Disobedient children and God's love

When you ask a child to do something, and they do it immediately there is a strong sense of joy and respect that you feel.  In fact, you even feel loved by that child because they have OBEYED you. Now imagine children were basically robots without a choice.  Suppose you only had to push a child's nose like a button and it would just operate without any further prompting.  Initially, that may sound great.  That sounds wonderful in fact...until we remember back to the joy and the love we felt when the child CHOSE to obey what we asked of them.  If children were only robots, there would be no sense of love.  There would be no real obedience; there would only be programmed response.

Sure kids make choices that frustrate us as well, but there is great love in their obedience.

God could have created us as programmed robots who just need to have the "ON" button pushed to go on doing what we are supposed to do.  But God created us with a choice and a will, because our choice to obey God is loving.  When we CHOOSE to obey God, I think he feels loved and respected and honored at a much more multiplied level than I do when my child obeys me.

When those you lead complain

When you know God has given you a direction to lead your group into and through, it is common for people to question you. Just expect it! They question Moses and Aaron in Exodus 5 (and many times after) when their vision from God initially brought the people much harder work and oppression. Once they came to Moses and Aaron to complain, the first reaction Moses makes is to bring it back to God and ask why He brought harm to the people. Moses knew very clearly what God had asked him to do, and now the very people he was there to deliver are angry with him for handling it the way he did. He does not give up on the vision or run away from it. He simply comes back to God as if to say, "YOU told me to do this, and now look what is happening!"

He was not giving up, but he was bringing God's vision and plan back to him and asking for answers.

Where is the Love: in the plagues

Today I see God's love in the plagues. I have been reading them for a few days, and now I see his love in the last most destructive one. He will kill all of the first born, but it is important to see how slow God was to get this point. He could have jumped immediately to this one, but instead he gave them chance after chance to turn and escape. He gave them several opportunities to get out of these plagues.

Yes, God gets angry and does CRAZY things, but his fuse is infinitely longer than mine would ever be if I were him in these situations.

Dont' look for his love and mercy in his anger; you'll find it in his long fuse.

what LIES within

We believe so many lies about ourselves, and when we believe those lies we develop different reactions to feel better or cope or forget about those lies. The part of this whole thing that sucks so badly is that we are reacting to LIES. We have certain destructive behaviors, and we try to change the behavior without changing the lie that lead us to our behavior. In order for us to really be better and whole (the real meaning of shalom), we have to identify and recognize the lies and false beliefs we have and how they affect us. Once we recognize the false beliefs, we have to replace them with truths. Once we replace the lies with truth we will find that our destructive behaviors, our underreactions and overreactions, will also begin to change. Any situation in which I underreact or overreact to something involved some sort of pain, wound, or lie underneath my surface. I have protected my wounds with lies and false beliefs, and my behaviors have developed as a result.

In John, Chapter 8, Jesus is speaking to the Jews, and he tells them they are slaves to sin. But he tells them in vss. 31 and 32 that if they would, "continue in his word...and know the truth, that truth would make them free." We are slaves to our lies and false beliefs about ourselves. But if we would continue to listen to God's words and his heart for us, we would be able to see the TRUTH about ourselves, and that TRUTH can set us free.

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Identity Control and other thoughts on who I am

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The truth is that when I am in control of my own life, I end up being very destructive to myself and others. This is why it is very important for my life to be directed and controlled by God. But the problem is that I give control over to other things and people when I allow other things and people to determine WHO I AM! I realize in my head that these things cannot make me who I am intended to be, but I still find myself living differently. These things may change who I am on the outside, but they have nothing to do with who I really am. What I do comes out of who I am. How much do I realize God's love for me? God loves me and cares about me. He has a plan and purpose for my life; all the other things I use to determine who I am are false. All the other things I have attached "my self" to are "idols". I have attached my identity, "who I am", to other things than God and have, in so doing, created idols.

My true identity, who I really am, is God's beloved. I have to claim my identity solely with that realization. IF I were able to do that perfectly, I would have given God complete control of my life...

...IF...

Sandcastles

What do I build my life on? I have read the story about the wise man and the foolish man. I realize that the wise man will build his life on God, the Rock. I have to realize, then, that the foolish man builds his life on the sand. The question is: "What is the sand?" I mean we know the Rock is God, but what is the sand upon which we should NOT build our life? Upon some reflection, the answer is simple. Anything that is not God! Everything that is not God! The sand is anything, anyone that is not God. This means even good things are sand. That means even good people are sand. If I am not building my life on THE Rock, I am building it on the sand. That means everything other than God will wash away.

Does that mean to stay away from everything and everyone? No! The question is what do you BUILD YOUR LIFE ON? The question is what is your foundation? The practical way of looking at this is: "What or who do I attach myself to?"

To heal, recover, and move forward in my life, I have to replace everything and everyone with GOD as my primary attachment. When I attach myself to anything or anyone other than God, I give them power and control...they control me...I attach...I build a foundation. I...we choose people, places, and things that will not interfere with, but will likely SUPPORT our addictive personalities and behaviors and defense mechanisms.

I have to quit attaching myself to these things and people and re-attach myself to God...to, as Ozzie Chambers would say, "be THRILLED WITH GOD", to be defined by my relationship with God. Once I do that, I can make sandcastles with all the rest instead of building myself...my foundation with them.

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4 Hopes Students Have for the Church

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I read an article this week interviewing college students about their hopes for the future of the Church. As one who spends his life not only trying to reach this generation of the church but also listening to them, I thought it important to share some of these hopes.

It is important because it is a bit overzealous to jump to the conclusion that college students are leaving their faith all together when many of them are simply leaving your churches. It is important to reveal their HOPES in the shadow the ASSUMPTIONS we commonly have about them. If we were really concerned with why they were leaving, we would listen to THEM.

4 Hopes Students Have for the Church:

Community and relationships become vital Relationship, relationship, relationship. This generation is far more focused on getting to know people's stories before being concerned with converting them. They hope for a church that is driven by being a community and serving its community. This is a church that is outrageously generous and hospitable. This is a church that does not compartmentalize the rest of their lives, but understands church is how we live not part of me I engage on Sundays. 

Unity over separation This generation vehemently resists the separation mentality, and they will not participate in a Church which maintains that mentality. They resist the separation people 'different' from one another. They not only resist, but are simply baffled by the separation of church from church. Believe it or not, they resist separation of old and young.

There is hope in this generation for a church where the younger are engaged by and with the older, but there is a very important realization here that most of your churches are drastically missing. This means much more than just wanting to be discipled by someone older. This means this generation wants to be and needs to be engaged in the direction and vision of the church. This means, practically, your elders should want to hear from them. They should be a part of the church, not simply have Church dictated to them...which comes a large deal out of the next hope...

Lighten up a bit They hope to see a Church not so worked up over a rigid structure. They hope for Church to provide space for questions and ways to help translate theology into practical and understandable methodology. Listen, this generation IS excited about the gospel and truth, but they want to really think, pray, and study instead of simply being told what gospel and truth is...so yes, this generation DOES have a huge hope for...

Outreach and Evangelism They are excited about the gospel and seeing the gospel realized in this world. Understand that they look at scripture and they see beyond redemption to restoration. They desire to see restoration of what is broken with each of us and within this world. This generation hopes for a focus not only on "the decision" but also past the decision to follow Jesus. Again, relationships become vital here. They are more concerned with relationships than converts, because as you come to really know someone, they can speek the true restoration of the gospel into people's true stories and lives.

Overall, it is important to realize that I am not speaking here about 'the church of tomorrow'. I hate that phrase nearly more than any other. No body has future parts; neither does the body of Christ. This generation realizes this and is tired of being treated like future parts.

On the arts of following Jesus and shaving

Reed Markham said "Being a great father is like shaving. No matter how good you shaved today, you have to do it again tomorrow." While I sat letting that sink in to my heart of a father for my daughter, I realized how this applies to other arenas of my life. Particularly, I realized how much it applies to being a follower of Jesus.

After we decided to follow Jesus, many of us quit deciding to follow Jesus.

At the heart of this quote and its challenge is 'intentionality'. No matter how great my faith seems to be today, I still have to decide to follow Jesus tomorrow. Following Jesus is not a one time decision.