – i actually asked a friend about it over the weekend, she's a little more fluent in ASL than i, she confirmed that i was indeed correct with my expression of indebtedness.

It's funny how doubt works. i could teach you all the signs in my repertoire and never wonder if they were correct. But when it comes time to put it to use, a feeling of incompetence rushes through my brain. It's easy to be confident when you are sitting on the couch. Like the guys who criticize their favorite athletes performance, "Why did he make that throw, didn't he see that coverage?", "OH I would've passed on the outside, he had a shot at that.", "Why didn't he take the shot? It was wide open!" You put those guys on the field, the track, the court and see if they sill "Know" exactly what to do then.

But doubt is something that we all have to face. Doubt keeps some people from ever really living, they doubt they can do it, so they do nothing. There is a powerful quote about courage that is probably applicable to dealing with doubt, it has several variants and in it's many forms it is cited to several famous men, from Mark Twain to Nelson Mandela. But my favorite version comes from a man named James Neil Hollingworth, a man who was described as being a beatnick and a hippie. A mysterious man; the Wikipedia entry on him being a prodigious 27 words (29 if you consider "1933-1996" as two words). He often wrote under the pseudonym Ambrose Redmoon and as Mr. Redmoon he is cited as saying this: "Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear."

Action breeds doubt, doubt leads to fear, fear leads to the dark side… ok, not really the dark side but Yoda was onto something there in the swamps of Degobah. As a person of faith i have seen so many people do nothing for fear they would be doing the wrong thing. They sit motionless waiting for the heavens to open and a booming voice to spew forth giving them a personal imperative for life and living. Often in Christianity we idolize people who seem to have those experiences: Paul, for example. He was struck blind while on his way to throw some Christians in jail and became a Christian himself, we love that kind of encounter. But he was also the same guy headed into Bithynia and he got the brakes put on him (Acts 16:7). He was just doing SOMETHING for God, and God kept him from doing the wrong thing.

Ultimately doubt is a beautiful thing. It causes us to wrestle with things. Makes us dig for answers on our own instead of getting them spoon fed to us. Motivates us. Give me 10 people who wrestle with doubt over 100 who "have it all figured out". For those of you out there who struggle with doubt, you are not alone. The Bible is filled with people who had the same battle. God is not intimidated by your doubt, but some people are.

1 John 4:18 God's Word:"No fear exists where his love is. Rather, perfect love gets rid of fear, because fear involves punishment. The person who lives in fear doesn't have perfect love."

Coats

Last week i got a call here in the office. A lady on the other end of the phone shared a story of how her nieces and nephews had no coats to wear as winter approached. Strange thing; in all of our conversations over the telephone she has never once called them her nieces or nephews, she always refered to them as "my sister's kids". i suppose on some levels it's more efficient to word it that way. After all "my nieces and nephews" is a whopping six syllables long whereas "my sister's kids" racks up a scant four.
She shared with me the story of how she went to her sister's on a cold morning last week and saw the four of them, "the sister's kid's", waiting for the bus wearing two sweaters a piece. Upon investigation she discovered that their mother, her sister, had done the best she could to keep her spawn warm and comfy in light of the fact that no coats were available for them. The plight of her kin-folk had so moved her that she spent the day calling various agencies and ministries looking for a way to keep the dear children from freezing to death this winter, all to no avail.
After sending her to other local groups i knew of, all of which were able to offer her no help, i agreed to help her out. So last night i went coat shopping, one hundred forty dollars in hand, one hundred forty dollars squeezed from the pockets of teenagers willing to help some kids stay toasty through the harsh and windy winter.
One thing became painfully apparent to me last night, that i am a man to the core. Let me explain; normally tasks like shopping for clothes for those in need gets delegated to one of my closest friends. She just happens to be, well a "she". It is a great joy for her to search out deals, to stretch our benevolence dollars as far as they will stretch, to hop from store to store, scouring over racks, tabulating just what 30% off really means in dollars and cents. i, on the other hand, felt not like a fish out of water, but more like a fish in mid-air. A fish out of water may still propel itself by flopping about, but a fish in mid-air is completely out of it's element. So there i was confused, i had not been more confused since i suffered a concussion in an ice skating accident years ago, wandering through stores, looking for coats. After passing the same rack for the fifteenth time a sales lady finally asked, "Do you need any help sir?" Pride got the best of me, "No, i'm just looking." What was i saying?!? i had been stricken by a flashing bolt of idiocy! Before she could escape i called out to her, "WAIT!, i.... uhhhhh... yeah i could probably use some help." i asked her where the little girls coats were at, she pointed to the rack directly in front of me with a look of incredulity, "Right here sir." She then proceeded to help me find the correct sizes with the kind of care that you may see a nurse use when feeding a severely mentally handicapped person.
i was very relieved to load the large swollen bags into my truck, shopping assignment complete. Why the ladies i know get pleasure out of such a draining experience is completely beyond my feeble understanding. i was very excited about delivering the goods this morning. Driving through the drizzling rain to the address i had been given, "You can't miss it, it'll be the trailer with the blue mini-van in front of it, I can't move it, because it won't move." Perfectly logical reasoning. i put my truck in park and made my way, bags in tow, through the rain and onto her front deck. Dogs barked in the background, i knocked on the door. "Man, it would be nice if she had a porch instead of a deck," i thought as i admired the "Happy Haloween" towel that was draped over her front door as a decoration. The door creaked open and there stood the person who possessed the voice i had been speaking to via Alexander Graham Bell's wonderful creation.
"Hi, i'm Tony," i said by way of very creative introduction, "i've got the coats for your...," i paused here, because this was the moment i realized she had never called them "nieces and nephews", "...ahhhhh, sister's kids"
"Thanks," she said as she relieved me of my burden and closed the door.
i stood there on her front deck, in a state of a kind of peculiar amazement. From the moment she first spoke to me on the phone till now, this was exactly what she had expected. She handled the whole situation like it was simply a business transaction. She took the coats the same way i may take, say, my paycheck. She said, "Thanks," the same way i say thanks for my check every Friday. Not "Thanks for doing this for me, i don't know how to express my gratitude for your generosity." But just, "Thanks." i mean it when i say thanks on payday, just like she meant it. But when someone does something charitable for me it's different. When my Dad showed up at my house with the title for my truck, which i was going to purchase from him but he decided to give to me as a gift, i said "Thanks" but it came out insufficient for the gratefulness i felt.
There i stood, in the rain, admiring her "Happy Haloween" towel draped over the front of her door as a decoration, realizing that i had just dealt with a pro. Honestly i didn't feel used or taken advantage of. The revelation that she was good at getting stuff for nothing wasn't shocking or offensive, it wasn't really humbling or disturbing, it was just true. Anyway we had bought those coats for "her sister's kids" not for her... or had i?
It makes me wonder, how many people have successfully made a career out of getting stuff for free? How many people are as thankful for the handouts they get as most of us are for our paycheck? How many people feel they have "earned" something for nothing? How often do i feel that way?
How many of us have developed that attitude about what Christ did for us? We say "thanks," and we mean it. But when you get a bona-fide hand out, and you really understand what it means, there is a deep seated humility in your "thanks." "Here I am to Worship"- arguably one of the best worship songs of our time says in the bridge, "I'll never know how much it cost, to see my sin upon that cross." Most of us sing that without much more than an attitude of payday thanks.

The Mystery of Beauty

i have heard a lot about this whole beauty thing lately. Sometime recently i heard someone say that mankind's appreciation of beauty is proof of the divine spark within us. Honestly i didn't get it at first. But the more i think about it the more sense it makes to me. i love nature, love to be in it, surrounded by it, far from civilization. How many times have i hiked a ridge on the Appalachian mountains and stopped at a clearing just to take in the view? The majesty, the glory, the enormousness of the world we live in mesmerizing me. Stop at a scenic overview sometime and observe the other people taking in the view. Often the are silent, stricken by the panorama stretched out before them. As much intelligence and emotion as i have always attributed to my K-9 companions i have never noticed one of them staring in awe across a landscape with me. As many deer as i have walked quietly upon in the wilderness of the Old Dominion, i have never caught a single one of them enraptured by the aesthetics of nature. Maybe those folks who claim our acknowledgment of beauty is what separates man from beast are on to something. Maybe it is proof of the divine seed placed within us.

i have the indescribable privilege of working with an autistic boy here in our community. He has become hands down one of my favorite people in the world. Over time i have developed an appreciation of his attraction to the beauty of the world around him. The simplest things become objects of loveliness. A pack of normal markers, linked together, end to end, to become a long tube of smooth glossy plastic. Watching as he passes them across the bridge of his nose, watching the procession of markers pass like a bullet train in slow motion, close to his eyes. i didn't get it at first, so one day at home i dug out some markers and hooked them together, i tried it out. You know what, it really is a mesmerizingly beautiful thing to watch, simple yet spell-binding. The way textures fascinate him. Water, clay, a crumpled paper towel, construction paper, mud, sand, a blade of grass. For most of us it has been a long time since we were really aware of the feel of the things that pass through our hands on a daily basis. We just pick things up, put them down, stuff them in our pockets or throw them into a waste basket. But there is something wonderful about our sense of touch. He has helped me to reclaim a little of the wonder for ordinary things. Lay in the grass and really look, the world beneath our feet is alive, crawling, bustling with life. There is a beauty in the everyday things of life that we miss in our business, our rush, our "adult-hood".

Beauty is all around us. It is invasive. It finds its way into the ugliest of situations. At the landfill - the swirling mass of white that undulates like a giant ameba, the mass of seagulls gathered there for a feast, their feathers the purest white even though they live in a sea of refuse. A parking lot - an ocean of black pavement, a scab on the planet, and yet there, by the buggy coral, a crack in the armor of modern convenience and a flower pushing its way up for the sun, little yellow petals made more beautiful by the tar saturated backdrop. Yet we tend to associate beauty with those of the opposite sex. We scan a room, see someone, neuro-chemical reactions take place, our pupils dilate, our attention focuses in, "He-lo!" we think. But really isn't beauty more that that? Beauty is much more than a biological reaction to an attractive person. Beauty is bigger than that, more complicated, mysterious.
i think our love of things beautiful is somehow connected to our desire for the divine. We long for something transcendent, something glorious. There is an element in beauty that is indescribable, unexplainable, incomprehensible. In so many ways the divine that fits that same bill. i think that mysterious desire is why we are drawn to art, to paintings, to photos, to movies, to music. Those things move us on a level we were designed to be moved on. They move something deep inside us. That is what sets us apart from every other living breathing thing on the planet, and i am convinced that it is the result of the divine nature placed within each and every person.

Romans 1:20

From the creation of the world, God's invisible qualities, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly observed in what he made. As a result, people have no excuse.

In Compliance

Spent the early part of the morning in court. It seems that in the Commonwealth of Virginia it is against the law not to have current tags on your truck, who knew? Oh yeah the State Trooper at the road check knew.

It really was a funny moment when i got the ticket last month. i do some work for our local Community Services Board, to make some extra dough and just because i love it! There i was returning from a night on the town with a mentor kid i work with when we came around the curve, the curve that just happens to be less than a mile and a half from my house, and there they were Blue lights flashing, state troopers lined up on the middle line in their gray uniforms and black hats, orange safety vest screaming, "Don't hit this man!"
i pulled easily up to the trooper waving at me to stop, oblivious to the fact that my tags had expired. He asked if i knew my tags had run out. i responded with a deer in headlights look of surprise mixed with incredulity, "No sir," i replied. i spent the next 10 -15 minutes pulled off the side of the road waving at my neighbors as they drove by shaking their heads and listening to my mentor kid saying over and over, "You are supposed to be a good example to me, how is this a good example?!"

So like i said, there i was this morning in the courtroom, my cell-phone off - the deputy at the door had been very specific - vibrate just was not good enough the things had to be OFF. It was a bit of relief for me, i hate carrying around that electronic leash. No matter where you are or what you are doing someone always wants to give you a tug. i sat on the pew, a pew!, who has pews? Churches and courtrooms thats who. As i waited for the judge to come in i opened my book, "To Kill A Mockingbird", i figured its a great American classic and i've never read it so i may as well consume it. It was surreal, sitting in a courtroom reading through the court case of Tom Robinson. Suddenly thankful that it's 2007 and our courtroom is air conditioned, thankful that im just here for expired registration.

The judge enters, telling us all to just stay seated, he is jovial and friendly this morning; a feeling of hopefulness pours over all of us gathered there to pay penance for our traffic sins. As person after person hears their name called and approaches the bench, standing beside the particular officer who issued their ticket, the judge hands down decision after decision, to me they seem gracious and lenient, i am thankful. i watch the cases, waiting anxiously for my turn before his honor. Finally it comes, since i now have current tags on my truck he dismisses the charges, i have come into compliance with the law. Relief.

All this make me wonder, what about my dealings with the other folks who's lives intersect and intertwine with mine? i think that it's easier to be gracious to them when they come "into compliance" with my own personal law. What i want them to do. Who i want them to be. It's when they don't come into compliance that forgiveness is hard. It's then that i want to hang onto stuff, hang it around their neck like some scarlet letter, no not a scarlet letter - a millstone and then kick them off a bridge into a deep river! But people don't always come around to doing things my way. Really do i have the right to expect them to? If i don't have that right, why does it bother me so much? Why does it cut so deep when a friend steps on your sore spots? Ignores you? Why is it that deep inside of me something protests so hard when things don't go my way? Why does the same thing happen to you?


Matthew 6:14 "If you forgive the failures of others, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.
Matthew 6:15 But if you don't forgive others, your Father will not forgive your failures.

Life and Powerpoint

So ive been thinking alot about life and Christianity lately.

Been thinking alot about the way we talk about life in Christian circles. Seems like the way we talk about life, especially from the pulpit, makes life sound like a PowerPoint. You go orderly through the thing and if you follow a set of bullet-points everything works out just right. But if you deviate from the bullet points things start to unravel.

But is life really like a PowerPoint? Does life have bullet points? Are there really 6 steps to spiritual success, spiritual power, happiness? i've tried to follow some of those bulletin points and it just doesn't seem to work out for me.

So what is life like? If life were written down would it be prose? poetry? song? a letter? a love note? a greeting card... defiantly not a greeting card!

i think that if we compared life to writing we would find it to be a hodge-podge collection- is life prose? Sometimes. Sometimes we go through life living out the narrative, other players in the story fleshing out the plot and dragging in their own sub-plots as we experience it all unfolding in front of our eyes.

Sometimes life is Poetry: Maybe today it's Haiku- our emotions and passions set out orderly and neat. Maybe tomorrow it flows and is a thing of beauty like a Robert Frost Poem. Sometimes it's edgy and messy, like the young poets of the 70's. Sometimes its epic like something from the pen of Tennyson. Sometimes life is lived out so that prose is not worthy of life, and life isn't worthy of prose.

Life is a song: sometimes its the rhythm, the melody, the harmony in the background that makes life so powerful. Like song lyrics that sound lame when you read them from the CD insert, but move you to tears when you hear them in the song. Moments in life, playing in a stream with your best-friend: it's not an earth-moving moment in itself, but with the underscore of the emotional instruments in the background it become a powerful thing: The rhythm of things you have experienced together, the guitar of secrets only the other knows, the low drum of the bass of intuition- the way you communicate without speaking, all come together to make the hum-drum something magical.

Life a letter? a careful thoughtful pouring out of who we are and what we've been through. Calculated and precise, like when an acquaintance is becoming a friend.
i think that if life were written down it would be like a giant compilation of all those things, like the bohemian writers flowing in and out of prose and poetry, with a soundtrack that accompanies them. A beatnik poet on the stage, sharing poems they have written, giving you the narrative, telling you the story behind the poetry before each recitation. Life is all those things.

Like God's own book, the book HE wrote through the hands of men, the book we so often refer to as "a whole library of 66 books" but i don't think of it as a library, it's one book, God's book written in all the styles, flowing from narrative prose, into song, then poetry, to letters, to the cryptic mysteries that we in Christian circles call prophecy. So seeing that the book that God wrote has no bulletin points, no six steps to whatever, why are we always trying to translate life into a PowerPoint presentation?

Giving God a Bad Name ! ? !

Romans 2:17-24

17- Now then if you call yourself a Jew; if you rely on the law and brag about your relationship with God;

18- if you know His will and approve of what is superior because you are instructed by the law;

19- if you are convinced that you are a guide for the blind, a light for those who are in the dark,

20- an instructor of the foolish, a teacher of infants, because you have in the law the embodiment of knowledge and truth -

21- You then who teach others, do you not teach yourself? You who preach against stealing, do you steal?

22- You who say that people should not commit adultery, do you commit adultery? You who abhor idols, do you rob temples?

23- You who brag about the law, do you dishonor God by breaking the law?

24- As it is written: "God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you."

OK 2 points i would like to make here: The Jews were the people back in the day who were known for living lives for God, The Gentiles were people who didn't know God or much about Him.

Let's modernize: Today Christians are known for living lives for God, and people that we call "Lost" don't know God and often, but not always, know very little about God.

So here is the TMPV (Tony's Modernized Paraphrase Version) of this same passage of scripture..

So, you call yourself a Christian, you go to church and "know" you have a "good" relationship with God.

You know how He wants you to live because you go to church almost every week, some weeks several times, Hey! you might even be a "Sunday Nighter"

You have something to offer your lost friends, you have a testimony to share with them, because you have actually studied your Bible a little.

So you want to help other people out, are you helping yourself?

You complain that people are unloving, are you unloving?

You gripe when people judge others, who are you judging?

You get mad at people who act all "religious", do you ever act religious?

It upsets you when your friends sin, in what ways are you sinning?

When you feel good about yourself because you are doing the church thing, do you turn your back on God by the way you act outside of church?

God is disliked, hated, and talked bad about all the time by people who don't know Him because of the way we, as Christians, act.

I know that before i became a Christian i was turned off the Christianity by some Christians i had encountered.

Bottom line question: Are your actions and attitudes as a Christian making God look good...

or bad?

To many people we are simply polluting the world of faith with our attitudes of judgement, unforgiveness, and exclusiveness.

The Right to be Happy???

Is happiness a right?

Here in the U.S.A. we have rights.

We have the right to a trial by jury...
the right to remain silent...
the right to free speech and free press...

our Declaration of Independence declares that we are endowed with certain rights from our Creator: Life, Liberty, & the pursuit of happiness...

Life: God gave it to us-

Liberty: we are all created in God's image, so we are all equal- none of us has the right to make another human being our slave.

Pursuing Happiness: .................... i guess we have the right to chase some happiness in our short lives, but is it our right to catch it?

Do we as humans have the right to be happy?

Is God obligated to dish us out some happiness?

i know alot of people preach that He is... but is He really bound to give us all a happy income? a happy marriage? a happy parenthood? happy friendships?
Is that really a right we have? or merly a benefit?

i ask you to participate in this discussion... what do you think & why?

Do any of us have the RIGHT to be happy?

It's my goal for others to join me in the journey that is following Jesus, will you join me as i honestly wrestle through this question?

Think about it, Post a comment here about it, & please... be honest.

God Challenge

The conversation went something like this:
"Have you heard about Blasphemy Challenge?"
"Yeah, that's old news," i replied
"But have you went and checked it out?" They asked me
i thought for a few seconds, "No but i've seen it on the news."
"You need to go and check it out for yourself."

That got my wheels turning. So i did, i went to blasphemychallenge.com/ and checked it out. The way it impacted me is almost indescribable. i literally felt sick.

We need to do something. But what?
http://godchallenge.com/
That's what! A place where we as believers can make an organized response. Blasphemy Challenge is pushing unbelief! Jesus said in John 3:18 that those who do not believe are already condemned. This is our chance to show the world, and hopefully eventually those who are considering participating in the Blasphemy Challenge, that faith is REAL! That God is REAL!

Join us as we make a stand... who knows? it could be YOUR testimony that reaches someone.

If you are interested you can see me and we will post your response to God Challenge! The web-cam is ready and waiting for You!

Spiritual Growth

We talk a lot these days about Spiritual Growth. It is an important part of our Christian experience, i mean Jesus gave us the orders to "go and make disciples of all nations." Christianity is about more than just evangelism, it's also about seeing ourselves grow and helping others grow. i have been thinking a lot about spiritual growth lately.

Walk into any Christian bookstore and you will see rows of shelves packed with books to guide us in the process of spiritual growth. Many of those books encourage us to follow a program for growth, many paint a picture of growing from spiritual point A to spiritual point B and so on. But does any living thing grow from point A to point B?

i think of my 3 kids. i don't think any of them have grown the same way. There is no prescribed method for growing kids. There is no "one-size-fits-all" method for raising children. ( i know, there are hundreds of books out there that say there is, but anyone with kids knows on a gut level that it just does not work like that.) How many "measurable markers" do my children grow towards? Other than grades in school i can't think of many. They just grow. They eat, and grow.

Growth is a pretty messy process. You build a wardrobe for you kids and what do they do? They grow out of it & you have to buy them more clothes. You feed them breakfast and what comes next? Lunch - then Dinner - then Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner... it just does not stop. You buy them toys to entertain themselves with and what do they do? They take them apart to see how they work. You enroll them in some sports program and what happens, they get bruised and bumped, skin a knee and bleed on their new uniform. You cut their hair, wash their clothes, wash them, teach them how to clean up their mess, tell them to clean up their mess, yell at them to clean up their mess, ground them for not cleaning up their mess... Woah! this whole kids thing is just a MESS!

You put up with all this because one: you love them and two: you want to see them grow up and be healthy productive adults. So you watch them, and you know what... you just don't see them growing. i mean just look at the same kids day after day waiting for them to grow and you know what you will notice- nothing. It's not until one day, let's say early to mid-winter, when the first snow of the season falls that you see something. It happens like this: snow is on the ground, school is canceled, and the kids are itching to roll around in the white stuff. So what do you do? you dig in the closet for their snow-suits (or as we here in VA call them: "Cover-alls") You pass out the gear and tell your children to put it on as you go get there snow boots. And when you return: there they stand, wedged into tiny suits with pants that come up to their mid-shins, sleeves that only cover down to the middle of their fore-arms and you realise: Man have these kids grown since last year!

That's so often how it is with us. We want our spiritual growth sanitized and measured out, we want it disinfected with mile-markers along the way. But really you keep walking, keep reading the Word, praying, going to church, struggling to be like Jesus... & so often it just feels like nothing is happening. It's messy, we fail, stumble, get confused...

Then one day a situation arises, some crisis point of life and... you have the wisdom to handle it correctly; or you keep your temper under control; you resist the urge to spread that juicy gossip; you tell the truth even though it's embarrassing. And you realise that spiritually, your old coveralls are knee-high, the sleeves half way up your fore-arms... You have grown.

Sometimes the only way to see our own spiritual growth is to look back at who we have been and see who we are now becoming.

Jesus?

Have you ever wondered what Jesus is really like? i'd venture to say that many of us haven't asked ourselves that question in a while.

When we are first saved we ask that question a lot. "i wonder what Jesus would do in this situation?", "If Jesus were here how would He handle this?", "What would He say to that person?"

After a while we begin to think we have things figured out pretty well. We don't ask those questions like we should. We begin to assume that we just know how Jesus would react in certain situations.

But reading the word i find that He often acts in ways that don't fit with my view of who He should be. He turned water into wine.... He hung out with the wrong crowd... Mary Magdalene was one of his most faithful friends- Mary a woman who tradition paints as a reformed prostitute! Hardly the way that i think Jesus should act!

Another problem that i have with Jesus is this: Sinners loved Him! People with some real sin issues followed him around, climbed trees to see Him, washed His feet with their hair... Sinners WANTED to be near Jesus. i think that's great! The problem i have with it is this- if we are supposed to represent Jesus on earth... Then why don't sinners like to be around us? Why don't they like to come to church?

i know that you may say it's holiness. A holy lifestyle makes them uncomfortable, and i am sure that's true on so many levels, it was true for me. But Jesus lived a totally non-compromising lifestyle of holiness. Scripture says He was without sin! When He preached He preached a level of holiness that few dare preach today: To hate is murder, to lust in your mind is adultery, yet still people loved to be around Him.

my question to you is this: What are we doing wrong?, it's the same question that i ask myself almost every day- it's that question that haunts me, that keeps me up at night. Instead of turning the world upside-down for Jesus, why are we simply turning the world away?