Thanks to Denise...

I've fallen off my blogging here. Honestly, there really hasn't been much to blog about. Well, even that isn't quite right. The Lord works and is so merciful I can't really understand it. But then again, I guess that's pretty much par for the course with me.

It has to be dipping 68 degrees now in Greenville. I'm outside of starbucks in a white t shirt, gray mesh basketball shorts, and dirt colored crocs. I'm not dressed for this chill, but the Lord is making me warm. His word is starting to burn inside of me, and there's little I can do. I feel more inclined toward him now than I have in some time. Moving to Carolina has been the best thing for me. I see the Lord again; I feel his presence near me again like when I used to the summer before seminary. Tonight I planned on writing about Francis Schaeffer's True Spirituality (At least the first 4 pages). That was before Misti's co-worker intervened. And I got to tell her about it instead... She's not a believer. The whole thing is she's got that "all christians are hypocrites... and I don't do hypocritical religion." I agreed with her and said, "well you don't have to go to church to find a hypocrite. they're everywhere, you're a hypocrite, I'm one, anywhere you go you'll find one. In fact, a hypocrite is only a person who's sin is more appearent than the sins of someone else." She decided to try another smokescreen, but I told her about christianity being about Christ's death plus NOTHING else. That there is nothing we can do to earn our salvation... so on and so forth." I do love to share the gospel and have been missing it since I left Dr. Nyquist's class. Lord willing this is only the beginning of our conversations at closing. I can't wait to see how the Lord breaks her from the sin in her life through these conversations. I can't wait to see how he breaks me away from my own sin.

the beauty of all this is that it's thanks to one little question Denise asked me yesterday on the way to visit the boys in Columbia, "have you done any more seminary reading?" I was thinking about that when I left the house tonight - I decided to grab true spirituality instead of my book on Caleb. It's amazing how far a little question can go toward changing a circumstance.

Soundtrack: Band of Horses, David Crowder
Eyeball-track: True Spirituality by Dr. Francis A. Schaeffer; "Caleb" Francine Rivers

enough

I’m having a tough time understanding what I want to pray this morning. I had my time with the Lord and it was pretty good. I was reading in Acts about the Jerusalem council and the separation of Paul and Barnabas. I wonder if the Lord made what was bad, good… or if he intentionally split them apart so that his word might go out to Cyprus and make John-Mark the man he needed to become. I think it’s making a bad thing, into a good thing, allowing the friction of Paul and Barnabas so that Cyprus could know him and that John-Mark could be the disciple that he was meant to become. If it wasn’t for that fight Paul and Barney would only have gone to the same places they went before, but now they could do all that and more.
This days devotional was easy to pray with. I prayed for Richard, Ian and Jess, Boone, and then Misti and myself. I prayed that we would not have self pity take hold in any of our lives, but that we would charge on trying to pursue after the glory of the Lord zealously among the people around us.
I had a dream last night about Richard (Misti did too, though she didn’t tell me the specifics), it was actually about a lot of people in my life. It was about me, though I was no hero in the story (adultery), and it was about my old youth pastor kind of sluggish and depressed but successful, bringing students with him to this conference/mega-church service. Richard however, is the hero of my dream. It was challenging and exciting and disappointing all at once. Selfishly, I wanted to be the evangelistic hero of my own dream, but I guess whatever it is that causes dreams is pretty honest and not given to egos. In my dream I’m walking throughout the service talking to people and person upon person upon person say to me, “I came to know the Lord through Richard.”
Apart from the adultery, it really encouraged me for the ministry that Richard will have on the world. It encouraged me that he’s in the right place and doing the right things that god would bless him and bloom him and make him grow high into the clouds and as strong as an Oak.
My second reading was not as encouraging as the first one, however. It was about the first days of Elisha being separated from Elijah. It was about doing the job once you’ve left the safety of the professional who guided you and going out all on your own. I think about this and am reminded immediately of my intimidation at being a pastor, the top dog, the head honcho, God’s main man. I’m reminded of being a father - being on the edge of manhood close to making the plunge, looking down into the depths of the blackness below and knowing that eventually I’ll have to jump into that scariness, but wanting to delay the inevitable as much as possible. Up to now, I’ve been walking up the ladder of responsibility – going to school, doing my homework all on my own, graduating school, going off to college, graduating college, going to seminary, making a change all based on my knowledge of the what the Lord is saying to change degrees, getting engaged, getting married, graduating seminary, moving to a place just because we feel called to move there, and now… here I am at the top… I thought at the top there would be more stairs up, not a ledge looking into a watery abyss, but I guess that’s what makes it the “top”. This really is scary. I feel like I’m six again at the Fletcher high dive looking up and getting scared to death, but climbing the ladder anyway, walking out on the high dive and seeing the placid water – concrete death – seeing the faces of the unwitting victims waiting behind me, pressing in on me to take the leap. I do a pencil dive and feel very accomplished (at least until the 35 year old mom 10 people behind me does a swan dive.)
The question is, “Am I enough?” “Am I willing to risk it all for the Glory of God when he says Go?” “What kind of stuff am I made of?” I think I’m so afraid of sinking that I’m no longer getting in the pool. But that attitude isn’t OK! It’s never been OK before and it won’t be OK now. I don’t have any clue if the Lord is calling me to pastor right now. I really don’t have a clue. I don’t know if he wants me to start making babies yet, or if he even wants us here in Greenville long-term. For all I know he may want us to pick up and move to J’ville and work with Second mile, or to pick up and move to flat and boring Nebraska with Campus Crusade, or maybe even sell our pre-owned Subaru that I’ve wanted as long as I’ve been in college. I can tell you what I want, because I know what my crazy mind wants. I want to live in Greenville, teach art to kids that really want to know how to paint, pay off our debt, buy a kayak, a home, new golf clubs, a GPS that tells me when to turn, paint like crazy, read some good books, and share Christ with all my neighbors while we go hiking and kayaking, then I want to quit my teaching job and work for a church that will pay me to work with college kids at Clemson University. I want to have babies that sleep through the night from day one and look really cute… and generally have no inconveniences at all! That is what I want… but that is absurd! That is not life, it is a dream. I’m afraid of life. The question then is do I jump anyway, even if I can’t see the bottom, even if I don’t know I’ll succeed? Can I trust that God is enough to make me enough to change the world for millions of people or even just one? Yes. Yes I can but Lord, I need you to reassure me every day that I can say “yes, you are enough…” Make me enough Lord.

check... check out our heart.

I'm listening to Cross movement. I love this Rap group. They sling truth that doesn't hold punches but gives it all like a machine Gun. They inspire me, and give me hope for this world. When I hear the rap "redefined" I see how small my God has become in my eyes, by seeing how big he is in theirs.

Lately, the Lord's been showing me that I'm never going anywhere until I am intimately in tune with his word. I'm in tune with his world but not his word, I can make relationships with the best of them and I can love people where they're at like it's my job (which it happens to be), but I still feel lost in my study of the word. I realize that's what I went to seminary for but it's true, for one reason or another the word just won't stay in my head! I can't tell you how frustrating that is... it's just really frustrating.

I need prayer to know the Word of the Lord for the Sake of his world. I need his wisdom on how to do that. I've tried learning in conventional ways, and nothing seems to make it stick, but I have to make it stick or this ministry thing will fall flat! In a related note, I'm praying for Amanda to know the Lord, she goes to a huge baptist church and is living a life that smacks of attendence without true change. Kenia, who is doing pretty much the same, and my buddy J, who seems to surprise me every day with how much the Lord is doing in his Life. I'm praying that the Lord continues to allow us to work together even after we leave, so that he can know Him so well it makes him shine brighter than he already does. What a treat it's been to be his friend.

I still don't know how to love my wife as effectively as I ought. I'm trying and she says I'm doing well, but I really think I can improve how I show her my love. I need that Lord.

obedience

in My Utmost for His Highest, Oswald was talking a lot about obedience. Yesterday he was talking about obedience being the process of hearing the command to God and DOING it. He says, “The golden rule for understanding spiritually is not intellect, but obedience…Intellectual darkness comes through ignorance; spiritual darkness comes because of something I do not intend to obey.”

This is pretty intense – Intense because I’m making life changes… intense because I work with people who are made up… intense because I don’t know what to do with any of it. Oswald says, “First Go – at the risk of being thought fanatical you must obey what God tells you.” But what if you legitimately aren’t sure of what he’s telling you? I guess you obey what you know and keep asking for what you don’t.

My quiet time tonight was Peter’s Vision and Cornelius’ Reply. So there is our friend Peter sitting on the roof of his buddy Simon, just chillin’. Peter falls into a trance – the bustle of the street below and the waves lapping against the shore fall faint as he’s fully enveloped by this vision of the Lord. A Sheet with animals floats down and angels bring down the corners of it to the Ground and God says to peter what I have made holy is not unholy.

This is obviously a gross oversimplification of the verses in question, but it’s enough to get the gist of what is happening. God is telling Peter a message in a super miraculous vision that he otherwise wasn’t going to figure out on his own. Before last night I thought that the vision’s purpose was to break down some of Peter’s barriers to sharing the faith with the Gentiles (Cornelius). Making him open up his palette a bit and eat the foods he would otherwise deem unclean. I think I missed the picture all this time. That wasn’t the purpose, the purpose had little to do with his mouth and his stomach and everything to do with his heart. The Gentiles were the animals on the sheet, the sheet was God’s love and acceptance, and peter was to take, kill and eat (metaphorically) – Go, talk and reap. Peter awoke from his trance and did just that. He was resolute. He said “I am who you came for, let’s Go.”

I’m not sure what that means for me yet, but I know it’s been like a burr in my shoe since I read it and there is something really important within that text that the Lord is trying get me to understand.

bearing burdens, bearing sins

Tonight I was reading Dietrich Bonhoeffer before bed. (Note to self: DB is not light reading before bedtime.) It’s gotten me thinking about my prayers. I’ve come to the conclusion that my attitude on prayer is a direct result of my perspective of prayer. Last night I learned that prayer is a believer’s communication with God. I’m sure the ipso facto of that entails the communication of other believer’s needs and so on, but tonight something very tenable came out of my reading. It’s more than just needs.

I’m being very roundabout and confusing so I’ll try and get right to the point tonight.

Previous perspective: Prayer is communicating needs of myself and others

Current perspective: MY prayer is the willful bearing up of the sin and corruption of my brothers and sisters, willingly choosing the suffering of corporate burdens over the contemplation of a life less occupied.

This quote is how arrive to my conclusion,
“Just as Christ bears our burdens, so also are we to bear the burdens of our brothers and sisters. The law of Christ which must be fulfilled is the bearing of the Cross. The burden of my brother and sister that I am to bear is not only that person’s external fate, that person’s character and personality, but is in a very real sense that person’s SIN.
Pretty wild. He’s suggesting that my prayers are the bearing of my brother’s sins and my sister’s sins. When I pray for my friend’s issues with sin, I’m not just announcing to god some point of contention that must be dealt with, I’m exacting his sins upon me. I’m taking his sin’s burden upon my own shoulders and helping him lift it up. I’m working and being strained dry for no other reason than the grand love I have for my brothers and sisters.

Tonight I found out prayer is not a matter of reporting the news, but breaking a sweat making the wrongs right again. there really is no better way to be a friend than to suffer upon yourself the cross that they bear -- to suffer their sins as your own, but not merely as your own, rather reckoning them your own! If this is a proper understanding of prayer is alive and it matters, it is moving and important. My best friends sins are at stake! what an amazing gift prayer is.

I know you exist... but do you care?

07-08-07

Prayer is one of those disciplines that has never come easy to me. There are times when I have felt my prayers have been more effective at reaching the throne room of God and beseeching the king of kings to partake some sort of action at the behest of my prayers. At no time have I ever considered my own eloquence or manner of speech to be the catalyst for the Lord’s movement – I hope I never do. As much as I have always wanted prayer to be one of my gifts it never has been so.

Like many disciplines, no one person is blessed with all of them all at the same time (Jesus excluded). We all have our own strengths and foibles, though my failings are many my strengths, though much less are great still. Unfortunately, one of those strengths is not prayer. I know I’m not alone. I know I’m not the only one who prays at night before bed as an effective means of disengaging my insomniac tendencies. I know also I’m not the only one who can be praying with some degree of focused intensity only to be distracted by an itch or by some vapor of a thought quickly passing from my left ear to my right. I may be the only one distracted by my own prayers, praying for a situation and only to find myself playing out the resultant conversations, effects, and expected desires of my prayers. Apart from the last of my examples I know I am not alone.

Well, I am not going to sit any longer without exercising my prayer muscles. I want to be one of God’s mighty men – a true prayer warrior in its greatest sense. I want to be an effective prayer, consistent, persistent, and ever vigilant for situations where I can praise, honor and glorify the Lord in my prayer life. I want my life to speak of a heart devoted to prayer, and I want that life to point not to my own determination, but the Lord’s effective ministry in my own heart, despite my own feelings to the contrary. I believe this is something the Lord is wanting to teach me, and I believe I am ready to learn.

My text book apart from the bible is Pray with your eyes open by Dr. Richard Pratt, and I am taking it slowly so I can absorb, use, and reuse over and again the principles to an effective prayer life. Tonight I read the opening chapter and will meditate over the next week during my morning prayers over what he defines prayer as: the communication a believer has with God. He says the essentials of this communication are
1. God
2. The believer
3. Communication
Without any of these three main essenitials prayer can not work. Unessential but important are the ways and methods I use to communicate to God. These frameworks are simply frameworks, structures to start with but malleable enough to change and evolve with my own current circumstances. After reading the first chapter, I came across this point that Dr. Pratt makes, which I found especially important, “The same words, said in the same way, at the same time, over and over will drain all the life out of communication with God. Yet, if we learn from the Psalmists and other biblical figures and begin to imitate the freedom and creativity of their prayers, then we can expect our communication with God to grow richer and more inspiring by the day.”

For this week my goal will be praying prayers according to the different facets of God’s character, being thankful for the great blessings he’s given, and staying steadfast in praying for my friends and loved ones, asking for my prayer requests as I go on through this week. I also endeavor to complete the list of prayer exercises listed at the end of this chapter. By keeping a consistent journal of my success or failings at achieving my aforementioned goals I will be able to see my progress through the week and the various disciplines I still need to focus on in the next week.

There is a second reason that I think I’ve been desiring to take God up in prayer and that is to see him closely. To see how our relationship really is. Here’s the scary part for me, and the part that has tripped me time and again in these prayer pushes – the what if’s. What if God doesn’t show up? What if he never answers a single one of my prayers? What if he leaves me be? What if the situations I pray for just get worse and worse instead of better? What if he’s not really listening? What if I never was a believer to begin with? What if there is no God at all?

First of all, I know that some of these questions push pretty far past faith, but I’m sure even the greatest believers question a God they’ve never seen. ie. I don’t question Richard’s existence for example, nor do I question my own, as far as I’m concerned we are both mutually attested to and both exist. But if someone came up to me and told me dragons exist and they live in Moose Jaw, Canada my doubts would tend to rise since I’ve never seen a dragon much less a dragon residing in Moose Jaw, Canada. My faith is what tells me God exists and I see the effects of his work in my life. I see the effects of his work in my own heart and I see the difference in my own life from before I had Christ and when I accepted Jesus as my savior.

When rubber hits the road I know God exists – the question is does he care?