Get off the bench!

"Even though I am free of the demands and expectations of everyone, I have voluntarily become a servant to any and all in order to reach a wide range of people: religious, nonreligious, meticulous moralists, loose-living immoralists, the defeated, the demoralized—whoever. I didn't take on their way of life. I kept my bearings in Christ—but I entered their world and tried to experience things from their point of view. I've become just about every sort of servant there is in my attempts to lead those I meet into a God-saved life. I did all this because of the Message. I didn't just want to talk about it; I wanted to be in on it!"

~ Paul the Apostle (1Cor 9:19-23 MSG)

Faith & Difficulty

"If we think we are going to grow in faith by sitting around at a Bible study, we are wrong. That stuff is fine, but without a story, without diving into something really difficult, something that requires us to look to God for support and wisdom and comfort, it will be more difficult to become a person of great faith."
~ more from Donald Miller

Spending time with Father

"Sunday morning church service is not an enormous priority; spending time with other believers is!  Some people associate Sunday morning with God. One of the things I associate with God is a sunrise. How many sunrises have you missed over the years, and God created that?"

~ Donald Miller

Schools Out

My counsel for you is simple and straight-forward: Just go ahead with what you've been given.  You received Christ Jesus,
the Master; now live him.  You're deeply rooted in him.  You're well constructed upon him.  You know your way around the faith.  Now do what you've been taught.
School's out; quit studying the subject and start living it!  And let your living spill over into thanksgiving. – Colossians 2:6-7 (The Message)

Burritos full of lvoe

Burritos full of lvoe

How wonderful the aroma

That has found their hearts

So hungry for significance

Lvoe, peace, dirt, smiles

And hearts longing for lvoe

A suffering people lost to society’s cares

A broken people needing helping hands

A hurting people that look like Jesus

A special people who know how to share

A dirty people with hurting hearts

A tender people with golden hearts

A least of these people that Jesus said to love

A proud people hanging on to dignity

Picking up pieces

Of broken hearts and spirits

Walking through the pain with them

One step at a time

Loving and learning and being the blessing

They’re the same kind of different as me

They’re just like you

A hopeful people who bless you right back

A wonderful people who stay on my heart

An infectious people who know the meaning of want

A strong people who know what it means to suffer

A suspious people leery of liars

Burritos full of lvoe

How wonderful the aroma

- Jim Burnham, Spring 2010

Theos - logos

I thought this was pretty interesting. It’s from the Mars Hill Bible Church theology:

The word theology comes from two Greek words: “theos”, meaning “God”, and “logos”, meaning “word”. So theology is words about God.

When we put to words what we believe about God, we discover that he has been writing a story of hope and redemption for all the world. His story is a movement from creation to new creation, and he has given us a role to play in that story, in the restoration of our relationships with God, each other, ourselves, and creation.

Since story is central to our belief about God, our words about God–our theology–exists in the form of a narrative [see below]. You won’t find isolated text references or a list of specific propositions in it, because ultimately neither of those things best reflects what we believe about God. What we believe about God is at the heart of what we believe also about each other, ourselves, and creation: that ultimately everything is part of the one great story.

In the beginning God created all things good. He was and always will be in a communal relationship with himself–Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. God created us to be relational as well and marked us with an identity as his image bearers and a missional calling to serve, care for, and cultivate the earth. God created humans in his image to live in fellowship with him, one another, our inner self, and creation. The enemy tempted the first humans, and darkness and evil entered the story through…

Place Your Life Before God

I love this reminder from Paul in his letter to the Roman belivers:

So here's what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don't become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You'll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.    Rom 12:1-2 (MSG)
 
How's your life offering of worship today?  Is it pleasing to Father?

The Power of Stories

This quote from Scotty Smith jumped right out at me, so I had to share it. Stories. Hmmm?

We learn so much from each other's stories. The impact of monologues proffered from the lecture halls of academia cannot begin to compare with the power of a heart recounting tales from the variegated journey we call life. So much of God's Word comes to us in the form of story-telling. In both the Old and New Testament narratives we are encouraged and challenged as we enter into the heartache of sin and the joy of redemption as the history of salvation is so creatively and faithfully preserved for us. Pretty soon we realize that these stories are really our stories because we are a part of the same family and the same tapestry of failure and grace. Such is the power of stories. - Pastor Scotty Smith, from the Foreword of Soul 2 Soul

Looking with Eyes of Love

While listening to a recent podcast "The God Journey" with        Wayne Jacobsen & Brad Cummings, I heard a profound statement that I just have to share.  One of their friends sent this quote: "If we look long enough and hard enough, we can find something to HATE about everyone."  Their comment was that the opposite of this is true also; but most specifically in this: "I think Jesus looked long enough, and hard enough, to find something to LOVE about everyone"

How's your vision?  Perhaps a new prescription will bring things more clearly into view...

Excerpt from a Make Way Partners newsletter

In the movie Dead Man Walking, based upon the true-to-life story of Sister Helen Prejean, Sister Helen befriends a man convicted of kidnapping, rape, and murder. She tells him, "You are a son of God, Matthew Poncelet." He breaks down, and says, "Nobody ever called me a son of God before. Called me a 'son-of-a-you-know-what' lots of times, but never no son of God. Thank you for loving me."

Reflecting upon Sister Prejean and Matthew Poncelet reminded me of what I often tell people who think, "some girls might be trafficked, but others 'choose' prostitution" I tell them, "No five-year-old little girl ever sits on her daddy's lap and says, 'When I grow up, I want to be a prostitute.'"

When we see a prostitute on the street in the light of a daughter of God whom life pressed, punished, and pummeled to the point where she felt prostitution was her only choice for survival, then, we catch a glimpse of her in the innocence of childhood gone awry, sweeping her far from the beautiful creation God intended her to be.

Likewise, I doubt any trafficker or murderer went fishing with his daddy one bright sunny Saturday morning when he was five years old and said,"Daddy, I think I want to be a rapist when I grow up." What did satan -- the enemy of God and all of those He loves -- do to that little boy to destroy what God created him to be?
I wonder what satan has done to blind each of us from finding our own glorious incarnation of Him shining through us, like portals of Christ. Do you feel the splendor of Him working in and through you each and every day because you know exactly what He creatted you to be, do, live?
I wonder how we might transform the world if we saw all those who participate in the suffering of the oppressed as sons of God. After all, they are exactly like those whose life has blown up to the point they find themselves on a cross, next to our Lord being offered paradise.
At the very least I bet we'd be transformed, and I suppose that is where it all starts -- our transformed hearts blazing love, compassion, and forgiveness so brightly it burns the dross of sin from the world.