Die Printer, Die!

"Everyone who goes on ahead and does not abide in the teaching of Christ, does not have God.  Whoever abides in the teaching has both the Father and the Son." - 2 John 1:9

I make the mistake of just reading my bible a lot.  I forget to abide in it.  I forget to let it's truths wash over me and form me.  I sit down, read, get up and go about my day, one more box checked off.  This leaves me feeling good about myself but not feeling good.  It's sort of like after I've eaten a Big Mac (without the nausea).

The goodness that God offers is not quantifiable, it's inexhaustible.  It's inexhaustible because it comes in the form of Himself.  This echoes John Piper's greatest teaching: that God is most glorified when we are most satisfied in Him.

And to relate to God, to abide, to find him as my refuge and the restorer of my soul, now that's where it's at.  That's satisfying.  That's where the magic of the gospel is at.  In Christ I now can relate unhindered with God.

It says in the verse above above that if we abide in the teaching we have "both the Father and the Son."  Heads have exploded throughout history trying to understand this core concept: that we can actually have God.  Are you kidding me?!

And like I've said in previous posts I yawn at these truths.  At core I often don't really believe this stuff.  It's too alien to my experience.

If you check the time of this post, you'll realize that I am up way to early.  I had a terrible day yesterday.

I spent almost an hour staring at my computer trying to get the *&@*# printer to work at the office (I'm convinced that all printers are going to hell).  Then I read a book on parenting, which even though it was really good, thought it would be fun to beat the daylights out of my parenting style.

Then, being a total glutton for punishment, I read some Systematic Theology by Grudem, which went on and on and on, yes, and on, about God's immutability.   By this time my eyes glossed over and I thought, "I wish I could just die."

So when I got home I did the next best thing, I told the kids I was sick (white lie) and crawled into bed.  I slept from about 6PM till 3AM.  Hey, maybe I'm turning into a farmer!

But this morning has been weird, I've actually had a good time (along with the roosters and the English - who are probably eating crumpets by now).  There's not a printer in site and I've had time to meditate and listen to God.  And what he's speaking to me is really encouraging stuff ("Uh-oh, Philip's getting all charismatic on us, he's probably waving his hands around in worship and all that craziness...")

He's reminding me that abiding in him is my number one priority.  Being still and allowing him to speak to me.  Being still and allowing him to lead.  Being still and allowing him to help me face my fears.  Being still and allowing his fullness to fill my emptiness.

It's a good thing that God is awake at 3AM.  Otherwise I don't know what I'd do.  I'd probably go feed the chickens.  "Yuk, let them eat cake. I say, would you pass the Mar-mite?"

  

Victorious Christianity Loses

"In this is love, not that we have loved God, but that he loved us..."  1 John 4:18

I woke up this morning with a tight ball of anxiety in my chest.  I wanted to pull up the sheets, curl up and escape all the worries of the day.  I'm feeling depressed, out of my element and not up to the challenges of the day.

It's on mornings like this that I need to hear the core goodness of the gospel, that I am a sinner who is loved, forgiven and reconciled to God.  I don't need to hear what I heard on the radio later in the morning, "Dear friends, if your life doesn't look any different now as a Christian, you need to examine you heart and see if you are truly God's child."  Thanks!

If I'm honest with myself I often feel as if my life is no different.  And I know I'm not the only one.  Measuring my levels of sinfulness on a human scale gets me absolutely nowhere.

"Victorious Christianity" beats a very dead rhythm on the over-stretched drum of my heart (sorry about the mixed metaphor).  Thud, thud, thud it goes.  And I can't help but think, is the gospel really about personal victory over sin, self-examination and moralistic and trite sound-bites for the broken?

I know it's not and I had a meeting this morning that reminded me it's not.  The gospel is that God is alive and working, working in the lives of the desperate and needy, continually calling us onward, moving us forward into real life, precisely because we are needy, frightened, worried, discouraged and helpless.  We need God.  Any victory we have is from God.

The gospel is hope for the sinner.  Real sinners who really sin. Repeatedly. Over and over.  People like me who consciously say, "No God, I'm not going to obey, I want this more."

Does the gospel encourage sin?  No.  Does it have tons of passages about obeying God's commands, yes.  Even the verse above is preceded by "Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love."  But even there it's about knowing God and not "sin management" as I've recently heard it referred to.

I think I'm right in concluding that the good news of the gospel story is not that we become better people, it's that we become part of God's family.  The gospel is what I quoted above.  It's about God's unfailing steadfast love that's poured out on a rebellious and stubborn people.

It's also true that you can stiff-arm God.  You can say that you want nothing to do with him and his forgiveness and love.  But God rescues those who cry to him for help (no matter how many times) and he welcomes them into the family.  And last time I checked, once we're part of the family, it's not our job to figure out if we're a child or not.

"May those who seek you rejoice and be glad in you!  May those who love your salvation say evermore, 'God is great!'  But I am poor and needy; hasten to me, O God!  You are my help and my deliverer;  O LORD, do not delay!"  - Psalm 70:5

A Dispirited Spirit

"Take heart my son, your sins are forgiven."  - Jesus in Matthew 9

To be honest, which is a good policy, I was a little depressed after my last post.  You may have noticed I didn't even include a picture, which is a sure sign of my dispirited spirit (what is a "dispirited spirit" you ask?  It sounds like a ghost that's died, so it fits, but really I have no idea).  But that's the way I felt.

This morning I was reminded of the words Jesus gives to a crippled man whose friends have brought him over.  It's interesting that in Matthew (and I need to check it out in the other gospels) the man hasn't done a thing but get carried to Jesus, and he's forgiven, as well as healed.

After a long day at the office yesterday, and my dispirited spirit, I felt like a water-logged and flat soccer-ball (being an avid soccer player, I know exactly what these feel like - they are depressing. It's sort of like kicking a dead frog, just not as gross).  But yesterday as I  trudged out of the office like Eeore, I was greeted not only with a gentle Floridian breeze, a wide spacious vista, a setting sun and birds and all those nature thingies, but with these words, "take heart my son, your sins are forgiven."  It was just what I needed.

I'm reminded of the words David says in Psalm 103, "Bless the Lord oh my soul and forget not all his benefits.  Who forgives all you iniquities..."  I heard a speaker once say that forgiveness is enough for us to be thankful for the rest of our lives.  And with my experience yesterday, as I felt all the weariness and fleshy-world competitiveness wash off me, I felt that.  I felt that God's forgiveness and acceptance was more than enough.

One of the things that's been weighing me down is the way I responded to my daughter Teya this past weekend.  We were FINALLY (why does gathering young children to go to church pose as difficult a challenge as say Ernest Shackleton's desire to cross the South Pole?  His misadventures can be found in the book "Endurance," which I highly recommend if you want to learn how to get to church on time, attempt to cross the South Pole, or learn how to eat penguin for a week while floating on a slab of ice) on our way to church and she threw out this comment, "David, I know how you can put Jesus into your heart."  The words not being couched in my thinking of right theology (which could be a whole post in itself), my knee-jerk reaction was to laugh.   Boy I wish I could take that laugh back.  After my laugh Teya clammed up like a high-security Swiss bank vault and would not share another word, no matter how much I apologized and encouraged her.  I felt like a total jerk, perhaps because I'd just been one.

Another thing that makes me grateful for the forgiveness I felt, is just the difficulty I have with not getting really ticked off at people who disagree with me, belittle me and/or touch my pride. I'd been having a discussion yesterday that had me feeling about a centimeter tall (even standing on my toes), so when I stepped out of the office to be met with a renewed reminder that I am to "take heart" as God's forgiven child I felt a very real, tangible gift.

I'm not made to carry all the weight of life around on my shoulders (my shoulders are sloped which doesn't help anyway).  I'm actually made to live weight free.  And while "weight free life" means death to my old ways of living (as I posted yesterday), it also means authentic and real joy in the knowledge of my forgiven status before the King of the universe.  My heart is quick to forget to be grateful, but I sure was grateful yesterday, as I trudged off to my car.

I'm a forgiven sinner and a child of God, that's the truest thing about me.  That being said I can move on to bigger and better things, like thinking about the one who's forgiven me.

Jesus Needs a Better Marketing Strategy

"And whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me.  Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it."  Matthew 10:39

Come on Jesus.  Couldn't you make the Christian life look a little more appealing than following you around with a Roman torture device strapped to my back?  Couldn't you tame your words a bit and help us just revel in love, forgiveness and good times?

No.  I guess not.  The reality of the gospel is that it can be a hard pill to swallow.  The reality of the good news is that it sounds like bad news sometimes doesn't it?

Why would anyone want to join Jesus in his death march?  Why would anyone want to lose his life?  Am I, as a Christian, called to spiritual suicide?

According to Myers-Briggs I'm a high feeler.  When it comes to passages like the above a high feeler is likely to feel something like cold ice slowly sliding down his spine.  That doesn't "feel" good to a feeler.

But Jesus words are a kindness aren't they?  He's preparing us for the reality of being a Christian.  The reality is life won't be roses for the Christian.  And the reality is that if I seek to make my end this life, I'm going to forfeit the life to come.  I'm not saying it, Jesus did.

Jesus, rather than letting us hold on to an ideal of having our cake and eating it to, tells us that living in this life expecting blessings while expecting the next life to hold blessings is incorrect.  It would be cold comfort, as it's just not reality for the Christian.

Jesus is my Lord.  That means where he goes, I go.  Where does he go?  Unfortunately he goes to die.  So, as much as I hate to say is, so do I.

Alright, so that sort of sucks doesn't it?  I don't really like the potential of all this death talk.  I don't like transformation, crucifixion and self-denial, but both Jesus and I know that I am so sick that the only remedy involves the salve of death and rebirth.

It's all so counter-intuitive.  No one in their right mind should become a Christian.  Life is full of promise.  Life can be fun.  Life can be about me.

Not so for the Christian.  Life is to be let go of to find.  Death is entrance into full life.  (I really don't like writing this stuff, I wish there was an easier way.)

But when I look at what Jesus offers in himself (friendship, healing, hope, joy, connectedness, love, freedom, peace, and eternity), and then I compare that with the vapid and meaningless directions my ego will take me, I better hurry up and pick up that cross and follow, there's no other direction to go.  I'm between Jesus and a hard place.

And knowing Jesus the little I do, I believe he's got this whole paradoxical death thing figured out.  And death after all is only the beginning of the story.

All of this is so morbidly depressing that I'm sort of tired of typing about it.  But it changes tone when I realize who I'm following, who is calling me to come and die and who promises to never leave my side.  If death was my focus, I'd never go through with it.  But the truth is real life in real reality is my focus.

So I surrender Jesus, you win, at least for now.  After all Jesus, it sounds so crazy it just might work.

"Hubba"

Sometimes it's best to just go ahead and plagiarize and ask for forgiveness later, IF anyone reads your stuff.  No, I read this fantastic article this morning on "hide-and-seek" which can be found at wonderingfair.com.  In the article I was reminded of the ridiculous games I've had with David and Teya.

There's a wide variety of games we play.  "Wrestle" is their favorite, but it involves all sorts of spin-offs.  Our pre-wrestle warm up is to run to Melissa's and my room, begin growling "wrestle" and rip our shirts off.  We're ready...

Then all of heaven breaks loose.  Teya asks for "Rocket" - where I swing her in a circle and basically slam her on the bed hoping she won't just skip across it and fall off (this hasn't happened yet, but like those movies with cliffs in them, she's come really close and caught a hand-full of bed-spread to avoid plunging to her demise).

David typically whines while we do this, just begging for us to wrestle.  So when I'm tired of throwing Teya all over the place, I hop up onto the bed and David tries his muscles out on Dad (Teya meanwhile gets into a popular and more realistic fighting stance - on her back - and begins aiming kicks at my groin.  This has since been outlawed.)  But David is fantastic!  He bares his teeth, furrows his brow and just takes on this persona of the baddest little dude ever.  I love it.

So why am I sharing all this?  Well if you don't have little ones, I hope you can hear a snippet of how God loves you seeping out through my paternal gushings.

I just love playing with my kids.  And as painful as the kicks to the groin can be, as well as the poorly aimed punches that hit me in the ear or some other not-so-sturdy spot, I find it totally worth the risk.

I believe God plays "Wrestle" with us.  He did it with Jacob, and he does it with us every day we want to play.  And as the kids and I decide to take a break and go get Mommy, run around her in our under-wear all the while chanting "Hubba, hubba, hubba!" there's even something here that reflects our going out into the world with God and sharing his good news: "hubba."  Enjoy Him because he enjoys you.

My Spiritual Ear-Wax

"May I always be amongst those who not only hear thee but know thee, who walk with and rejoice in thee..." - The Valley of Vision, pg. 12

As I study God it's so easy to just stop up short.  To stop up short at knowing stuff about God and not enter in to actually knowing God.  To hear things about God, but not even listen to God.

So much clogs up my ears, and I'm not just talking ear-wax - thought Melissa thinks I have a problem with this.  I think that that what really keeps me from presently knowing God is not entering in to the cycle of love, trust and obedience.

I say "cycle" of these three because I believe that they all feed eachother.  As another blogger, Pastor Paul at http://pastorpaulvbsblog.blogspot.com, reminded me today, obedience is birthed from the relationship of love and trust.  As I trust, I obey.  As I obey, I love.  As I love, I trust.  I love it!  I could mix those up all day.

I stumble when I think that I've got to feel God's love before I obey, for obedience may be the vehicle through which he wants me to feel his love.

Anyhow, I struggle with actually knowing my God.  But it is good to know that he knows me, knows my struggle and my mental hiccups, and all the games I play to try and get out of obedience.  And he knows how tempted I am to run my own life, find my own blessings and live for my moments rather than his.

And I am convinced that his knowledge is what will win the day in my life.

Phil Saves Father-in-Law from Certain Death, Again!

"Our God is a God of salvation, and to God, the Lord, belongs deliverances from death." - Psalm 68:20

A couple of days ago I was worrying about how I've been asked to write for youth, address their issues and help them walk closer with Christ. Basically I was carrying the weight of the spiritual plight of teenagers everywhere. No big deal right?

It doesn't help that I'm not quite sure what project I should be diving into right now. Should I be developing a blog, populating our Facebook page or writing new discipleship materials? There's so much to do, and so many directions I could take that I feel a little frozen in indecision. I'm also feeling impatient, wanting stuff for young people's spiritual growth to already be out there yesterday!

(I find my Uncle's advice about taking this time to research my theology and today's culture as invaluable. So that's what I'll be about.)

But I realized that the reason I was feeling so much weight is that I don't believe in a "God of salvation." I tend to default to the idea that "Phil saves from death."

Of course I do have some experience in this area. I once caught my father-in-law as he was sliding off a roof. Then another time I saved him from doom by catching a wall that happened to be collapsing on him. (My father-in-law lives a peculiarly perilous life. I am secretly grateful of this as it gets me a few brownie points, that I could cash in one day, say, like when he makes a comment about me not mowing the lawn for Melissa - "Remember the time you almost died...")

So I needed the reminder today, that I can't save anyone from death (other than my father-in-law) and that I do indeed serve a "God of salvation" who is way more than capable to deal with the spiritual plight of teenagers. He's just invited me along for the ride. For that, I'm very grateful.

And in case you're wondering, my Father-in-Law doesn't give me a hard time about not mowing the lawn, it's Melissa that does, so I plan on using my points on her: "You're mad that I didn't mow the lawn for the sixth week in a row? Do you really wish that your own flesh and blood, your father, was dead right now?".. Something like that anyway. I try and keep life light.