Bathing In Thrown Out Bath Water

How many people have been infected with the love of Christ that leads them to live an ever changing life in a world stirred by chaos?
A life that is morphing slowly under the gentle pressure and prompting of the Spirit, to look more like Jesus than me.
A life that is consummed with passion for connection with the life giver and fellow travelers.
A life that is less and less self motivated and manipulating.
A life that loves, gives and serves.
A life that is simple in essentials and complex in relationships.
A life that overflows with worship.

Where is this life best incubated?
Let’s assume God is moving in your life, where would you turn to become more like this?
How would this “place” take form?
What would need to be present?
What would you be doing more of, less of to encourage this style of life?

I am waiting for your input….with baited breath!

deconstruction

I like to build stuff. I think people on a whole like to construct things as well. Just look at our world. Construction masterpieces everywhere. Even the now dilapidated building that you see, once had a glorious beginning. A beginning filled with hope and dreams. A family once lived in that house that is falling down around the corner.
We like to build things in the church as well. Programs and buildings and events. Things that much of the time had glorious beginnings, good intentions and meaningful goals. The error, I believe, is that we in the Church have a very hard time dismounting when the horse is dead. We prop it up, give it a make over and pretend that all is well and new. We relaunch and expand and build on top of outdated ideas, which usually makes really bad ideas because the context has totally changed.

I think that we need a cleansing. A rethink. A “deconstuction,” as many have called it.
I what ways is the Church, as we know it today, proping up dead horses?
What are things that need a nice burial so we can move forward?
What needs to be torn down, so new life can spring forth?
Yes, these are real questions, that I am asking you to weigh in on.
What about the Church needs decontruction, in your opinion?I’m waiting….

Island Love

It’s Wednesday and Connie and I are getting ready to watch “Lost.” We like the show, probably for different reasons. I have always had this desire to live on an island. Some of it must come from watching shows like Swiss Family Robinson or Gilligan’s Island when I was a kid. Even today I own Castaway the movie.

In my childhood fantasies on my island you get to answer the whole survivor question: I am able to live without help from others? Am I tough enough, resourceful enough, creative enough to make it? Also, in my imagination, on an island you can just have around you the people that you get along with, you know the people that you like. But who gets to choose? You don’t like all the people that I like and I certainly don’t like all the people that you like! It’s my dream so I have just always assumed that I make the choice. It’s my island!

We try that so much in our lives. We exclude those we don’t like and only include those we do. Along comes Jesus and screws the whole dream up. It sure makes following Jesus harder if I have to love everybody, doesn’t it? Loving people is messy and hard and the only way.

So watch Lost if you like, but don’t live like you are. The found are called to outrageous love.

Growing Up

I just turned 42 less than a month ago. 42 isn’t any worse than 39 or even 35 I guess. It’s a bit harder to stay in shape according to my belly and heaving chest I experienced the other day with my son Ryan. Ryan and I have been trying to work out at the YMCA three days a week for the last couple of months. We lift weights together, laugh with each other and other guy stuff that I won’t mention in this format. I really love the time that we have been spending together.

As a father who is a Pastor, over the years I haven’t intentionally spent enough time with all of my children. I was far too often busy with “church” things to invest into their lives and I know inside they somewhat resent me and the church for stealing that time and attention from them. They should. I was wrong. I never should have allowed my own personal agenda (the desire to be a “great” Pastor) and the church, to overshadow my fatherhood promises (Not to mention how much I ripped off my beautiful wife Connie, that is another discussion).

I believe that Jennifer (23), Matthew (21) and Ryan (17) have forgiven me and we have today a really solid relationship. I am very proud of all of them and more and more I really try to tell them how much I love them.

I thinK that sometimes growing up in your salvation is as simple as getting over yourself and putting others ahead of you. I pray that it doesn’t take you as long as it has taken me to begin to understand and practice this reality in my life.
Growing up is hard and at the same time know one desires to be a 90 year old infant, do they?

Oh yea, the reason that my chest was heaving the other day was because Ryan convinced me to play basketball with him as part of our workout. Being 17 he really felt that he could give the “old man” what for on the court. In the end, well lets just say that I was breathing hard and smiling on the inside.
I’m not that old ………………… and I can still grow up.

Muddy Roads

I live on a short dead end gravel road that is connected to another short gravel road. Winters in Michigan are the best time to live on such a road. Not that it being the last road in the county to be plowed is all that helpful, but usually the road is smooth and dust free for most of winter. You learn to drive on the ice that is formed from the tire compacted snow.
It even can be a fun drive.

For whatever reason, we have had a warm spell and my short dead end gravel road very quickly has become a pot-hole infested swamp that stretches for many miles. Now, the once pleasurable driving experience has changed into a dangerous undertaking designed to protect your spine and the life of your car, at all costs. As you weave through the streets to avoid the pitfalls it must seem like a weird kind of dance to the casual observer or the soaring bird.
It is no longer a fun drive.

One day your driving along just fine, coasting if you will, and the next you can’t seem to avoid the muddy traps. Sounds all too familiar in my life.
What changes from one day to the next? Where did I deviate? I’m still me and the last I knew God was still on His throne, so not that much is dissimilar.
On the other hand if a few degrees can make such a huge difference in my road, what are the “degrees” in my life that causes me to change?
Is it as simple as the way I think?
Why is my thinking so different from one day to the next?
Am I alone in this plodding along through a muddy existence where little satisfies?

“…let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus.”