Wet Dog Stink

My dog (Samson, a Shepherd-Labrador-and-small-amount-of-Wolf combo mutt, who weighs in over 100 pounds) absolutely stinks when he comes in from the rain. I just got another blast from the living stink bomb and it almost makes me want to gag. Usually he shakes himself off on me as I walk by just to add a little insult to the injury he caused my sense of smell. Normally Samson doesn’t smell “all that bad” but as soon as you add a little water, schzaam, big nasty dog!

Most of the time I have a positive view about myself, even a little smugness escapes into my everyday. I seem to walk about with the attitude that I don’t smell “all that bad.” I am a nice guy, to oh so many, I reason.
Then add a little temptation or strife to my life and schzaam! Mean, nasty, selfish guy appears right through my skin, using my mouth to speak malicious vile.
That stinking dog creeps back through. The dog that I thought I was done with the last time I was stinky, returns.
Oh to kill the stench. Who can bathe me clean, really clean?
I am fairly convinced that we haven’t a clue when it comes to grace.
Pure unadulterated grace scares the crap out of us. So much so, that we often attach conditions, requirements and hoops to it. The problem is that those conditions immediately diminish it’s value, truth and beauty.
The truth of grace washes the smelliest of us with a beautiful fragrance that supercedes all stench, even nasty wet dog stench.
May the grace of God change you.

A Life Of Becoming

When will I learn to lean?
When will I discover to give up my striving?
When will I trust?
When is enough, enough?
How much sweat does it take?
When will I give up my addiction to acceptance and be me?

Father come and press your grace deep into my being so I can humbly follow you knowing I have been rescued from the hell of isolation.
Uncover the mask of constant effort.
Spirit, mark clearly the way of life and liberty.
Breathing the Life of becoming into me.
A life of discovery, hope, tears, anger, Jesus, sunshine, clapping, rest, fighting, blue waters, quiet, rain, friends, sex, prayer, disappointments, beaches, change, laughter, death, smiles, vision, children, familiarity, mountains, pain and blessings too.
A life of becoming.

The Haunting

Luke has been haunting me all weekend.
I come to Monday and it still is rattling around in my heart.
Let me take you back to Friday as I was reading through Luke 11: 13
"If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”
Jesus, painting a picture for his disciples on persistence in prayer, tells his disciples to simply and persistently ask and our heavenly Father will give the Holy Spirit.
How much do I ask for the Holy Spirit?
What keeps me from it?
What am I afraid of?
What has my "Christian subculture" taught me about it that makes me afraid?
Currently there are so many lives around me that are reeling from the pain of life, deep hurt and wounds that scar. We plead for healing, jobs, deliverance, peace, material things, our kids, our relational cancers and yet, do we, do I, simply and persistently ask for the Holy Spirit?
I need to, much more than my current reality.
I am tired of powerless prayer.
Come Holy Spirit.

Thomas a Kempis

"Be not angry

that you cannot

make others as

you wish them to be

since you cannot

make yourself

as you wish to be."

Thomas a Kempis

The Death Of Discipline

As I was working out today, God (or the banana I had before I left home) revealed a little something to me. I was peddling a stationary bike and was warming up to the long workout that lay ahead. As I was thinking, a realization that I really didn’t live a distinctly disciplined life was weighing on me (looking at my stomach, it really does weigh on me!) and the old argument that I have with myself crept in. The argument that I play with is that a disciplined life would cost so much more, would limit my freedom, spontaneity and passion. I also didn’t want to become a rigid old fuddy-duddy that couldn’t have any fun in life. That is the picture that I allow myself to paint of a disciplined life. Then it occurred to me that a disciplined life doesn’t cost any more, it simply costs different. To be disciplined isn’t the "anti-passion." And the thought/phrase that I hung onto was “Discipline is the soil from which passion springs.” And the picture that I have is that discipline is the necessary dead things (IE: leaves, grass, bugs, twigs) that is turned into the fertile soil that passion springs to life from. The less “mulch” of discipline the less viable our passion for Jesus living will thrive.
Now the hard part: Retraining my mind to take the new info and make it practical. I read a blog recently that said “following Jesus is 20% information and 80% application of that information.
I pray for application.
I pray for discipline.
I pray for passion.
Pray for me.

True Intent

"What we do matters less

than who we are.

How we do things matters less

than for whom we do them.

As we look back at the work of art called life,

who we became

and

who we served

will expose our true intent."

From "Ascent Of A Leader"

no say about it

Last week my youngest son Ryan (17) went on a trip to Florida with his youth group, a normal thing, to be sure. Except that it was very not normal, for me, the Dad. Up until June I had been not only Ryan’s dad, but also his youth “pastor” too. So seeing him go was different. All three of my kids had been involved at a high level in my youth ministries over the years, and I have been always grateful for that. My kids, their friends and I, spent a lot of time together all over the North American continent, on trips and retreats and vacations, always together, and most of the time my very patient wife, Connie, came with us. All of us adventuring through this crazy thing called life, together.
This past week I really missed the boy.
It all reminded me of the song “The Cats In The Cradle” as the situation shifted on the Dad in that song from the one being away, to the one being left behind.
I looked out my front window on one of the days that Ryan was gone, realizing more and more that my life is changing rapidly and I have no say about it. Gray hair replaces the black. Weight hangs on. Eyes growing weak. Kids grow up and leave the nest.
It all makes me want to be a better son and a better father.

One Broken Life

Terri’s one solitary life, a life not worth living, in the estimation of some, has made a huge impact in the lives of so many others. Isn’t it just like God to take the weak things of this world and use them for His glory? As you know, He gets all the glory in the end including the absolute genius of using the broken and weak and shameful and depraved and disgusting and repulsive things for His glory. How all that shakes out, well, I don’t really know, but I do know that the broken and brain damaged Terri has had more impact than most of us who are “whole” and “well” and “normal” will ever have!
Who are the real "April Fools," now?

Long Live The King Of Kings!