God, you are my God. You are my Peace, my Desire, and my Drive. You created the entire world and universe and space with your voice, and yet you are capable of relating intimately with my heart. You are able to relate to my heart so tenderly and intimately while simultaneously relating just as intimately with every other human being on this planet. Should there be life on other planets, which we cannot even conceptualize, you are capable of relating intimately and tenderly to them as well. Do you know the numbers of hairs on each animal? Do you know how many hairs are on these strange characters from other planets (should they exist!)? Do they have hair at all? God you expansive existence is one I will never fully know; I could never contain it. Every human on this earth could have a phenomenal revelation of you, and together, we would never be fully capable of praising you for what you are worth. I have no idea why you love me, why you bring me up to you in intimacy and love. How, oh God, could you love such a spec as I am? I could never praise you enough or give you enough (though you have everything), and yet you give me so abundantly much. I will never fully understand it.

My best friend Augustine

Augustine and I have been hanging out together so much lately that I may need to create a nickname for him as well.  All my good friends have nicknames (or I refer to them by their first name at least...the real friends right?)...Brennan....Ozzie....and Augy?...The Saint?...Stine?...I'll work on it. Today, Augustine said something that actually made me smile right here in the coffee shop.  He is talking about the wonders of being a baby and asking questions of God regarding where was before the womb...what was he before the womb?  After asking many great questions, he writes,

"Do my questions provoke you to smile at me and bid me simply to acknowledge you and praise you for what I do know?"

What a great image and challenge in and of itself!  I love the image of God smiling at all my crazy questions.  I find myself smiling when a child asks, "Does God have feet?" "Whatcha doin?"

I have to think God sits up there and smiles when his children ask him questions.  I'm sure he just smiles at Augustine's questions because they're brilliant, and if he smiles at Augustine, he roars with laughter over my questions.

I can imagine myself telling my daughters, "You know what; just enjoy what you do know and go play."  I can certainly see God telling me, you know a lot of other things about me.  Do not overlook those.  Praise me for those things.

Invited but Unwelcome

The room is full of those people. You know the ones! THOSE people. They are the ones we have learned to hate. They are the ones who look nothing like us physically, morally, spiritually. We do not want to SAY we are better, but... The room is full of them, and there is Jesus just hanging out with them as if He did not see what we all see in them. Why are they all there anyway?

Only a few hours ago, Jesus invited one of them to follow Him. The man did leave all the things that make him one of them to follow Jesus. We will give him that, but then Jesus went to hang out at his house. Now Jesus is with the one who is unwelcome. He invited the man to follow Him, and then went to the man's home.

For the first time ever, here is a holy teacher willing to take one of them under his teaching and care. Here is The Epitome of one of us taking on one of them.

Now the house is full of them.

Of course it is! All these people are crammed into the man's house to follow and hear Jesus. Though the call and invitation was to one, it seems to have drawn all the others.

Which 'sinners' do you like to avoid? Who of them need finally to be invited into your life, your love, and your care? Who of them would be able to tell all the others about you being different from the rest of us who avoided them?

That one invite into your life just may draw many others to Jesus.

the time I prayed for strength

I found myselfbroken on the floor in tears. I did not know what to do or where to go who I had become.

So I asked for strength for wisdom.

Rarely do I ask for much I am more content to pursue intimacy than to ask for things

brokenness makes you ask for things

I started asking and I waited...

........

........

I listened until I was frustrated with the silence Just before I fell asleep, I lay there with dried up eyes and I heard:

"I am not a genie. I am your God, and I love you. If you want strength, I am not just going to GIVE you strength. It will start to get really difficult now. Will you be strong in those times or not. I am not a genie; I am your God who loves you."

The weight of discipline

I ask students, "How's your relationship with God going lately?" Most often, their answers come back to something like, "I need to get in the word some more." "I had my quiet time this week every day; its doing pretty well I guess." "I could pray some more." None of these really answer the question I asked. None of those things are bad, in and of themselves. In fact, we are called or 'prescribed' to them, but for a different purpose than just making sure we get them done. We have made our focus on the discipline instead of the God the discipline was intended to bring us nearer to.  Augustine wrote, "Grant my prayer, O Lord, and do not allow my soul to wilt under the discipline which you prescribe. Let me not tire of thanking you for your mercy in rescuing me...so that I may love you most intensely."

Disciplines are 'prescribed' to us by God. We are called to live a life of discipline; to celebrate it even. There is nothing wrong to be said of discipline, but it becomes dangerous once we begin celebrating the discipline instead of God. We can often get so caught up in the discipline that the most important thing is that we get the discipline accomplished on a daily, weekly, or regular basis. We are no longer actually connecting to the heart of God as was the intention of the discipline in the first place.

My digital bumper

The strength of uncertainty

"Certainty is the mark of the common-sense life: gracious uncertainty is the mark of the spiritual life." - Ozzie (Oswald Chambers) We are certain of God: we are uncertain of what will happen next. There is much to be said of faith and the spiritual life as it applies to certainty.

We are so obsessed with certainty. Is it really all that necessary? Well, its not if you are living a life of faith...the spiritual life. The spiritual life is not one of certainty. The moments I am so uncertain of what would happen next are the moments my faith is stretched and made stronger.

When you stretch your muscles they grow. They do not necessarily grow stronger and bigger, but they do grow more flexible, which allows them the ability to grow stronger in time.

So here I am a man in need of flexibility. I am a man in need of faith...because I am certainly uncertain. These are now the times of becoming more flexible, and that flexibility makes strength more available. That ability ultimately leads to strength.

Notes from the dogeared pages of #32

Today I retired journal #32. It is always good to look back on the thoughts and reflections. The quotes and jots. The drawings and scribbles. So here are a few random notes from the dogeared pages of #32. - A love letter from a stranger means nothing to us...but even a tiny note from my wife means the world...most of our not liking scripture is just not understanding or being in relationship with the one from who the letters were written

- Discipleship: action needs to be important, not just a Bible study...Application is a must throughout, but doctrine has to be important or at least clarifying of the essentials...contracts is necessary; this is a commitment you will only get what you put in...

-[vision casting] ENVISION a new culture SHARE vision with everyone GET ALIGNMENT with leadership MODEL the culture you want to create FORM URGENCY sense

- "Boredom is the natural byproduct of redundancy...and church ministry is redundant by nature." ... create new and fresh experiences with God instead of repeating the same stories over and over and over again..we tell the same old stories about God because we are having no new experiences with him...the pastor needs to teach and lead in a way that creates new opportunities and new experiences for the church family...but my teaching and leadership cannot be new, fresh, and alive if my personal experience of God is not new, fresh, and alive

- Pull away...look within...look around...Fill up...change it up

- "Greed is a sign of slavery; you have to hold on to something because you NEED it" - "Generosity is a sign of freedom." - Cody Cannon

- "People who don't know Christ do not get to OUT-SERVE Christians." -Cody Cannon

When I tell my students not to listen to their parents

As a college pastor, there are a few very common conversations I have always had with several students like it was the first time. One of those conversations walks students through following God's intent for their lives to the chagrin and often in the face of their parents' intent for them.

Acts 21:10-14 shows Paul being clear of God's intent for his life in the face of people who love him. They are people who deeply care for Paul, and he knows that is the reason it breaks his heart so much when he sees their advice and strong intent going against what he KNOWS God has told him to do.

This stress of the tension between disappointing those who care for you in order to follow God's intent for you is one I hear all the time.

There has to be a challenge here for all of us to answer God's call while realizing it is not what our loved ones will aways want for us.

You're Welcome: most highlighted quotes

A few days ago, I came across an Amazon page indicating the top highlighted quotes of all time on the Kindle. By no surprise, there were a ton of Hunger Games quotes. Either way, it was pretty interesting to see the things which stuck out to the most people reading ALL books found on the Kindle at this point. Here were some of my favorites:

#1 - "Because sometimes things happen to people and they're not equipped to deal with them." - Catching Fire, Hunger Games 

#4 - "It takes ten times as long to put yourself back together as it takes to fall apart."  - Mocking Jay, Hunger Games

#8 - "Pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves, vanity to what we would have others think of us." - Pride & Prejudice

#23 - "What is childlike humility? It’s not the lack of intelligence, but the lack of guile. The lack of an agenda. It’s that precious, fleeting time before we have accumulated enough pride or position to care what other people might think" - Heaven is for Real

#31 - “What you are shouts so loudly in my ears I cannot hear what you say.” - 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

#33 - "While the goal of the American dream is to make much of us, the goal of the gospel is to make much of God." - Radical

#36 - "Those three things—autonomy, complexity, and a connection between effort and reward—are, most people agree, the three qualities that work has to have if it is to be satisfying." - Outliers

#38 - "life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent." - The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

#45 - "Pretend to be completely in control and people will assume that you are." - Steve Jobs

Let this blest assurance control

"It Is Well With My Soul" has stricken me today, and I hope I can digest it further. One particular phrase sticks out: "Let this blest assurance control." Singing the song in its entirety, you may be able to boost your spirit a bit upon hearing the words, but when I write the entire song out, this phrase jumps off the page demanding my attention. It comes right after the phrase, "Though Satan should buffet, tho' trials should come..." The challenge comes when you read, "Let this blest assurance control." This phrase requires our action. I really need to learn how to LET this assurance of God's goodness and provision to control my thought and spirit. Easier said than done a lot of the times, but today I am begging for it it. I beg that God would let this assurance control my thoughts and heart. I beg my soul to LET this assurance control things. I hope to be controlled by God's blest assurance rather than my worry, my fears, my self-consciousness. I beg my soul within me to be controlled by God's blessed assurance.