The Art of Questioning

Soul-Destroying Lies and My Real Identity

2011-07-08T10:30:00.000-07:00

Nobody can deny the powerful imagery that is all throughout Hosea. It makes my heart soar at times and makes my gut wrench at times. Hosea 12 is one of those chapters that definitely does both. I have been reading the Bible in The Message for the past two years (sometimes checking the translation with the NIV and ESV) and I love some of the interpretations he gives. Peterson actually thinks this section should start back in the last verse of chapter 11 where he puts the title “Soul Destroying Lies” From 11:12 to 12:11 we read that gut wrenching description of someone who is literally hell bent and then in 12:12 God puts the question to his people in light of the description he has just given. He says, “are you going to repeat the life of your ancestor Jacob? He ran off guilty to Aram, Then sold his soul to get ahead, and made it big through treachery and deceit.” I was reminded yesterday how most of us find our identity in what we do. We think our job or "making it big" defines who we are and when we believe that, we will not stop at any amount of treachery and deceit to gain and improve our value. God, knowing that, tells them where their real identity is found. In The Message, Hosea 12:13 says “Your real identity is formed through God-sent prophets, who led you out of Egypt and served as faithful pastors.” The ESV says, “By a prophet the Lord brought Israel up from Egypt, and by a prophet he was guarded.” So, I fused those two translations together to get this “The Lord forms your real identity through a God-sent prophet who led you out of Egypt and served and guarded you as your faithful pastor.” That is overflowing with Christology. Jesus is the real and true prophet who is the Lord who leads his children out of Egypt. He doesnt grumble about them but guards them and serves them as the faithful pastor.

Prayer for today:
God, even though I am hell bent to repeat the life of my ancestor Jacob let me see and embrace that my real identity is formed by you, the one who brought me out of slavery to sin and who serves me and guards me as my faithful pastor.

Feelings Check At Recovery Group Meetings

2011-06-18T22:09:00.000-07:00

Why do we have times of feelings checks at our group meetings? Last week in our Wednesday night Route1520 meeting we talked for a while about why we have times of "check in." I think it is a really good question because sometimes the value of group feelings checks can be lost just like many other very valuable things can lose their value. After that discussion and a couple of conversations today, here are a few of the benefits I see to having a time of check in during a recovery meeting.

• Feelings check shows me that everyone is human and everyone struggles. Sometimes I get to thinking I'm the only one who is struggling or some people have it together and I don’t so I better act like I have it together while I'm in this room. That is not true. These rooms are places where we are to connect at human weakness then talk about the strength and hope that Christ provides. If we never connect at the point of human weakness, we start to get to a place where we miss the fact that the strength comes only from Christ and not from ourselves.

• Feelings check gives me times to hear about and thank God when a brother is doing well. This is the flip side to the first point. Week after week I might hear how a brother is struggling but when he comes in and is doing well he can share with us hope for us to have strength from the same place he is finding strength.

• Feelings check makes "hiding in recovery" harder. We addicts can hide almost anywhere and that includes recovery. If all I do at meeting after meeting is talk about what I know about the program I can come off as someone who doesn’t have any struggles and can come to meeting after meeting without letting anyone know that I'm struggling. We have all known hiding in shadows but the truth is that we can hide even while talking at length and sharing great knowledge of the 12 steps and recovery in general.

• Feelings check helps me get in touch with and describe my feelings because I am hearing other people describe their feelings. Let's honestly face this. We have trouble describing our feelings. If Tal is asking me how I feel about something he normally has to tell me several times "That is what you are thinking. I want to know what you are feeling." I will take whatever help I can get to put my feelings to words. There is something about talking about my feelings in front of three other brothers that is different from talking about my feelings with just one other person. As I continue to grow in recovery I will be able to get in touch with my feelings and describe my feelings better. As I talk about my feelings with others who are newer in recovery they can better know how to describe the feelings they are feeling. A quick sidebar (you can tell I have been watching the Casey Anthony trial) - Check out The Feeling Wheel

• Feelings check helps me know better how to pray for my brothers. Honestly, we don’t talk to each other enough about how we can be praying for each other. Until we get better at that, I see a focused time of feelings check as something that is needed to begin to see James 5:16 realized in our recovery groups. We all want to see healing and healing will not come without confession.

• Feelings check gets all of the garbage out on the table so we can then focus on the solution. A lot times I sat through meetings just thinking about the crap I was going through rather than really listening to the strength and hope others were sharing. This is one of the reasons we do feelings check at the beginning of our group meetings. Once we move into the discussion time I am actually feeling a little more freedom than I felt when I walked into the room and that freedom can allow me to focus on the light of Christ rather than the darkness of my day.

• Feelings check show new people that it is ok to share your feelings with others and that others in the group really want to hear how their brothers are feeling. When I was new to recovery groups I was scared to share my feelings with others because I thought no one would want to hear about my problems. When a new comer can hear others share their feelings and see that no one freaks out and see that the rest of the group is really concerned with how each member is doing he can be free to share his feelings with us and know we will care about his feelings too. Beyond that, he will really care about hearing your solution because he has some more reason to believe that you really care about him.

While there are many more benefits to having a time of feelings check in group meetings most of those benefits can be experienced checking in with a sponsor one on one and are probably best experienced checking in with a sponsor one on one.

Now, there are a few reasons people give for NOT doing feelings checks at meetings that are actually very good concerns. The top reasons I have heard are that it turns meetings into places to just emotionally dump and it keeps groups focused on the problem rather than focused on the solution.
1. If I come to a meeting and all I hear about is how all of these guys acted out over the week I am going to leave that meeting more triggered, down, and depressed than when I entered and by the way thanks for the new ideas on how to act out because you spent the majority of your time describing exactly how you can access porn without your wife knowing and you said the exact same thing the last time I was in a check in group with you.
2. This isn't your therapy group (namely because there is no therapist there) so don't treat it as such.
3. This isn't the place for you or me to get free therapy from quasi therapist wannabees. Quit looking for that.
4. This is not a place for me to get an audience to hear me go on and on week after week about the resentments I hold so deeply. I need to share that stuff with my sponsor (if I dont have a sponsor I need to get a sponsor immediately) so he can help me apply the steps to it and hopefully get to a point where I canadmit my part in the resentment, admit where I am wrong, and let go of that resentment.
5. I do not come to these groups to just get stuff off my chest or just hear other people get stuff off their chest. I come here to hear about strength and hope that is born out of experience and share the strength and hope I have experienced. Thank God for the things I have heard Jim C say at the meetings he leads. Talk about experience, strength, and hope!
Obviously, I too think that many (DEFINITELY INCLUDING MYSELF) have abused feelings check times and have turned them into very negative things that can ruin meeting times.

So, at our Wednesday night Route1520 meetings we have come up with a few practical ways to counter those negatives.
First, we use a timer when people are checking in. People get 3 to 5 minutes to check in. This makes my time of sharing tight and helps me stay off rabbit trails, which I love to go down. Second, groups are limited to four people. Checking in with three other brothers is just a little more intimate making me pay more attention when others are speaking and letting me feel like others are paying more attention when I am speaking. Also, when there are only three other people in the group I feel less of that "great I have an audience" feeling. With the timer and 4 person limit, the overall check in time is around twenty minutes per meeting, giving us seventy minutes to focus on the solution. Third, we do check in at the beginning of the meeting so that we can move on from that to spending the rest of our meeting focused on the solution. Doing check in first, keeping it tight, and making sure it is not the majority of the meeting helps us experience the benefits of checking in and somewhat protect them from turning into the negative times of pity parties they can many times turn into.

I would love for us to add to this practical list! What have you experienced in your groups? Do you have times of feelings checks? How do they go?

Easter 2011 at Tapestry of Hope

2011-04-26T23:02:00.000-07:00

Here is a little glimpse into what happened at Tapestry this past Sunday. I have been wanting to do this for some time now so I guess Easter Sunday is a great day to start it.

It really seemed that the place was buzzing with excitement this Sunday. Tal had found a video that we thought would be a great way to kick off our worship gathering but it is one of those videos where we wanted everyone to be watching from the beginning. So, I gave a quick welcome to get everyone’s attention and then we played this video.

G.O.S.P.E.L. from Humble Beast Records on Vimeo.

The check cleared and that is why we gather here to worship every Sunday evening. If Jesus can beat death there is no problem we can bring him that is too big for him.

We then all stood for a responsive reading of Psalm 118. I read the Psalm aloud and we all read together the parts in bold.
Oh give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; for his steadfast love endures forever! Let Israel say,
"His steadfast love endures forever."
Let the house of Aaron say,
"His steadfast love endures forever."
Let those who fear the Lord say,
"His steadfast love endures forever."
Out of my distress I called on the Lord;
The Lord answered me and set me free.
The Lord is on my side; I will not fear. What can man do to me?
The Lord is on my side as my helper; I shall look in triumph on those who hate me.
Open to me the gates of righteousness, that I may enter through them and give thanks to the Lord.
This is the gate of the Lord; the righteous shall enter through it.
I thank you that you have answered me and have become my salvation.
The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.
This is the Lord's doing; it is marvelous in our eyes.
This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.

SONG – Come and Listen

SONG – I Will Sing of My Redeemer

Matthew 28:1-10 (The Message)

SONG – You Are My King

VIDEO – What is the Bible Basically About?

SERMON – Love of a Different Kind

SONG – In Christ Alone

As we moved toward communion, we confessed our sins together using “The Great Confession.”

Most merciful God, we confess that we have sinned against you
in thought, word, and deed, by what we have done, and by what we have left undone.
We have not loved you with our whole heart; we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves.
We are truly sorry and we humbly repent.
For the sake of your Son Jesus Christ, have mercy on us and forgive us;
that we may delight in your will, and walk in your ways, to the glory of your Name.
Amen.

Casey then read the words of institution from the Book of Common Prayer and then asked us question 45 from the Heidelberg Catechism, encouraging us to read these words aloud together if we believed them.

How does Christ's resurrection benefit us?
First, by His resurrection He has overcome death, so that He could make us share in the righteousness which He had obtained for us by His death.
Second, by His power we too are raised up to a new life.
Third, Christ's resurrection is to us a sure pledge of our glorious resurrection.

During the benediction Tal again reminded us of the love of God for us that he chose us and he is coming back for us to complete the wedding and prayed that the peace of God be with us as we leave.

Don't Just Give Up. Throw In the Towel!

2011-03-07T20:08:00.000-08:00

There are times in my life when I just want to give up. Maybe the struggle is too much. Maybe I have lost too many times. Maybe I am experiencing the consequences of a fallen world and my sinful actions. Whatever the case, I just want to give up.

I think Micah, one of Israel’s prophets, knew that feeling very well. Micah was overwhelmed with sorrow, sunk in a swamp of despair because everyone he knew was out for blood. They were like animals preying on each other. He couldn’t trust anybody and the world around him was falling to pieces because the consequences of the sins of his nation were finally landing.

He wasn’t going to give up though! I hear that all of the time. “Don’t give up! Don’t give up! When times are hard don’t give up!” What does that mean though? What does it mean to not give up?

We normally think the opposite of giving up is fighting but the truth is that not giving up and fighting in my own strength are two totally different responses. For Micah, giving up meant trusting that God could do for him what he could not do for himself. We face an enemy that is cunning, baffling, and powerful. Without help it is too much for us.

This reminds me of one of my favorite movies, Rocky IV. Apollo was up against an opponent that was too much for him but he didn’t want to admit defeat. He didn’t want to throw in the towel and he died in battle. He didn’t realize that there was one who could defeat his enemy and he needed to throw in the towel, step aside, and watch the enemy get defeated.

I cannot beat the enemy of my addiction. I must throw in the towel, but only to move out of the way and let God fight. As some people say, “we surrender to win.” This is one of the many paradoxes of recovery.

If I fight in my own strength I am actually giving up on believing that God is greater than me and I am giving up on the assurance that he can and will fight for me. In fact God has already fought for me, the victory has already been won, and amazingly we get credited for that victory if we belong to Christ!

Micah waited for God because he knew that God was listening and he knew that God was making things right (restoring sanity), something he knew he couldn’t do in his own power. This is the essence of the second step.

Prayer for today:
Lord, today may I not give up on you and fight my battles in my own strength but may I throw in the towel and let you work in and through me to fulfill your good purpose.

Donald Miller A Million Miles In A Thousand Years

2011-03-07T08:56:00.000-08:00

This is one of those few books I bought as soon as it came out. I was really excited about the release of this book somewhat in the way I have been excited about the release of many albums. My excitement was fueled by the fact that Miller was coming to Birmingham, AL on a book tour shortly after the book was released. I, like many, fell in love with Miller's writing style in Blue Like Jazz. My church, Tapestry of Hope, had a men's Bible study group that read Blue Like Jazz and discussed it chapter by chapter in Jackson's Bar and Bistro. One assistant manager, Jessica, asked, what is this, a Bible study? Do you know you are in a bar? We thought that was awesome that she said that! But, she started asking questions about Blue Like Jazz and we got her a copy of the audio book and she came up to us a few weeks later telling us about her favorite chapter in the book! In fact, almost every server in the place had a copy of Blue Like Jazz because if they asked us what we were reading we asked them if they wanted a copy and almost all of them wanted one and came back to us telling us how much they liked it. So, here is DM again, offering some great insights into life, based off a movie that is being made about Blue Like Jazz. This book has some great points and it is in great Donald Miller style. Get it, read it, and most importantly, pray over it and discuss it with friends...maybe in a bar over a half price beer (which all low gravity beers are at Jackson's on Tuesday nights). Here is a promo trailer about DM's new book...

What story are you telling? from Rhetorik Creative on Vimeo.

Hope In the Middle of Disaster and Doom

2011-01-03T15:28:00.000-08:00

Monday, January 3, 2011

I read Isaiah 3:1-5:30. The verses I am taking as my verses for the day are 4:5-6.

5 Then God will bring back the ancient pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night and mark Mount Zion and everyone in it with his glorious presence, his immense, protective presence,
6 shade from the burning sun and shelter from the driving rain.

Isaiah 4 is so short but oh man what a powerful punch. Chapter 3 describes (in some places pretty graphically – I think Eugene watered it down a little from what the Hebrew says) the outward expressions of the dark hearts of the Israelites. I think the outward expressions are like what we call "fruit sins" in Route1520. Fruit sins are the disasters you can see but they always have root sins that produce them. Some root sins I have seen in my life are dishonesty, lust, pride, envy, and fear. Ultimately they all go back to unbelief. The problem is that so often we just want the fruit sins to be gone and we dont want to take the time it takes to attack to root sins. Truth is that if we are ever going to see those fruit sins dry up, we must let the gospel message attack the root sins in our hearts. In Isaiah 4:1, the description of the fruit sins comes to its low point, what a lot of people call rock bottom. But to our surprise it is here, just when it looks like all light of hope has been totally burned out, “…that’s when God’s Branch will sprout green and lush.” Right between disaster, which the Israelites brought on themselves as a result of their darkened hearts, and doom, which God uses to discipline his children, there is HOPE. What does he promise as a gift of hope? NOTHING but HIS PRESENCE. I wonder how many times I see his presence alone (4:2-6)as the only hope in the middle of the disaster of my life (3:1-4:1) and the doom of my consequences (5:1-30). Not nearly often enough. Today Lord, show me how YOUR PRESENCE is all I need, your immense, protective presence that is shade from the burning sun (reminds me of Jonah and the shade tree) and shelter from the driving rain.

I got that passage nailed!

2010-07-22T16:53:00.000-07:00

Have you ever heard a preacher or seminary student say something like that? Slap him next time he does. He deserves it. We never have passages nailed. This passage I am studying is kicking my butt...and I love it! I am working on my sermon manuscript for Sunday, Ephesians 1:15-23. Basically the point of the text is that Paul is praying for the Ephesians to have true understanding of the hope we are called to, the glorious inheritance of the saints, and the power of Christ working toward us. WOW! I mean, could you have any more power packed statements? I don’t think so. So I am sitting here meditating on how to talk about the hope we have and there is just so much that can be said about it but the problem with everything that can be said about it is that none of it fully grasps the concept. So I say I will come back to hope. I will just move on to the next one. Oh great! The glorious inheritance we have as saints! Ok. I will go back to working on hope for now. And as I look forward to the power of Christ I think that one will be easier because that is the one that is expanded upon in the text. The other two are just stated and then Paul moves on. But the expansion of the idea of Christ’s power working toward us only makes me more aware of how huge that concept is! It is like th power of the resurrection, ascension, every name bowing at Christ, everything being under his feet, and Christ being the head of his church which by the way is his literal body on earth. Wow! Well, if this doesn’t bowl me over as a preacher and show me how small I am in the midst of God’s big ocean of knowledge I don’t know what will. This is an awesome text filled with so much. I am so glad I am spending time digging into it.

Holding My Fears or Being Held By My Father?

2010-05-07T10:11:00.001-07:00

One thing we have been emphasizing at Tapestry and on Tal Prince Live lately is that the enemy has a three fold plan (to steal, kill, and destroy) and he never sleeps. As I was reading today, I came across the story of David and Goliath. Like many of the biblical stories I have known since I was a little kid, there are some important details that I never really thought about.

Today the thought that jumped out at me was how for forty days Goliath came out every morning and evening and took his stand (1 Samuel 17:16) And I love Peterson’s translation of 1 Samuel 17:11. “When Saul and his troops heard the Philistine’s challenge, they were terrified and lost all hope.” When Satan taunts you do you feel terrified? Do you loose all hope? That is how many of us have felt in our addiction. What do you fear? Have Satan’s taunts made you think you can never give up this addiction to God? Have you worked step four and inventoried your fears to see what they really are? Charlie, an alcoholic with a lot of days of sobriety, said your fears basically fit into three categories. You are afraid of loosing what you have, you are afraid of not getting what you want, or you have done something wrong and you are afraid of what’s going to happen when you get caught. When I see my fears fitting into those categories I also see it fitting into one big category. I am not God and I am afraid God can't do as good of a job at being God as I think I can. Idolatry. Misplaced worship. Unbelief.

Here is the hope we have. First, remember that “although my conscience accuses me that I have grievously sinned against all God's commandments, have never kept any of them, and am still inclined to all evil, God, without any merit of my own, out of mere grace, imputes to me the perfect satisfaction, righteousness, and holiness of Christ. He grants these to me as if I had never had nor committed any sin, and as if I myself had accomplished all the obedience which Christ has rendered for me, if only I accept this gift with a believing heart.” Now, remember that our Lord was tempted in the desert for 40 days. That's the exact number of days Goliath taunted Israel. Satan went after him with attack after attack…………and Jesus was victorious! If we are in Christ we don’t fight this battle without hope!

Are you trying to defeat Goliath on your own so that God will be proud of you? Remember, if you are his adopted child he has given you all of the holiness of Christ. That is better than any holiness you can muster up on your own, which is actually no holiness at all. When God sees you, He sees Jesus. You cannot be any more loved by God or pleasing to God than that. Max Lucado said, “God loves you just the way you are but he doesn’t want to leave you that way. He wants to make you just like Jesus.” God will fight for you if you are willing to give up the fears to him, give up the fight to him, and rest in his arms. Are you holding your fears or being held by your Father?

Numbers 9 thoughts

2010-03-04T22:24:00.000-08:00

I love the interaction going on in Numbers 9. Some people approach Moses asking him some “what if” questions. I am a “what if question” kind of guy myself. I love to have all of the details to some situations. The people wanted to know what could be done for them if they were ritually unclean on account of a corpse on the day for offering Passover sacrifices. Moses seems to be stumped by their question and does what any good leader does when he doesn’t know the answer. He told them to wait while he asked God and he would get back with them. Wow…quite the humble Moses here. After reading how everything had to be just so in every situation through Leviticus and the beginning of Numbers I would think God would say, nope…if they are unclean on that day they just have to wait until next year. But that is not what he comes back with at all. He tells them they can offer the sacrifice in the second month if they are ritually unclean on the 14th day of the first month and even adds another circumstance that would allow someone to offer their sacrifice in the second month. Wow…God is sounding pretty lax here huh? Well, just when you start to think that, you are confronted with verse 13.

13 “But a man who is ritually clean and is not off on a trip and still fails to celebrate the Passover must be cut off from his people because he did not present God’s offering at the set time. That man will pay for his sin.

That man will pay for his sins. WOW. I begin to think, what if I had to pay for my sins. This is where I recall 2 Corinthians 5, stop reading, and lift my head to God and thank him once again for Jesus being my once and for all sacrifice. My Passover sacrifice has been offered, he was perfect, and he counted for all of the sins of all of God’s children for all time! I do not have to worry about ever having to pay for my sins because the highest price possible has been paid already. I may have consequences of my sins but that is God disciplining a child he loves in order to make me more like Jesus. God is not lax on sin. Payment must be made and payment has been made, once and for all in Christ. So today, God does not count my sins against me and he has even gone a step further to give me the righteousness of Christ and made me an ambassador of that message.

Good Words to Remember - Love

2009-12-30T21:36:00.000-08:00

“Love Came Down at Christmas” is a very popular Christmas hymn. In it, Christ is lifted up as the physical embodiment of love and the hearers are called to remember that and celebrate it especially during the Christmas season. What shapes your understanding of love? If the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Christ isn't the basis of your understanding of love, then you view of love will always be slanted and unstable.

When it comes to the Christmas story, love is all around, even from the very announcement of Jesus’ birth. Gabrielle went to Mary and told her, “Greetings O favored one, the Lord is with you” (Luke 1:28). This can be translated, “Rejoice (be glad), graceful one (charming one, beautiful one, highly favored one), the Lord is with you.” The next verse says that these words troubled Mary. It was not the angel’s presence that troubled Mary, it was the angel’s words that troubled Mary. She did not believe that God would think that highly of her, that lovingly of her.

Do you really believe God loves you? In the last “Good Words to Remember” we saw how we are God’s beloved. Have you been thinking about that since you read it? Many churches have been talking about the Advent themes of hope, peace, joy, and love these past few weeks. Love is the basis of these other virtues. Without a belief that God loves us how can we have any hope for the future, any peace with our past, or any joy in our present circumstances? When you have hit bottom, when you feel like the lowest of the low, do you still believe God loves you? Jeremiah says, in Lamentations 3:

I remember it all—oh, how well I remember—
the feeling of hitting the bottom.
But there’s one other thing I remember,
and remembering, I keep a grip on hope:
GOD’s loyal love couldn’t have run out,
his merciful love couldn’t have dried up.
They’re created new every morning.
How great your faithfulness!
I’m sticking with GOD (I say it over and over).
He’s all I’ve got left.

If you feel like you have lost your grip on hope, like you don’t have peace with your past, or like you don’t have joy in your present circumstances, ask yourself where you are in your belief in God’s love for you. For many, it is fear that is holding them back from believing that God loves them. They fear that they are not good enough for God’s love, like they have not earned God’s love. We never will be good enough for God’s love and we never will earn God’s love but God loves us because he is so good and he gives good gifts to all.

Gabrielle immediately addressed Mary’s fear, called her by name (letting her know he knew exactly who he was talking to), and told her God was with her, even in her low, despised, state. By the end of the conversation, we see Mary at peace with God’s plan for her, hoping in the future birth of Jesus, and running off in joy to tell Elizabeth all about it. She says, “My soul magnifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my savior for he has regarded my low estate.” True worship only comes when we realize that God regards/loves us, even in our lowest of low.

LOVE – A good word to remember.

Good Words to Remember - Beloved

2009-12-02T00:24:00.000-08:00

Beloved

Do you hear this word often? It is not a word that is used very often today, but it should be. In the very short book of Jude it is used four times to speak of those who are called by the Father and kept in Jesus Christ. Dear brother or sister in Christ, do you really believe that you are the beloved of God? Of course you can say that you love him and he is love, but do you really believe he loves you? Does he love you, warts and all, with all of your imperfections on the outside and the inside? Remember, he can see the inmost parts of you, the things you hide from everyone else. He sees past façade you construct to get the approval of others. He sees past it and says, “Those who were not my people I will call ‘my people,’ and her who was not beloved I will call ‘beloved.’” (Romans 9:25)

A prolific writer on the love of God (Brennan Manning) said, “I could more easily contain Niagara Falls in a tea cup than I can comprehend the wild, uncontainable love of God.” We lose sight of the gospel so often and go back to thinking we can somehow earn his approval by the devotionals we read, the amount of Scripture we read, or the amount of time we pray. The truth is that if you are an adopted child of God, even though you cannot comprehend it, you are called his “people” and his “beloved” not based on anything you do, but based on the accomplished work of Christ on the cross.

Are you having a bad day today? Have you gotten caught in a cycle of shame that you think you will never get out of? Do you think you are no longer his “beloved?” That is a lie of the Enemy, trying to get you to trade in a relationship based on grace for a routine based on works. Remember that you have something that can never be taken away from you, something that is a gift from the creator of life. It is an enormous gift to be called his “beloved.” Ask the Holy Spirit to remind you of that as you go through your day today and him to reveal ways in which you can pass his love to others because you are his beloved.

Beloved – A good word to remember.

FALL 2009 Brennan Manning in Birmingham, AL (session 1)

2009-11-16T02:38:00.000-08:00

I finally got to meet the famous author of one of the greatest books I have ever read, Brennan Manning. I actually still have a few pages to go in The Ragamuffin Gospel. I cannot believe I am just now reading this book! I am going to post my notes from the four sessions over the course of this week. Here are the notes from session one. Know that these are rough notes, not a manuscript by any means. Some of the thoughts seem to just cut off…that is a combination of my wondering mind and the way Brennan spoke. I literally thought he was going to pass out a few times, especially on Friday night. Many of the things he said are well worth repeating and I hope they are things I will be sharing with others and living myself for the rest of my life.

My books have aimed at dispelling myths of God and helping them experience the God of Jesus Christ. This is the main business of Christianity.

God’s love is so great that he will no allow us to keep false images, not mater how much they comfort us.

The truth of the intimate love of God is echoed in the unique love of God. God loves me as I really am, a bundle of paradoxes and contradictions.

Aristotle says I’m a rational animal. I say I’m an angel with a capacity for beer.

Do you believe that God loves you so much that he would rather die than be without you?

Feb 8 1956 – In a 4 hour experience of Gods passionate love for me. It changed the entire direction of my life.

Do you believe that God loves you? That he is crazy about you? If not, you are projecting onto Jesus your own negative thoughts about yourself.

Do you believe that God loves you as you are and not as you should be? Nobody in this building is how you should be. Only you can answer that question. It is the sheer work of Grace for us to live in the house of love rather than in the house of fear.

Good Words to Remember - Meaningful

2009-10-29T09:29:00.000-07:00

Over and over in Ecclesiastes, King Solomon repeats the exact opposite of this word. He shouts it four times in his opening sentence, saying, “‘Meaningless! Meaningless!’ says the Teacher. ‘Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless.’”

If you give Ecclesiastes a mere surface reading, you will walk away thinking it is a very depressing book. You must look deeper. Solomon had everything he could have wanted, materially, but he found it all to be meaningless…under the sun. Many theologians say this phrase means “apart from God.” When realized as such, Solomon’s words wake us up to the reality that we can have all of the earthly pleasures that advertisements and commercials tell us we need, but as long as we are pursuing them “under the sun” it will be a meaningless pursuit.

A meaningful life is lived when we do all things, even eating and drinking, not “under the sun” but “through the Son” because “in him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28). “For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him” (Colossians 1:16). “Under the sun” even the loftiest of the world’s delights are meaningless but “through the Son” even the lowest of the world’s duties are meaningful.

Meaningful – a good word to remember.

Humility vs. Humiliation

2009-10-05T23:41:00.000-07:00

Nothing says power struggle like those two little letters put together…“vs”. Life seems to be so much of a power struggle sometimes and it is exactly that struggle that leads so many into the addictive cycle they so want to have power over.

What is the difference between humility and humiliation? I was with a group of friends a few days ago and this topic came up. Don’t you wish you had my friends? One of my older and wiser friends, who is often known as being once again worded it perfectly…I will not do so here…so, here is my paraphrase…Humility comes from within and humiliation comes from without. To unpack that, humility is something that is an inner gift of the Spirit while humiliation is something that Bret Favre wanted the Packers to feel last night in MNF.

So I started thinking…maybe the more humility we accept, ask for, and cultivate in our own souls, the less someone else has the power to humiliate us. Humiliation, a synonym of shame is one of the main drivers of the addiction cycle but if we continue to humble ourselves before our Maker, he will lift us up above the accusations of the many who are trying to shame us – even the ones who don’t even know that is what they are doing.

I have had a long streak of sobriety, longer than I have had in a long time and the Enemy is taking this as an opportune time to try out some old lies on me to see if I, maybe getting somewhat prideful of my sobriety, might believe them again. He is saying, you are married now so you are fine. You don’t need “accountability” anymore. What did it do for you anyways?

It is only humbling myself before my Maker, remembering that my life has become unmanageable but because of his grace I have been redeemed and will be sustained to the day when all evil is gone, that I will be able to go throughout my day avoiding the ambushes the Enemy is setting for me. The Enemy wants to ambush me, trap me, and leave me wounded so that I might go back to my old medication cycle, which is a trap in itself.

Derek Webb says it well. “I don’t want medication just give me liberation even if it cuts my legs right out from underneath don’t give me medication I want the real sensation even when living feels just like death to me.”

Where Do You Get Your Ideas About Sex?

2009-07-13T12:18:00.000-07:00

I was reading one of my favorite Birmingham publications (Black&White) and ran across this article about a sex theme park. What?! A sex theme park? Yep, China, a place where apparently talk about sex isn’t as wide spread as it is in these parts of the world was actually going to build a Six Flags of Sex. Hmmm… Of course the Chinese government wasn’t having any of that so they put the kibosh on that project, even making them take down the huge mannequin one would have to have walked through the legs of to enter the park. Think the story is over? Think again. It turns out that while the Chinese Love Land was getting all of this press there is a Love Land in South Korea that is open for business and has been for five years. Yep, we kept part of Korea free from Communist tyranny and look what they have used their freedom to do. Well, that’s one thing to do I guess.

So all of this brings me back to the original question. Where do you get your ideas about what sex is? It seems that in a part of the world where sex is a taboo subject for public discussion the pendulum is swinging to the opposite end. Now sex is the theme of a sculpture park. We have been kicking this question around at Tapestry now that we are entering out Summer of Love series of teachings through the Song of Songs. For me personally, I cannot remember sex being talked about in church, at home, or in my Christian school beyond the admonition to not do it before marriage and then only do it with the person you are married to. That’s it. What do you think the typical teenage response to that is going to be? OK. Got that. Nuff said. NO WAY! Especially when I was hearing all kinds of stuff about sex from my friends at school, and on TV. I was looking up anatomical terms and the word “sex” in the dictionary and in the encyclopedia and when I got to 11, I was spending more time at my friends houses who had Sinemax or Playboy magazines around. And of course there was the music I was listening to in my “Walkman”. Snoop Doggy Dog and EZ E were my teachers then. Now, of course I knew there was a difference between sex and romance. Where did I learn about romance? Boys II Men were my teachers there. I’ll Make Love to You was one of my favorite songs. Still, all I heard from home or church was, “sex is for marriage.” That’s it. I know I’m not the only one here. This is the USUAL story of people growing up in the church.

So, now we at TOH are going through the Song of Songs, seeing what the Bible has to say about sex and romance. It turns out that God actually has a lot to say about this invention of his, actually advising us on how to use it properly, beyond the admonition not to do it outside of marriage. WOW!

Give a listen to this sermon series and jump in on the conversation over at TOH Community to let us know what you think.

Im Just A Restaurant Prophet With My Hands In My Pockets

2009-05-27T21:26:00.000-07:00

Now, Jesus knew well from experience that a prophet is not respected in the place where he grew up. So when he arrived in Galilee, the Galileans welcomed him, but only because they were impressed with what he had done in Jerusalem during the Passover Feast, not that they really had a clue about who he was or what he was up to. John 4:35-45 from The Message.

Yesterday I was reading this passage in John and as I meditated on it I was brought back to the memory of when I was working on my undergrad degree in the thriving metropolis of Kosciusko, MS (the birth place of Oprah Winfrey) and was preaching at small church in Laurel, MS every week (twice on Sundays). When I was in Laurel and increasingly as I traveled across the state representing the college, my reputation began to build and I was becoming a respected up and coming Bible teacher / preacher. But, when I went home to Mobile, AL, to the church I grew up in, I was just a college kid home for the weekend. This verse brought comfort to me because I loved the fact that I was experiencing something Jesus experienced.

The thing is, I wonder why it was that I was just a college kid home for the weekend in one city and in the next state over I was having more speaking requests than I could fill (now this isn't bragging because I average about five speaking requests a year now and that is normally when someone is really desperate). Was it because they knew me better in Mobile? Was it that they know all of the silly things I have done, so it is hard for them to respect me? Maybe. I feel like the less somebody knows me, the more I keep the relationship a relationship of preacher and congregant, preacher and student, or whatever you want to call it, the more the person respects me and comes to me for advice. Maybe that is true and maybe it isn't. I know that there are kids from the various Birmingham ministries I have been a part of that still come to me and respect me even though they have certainly seen some of my ridiculousness. Whatever the case is, I need to know that people are watching me and I need to do my best to glorify Christ and lift him up. If I do that and people don’t respect me, then so be it. But, if I do not do that, then I have no right to complain when people don’t respect me. This has a lot to do with my situation at work.

I tell you what, working in the restaurant industry is a strain on my Christian witness. It is a place where I experience rejection coming from all angles and have plenty of down time to gossip and complain about people. You think gossip happens at an old lady’s bridge game? I have heard, and yes, been a part of, more gossip around the soda machine at a restaurant than I could have ever imagined. It is a culture at the restaurant and it is so hard not to get sucked up into it. It is just one of the examples of how stuff can hit you from out of nowhere and one (insert me here) can go from a reputation of being “oh that preacher who just started working here we better stop cussing around” to “just another guy that gossips and I couldn’t even tell he was an different from us.” I think the person I want to be known for, the type of “prophet’s respect” I am looking for, is somewhere in between those two things. I mean, if people just respect me when they really have no clue who I am or what I'm up to, that is really no respect at all is it? Where is the reality in that? There is no reality. I want something that is REAL.

God help us as we navigate those waters, trying to stay in the fairway between the roughs. What I need to remember is that when I get in the rough water of my mistakes, sins, addictions, obsessions, etc..., I have an awesome opportunity to lift Jesus high! Living in the fairway all of the time, something I'm never going to do since it is impossible, normally just leads to SELF glorification. So, while I pray that God will keep me in the fairway by his grace, when I wander off course, I pray that God will show me how when I am weak he is strong and how he can be glorified in the midst of my mistakes. I also know that because of the sanctification work going on in my life I can be brought back to the smooth waters of the fairway…until I drift off again

Copy and paste this link below into your browser to hear the Derek Webb station on Pandora I have been working on. I love it!

http://broadcaster.pandora.com/t?r=927&c=0&l=37961&ctl=171ABB0:B375FAE8D7699F913F36FB2C8E97A6D9&

The Village Psalms Bible Study

2009-03-31T06:56:00.000-07:00

Last night I met up with some of the guys from The Village to study the Psalms as I have been doing every Monday for about eight weeks now. The last two times we met, it was at Starbucks in Five Points South…where you can run into some for real characters! We have been sitting at the tables outside because the weather has been so nice and both weeks someone has been walking by and has heard us talking and asked if he could join us. We had a really cool guy, Tony, join us last night. Tony, like our friend from the week before, got really antsy when he saw the Birmingham Police pulling someone over just a few yards from where we were sitting….he didn’t tell us exactly why. What he did tell us was that years ago he would read the Bible every night and fall asleep holding his Bible. He told us that he wasn’t sure if he would be able to be part of a discussion about the Bible but he would try. About an hour in he asked us if we did this every Monday and asked if he could join us next week. As he walked away, Rob asked him how we could be praying for him. He asked us to be praying for his soul to get right with God. So, be praying for Tony. I hope he was blessed in some way by our discussion of the Psalms.

So, what did we actually discuss? This week we got into the categories/genres of the Psalms. They wanted to talk about some of the things I am learning in seminary and that was the first things Mark got into in our Psalms class at Beeson. I wanted to show them 3 main things…what a preacher I am…
1. The importance of realizing categories and how we use them everyday
2. That we cannot understand the categories of the Psalms as easily as we understand the categories we use everyday.
3. How to recognize what category a particular Psalm is in and what to do with that knowledge.

I think my favorite part of the discussion was that right around us there was a great example of what I was teaching (Starbucks, The Original Pancake House, and Surin West). We all understood that if we come downtown at 6:00 am we would only expect to get bacon and eggs at one of those places and we would only expect to get a cup of coffee and a muffin at one of those places. If we went there at 6:00 pm we would only expect two of those places to be open and would only expect to get a meal (a delicious meal covered in curry) at one of those places. Without knowing categories of restaurants, and what category those three restaurants fit into, we would be messed up. My next move was to point out how naturally we understood those categories and tell them that we cannot expect that we know the categories of the Psalms that intuitively.

Then, only having time to analyze one category of Psalms, we discussed praise psalms, particularly looking at Psalm 103. I love the last verse of the Psalm, Psalm 103:22. There he moves from telling all of creation to praise God to telling himself to praise God, which is exactly how he begins. Wouldn’t it be awesome if all preachers preached like this? David admonished himself from the beginning, wasn’t afraid to give that same admonishment to the gathered community (and even all created things), and then said again how he needed to obey the commandment. I find that it is sometimes easy to think of what others should do without realizing my own wandering heart. At the beginning of the day and at the end of the day my focus must be on whether or not MY SOUL is praising the Lord. Praise the Lord, O my soul!

Help With The Hamper

2009-01-22T14:45:00.000-08:00

I think I have always been one of those people that was pretty eager to accept help. I think it goes back to this trip I was on when I was like 11 years old. My Mother, who has always been directionally challenged, was driving us from Mobile, AL to Columbus, MS. Now I know that is not a far drive at all, but then, I thought it was forever away. To make matters worse, there were large detours because of a bridge that was out. So, not only was my Mom not sure where she was going, now she was taking even less traveled roads to get there. At one point, after we had been on the road for hours, we saw the sign welcoming us back to Alabama. I don’t know if it was the downpour of rain, my screaming little sister in the car seat next to me, or the fact that I had watched too many horror movies about people getting lost in the country, but for some reason, seeing that sign welcoming us back to Alabama and knowing we were far from home made me panic. I couldn’t understand why she wouldn’t pull over and ask someone at a gas station for directions, though at this point, this far from the main road, I wasn’t too sure about that option either. So, I have never been afraid to ask someone where something is or admit that I have no idea what the answer is to a question, which isn’t a good thing when my manager is asking me questions about the new menu items and I seem as if I could care less what the answer is. I really do care; I’m just honest about it when I don’t fully know it, rather than trying to BS my way through it.

Last night I was standing up at the host/hostess stand at Brock’s and I saw a woman, who I knew was a guest in our restaurant, walking toward me. Eager to act is if I was taking care of company business and always ready to help the guest, I locked eyes with this woman and asked if she was looking for the restroom. She looked at me as if I had just asked her if she knew where her own head was and sternly told me, “It is through those doors. I know exactly where it is.” Taken aback by this, I told her, “Well there is a mirror in there and you might want to take a look in it before you return.” Not really. But it would have been pretty sweet if I would have. It was as if she was so irritated that I would think that she didn’t know where the restroom was and that I would offer to help her by telling her where it is.

I think we find this problem in churches a lot today. We all walk in like we don’t need help or if we do, it is only a little bit of help. I'm doing great brother! Great! How are you!? Galatians 6:2 Paul commands Christians to carry each other’s burdens. One of the things that struck me about that when I read it a few days ago was the context of Galatians 6:1-5. This is a spiritual brother/sister restoring someone who has been tempted and is caught in a sin. I don’t think this is “catch me if you can” kind of caught but “Help, I’ve fallen and I can’t get up” kind of caught. When are churches going to be the places where people admit their struggles and believe that real spiritual restoration will occur because the Holy Spirit is going to work through Christian family? When is John going to be transparent with the community and tell us what sins he is caught in and what burdens he needs the community to help him carry rather than telling us what sins his neighbor or family member is dealing with. When I guest preach at churches and preach on the prodigal son, I always hear stories of how someone is a prodigal that needs to come home. The kicker is that it is always some telling about someone else who is a prodigal who needs to come home. The person talking to me never thinks he/she is the prodigal!

Where does this start? This starts with the leaders and teachers in the church being transparent and honest about struggles in their lives. We don’t have to air out every bit of our dirty laundry but to act as if it is all clean in that hamper is a lie, a lie that Satan will be glad to help you keep up as long as possible. What dirty secrets are in your hamper? Do you have anybody in your life you feel is safe enough to confess to (James 5:16)? Is anybody in your life safe? Do people think you are a safe person to confess to?

Sweet Monday Action

2009-01-19T15:42:00.000-08:00

This has been a great day! I am still pumped about last night, I am actually getting pulled in to the inauguration hype, and I am watching a MLK documentary (KING) in celebration of MLK day.

I posted Tal's sermon from last night here.

I posted Tal Prince Live from last night here.

(My heart sinks as I watch a national cable channel recount the bombing at 16th Street Baptist Church, a horrible tragedy that occurred just a few miles from where I sit and type now.)

Last night was a great night at Tapestry. As we sat and prayed over our gathering (something we do every week for about 20 minutes before the gathering) I could feel the Holy Spirit moving in me, letting me know this was something special we were doing tonight. People often say that as soon as they walk in the room where we worship, they can physically feel the presence of God. That isn’t anything you can conjure or make happen. God just chooses for it to happen and all you can do is be thankful for it and not overlook the wonderful blessing you have. Of course, we are gathered, asking for God’s presence among us and we set the atmosphere as much as we can with lighting and music but in the end, it is God’s decision and I cannot make Him do anything (nor would I want to).

I read Isaiah 44:9-20 from The Message and I could hear that the community was really hearing the words of this Bible passage. Sometimes Peterson hits the ball out of the park and I think his translation of Isaiah 44 is one of those home runs.

Tal used the story of Marcus Schrenker, how he faked his death (and was horrible at it) because he couldn’t keep up the image. He went on to say how we all need to die to our images but many of us are just faking our deaths because somewhere in the Bible we are told to do so.

I wonder if I am faking my death. Oh, I know I am faking my death. Well, it isn’t really faking my death as much as death to self just doesn’t come that easily. I was totally reminded of it last night and this morning as I signed up for Twitter. Now, I kicked against the multiplying wave of people looking for one more way to update everybody on the minutia of life and keep “networked” for long enough but I couldn’t hold out a day longer. I walked down the aisle last night, and I am tweeting with the best of them. I am not one of the best of them mind you…I am just out there tweeting along with them. Immediately I had two followers…at 4:00 am! Then I started looking at how Tal is following just a few more people than is following him and I thought that is the true sign of Twitter fame…when more people are following you than you are following. I thought of cutting the number of people I was following from 30 down to one so I could have twice as many followers as number of people I was following and then saw what must be the ultimate twitter triumph…Donaldmilleris is following one person while . I just thought of this one…if you could keep your number of followers above your number of updates. Nope. Not a good measuring rod. Barack Obama has 165,414 followers and only 264 updates, but he is following 168,134 people, so that whole followers over updates thing isn’t going to work out.

Why do I care so much about all of this? This is my image! This is the image that I hold up so high, thinking the world revolves around me…when clearly it doesn’t. I love looking at my little map on my blog and seeing where in the world people are who are looking at my blog. Who are you in Brazil? Whoever you are…I love you and you do so much for my little idol of an image. Seriously, this is crazy. I have like 9 blog readers and I think it is some kind of big deal and I am worried about how many people are going to follow me on Twitter now. So, now I am off to try to make my blog really cool like this guy from Atlanta who’s blog is so cool that they did an article on him in Collide Magazine. I especially love the way he has the little Twitter bird at the top of his blog...I need to get one of those.

I don’t have an image problem…I promise.

KC part 1 (Sunday at Jacob's Well)

2009-01-14T15:34:00.000-08:00

Today is a really great day in Birmingham. I had a great lunch with Tal and Marc, the weather is great, I posted the first recording of Tal Prince Live since August, and I just picked up my dry cleaning. What could be better? Now I figured it is as good of a time as any to write about my experiences in Kansas City while I was there to visit Becki during the second week in December.

I am going to start with my experiences at Jacob’s Well Church. Here are some pictures of JW that are on Tim Keel's blog. Since I knew I was going to be there that Sunday, I checked out their website, downloaded a few sermons, and familiarized myself somewhat with their staff. It turned out that familiarizing myself with the staff helped out because the regular teaching pastor, Tim Keel, was no preaching that Sunday. Instead, Deth Im was preaching. Deth is one of the associate pastors and he also serves JW as an elder. They were going through the themes of Advent (hope, joy, peace, love) which was awesome because that is exactly what we were doing at Tapestry! That is the kind of stuff that happens when you are following the church calendar, which is something we do a little at Tapestry but I later learned they do a lot at JW.

Deth preached on rejoice, which he said really means to be glad glad because the re prefix intensifies the word joy. One really cool thing they did was give us all tiny bells as we walked in and Deth asked us to ring those bells when we felt like something said or read resonated with us, instead of using our normal evangelical guttural sounds. That was a really cool thing. People rang the bells after Scriptures were read, people rang bells when they resonated with a truth of happy things in our lives and when they rejoiced even in the midst of pains in our lives. The texts he especially used as he taught were the magnificat of Mary in Luke 1 and story of the Israelites rejoicing in Psalm 126. This all led up to the final question of how does your soul magnify the Lord?

This sermon is an awesome sermon. I don’t always say that, so you can trust that I really believe that. Several things I liked:

ª The opening way he involved the entire audience with something fun AND used the context of the interaction as a launching pad for the sermon.
ª The way he shared personal stories, and what Calvin Miller calls his romance with the text. A lot of times preachers get really jacked up about something in the Bible and don’t understand why the congregation doesn’t get that jacked up too. What we don’t realize is that we had a long time of meditating over this passage before we got jacked up over it. Share the journey that you went through as you came to fall in love with this text.
ª The interaction brought by the bells
ª The way we read Psalm 126 out loud together during the sermon and then he invited people to say what they thought was going on there and what the writer of the Psalm was getting at. He used those thought, at almost the exact middle point of the sermon, as a catalyst to bring us to the end of the sermon.

After the sermon, Mike Crawford led us in “The Magnificat” and “Ring Out O Bells”. You really need to check out his Myspace page and get his new CD. I will be writing more on that later.

How does your soul magnify the Lord?

Romans 6

2008-12-25T03:05:00.000-08:00

I am really wanting to get into Romans 6 with the guys at The Village. I was reading it tonight and so much stuff was jumping out at me. (Reading back over what I have written here, I want you to know that what I talk about in the next to paragraphs are not the main things I want to teach the guys at The Village, though the importance of baptism and sanctification are subjects that I expect to come up.)

First, the importance of baptism in the believer’s life was so obvious. Of course the denomination I grew up in teaches that one is not saved unless he is baptized and this nifty NIV Study Bible study note on Romans 6:3-4 says, “In NT times baptism so closely followed conversion that the two were considered part of one event (see Acts 2:38 and note). So although baptism is not a means by which we enter into a vital faith relationship with Jesus Christ, it is closely associated with faith. I look at that and say that those verses in Romans 6 and Acts 2:38 sure do make good cases that one is not saved if he refuses baptism and even further, the case that one is saved at the moment he is baptized and not before. The bottom line for me is that my teaching on salvation is going to come from the NT examples. So, if after I talk to someone about becoming a Christian he decides he wants to become a Christian yet doesn’t inquire about when he will be baptized, I need to go back to the drawing board and figure out where I went wrong. I guess I just picture it to be like when Phillip was teaching the Ethiopian Eunuch. After being taught about Christ from Isaiah 53, as the Eunuch saw water he wanted to be baptized.

The second thing that jumped out at me was the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints. Romans 6:10 clearly states that Christ’s death to sin was once and for all and Romans 6:11 clearly says that we are to count ourselves dead to sin IN THE SAME WAY. So, that leads me to think that it is once and for all. I have been struggling a lot lately with this doctrine. Some of my friends present the logical argument that if there is nothing we can do to earn our salvation then there is nothing we can do to loose our salvation. I do agree that it is not on the basis of doing good things of following the law hat we are saved and neither is it on the basis of doing bad things or breaking the law that we might possibly pass back from the kingdom of light back to the kingdom of darkness. I do think that we have to accept the gift of salvation and I tend to think that just as we can accept it we can later reject it, saying we never really accepted it in the first place or maybe we did accept it but now we don’t want to have anything to do with it. I feel like my friends would say that person never really accepted Christ in the first place but only tasted of salvation and it was like seed scattered on rocky, shallow, or thorny ground, it was never going to produce fruit. Maybe they are right about that, so I think that there needs to be balance. People that don’t believe in “once saved always saved” need to quit acting and living like their salvation depends on the last prayer they said rather than on the saving work of Christ on the cross that stretches forgiveness all the way to the beginning of my life and all of the way to the end of my life. It doesn’t just wipe my slate clean and it doesn’t just obliterate my slate. It obliterates my old slate and then gives me a new one that has the righteousness of Christ written all over it so tightly that there is no room to write any sins on it. My sisters and brothers that believe that all saints will persevere to the end need to be real with people who show no signs of sanctification in their lives. People who show no signs of sanctification in their lives need to be told that a person who is justified shows signs of the Spirit’s work in his life and if you are showing no signs that you intend on following him, especially if you outright reject his saving work, you might not be a Christian (and I guess they would follow it up by saying, “and you never were one”).

The connection between Psalms and Romans 6, especially what I want to teach the guys at The Village out of Romans 6, is the connection of sin mastering a person’s life that is found in Psalm 19:13. I want Psalm 19:13-14 to be the theme of this group. I love that paragraph, Romans 6:11-14. I think that is the elaboration of "live a new life" in Romans 6:4, even though the NIV Study Bible note says Romans 6:8-10 is the elaboration of "live a new life." I think Romans 6:8-10 is the elaboration of "as Christ was raised from the dead."

So, my blogging friends, do you agree or disagree with me on my Romans 6 thoughts on baptism and the perseverance of the saints? What do you think about the connection between Psalm 19:13 and Romans 6:14? Thanks for walking this road with me. We need Jesus and he has given each of us deposits of His Spirit. Therefore we need each other. We cannot travel this journey of faith alone.

Romans 1

2008-12-20T02:05:00.000-08:00

Having read Romans 1, I think Romans 1:1-2 really describes what we are trying to do at Tapestry. We try to show the good news of Jesus from all of the Scriptures. I recently had a friend from work come to Tapestry and he said that he had been to several churches lately and one thing that was different about Tapestry was that he heard a lot of hope in the sermon. That made me smile because I thought, “Hope is our middle name baby,” even though it is our last name. Another one of my friends from work was somewhat contemplating whether or not he was going to come to the sermon on divorce since he had recently been divorced and, I agree, he didn’t need to hear another “sermon” on divorce. The thing about Tapestry is that as I was talking to him I was able to certainly guarantee him that we weren’t there to shovel shame on sinners but to give all of the comfort and grace that Jesus offers. As a matter of fact, Tal had specifically told the rest of the worship planning team that he wanted comfort, comfort, comfort after the sermon. Now this doesn’t mean that we don’t call a sin by its own name. We do. But we also are transparent about our sins and our total dependence on the one that has put us in right relationship with the Father and is putting our lives back together as we continue on our journey here in this world and the good news that God loves you and that even though it may be difficult, he has a plan for your life. I am so happy to be in a church where I can be certain that hope in the good news of Jesus will be preached from every portion of the Bible. I love that hallmark of Tapestry. I just wish it wasn’t a hallmark of Tapestry but a regular part of the church as a whole. Romans 1:20 really stood out to me. Is that the cut and dry answer to the skeptic that asks, “What about the Crackatoans that have never heard about Jesus?” The cover story in the latest Newsweek is Lisa Miller’s article, “The Religious Case for Gay Marriage.” She quotes the Anchor Bible Dictionary as saying that nowhere in the Bible do its authors refer to sex between women. Well I think Romans 1:26 is referring to sex between women. Is it not? Anyway, I'm not trying to jump on a bandwagon, I’m just telling you what I'm reading. Probably the most convicting verse of this chapter was Romans 1:32. It seems that it is worse for someone to approve of these kinds of wickedness than to actually engage in them. My prayer is that I never applaud, but always regret my sins and the sins of others. Are all of my sins, past and future, removed? YES. Even though God can use my most wicked actions for His glory, I still wish I had not sinned in the first place. One of my friends said he does not regret anything he has done. I wonder about that. I think there are things I wish I never had done and hope I never do again. Do I sit around and think about my sins all of the time? NO. I don’t live in the shadow of sin and shame but in the shadow of the cross where all shame is dispelled.

Religionless Christianity

2008-12-03T00:18:00.000-08:00

I was talking to Casey earlier about this paper he is writing, which I hope he shares on his blog when he is finished with it...although his publisher might not like him giving it away for free. We were talking about Bonhoeffer looking forward to a “religionless” Christianity. In this religionless Christianity there would not be special words than only Christians understood and only used when talking with their Christian friends. I think a lot of times Christians say these religious words without giving any explanation as if no explanation is needed. I think people that just say it instead of explaining it in beautiful ways in which people that have never heard of it can grasp it really don’t grasp it themselves. Now I do realize that there are people who grasp it but never explain it in ways in which someone who doesn’t understand it, or has little understanding of it can actually grasp it too. These people need to wake up and realize that not everyone has had their noses in theological textbooks for the last 30 years of their lives. At the restaurant I work at, I can mention foie gras, show you that it is available as an appetizer and how it is part of the duck cassoulet but, if I cannot explain it to someone in a way that is going to make it appetizing to him, he isn’t going to buy it. The same is true for terms like “justification.” I can mention that in a sermon but if I never explain it in a way that, as one preacher says, brings the cookies down to the bottom shelf, people aren’t going to be really amped up about it nor are they going to be able to live in light of it or understand how sanctification is different from it. So, is a term like justification just religious talk? Can we find a word that embraces all that is true and good about “justification” but looses the technical term that so many people don’t understand? The thing is, computers have technical terms that have to be explained and medicine has technical terms that need to be explained, so maybe theology has technical terms too, terms that aren’t going to be understood unless you explain them and the thing to do is not change the term but just make sure you explain the term to people so they aren’t afraid of theology. I hate it when people say they hate theology. I especially hate it when pastors say, “I'm not theologian but…” Give me a break. All Christians should be theologians of some kind. I love what Vintage Church is doing with this concept. So, I think we should remove the technical terms as much as possible, realizing that they are not always helpful, but also realizing that sometimes removing the technical term is less helpful than keeping it. In those cases, the goal is to talk about the concept in a way that is inviting and creative and then say… “and that, my friends, is (insert your favorite theological term here).”

Why is this on my mind? This not only comes from the conversation with Casey but from reading some in McLaren’s a Generous Orthodoxy, especially the epilogue where he talks about not wanting to be called an Evangelical but rather an evangelical and chapter 19 where he explains why he is Emergent. More to come on those two things later…

Theology on Tap last night

2008-10-29T14:50:00.000-07:00

Life at Jackson’s Bar & Bistro is great. We have our worship planning meetings there, Becki and I meet Tal there for our counseling sessions, and of course we have “theology on tap” there. Good theology, good fellowship and good beer are what you can expect when you come to theology on tap. When we started going there about a year ago, we never thought it would turn into this. Almost every member of the front of the house staff comes up to our table on Tuesday nights to see how we are doing. Brett, Jessica, and Charles update us on their lives and they seem to really appreciate us coming in there every week. Brett even remembers when we put up the "free beer for your story" sign, something we havent done in quite a while. Last week the weather was great and the patio was packed. This week it was freezing cold…literally in the thirties…so the patio only had a few random smokers who would bear the cold to get that nicotine fix. We actually had to break up in to two tables last night which was what we knew we would have to do because it is so loud inside that having a discussion would be impossible. This week we hit excerpts from Penses by Blaise Pascal. He is already under suspicion just for the simple fact that he is a math genius but to top that off, he is French. Despite that, God has used him to kick us all in the nuts with words that were written down almost 400 years ago.

Foster sums up the chapter by saying that Pascal basically says that there are two contradictory principles at work in all of us: the greatness we have because of our creation in the image of God and the wretchedness we have because of the fall. He says that only Christianity adequately explains the contradiction and only Christ can lift us above our pride and lust.

Could it be that pride and lust are at the center of all sins? What do other religions have to say about our pride and lust? I don’t think they have much to say that is helpful. Buddhism basically says for you to get rid of all of your desires which as soon as you desire that then you have failed because you still have a desire. That’s a little like saying that there is absolutely no absolute truth. Islam gives you list after list of things to do in order to conquer your desires. Why are we full of pride and lust? It is because we are broken, busted people that are enemies of God just because we were born into it. The good news is that even though we are enemies of God, He still loves us and hung in there all the way through death in order to save us from ourselves. Though we still have to go down the road of sanctification, Christians can be sure that we are united with God and that is something the Enemy can never take away.

That is some of the conversation that went down last night. I thought it was a great night and I am so appreciative of the guys that were at my table. This is the most honest group of fellow travelers I have experienced. I love these guys. More of us Christian men should tell our brothers that we love them. Paul wasn’t embarrassed of it and we shouldn’t be either.

Monday night update

2008-10-27T23:14:00.000-07:00

Check out Roger Cullins on NoiseTrade. He has a really good sound. I am really digging “Who Can Know Your Ways”

I just posted a bunch of Disney pictures on Facebook. Check them out and comment on them.

Part of fulfilling Beeson’s ministry internship requirements includes setting learning goals and having my mentor take me through certain action steps to show that I have made some tangible progress in these goals. One of the goals I picked was to work on my attitude. So, my mentor lowered the boom. He said that this is going to be an ongoing battle for me. He said that I will many times come across as arrogant and derogatory even if I don’t mean to. Well I guess that explains all of the times I thought I was being so innocent and Becki thought I was just trying to cut her down. And all of this time I thought the problem was with her. Imagine! The problem was actually me. I know this may come as a shocker to some of you, but we are going to just have to accept this and move on. So what do I do? I need to be intentionally watching for that. I need to get people in my life who have permission to let me know if my attitude is getting too sarcastic. You would think I would be offended at this but I totally wasn’t. It is a lot easier to accept criticism from a mentor when he admits his own faults and is as transparent about his fears and faults as Tal is. He even said he knew he could get too sarcastic and too far off making fun of people and that created an atmosphere, especially between me, Casey, and himself of being cliquish and arrogant at times.

Thanks for taking time to read.

Ministering in the restaurant (part 2)

2008-10-24T23:23:00.000-07:00

In the last restaurant post, I said that there was someone who I could really say was my enemy. I mean it. This guy seemed to be doing whatever he could to make me look bad at every turn as if it was his personal agenda for the day to make me have a bad day. I had been praying for him because Jesus says to pray for our enemies but then the craziest thing happened. All of the sudden we started getting along! He was super nice to me, we would actually have conversations, we would help each other out. People’s heads were turning. They couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe it. He started asking where I was when I was gone and even telling people that he liked me. It was crazy! A few weeks later I realized that I had stopped praying for him. Now he was just a coworker that was nice to me just like most of my other coworkers. Tonight changed all of that though. I don’t know what happened. It was like a switch was flipped. Man, this guy was all over me tonight. I made a mistake. It wasn’t a big mistake, as a matter of fact, I think it is a mistake that is made often but he was making a HUGE deal out of it. And of course, I was in one of those moods. I wouldn’t back down. We had it out in front of everyone. Well later, one of the other cooks was saying how he couldn’t put up with this guy and just wanted him to get out of his face tonight. Apparently my enemy turned friend had told this other guy that the Bible is…cover your ears children…this isn’t G rated…Bull seit. Replace the e with an h of course. This guy was all mad that he had said that. Now, I am objectively out of the situation and I am able to tell him that he needs to have patience with doubters like that. I am telling him that there are plenty of people that don’t believe the Bible is true and we have to be willing to be used by Christ to win them over to God. I told this guy that my enemy turned friend would probably be most affected by his witness so he needed to remember that. My how patient I am. All of this conversation is taking place in the back of the kitchen. When I go up to the front of the food window again, my enemy turned friend (I guess turned back to enemy) jumps my case telling me that I had made the same mistake again. He told me that I was a dumb ass and that I needed to learn how to do my job right. So, I told him, “I am going to pull out this ticket and we are going to see who is a dumb-ass.” So I pulled out the ticket showing that I had done right and he says, “well then someone back here is a dumb-ass because they didn’t tell me that this ticket was up.” Then he tells me that I was a dumb ass earlier because of the mistake I made. So I told him to look at the ticket and tell me who was a dumb ass now. All of that after encouraging this other guy to be patient with my enemy. And all of this in front of the other guy. Well, I guess he is back on my prayer list. Christians in the restaurant industry know how dark of a place it is sometimes. Almost anyone in the restaurant industry knows how dark it can be sometimes. We Christians have to be praying for each other and encouraging each other everyday. It is a high stress environment but we need to know that people are watching us to see where our hope lies. Do we get just as stressed out as everyone else? Where is that peace that passes understanding the Bible talks about? Do we get pissed when a table leaves a crappy tip? What does the Bible say about the love of money being the root of all kinds of evil and what does it say about not worrying about what you will have tomorrow? If you are shining like a city on a hill then your light cannot be hidden.

Im not together but Im getting there.

2008-10-20T23:24:00.000-07:00

I went to Chattanooga this weekend (unfortunately did not get a chance to visit those two beloved places, Ruby Falls and Rock City) because Tal was doing his porn presentation with Ruth Graham and Friends. He doesn’t like to travel alone, which is a really good idea because women at these conferences hit on him even though he is admitting his sexual sin. I guess somehow that turns some people on. So, Casey “Sea Bass” Hobbs and I went with him and I had a great moment with God as I read Thomas Merton’s book Spiritual Direction and Meditation later Saturday night in my hotel room. One of the most important things Tal talks about when he talks about the recovery process is accountability, which naturally includes the discipline of confession. I do not remember hearing much teaching, if any, on confession as I grew up in the church. There was not very much openness and honesty in the church I grew up in. Many priests and pastors have neglected this practice and do not have any practical understanding of how to take confessions or give spiritual direction to the penitent in order that he may avoid sin. As a pastor I want this to be one of the distinguishing marks of my ministry, that I not only preach and teach, but that I am loyal to receive confession from people in my church, am able to give direction and counsel for living in light of the gospel of Christ, and that I go into other churches and teach willing and able Christians how to give this kind of spiritual direction. So many Christians and even leaders are living a meaningless pantomime of perfection. This is precisely why so many sins have gained such a foothold in our church members and leaders today. The sin is kept secret and the secret feeds the shame and the shame feeds the addiction and the cycle goes round and round. How I wish this cycle would be broken and I believe the type of transparent spiritual direction Merton is advising, especially with novice Christians, is essential to robbing these secret sins of their power to perpetuate that cycle.

On page 27, Merton says, “ Even for a superior (What Merton means by superior is someone who has been maturing in the Christian faith for years, as opposed to someone new in the faith) a timely conference with a good director may resolve many apparently hopeless problems and open one’s eyes to unsuspected dangers, thereby preventing a disaster…In many cases the absence of direction may mean the difference between sanctity and mediocrity in the religious life…good directors are rare…If we really desire spiritual directors for our communities and for others, let us seek them. We can at least pray for this intention! He will raise up priests who will desire to give themselves to this kind of work, in spite of the difficulties and sacrifices involved. But there is always a danger that the priest qualified to seriously direct religious will be overwhelmed by the demand for his services.”

As I read Merton’s words, my heart was burning inside of me. I want to be that kind of director. Then it hit me that Tal is exactly that kind of director, even the completely overwhelmed part! God has me at Tapestry to learn this kind of ministry and to be able to go out to be this type of minister that is greatly needed. This ministry is not the glam youth ministry at a mega church that I wanted to do for years. At the Ruth Graham and Friends conference, Tal had 33 people in the first workshop and 36 people in the second workshop and that is if you count Tal, me, and Casey in both of them! Our church has about 30 people coming to it and Tal’s cell phone rings at all hours of the day with some addict he has never met and is probably going to lie to him for half of the conversation. And, he gets paid squat! In case you don’t know, squat isn’t a lot of money in Alabama. The conversion rate isn’t very good here.

I have been struggling for a few weeks about my position in ministry, my role at Tapestry, what I'm going to do when I graduate from Beeson and get married, and how the church down the road is swelling by the minute and Tapestry is barely filling the preaching lab. But this weekend, I laid in my bed thinking about our church, how Kellee McCoy was going to lead worship on Sunday, and how Tal wants to train me and Casey to do the ministry he is doing. I was thinking about how Kellee told me that he finally realizes what he should have realized all along, that he isn’t worthy to be leading worship. I started thanking God for that and then talking to God about how I'm not even worthy to hold the doors open as these wonderful, confessing, broken-but-in-repair people walk in the doors to our worship gathering. I said that I certainly wasn’t worthy to be breaking the bread and pouring the juice and praying over the communion element like I get to do so often. That’s when I started crying. God was giving me a wonderful, humbling vision for ministry and I think it is beautiful. It isn’t anything like what I thought it would be when I was going to Bible College and it certainly isn’t what I thought it would be when I was in high school but it is awesome and I'm so happy that I'm in the ministry position I’m in.

TOH Worship Gathering

2008-10-06T16:05:00.000-07:00

Last night was amazing! I love being a part of this church. The whole night was a night of prayer, using the model prayer as a structure. We opened with some basic instructions, letting everyone know that we would be using the model prayer as a structure and telling them that after the Scripture was read to meditate on the phrase from the model prayer and pray out loud a prayer along the lines of that part of the model prayer if they wanted to. We used songs that went along with that section of the model prayer as bridges between the sections. There were some amazing responses to this. During the time of praying "forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors" conviction and repentance swept over that room like I have never felt before in any room. People were crying out for forgiveness and confessing failures. Tal challenged people to ask God to bless certain people in our lives that had wronged us. People all over the room were asking for strength to forgive people that they had been mad at and had been withholding forgiveness from for years! I was crying all night long. Some of the raw honesty that came out of some people broke my heart. As you will see in this lineup, we took sections from the Sermon on the Mount to go with each line from the model prayer. The Sermon on the Mount is one of the foundational texts for TOH.

Here is how we broke it down.

Song- Come and Listen (Marc always does a great job with this one.)

Our Father in heaven hallowed be Your name
Matthew 5:43-45
Time of Meditation
Song- How Deep the Father’s Love. (Alyssa Adalpe goes yard on this one everytime.)

Your kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven
Matthew 5:2-12
Time of Meditation
Song- Mighty Fortress (Casey and Jeanette stepped up to sing on this one.)

Give us this day our daily bread
Matthew 6:25-34
Time of Meditation
Song- The Air I Breathe (play through communion)

Communion Marc spontaneously sang a verse from Amazing Grace here. We always use the words from the book of common prayer as we explain the bread and wine. I normally say something about communion not only being a way to remember Christ but a way for us to realize our commonality in the body of Christ across the room, around the globe, and throughout time. At TOH the communion table is open to all who follow Christ, regardless of denominational affiliation. We tell people that they dont have to be a member of this church of any specific denomination but just be a follower of Christ to partake of the Lord's Supper. The one giving the Communion devotional says that in this we proclaim the mystery of our faith. And we all say together, "Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again." There is a great song by Charlie Hall on his new album that says "Celebrate His death and rising. Lift your eyes. Proclaim His coming." I love that.

Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.
Matthew 6:14-15
Time of Meditation - As I said earlier, this was a deeply confessional time of repentance for many in the room.
Song- Jesus What a Friend for Sinners (A great hymn. We just sang the first verse and the chorus.)

And lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil
Matthew 5:38-42
Time of Meditation
Song- Feels Like Redemption (A Michael English song that is right in Marc's wheelhouse.)

For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever amen.
Matthew 5:17-20
Time of Meditation
Song- O For a Thousand Tongues to Sing (DC*B arrangement)

I think this was "a very Tapestry" worship gathering because we were seated in a circle with the communion elements and the cross at the center, we had a lot of overlap between songs and Scripture, we heard the gospel proclaimed in many different ways from many different voices as different people prayed and different people stepped up to the microphone to read the portion of Scripture from the Sermon on the Mount, and there was a single thread of thought that ran through the whole gathering.

This was an awesome night where I was just so honored to see God through the things we had planned. I really think God uses our worship planning team when we get together and focus and pray and seek Him on what to do for the week. Before we got together Wednesday, none of us had ever seen this done or had any idea how to pull it off. Now, I think it was one of the most meaningful worship gatherings I have been a part of. I love this church and I am so humbled that God would let me be a part of its leadership team.

Little Joke...Little Laugh

2008-09-30T23:35:00.001-07:00

My buddy Travis sent me this. I thought in light of the recent happenings in the nations economy, we should be aware of these stats.

If you had purchased $1000.00 of Nortel stock one year ago, it would now
be worth $49.00.

With Enron, you would have $16.50 left of the original $1000.

With WorldCom, you would have less than $5.00 left.

If you had purchased $1000.00 of Delta Air Lines stock you would have
$49.00 left.

If you had purchased United Airlines, you would have nothing left.

But, if you had purchased $1000.00 worth of beer one year ago, drank
all the beer, then turned in the cans for the aluminum recycling refund
you would have $214.00.

Based on the above, the best current investment advice is to drink
heavily and recycle.

This is called the 401-Keg Plan.

Tuesday at Jackson's Bar & Bistro

2008-09-30T23:03:00.000-07:00

The weather was great tonight on the patio of Jackson's Bar & Bistro. I enjoyed a Good People Brown Ale and half of a steak sandwich which I only got because Rob was raving about how good it was. Our topic of conversation tonight was from Gregory of Nyssa's chapter in Devotional Classics. It is an excerpt from his most famous work "The Life of Moses." One of his main points was that we are to look at the people in the Bible and take encouragement from them, seeing how they lived the virtous life. I guess if they can do it, we can to it. One of the greatest comments tonight came when we got on the issue of living a perfect life. Some guy had asked Greg what he thought the perfect life is. Greg hem hawed around and finally got to the point that it is impossible to attain perfection since perfection is not marked off by lmits. How would one arrive at the sought for boundary when he can find no boundary? So, someone asked if we can live a day without sinning. Of course, this question has bounced around in my little head before because, coming from the CofC, there is some tendancy, especially in those who are very rigid, to believe that we indeed can purposely and knowingly live without sin for a period of time. One of the verses used to back up this position is 1 John 2:1 where John says that he is writing these things so that they may not sin. Even just looking at it just then I think the context is obviously showing that John wanted to warn people against a particular sin, that partictular sin being (ironicly enough) saying that you are without sin. As we kicked that idea around a little at Jackson's, we said that there would be no way for you to even go about that with the right motive. As soon as you set out to go a day without sinning, you have already sinned because you are wanting to put the spotlight on yourself and your ability to go without sinning for a day. So, you lost before you even get to the starting line (Tal quote). We talked about various other things such as fearing the Lord and the responsibility of teachers of the Word and what to do when someone asks you to pray for him. I love this group. We missed a few folk tonight but hopefully they will be back next week. Pray for me as I contemplate starting my own TOH men's group and look to encourage some female to start a TOH women's group.

A Christianity Worth Believing 3

2008-07-12T02:57:00.000-07:00

Chapter 14 was short and sweet. The main point I gathered from it is that all of us are at some point no longer integrated with God because that is what comes along with the territory of living life on earth but we should not be defined as people by the misdeeds we do and our disintegration from God but we should live to be fully integrated with God, eradicating any sin that springs up in our lives because we can.

As I read this chapter over again I see so much Tapestry of Hope stuff in it. On page 169 he says, “When we think of sin as disintegration, as the unraveling of life and goodness, we hold on to the hope that there is healing and integration, that a life can be woven back together from the threads that remain.” YEAH! I fully believe that. Going to church with registered sex offenders, a guy currently out on bond on a sex crime charge, pornography addicts, and alcoholics, I have seen God do just that. He has taken us, and not only woven my threads back together, his threads back together, and her threads back together, but he has woven my threads with his threads and her threads and we as a faith community come together as a marvelous display of God’s beautiful restoration and creativity.

So, once again I really like where Pagitt gets with this chapter (the main point as I gathered it) but I still don’t see why depravity theology gets kicked out. I think depravity theology is straight up theology from David in Psalm 51 and from Paul in Romans. I'm not one of these guys that believes in the five points of Calvinism or the million points of Calvinism (a la John Piper) but this is one of those things that seems to me to be too straight forward to ignore.

On 163 Pagitt says that hope is missing from the legal model. Whenever he talks about the legal model I think about the metaphor of the judge who steps out from behind the bench to pay our debt. I totally see hope in that. I hope in the fact that because I am an adopted son that the judge is my father and he actually already has paid the price for my sins when Jesus went to the cross and I don’t have to do anything to get him to come out from behind that bench. All I have to do is accept the payment and I get to live a life of freedom. That sounds pretty hopeful to me. If one is seeing (in that metaphor) that the payment is not being made until after we die and are in some kind of cosmic courtroom waiting to see if we are really going to make it into heaven and escape the flames of hell then I think that person is really missing the point of the gospel. I, unfortunately, thought like this for years but like I said in the last post, Jesus didn’t come to give us a get out of hell free card. He came to be a savior once for all and today. He came to give us a live life to the fullest invitation.

Pagitt, you make me think. On page 165 he says, “We were talking about how the story of fallenness would suggest that Alice, even in her sweet little four-month-old body, was capable of only evil because she had not been baptized, but that Laura, who had been baptized and was an active believer in Jesus, would be thought of as the one who was less influenced by sin.” On first reading I thought, “That is ridic! I don’t know anyone who thinks like that!” But I read it again and actually that is certainly how our boy Augustine put it and it seems to be the way it gets taught a lot today. That is a good one for me to chew on. I immediately think of how when the Israelites rebelled in the wilderness only the ones over 18 were sentenced to not enter the Promised Land. So, somehow the evils committed by children are not as offensive, or at least don’t get the same punishment, as evils committed by adults? I have been thinking here for a while and this is a pretty big hairy deal. Basically the way I see it is that I am created in the image of God but because I am a son of Adam there is no way I am not going to be disintegrated from God, no matter where I live or who I grow up around because I am sinful from birth.

I don’t see babies as full of evil and myself as freed from sin and growing in goodness. Obviously Jesus saw children as a role model of faith so there is something that even believers can look up to in children. The thing I disagree with is the thought that we could possibly avoid a kid being screwed up by sin. I believe we are screwed up by sin from birth. The systems, hurts, and patterns of our world do create FURTHER disharmony with God and one another but I think we are already in disharmony with God from the time we are born. Illness and sin are here and get more and more prevalent as we continue to live our lives in our decaying bodies but I don’t think living life on earth creates illness. Certainly it can but illness is found even in babies before they are born.

I love everything in the rest of that section (166 and 167) and I love the stories about Chico but just because I still see some truth and worth in the judicial model and I believe in the fallenness of mankind doesn’t mean that I think it is unchangeable or that humanity should be pitied. The legal model doesn’t drive me to despair and self-loathing or improper fear of God(I do think there is some proper fear of God. Is it because I hold to some of the legal model and some of the disintegration model that I feel that way? Am I cherry picking the legal model and therefore think it’s not all that bad?

In the end, I believe that we are more than our misdeeds and struggles. We shouldn’t say that humanity sucks because we were made in the image of God and God said it was very good. We all need to remember what it feels like to be the sad and the bad and minister from our wounds. Through Christ I can be who I was originally created to be – the wonderful, valued, image-bearer of God.

A Christianity Worth Believing 2

2008-07-10T22:54:00.002-07:00

So, I wake up this morning and see that I have a response to my blog post from last night. Either Mr. Pagitt himself has somehow found my blog or someone is playing a great trick on me. Wow, what an honor to have the author of the book I am blogging through comment on my blog. I guess I found a couple of people to dialogue with. Thanks.

I am just going to jump right into chapter 13. You aren’t going to understand any of this if you aren’t reading the book yourself. I'm not taking time to set up my comments for those who aren’t reading the book. Here goes…

“There is a debt to be paid, so Jesus comes along and pays it on our behalf. This blood atonement is the restitution laid out for our crimes. For many Christians, this is more than just a metaphorical way of understanding sin; it is a synopsis of the gospel” (150).” That is a really unfortunate place to be in. When we put rules over relationships like the Pharisees did with the Sabbath, we have taken God’s law and made it into a rod to beat people down rather than something to revive the soul.

I agree with Doug on page 151 when he says that he is not convinced that the judge stepping out from behind the bench metaphor is the best model for understanding the way sin affects the relationship between God and humanity. But I ask if we should totally get rid of it. For starters, I don’t see that it hamstrings God. Different from judges in America and different from city councilmen, the laws God is following were created by him, one who has infinite foresight into the future outworking of these laws and infinite goodness so that he is not making these laws for the benefit of some and the detriment of others like so many zoning laws do. Really, I don’t even think God is following rules. He is just being himself but we can’t understand someone being himself and being that unchanging because the only time we are that straight is when we are following the rules perfectly. So, we assume he is following some cosmic rules that are above him when he in reality is just being himself. No doubt that some people, even though they would never say they believe this, are living in theological constructs that are outworkings of a thought that makes God subservient to some cosmic rules. I can totally see the danger Doug is talking about here. If the gospel I am preaching starts and ends with God as a judge, then I am not giving the whole gospel. I am leaving a lot out. I love the quote from Willard about vampire Christians who need Jesus for his blood and nothing else. Christianity as a pessimistic, evil-obsessed religion of sin management is not Christ centered, God partnering, life at all. In fact, it is very self-centered. At our church, we say all of the time that Jesus did not come to give you a get out of hell free card. He is a savior once for all and today. I love the way a video (Welcome to our church) we show sometimes says it. That video says that Jesus didn’t come to give us a get out of hell free card but that he came to give us a live life to the fullest invitation.

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is suggesting a different way of living for his followers but I don’t see it as having nothing to do with the legal system I think it is showing us that following God’s laws is about what is going on in the heart because what happens in the heart is what dictates what happens in the hands. This doesn't negate the legal system but gets us to the roots of our problems before they become full blown ourworkings of our hands. The religious leaders in Jesus' day (and today)were so worried about what the hands were doing and they paid no attention to what the heart was doing. When we focus totally on what the hands are doing is when we begin to get out our point scale for sins and this is where things begin to really get nasty.

When people talk about point scales for sin (making some sins count more than others) I think they have gone into the territory of the Pharisees, thinking that some people are beyond God’s usefulness and forgiveness. But this is where I begin to see beauty in the doctrine of depravity. In it, there is no point scale for sin. It’s not the individual sins that make us enemies with God. It’s the fact that we are sinners that makes us enemies with God. There is no point scale for sin. No matter what the sin is, no one is ever beyond God’s usefulness or forgiveness. I think Jesus hung around the prostitutes and tax collectors for many reasons. He wanted to show the Father’s compassion on people that the Jews seemed to have little compassion for. He was living out Micah 16:8 by showing justice, mercy, and humility. Among many other reasons, I think a huge reason he hung around them so much was that they were crying out that they needed God in their lives because without him they were hopeless wrecks.

I think that one of the metanarratives of the Bible is that we are hopeless wrecks and we need God’s help and grace in our lives. I see this especially in Genesis 3. Humanity had one rule. ONE. What did we do? We broke it. We are helpless to do it on our own. We need God.

On a separate point, what do we do with Romans 5 saying that we were once God’s enemies? I think humanity was created to be God’s partners but we became God’s enemies. God was not slow in showing us that we had become his enemies but just as quickly as he showed us that we were his enemies he showed us that we didn’t have to stay that way. He offered a way for all of humanity to be blessed and he used Eve to give humanity that blessing. There is a relationship between God and humanity that is not broken. The Holy Spirit works on our hearts to pull us closer to him. The Holy Spirit shows us our sinfulness but he also shows us the path to righteousness and life in the kingdom of heaven.

I agree that its not the breaking of some code that is the problem of sin. It is the twisting and distorting of humanity’s relationship with our creator that is the problem. Like Switchfoot says, “We are meant to live for so much more.” It is because God is not distant and far off but intimately calling me by his Spirit that I know that. The point made on 158 – 160 is beautiful stuff. We can envision life without sin and that is why it frustrates us so much. I never thought of it that way. This is it. Life as a Christian shouldn’t be thinking about punishment for those who we have fractured relationships with and who have fractured relationships with God. Life as a Christian should be about seeing how God is going to use me to repair relationships with others and repair their relationship with him.

That’s funny. I like the overall point Doug is got to in chapter 13 but I don’t like some of the things said on the way there. Doug seems to be fine with the end result of the desperation for God created by the theology of depravity but he doesn’t like some of the things done along the way (and hey, I'm with you. I don’t like some of the things in the heavy Reformed circles either).

A Christinity Worth Believing 1

2008-07-10T22:54:00.001-07:00

I just finished page 144 of A Christianity Worth Believing. Pagitt says some wonderful things and some things I really have questions about. Hopefully I can find someone who will dialogue with me about this book. It seems like the main point of this chapter is to leave “the depravity” version of the creation story (The version taught by most Protestant churches, the more Reformed the more prominent, that says that because of Adam’s sin we are separated from God and out of relationship with him) and embrace the hope filled version of the creation story that he sees (God created man in his image and lives in relationship with his creation, longing to see them partner with him in his work in the world and that did not change after Adam and Eve ate the fruit.)

As he talks about what did happen as a result of the fall he says on 135 “Their state of being did not change; their DNA didn’t change; they were as naked as ever, but suddenly they saw it as a problem.” If their state of being did not change then why does Romans 5 talk about the rest of humanity being screwed because of Adam’s sin? If noting changed inside of them then why are they now going to die a physical death? I think humanity’s state of being is very different than it was in the Garden of Eden. I don’t think God is on the other side of the chasm waiting on me to come to him either. I fully believe that God is using all kinds of people, even people that do not want to be used by him or even believe in his existence. It feels like Doug is saying that I cant believe that all humans still have the image of God just like Adam and Eve and still believe that we are seriously flawed and messed up and different from Adam and Eve before they ate the fruit.

I am also very concerned about this whole language of partnering with God. At firs it was ok but as he continued to hammer it in chapter 12 it looks more and more like business partners with equal investment and power. I believe that all in the kingdom of God are to be carrying out God’s mission in the world (being creative, spreading his love, sharing the fruit of his Spirit). I just believe that it is not me + God doing these things but God through me doing these things. It is God carrying out these wonderful things. Not me. Romans 15:18, 19 and 2 Corinthians 2:14 seem to be clearly teaching that it might be my physical mouth or hands doing a good deed but it is actually God who is doing it.

He says at the end of the chapter that chief end of man is to live like God. He says this in opposition to the statement that man’s chief end is to glorify God and enjoy him forever. Is living like God different from being like God? It seems as if Adam is banished from the Garden because he is being too much like God. Too much and not enough at the same time. Even so, I still see living like God as a means to the end of glorifying God. I agree that we need to be like God in many many ways. We are living as his sons and daughters. I don’t think God would use that metaphor to describe our relationship if he didn’t want us to grow up to be like him.

So, I have said these many ways in which I question the point Pagitt is getting to but I do want to say that I am really enjoying this book so far. He is saying some really beautiful things and he is saying some really insightful things. I am really excited about the Church Basement Roadshow coming to Birmingham. In case you don’t know, it is Saturday, July 26 at Disciple’s Fellowship. It is 10 dollars in most cities but it is being underwritten in Bham so its free!

The Light of Christ in the Darkness of the Restaurant Industry 1

2008-07-02T02:25:00.000-07:00

For years I have been struggling to live as a Christian in this world, especially in the particular industry I have chosen to make a living in while I go to school, the restaurant industry. We are a different kind of people. Most of us stay out late, party a lot, drink a lot, and do a lot of drugs. Notice the consistent use of the word a lot there without much variation. The movie “Waiting” pretty much sums it up. It doesn’t matter if it is Macaroni Grill where we had 30 servers or Brocks where we have five servers, we are pretty different from your average 9 to 5 bunch. Scott, one of the chefs I worked under at Brocks, said that the restaurant work is one of the toughest environments to stay pure. I am not quoting him exactly but I wish I was. He was such a quotable guy. In my first week of work there he said, and I do quote this from memory even a year later, “There are some necessary evils in the world and my mouth is one of them.” I laugh out loud again just thinking about that day.

So, hopefully this will be the first of many posts about what life is like trying to follow Christ as I work in the restaurant industry.

I was listening to Rob Bell, one of the most fantastic preachers I have heard, from his sermon posted on iTunes on 4/26/2008 and just got smacked. It is good when God smacks you with something good like this. I recommend this sermon to all of my Tapestry people (because this is just great Gospel driven stuff) and all of my Beeson friends (because it is great Gospel driven stuff and I think he is preaching up your alley), especially those who like to throw my boy Bell under the bus. Mars Hill Bible Church MI is going through the book of Philippians, VERY SLOWLY. Its great!

In this particular sermon, Rob is preaching on Php 2:3-4 - Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others. He is hitting on some great stuff, but at 28:30, after talking about the trinity loving together and being in harmonious creativity inviting us in, literally pulling us into it, he starts really getting into this word, “others.” He says, “Its not look to those and serve those who you like, those you normally hang with and its kind of fun to serve them. Essentially the flow of the argument Paul is making is that the one soul, spirit, love, and mind will be encountered in orienting yourself around others. If the trinity orbits and encircles each other and serves each other, then we should serve others in the same way. We should mimic this serving in the trinity by serving others.” He then throws out the name Karl Barth (this guy can hurt your feelings, or simply make you have a man crush on him) and quotes him as saying, “What Paul is getting at here is that the strange, the different, the unintelligible, the subjective aspect of my neighbor, is the garment in which the one thing meets me.” As Rob goes along, he asks if I have anybody in my life that matches the words strange, different, the unintelligible (the person who drives you barking mad), the subjective aspect of a neighbor (man you have to be a German to use a word like that. This person doesn’t know how I set things up to operate and does not function objectively how he universe is supposed to work).

Immediately someone from work pops to mind. There is this guy who I feel like makes it his personal goal for that day to make me wish I had never come to work and maybe wish I had never come to life. Its always something with him. He talks about me nonstop and nobody can or does do anything about it! He breaks down teamwork more than anybody I have ever worked with and he drives everybody crazy. And to top it all off, this guy’s name is the name that Becki wanted to name our first boy. Get that for irony. But then, it hits me. Ugh. Rob explains, “The one thing he was referring to is God’s grace. If you want to truly understand what it means for God to have enveloped you in his grace, peace, forgiveness, hope, and light, then orient yourself around the strange, the different, the unintelligible, the coworker, the person who absolutely sends you out of your gourd. Circle around them and in your frustration and pain of trying to serve them and love them well you will be face to face with what it means for God to have embraced and loved you in all of your strangeness, difference, and unintelligibility. That person who most gets under your skin may in fact be the garment of God’s grace that is coming to you to bring you more fully into the love of God. If I could actually even learn to take one step to circle the interests of that person it would be a step into understanding more fully what it means for God to love and accept me. If I could learn to not hold their past against them, maybe I would come to understand what it means for God to not hold my past against me. Maybe if I could take one lap around them with all of their flaws, I would better understand the God who embraces and loves me in spite of all of my flaws. The OTHER, the one in your midst who most rubs you the wrong way may in fact be the grace of God coming to you, saying I drive you nuts and I am an invitation for you to understand the Trinitarian nature of the universe all the more fully my friend.”

Rob continues to quote Barth, “The claim my neighbor makes on me, on my patience, attention (“oh not again”), consideration (“I would prefer to ignore this”), on my love, is the claim of the one thing. We discover respect for each other, not on this ground or that, perhaps without any grounds, counter to every ground, simply because we are bidden when looking at our neighbor to think of the one thing, of grace.” Rob says, “It is the most frustrating and maddening dimension about this person that is God’s invitation to enter more fully into the grace and peace that God has extended to me. The degree to which this person draws out of me and demands of me things that absolutely infuriate me may in fact be the claim of the one thing and may be God’s grace.”

Wow. So, there it is. The big old gauntlet thrown down by a one two punch of the Holy Spirit brought to me complements of the tag team of Rob Bell and Karl Barth (those two should never be allowed to team up again). There is unmistakably a person in my life who is my “other” to a T! So now I start praying for God to allow me to show him mercy and grace and for me to get the benefit of experiencing his mercy and grace more fully. I have some more thoughts on how this is going but I will save that for my next work post. Surely we can change something.

Blogger

2008-06-20T00:27:00.000-07:00

Well, as i typed in the address (www.blogger.com) I thought to myself, "Im not really that much of a blogger." But, I will tell you that I have been reading a lot of blogs and I even got my feet wet by subscribing to some blogs and putting them into my google reader which I can easily access from my Blackberry. So, blogging world here I come...again. This Sunday at TOH we are going to be continuing in our series on Questions and Doubts with the question of what to do with anger at God. Tal and I had a really good conversation about that today. I will probably wait until after Sunday to post the contents of that conversation because (not that I really think anyone is reading this) I dont want to let the cat out of the bag as to where he is going. I really had that about the deductive preachers that hand you an outline (especially those really predictable fill in the blank ones where you can get an 8/10 before the sermon even starts) and then give you a mini version of the sermon during the first five minutes. Im sitting there wondering why I should listen to the rest of it if I have already heard a five minute version and I have the outline which tells me all of the important stuff anyways.

What do you do with your anger toward God? Is it ok to be angry with God? Is there a difference between being angry at God and hating God?

Check out this picture i will probably use as a graphic during the sermon.

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Questions and Doubts at Tapestry

2008-06-16T09:06:00.001-07:00

Hi everyone, I posted an episode to my podcast, Tapestry of Hope.

Click this link to check it out:
I Sometimes Doubt God Even Exists

- Tapestry of Hope

more of you in my life

2008-05-30T00:49:00.000-07:00

this phrase kept coming out of my mouth as I prayed tonight. I got up, googled it and found this video. It really ministered to me over just what I was praying about. I hope it ministers to you.

In case you missed it, the quotes on the screen were from Smith Wigglesworth. Have you ever heard of Smith Wigglesworth? What have you heard about him? Let me know in the comments section.

Keeping busy

2008-05-28T23:11:00.000-07:00

That sounds like such a noble statement doesnt it? Im just trying to keep busy. Or, you have to keep busy. Of course we have all see those stupid...well I shouldnt call them stupid...just poorly misled...bumper stickers that say, "Jesus is coming so you better look busy." That is the thing...we are all too busy. On Memorial Day I was too busy playing with my new Crackberry to spend time with my girlfriend and friends from church who were just a few feet away from me. Too busy. And its not just Crackberries that keep us busy. We have been too busy for years. Even the great Jonathon Edwards talks about the business that was abundant in his life time when he says, "When we look at the world we see that people are exceedingly busy."

So, people were busy in the early 17oo's and we are still busy today. What drives all of our business? Edwards says it is our affections and I tend to agree with that. Our affections have gone astray and we have gotten busy with lesser things. Like CS Lewis says, its not that we dont have enough passion but our passions are too low! I dont even know what affections have been leading me but I do know this, in the last week I have been reminded of the fact that my affections are way out of kilter (whatever that means).

My friend John Robert Dobbs passed away last week in a tragic accident. He was a kid in the first youth group I was youth minister over and his Dad, John Dobbs, is the person who hooked me up with the Presidential Scholarship to Magnolia Bible College (I must give some thanks to my boy Gary Kirkendall too) which is what has led to me now working with Tal at Tapestry of Hope and finishing my M.Div. at Beeson instead of going down the road to pursuing my BA in finance and my MBA. So, I have a lot to be thankful to John for and we used to be really tight buddies.

As soon as I heard the news I sent out an email to about 30 people I thought to be people of prayer and I started praying to God (the God of all comfort) for him to give comfort to John and his family. I realized at this point just how disconnected I had become from my good friend John. And I thought to myself, "I should go down there for the memorial service." But I didnt. I should have, but I didnt. I dont know why. I have read blog posts by people from Tulsa, OK who were there but I didnt make the trip from Birmingham.

John Robert was a wonderful kid. Most of my memories of him are from when he was a young kid in the 5th grade. Some of the pictures I have seen of him are of him leading worship and he looks so different, so grown up. I hate that I missed all of those years with him. I really hate it. It is truly my loss. I dont want to loose the precious time I have with those who love me, those that I love. God has given me the gift of friends and I need to invest in that gift wisely. Its not that Im asking for more time with them, Im just confessing that I have wasted the gift of time God has given me. I dont want to be wasteful anymore.

Where have my affections gone? I dont know, but I know I dont like where they are. I love this man (John Dobbs) and I hope I get to spend some time with him really soon. I hope God opens up that door for me. I need to be asking, seeking, and knocking which is what Im going to do right now.

April 6, 2008 at TOH (Clean Sweep)

2008-04-06T20:44:00.000-07:00

http://tapestryofhope.podomatic.com/

We talk a lot about addictions at Tapestry and we believe that a lot of us (maybe every one of us) are addicted to something whether we admit it or not. We might not look like it like the bums (that are bumming off of other bums) in 5 points but us folk (me included) that live in the Bluff Park suburb of Hoover have addictions too. At Tapestry, we believe in the validity of the 12 step program for addiction recovery and on the first Sunday of every month this year we are taking a biblical look at one of the 12 steps. This being the fourth month of the year, we are looking at the fourth step which is "taking a fearless moral inventory of ourselves." Here is some of the stuff you wouldn't know just by listening to the sermon.

We have this idea that people need a place where they can settle down and connect with God. At TOH we open the doors to the worship space at 15 til but we ask that people enter in an attitude of prayer and meditation. We have the foyer area set up with coffee and snacks as an area for people to hang out and talk about what is going on but we ask that every one keep their conversation outside when they enter. This is something we have been trying for a few weeks. Some weeks I feel like it goes over really well and some weeks I wonder if anyone saw the sign or cared about the sign. On the days when it happens I really think the room feels different and worship just seems...well...better.

Propmtly at 5:05 we started it if off with a TOH classic video "The Breastplate of St Patrick." Next, yours truly, that would be me, played what might go down in TOH history as one of the worst vids yet. Notice I didnt say graphics...I said videos. Ok ok...I thought it was funny when I saw it on Youtube...and I thought it was funny the second time I watched it...but it just didnt fit after having everybody enter in a spirit of worship and meditation. I dont know what I was thinking. Teresa Prince did the welcome (excellently) followed by reading Psalm 111.

Marc Phillips brought this awesome violinist with him that rocked the house. This week we put four songs together with this video in the background. Next, we had three people stand and read Scriptures (Jeremiah 17:9-10, 1 John 1:8-10, and Psalm 4:4)back to back. We really believe in the value of the public reading of Scripture. This is something that is every worship service we have. We are kind of liturgical in that way. Marc led us in one more song and then we showed "Spoken Word: Woman At the Well."

During the sermon I showed several pictures from postsecret.com. If you havent been there, check it out and check out Drew Marshall's interview with the creator of postsecret. Be careful. Some postcards you might think are OK to show probably arent. If you are like me...or if you ARE me...get a censor for this.

Tal led us in a time of reflection, beginning to make that moral inventory and then we focused on the forgiveness that we have in Jesus as we moved into communion.

This being my first time at writing about this I probably didnt do as good of a job as I wanted to do. But it is what it is.

OVERMATCHED

2008-03-19T18:49:00.001-07:00

No Country For Old Men got me. It got me more than any movie has gotten me for a few years now. When I say it got me I mean that I have been seeing images of the main villain in my head. One time when I was walking to the steps of my basement to go back up to the kitchen I imagined that Chigurh might be standing there waiting on me. (I know that sounds freaky…but hang with me) For some reason he didn’t have either of his trademarked weapons with him when I imagined him. I imagined asking him why he didn’t have his weapons with him. Then I realized this wasn’t a conversation I needed to be having so I put him out of my mind. I can’t remember the last time a movie got to me like that. This movie got Becki really good too but I can remember the last time a movie got her that good…movies do that to her. I can normally realize that movies are just fictional stories, especially when I know the actors in it but there was something just too mysterious about Anton Chigurh (played by Javier Bardem). I thought at first it was something about the fact that I have never seen Bardem in a movie and so his character seemed more like a real person since I didn’t know anything of that face other than the character Chigurh. After watching the bonus material I realized that a big part (probably the biggest part) of the fear that Chigurh incites comes from his mysteriousness. We don't know where he came from, exactly why he was there, or where he is going to. One of the most interesting takes on Chigurh is when someone called him a homicidal lunatic Sheriff Bell said he wouldn’t describe him as a lunatic but as a ghost. Why did he describe him as a ghost? I think It’s because Chigurh was unlike (not just unlike but way beyond) any earthly evil he had experienced before. In one of the few dialogues of the movie, an old man in a wheelchair (Ellis) asked Bell why he was quittin’ from being the sheriff. Bell's response simple. He was overmatched. Was he overmatched? There’s no doubt that Bell was overmatched. His entire staff was overmatched! There was no way they were going to catch Chigurh or stop him from doing whatever he wanted to do. Sheriff Bell...I know the feeling. The Bible makes it clear that we have an Enemy that wants to take us down and take us out (1 Peter 5:8) and that this Enemy is more than even the angels can handle (Jude 9). So to say that I'm overmatched by the devil is an understatement. I’m way in over my head. I can’t fight him on my own or even with my accountability group but that’s what I do and I get bloodied up every time. Some feel so overmatched that they may want to retire from this world because this world is no place for any men (old or young). Because you are putting your body and your soul at hazard when you say, “OK. I will be part of this world.” Alone, I know I'm overmatched. But guess what…(whispering voice)…I'm not alone (1 John 4:4)…and really…when all of the chips are pushed forward…my soul is just fine.

Free Beer For Your Story!

2008-03-12T13:52:00.000-07:00

Last night was great! The “Men O’ Tapestry” finally put up our “free beer for your story” signs. Why did we do that? We did it because people want to tell their stories, even if it is to a stranger, and we at Tapestry want to hear their stories because we believe everybody’s smaller stories are part of God’s larger story and we want to help people see that and start living for the larger story. The first two times I said to someone, “Tell me your story”, we got into really deep stuff and I had a great opportunity to tell them about the Gospel. Of course this time I was hoping for “greater things than these.” Last night was different though. Last night we just listened. There never really was that wide open door to share the gospel but we are laying the foundation. We heard three real stories (mainly surface stuff) and one outrageous story about the time this guy got drunk at Tiki Bob’s, walked six blocks back to his car (where he passed out laying across the driver’s seat and the passenger seat with his feet hanging out of the driver’s side door), and woke up in the fetal position in the passenger seat with a homeless person driving him around Southside. From now on, as we are doing our study of Blue Like Jazz, I think we are going to have the "free beer for your story" sign up and anybody that wants to can come over and share their story at anytime. Next Tuesday, Casey and I are going to stay at Jackson’s until we close it down. Last time we did that we talked to “the couch surfer” whose real name I can’t remember right now...probably because it wasnt nearly as interesting as the fact that she surfs couches. That was the first time Sea Bass and I really teamed up in a conversation for the Gospel and it was beautiful. If you know Sea Bass you know that we pretty much only agree on one thing…Jesus…anything else is uncivilized. Oh the hopes for the future of Tapestry...

Theologians Dont Know Nothing About My Soul

2008-03-05T11:58:00.000-08:00

Monday night Sea Bass and I went down to Mob town to see WILCO! We first heard about them in Blue Like Jazz...and let me say...TY very much Donald Miller for introducing us to them. One of my favorite Wilco songs is Theologians. Most of us at Beeson Divinity School are aspiring young theologians, to use a term I first heard eight years ago in Kosciusko Mississippi and only this year did I realize that the beloved Helmut Thielicke was the one who wrote the book Coker and I got that term from. It used to be said that the main function of the preacher was the cure of souls. Are we still in that business? Do we know anything about souls - let alone the cure of souls? Paul says in 1 Corinthians 2:9, “No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what the Lord has prepared for those who love him.” So, obviously nobody knows anything about what God is going to do in the lives of people, so no one knows anything about the cure of souls. Wow. That sure sounds hopeless. But, look at verse 12. But. Now this is a really big but. I love that word, especially when Paul uses it. Almost every time Paul puts his big but in the middle of a sentence things turn out good. I mean, it looks like it is going to be bad, really bad, and then Paul sticks his big but in there and says, “God has revealed it to us by His Spirit. The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God.” This word search can mean to search out or to investigate. When used in the sense of animals it means to sniff out. This is probably why many have called the Spirit the hound of heaven. The hound of heaven is sniffing out your soul but the question still remains. Do we theologians know anything about people’s souls? In Revelation 2:23 in the NIV Jesus says, “I am he who searches hearts and minds.” That word the NIV translates to “minds” (and know that I'm an NIV kind of guy…so I'm not bashing on them) is only found once in the NT. In the LXX (The Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures) it is found several times, most commonly translated as “kidneys” (Ex. 29:13; cf. 29:22; Lv. 3:4, 10, 15; 4:9, Dt. 32:14). It is translated metaphorically in PS 138:13 as “inmost being”. This is not the brain that the Lord is searching but something much deeper. One writer said that the kidneys are where we filter things out and this filtering system is the part of us that the Spirit looks deeply into because it determines what stays and what leaves our bodies. We have the Spirit of Jesus living inside us, the same spirit that Paul had but what are we doing here to grow in that? Because as I see it, any class here that has the word Spirit in it is pushed to the realm (the ever shrinking and hard to get into realm) of “electives.” Electives? If the class has the word grammar, syntax, translation, exegesis, history, or theology in it, it gets pushed to the front and center and made a “requirement” and a “prerequisite.” I don’t think I want to be known mainly as a theologian because as Wilco says, “theologians don’t know nothing about my soul!” I want to be known as a curer of souls! What do you want to be known as?

Happy Valentine's Day

2008-02-14T11:04:00.001-08:00

One of my profs said today, "I dont celebrate those Roman Catholic Holidays...just to show how Protestant I am." Do you think that'll go over well with Becki? haha. Well, this Valentine's Day I dont have to go to work (for like the first time in like 5 years) but Becki and I are not doing our big Valentine thing until next week. You see, the first few years I couldnt do something with Becki on Valentines Day because I had to work at the restaurant...well...lets just say my little girlfriend didnt like not celebrating the traditional lovers day on the traditional lovers day. But, by the third year, we had established our own tradition...that we would celebrate Valentine's Day the week after Valentine's Day. So, a new tradition was started. But this year, when I told my love that we could actually go out on THE ACTUAL VALENTINE'S DAY what did she say??? She said, "Thats not our Valentine's Day. Our Valentine's Day is the week after." So, I have set the reservations for next Wednesday and tonight we dine at Chic Fil A. I gotta love my little "STJ". Here is a vid from the great people at PostSecret.com. We run some PS stuff during the our worship gatherings at Tapestry sometimes...and it can get a little dicey. Have a great Valentine's Day and dont't forget to call 1-800-1BISHOP Sunday, March 2 between 8:00 and 9:00 central standard time.

The Office

2008-02-05T20:25:00.000-08:00

Since the strike is still on full force, why not admit that you reall are addicted to the office and join this group for addicts. It is not really a recovery group per se, but a way for you to feed your addiction until it takes over even more of your life.

http://apps.facebook.com/iwatchtheoffice/invite.php?id=6856734

The Leader Of Our Company

2008-01-29T12:06:00.000-08:00

Thank goodness it is not Ossama Barack or whoever it is...haha...inside joke. Oh boy...the joys of the first day of school. I just sat through a class where we actually read out loud the entire syllabus. I stayed up really late last night studying for a Hebrew quiz and we didn't even have the quiz today. Doesn't that suck!? I did get a free lunch in the Global Center and carry the flag in the processional for today's service of chapel. Man I looked like a tool. No pictures were taken...sadly.

Time at Starbucks and O'Henrey's has been good. Now on to Jackson's for a little Blue Like Jazz! How I go to church w/o getting angry.

Do do da-do do da-do do da-do-do...

2008-01-27T22:41:00.001-08:00

My Dad will probably tell me that I am going to burn out from blogging to much. He is probably right. My lovely gf and I watched Juno Friday night after we ate at Prairie Fire Grill. That link I gave sends you to the IMDb site but you should really check out the official movie website too. There are some super sweet things on there for you homeskillet! Oh man...and check out wikiquote's Juno page! Juno was great. I think I give it a 5/5 stars. I say "I think" because this whole stars thing is new to me. I quickly give it 5/5 because I'm already ready to watch it again. Be watching for a future post on how the gospel is portrayed in that movie.

School starts back Tuesday and I have'nt touched Hebrew ANY over the Christmas break. OUCH! But, to easy my pain I get a free meal (since im in the SGA) tomorrow night with the newbie Divinity Schoolers. Possibly a few future Tapers of Hopestry in there...who knows?

A Lot of Trouble (I Got Trouble All Over Me)

2008-01-25T15:11:00.000-08:00

Im listening to Wilco, Sky Blue Sky right now. Good stuff and hopefully I will see them in Mobile (my hometown) in a few weeks! So, last Sunday I preached at Tapestry. That was a scary thing and an awesome thing. I didnt have my boys Tal and Casey there with me but I had the support of my wonderful gf, Becki Moseley, and my boys Clint, David, and Kaelan (still celebrating 27 years of Kato). I must give kudos to Clint for doing a good job keeping up with me as he went through the Mediashout presentation I made, Becki for doing a great job with the welcome, Kaelan for doing all of those little things that Casey normally does, and Steve Wingo (Wingo Star) and full band (featuring our very own Barry Paige (possible sp)) Here are some of the things I did with the sermon, including the pics and vids for you listeners that want to know what was going on.

You can listen to the sermon in several ways but the best is to go to the sermon page on Tapestry's website. From there you can download it into itunes and listen to it from there.

I got this video from Sermonspice.com It ran during the introduction and as the background to the three Scripture readings we had (Matthew 25:31-40, Luke 5:27-32, and Mark 10:17-22) and the Scripture references during the sermon. I felt like this was a good video to get people thinking about what title they give Jesus. As I started my sermon, this video was playing and whenever there was not anything else I wanted up there, I had this playing. One of the biggest things I wanted to get across in this sermon is that some people (probably everybody at some time or another, even me, even dedicated Christians) come to Jesus as just a teacher or someone who has a quick fix for their problems but we need to come to him, falling at his feet, as the ONE we have waited for, the ONE with all of the solutions to the trouble we face.

This is the Derek Webb video I showed at the beginning of the sermon.

This is the picture of Becki's nieces I showed

This is the self portrait I showed

This is the Tomlin vid I made to close the sermon and move into communion.

Communion is a very important part of what we do at Tapestry every week. We are kind of traditional in that way. It is probably one of the only ways we are traditional. I love that community and we would love for you to come be a part of what is going on there.

How do you see Jesus? Who are you waiting for? How can you be part of God making everything right on the earth?

Great Day to be Alive

2008-01-24T20:22:00.000-08:00

Today has been a great day of relaxation. I REALLY slept in today. I guess that means I will be up really late tonight. I watched three more episodes of Six Feet Under which I still love then I went over to Becki's and we watched Home of the Brave. Home of the Brave was OK. I guess I give it 2/5 stars. It's main strength was the portrayal of how the different characters were getting back into the patterns of normal life after their tour in Iraq. It really makes you think about how tough it is when soldiers come back from war. Last night I watched Death Sentence. I think a lot of people will not like this movie but I really appreciate the honesty that is in it. A lot of stuff is really stretched, like how all of the sudden Kevin Bacon's character, Nick Hume, goes from being someone that knows nothing about guns to being a tactical genius that can chase down people while reloading his shotgun and spitting BA lines of intimidation at them The honesty is over the fact that revenge gets you nothing. All of the paths of revenge that the people took in this film just led to their own destruction. That is totally the Bible's teaching on revenge. For some reason, as Tal always says, we don't trust that God is going to take out the vengeance on evil that He promises to take, so we don't let Him do His job. The vengeance I can take out on someone will never be as full or redemptive as the vengeance that God takes out on evil. I am on my way to hang out at J Clyde's with some buddies. What things do you not let God handle and in doing so ruin everything in your own life? Can you connect Kevin Bacon to Six Feet Under and Home of the Brave in six steps or less?

Sermonspice

2008-01-17T02:41:00.000-08:00

I will be preaching this Sunday at Tapestry! What am I going to preach on this week you ask? The same thing I always preach on! I will be using a video from Sermonspice in the sermon and I look forward to using more vids from them. This website is a great place to go for a wide range of videos from a wide range of producers. I will let you know how Sunday went.

Is He present in a very real sense in my life?

2008-01-02T23:19:00.000-08:00

I just read a great article in Golf Digest on Tiger Woods that has a lot of commentary on his father’s role in his life and what has changed after his father’s death. The author, Jamie Diaz, quotes several times from Neil Chethik who says that after a father’s death, sons that were close to them start to do things to connect themselves to their fathers and integrate their fathers inside themselves so that the father can still be around. Diaz says that in Tiger, Earl Woods is still around in a very real sense. The first thought in my mind was how our Father in heaven lived through His Son and how after Jesus’ death the Father can live through us who have His Spirit. Chethik said that sons do things that connect them to the memory of their father. They wear their father’s old clothes, use their old tools, read their favorite books, and listen to their music. What am I doing to connect with my father? I ask that question thinking about my earthly father (who is still alive and well) and my heavenly Father (who BTW is very alive and very well too). According to Chethik, men who were close to their fathers often achieve their greatest accomplishments after their fathers are no longer physically present. This happened in Jack Nicklaus’ career and it is happening in Tiger’s. The Bible is satiated with statements of the superb things we will do with the Spirit’s presence in us. The sad thing is that I really resonate with what Chethik says when he says that the process of connecting to the father is a healthy process that tends to wane in intensity in about 18 months. 18 months huh? That’s 540 days. I normally wane in intensity in about 5 days and I know I'm not alone. My Father lives through me and I can do great things because of that but I need constant encouragement to be doing the things that connect me to Him so my communion with Him is deeper (same goes for my communion with my Dad in Jackson, AL). Diaz sees Earl Woods’ presence in a very real sense in Tiger’s life. I pray that people see my Father’s presence in a very real sense in my life. So...may the heavenly Father’s presence be very real in Tiger’s life and in your life and in my life.

2007-12-15T11:05:00.001-08:00

Click here to get your own player.

Podcasting baby!

2007-11-26T13:15:00.000-08:00

Check out Tal Prince's sermons!

Treo Problems

2007-04-26T02:10:00.000-07:00

Pic 1 - Trying to get it to work.
Pic 2- Getting a little frustrated.
Pic 3 - I just found out that it will not work at all!
Pic 4 - The tool that sold me this phone left a self portrait on the memory card. What a jurk.
Pic 5 - My Treo sits there...dead and useless.

Ok, so here is the story...
I am an avid Ebayer. Im not as avid as some of my friends, but I shop there from time to time and I love to check on the prices of items. I have recently been watching Palm Treos. I love those things! I found one that was pretty cheap because it didnt come with a charger or a stylus and it was kind of beaten up. The add said it worked wit AT&T wireless, so I thought that since AT&T and Cingular merged that my Cingular SIM card would work in it. Well, I recieved the phone, bought a charger, charged it, and the SIM card didnt work. So, I called Cingular ("the new AT&T wireless" as they call themselves) and they told me that all AT&T customers received a new phone when the two companies merged! HA! So I tell this guy that I want a refund and he tells me that he is not refunding...you know what. So, after a little threatening, he relented and is refunding me minus 4 dollars, so I am out the money for shipping the phone back to him plus the 4 dollars. I will keep you updated on what happens next.

In other news:
I got a free cup of lemonade while I was out running today!

This is Idol Gives Back

2007-04-25T15:09:00.000-07:00

I loved the idea of Idol giving back. Great concept and great job on the corporate sponsors and matching donations. I would have liked to have seen "off camera Simon" in that garbage dump. So, here is my rundown of the contestants.

#1 (Chris) "This song is about how someone has the will to change someone's life." Good try Chris. This show is about giving to people who are starving, not manipulating someone into thinking your love is so good. I don't think that is the kind of world changing they are going for. I didn't like your singing anyways.

#2 (Doolittle) Of course she got me with the content of her song! There will come a day! She is the resident pro. A vocal masterclass! Whatever that is...it sounds good.

#3 (Blake) Good answer to the question and I still like your hair but a song about Communism? Come on. Give me a break. You keep imagining that there is no hell. The judges were right this time. Next.

#4 (LaKisha) The singing was OK at best. I agree with Simon. "Anything is possible when you believe." Is that right? Believe in what? Sounded like the song to accompany The Secret.

#5 (Phil) Good answer to the question. I wasn't impressed by Phil in the last two weeks but this week was a little better. I don't think he gave Garth justice in his rendition of that great song, but it was pretty good.

#6 (Jordin) Now, Jordin has been my favorite for the past two weeks and she is definitely one of my favorites this week. Good comments Randy. What a closer. And...she reminds me of Sarah Hodges.

Weren't LaKisha and Blake in the bottom two last week too? Hmmm...

As a wrap up, I believe that part of our job as Christians is to be a part of God's work of the holistic salvation of the earth. AI started us out on one part of that, now lets pray that God raises up people to see these people's eternal lives changed.

IN OTHER NEWS:
I just updated from Slimbrowser to Mozilla Firefox.
I preached my final sermon of the year for preaching class today.
I am about to go for a run. First one in some time.

2007-03-26T12:37:00.000-07:00

Spring Break is almost over and I'm getting ready to go back to school tomorrow. I have a book reviews due on three books, a test on another book and an essay midterm due this week. Needless to say I should have been working on these things last week, but here I am. The Tulsa International Soul Winning Workshop was great. Hopefully I will have a chance to sit down and write out what it meant to me. I did pick up some great books while I was out there.

First and Second Chronicles from the Thru the Bible Commentary Series by J Vernon McGee

A Generous Orthodoxy by Brian Mclaren

How to Read the Bible Book by Book by Gordon Fee and Douglas Stuart

What to Wear to the War by Warren Wiersbe

On Saturday, my Dad and I went to one of my favorite restaurants in Tulsa, Kilkenny’s. After parking the car, we were walking to the restaurant and passed this “New Age” store, Peace of Mind Bookstore. They had some books for sale outside and I picked up these titles…

Saint-Watching by Phyllis McGinley

The Lord’s Horesman (John Wesley the Man) by Umphrey Lee

A Handbook of Contemporary Theology by Bernard Ramm

The Waiting Father (Sermons on the Parables of Jesus) by Helmut Thielicke

I am most proud of the last book! I got all four of those books for about ten dollars and I got the first four books for about 20 dollars. All in all I think it was near a “Viking style pillage”.

Were the claims of Christianity unique in the first century

2007-01-09T21:11:00.000-08:00

I just finished listening to Rob Bell in sermon 399 from Mars Hill Bible Church. In it, he says that the claims of Christianity were not that unique from the other religious claims from that day. The main god from the Roman Empire was Mithra who was born of a virgin in a cave, was worshiped by shepherds, had 12 followers, had something to do with life and death being conquered, and originated around 600 BC. The myth of Attis originated around 200 BC. Some of the beliefs include that he was born of a virgin, , was hung on a tree, and rose from the dead. Another, the Adonis religion, originated around 200 BC, born of a virgin, was referred to as the son of god, and his followers believed he died to save humankind. Horace, an Egyptian god, was born of Isis who was a virgin, the legend originated around 1500 BC, he died from a crucifixion, and when he was a child foreign kings brought him gifts. When Caesar died, there was a comet and twelve people came forward to say that they saw this comet and Caesar’s followers said that of course they saw a comet because it was Julius, because he was the son of god, rising from the dead and ascending to the right hand of the god in heaven. So, if in the first century you said, “my God was born of a virgin and rose from the dead”, you might get a response like, “sweet man! Mine too!” The claims of the Christian faith simply were not that unique or original. Everybody’s god had risen from the dead. So, Paul writes in Corinthians saying that he didn’t come with persuasive words, but in humility with a demonstration of God’s power.

Have you heard anything like this? I have heard that the claims of Christianity are very unique when compared to the other religions. Maybe many other claims are unique, but those mentioned above are not?

One well respected biblical scholar told me that this was simply hogwash. He said that there was an inscription found in a Roman cave of a person with a donkey’s head being crucified. He said this was done because the Romans thought the Christian religion was so stupid and even Paul said that the unspiritual would think that someone hanging on a cross to save humanity was foolishness. He also said that Christianity was very different from other religions because it is the only one that doesnt make you earn your status. While I fully agree with that final statement, it still doesnt speak to the other claims like virgin birth, where he was born, who visited him, and how many followers he had.

As I researched this, I found this website, and this article written by a preacher turned atheist.

I first posted this with the third paragraph as the end. Then, I wanted to add in some links to the names of Attis, Adonis, and Mithra. First, I realized that I had all of those names spelled wrong. Secondly, I found that there is a ton of info on the net about these religions being very similar to Christianity and even more general info on those gods in general. Even the early church fathers commented on this very thing. This post was at first going to be just throwing up the question to see if anyone had heard of this stuff. Now, I see that it is all over the internet and I cant believe I have been in church for all of my life, have a BA in Bible, and am half way through a Masters Degree in Divinity and I have never heard this stuff. Let me make this clear to any of you out there that are Rob Bell haters...he totally believes in Jesus and his point in all of this was to get Christians to live more like Jesus would have them to and less like we have been living. The whole point of the message was that we should be demonstrating the power of the gospel, announcing that this is the kingdom of God coming to earth, and then if they want to hear more, fine, and if not, shake the dust off and move on.

So, I go on to more discussion on this and I hope you will join me.

Praying Like Jesus

2006-12-28T00:56:00.000-08:00

Christmas was great. I got to spend some good time with many of my family members and was even able to share some spiritual experiences with my Nana. I love Mayer’s new CD, Continuum. My favorites so far are Belief and Stop This Train. A while back, he played the whole CD on Star 98.7 and gave commentary between songs. That airing is available for download as a torrent at www.score1more4me.com

I just finished chapter 2 in God the Holy Trinity. In it, Bray discusses the Trinity in light of Galatians 4:6. He starts off by reflecting on how the concept of the Trinity was one of the basic doctrines that immediately separated the Christians from the Jews. As he concludes that introductory point, he says, “…whereas ordinary Jews were kept out of the holiest place in the temple, Christians have been admitted into the inner life of God. Only in that context, and based on that understanding, can we reconcile Christian theology with the Old Testament revelation. The God who appears as One to those who view him on the outside, reveals himself as a Trinity of persons, once his inner life is opened up to our experience.” Now, this springs off one of the most interesting statements he made which was, “From the beginning, the Christian knowledge of God in Trinity was first experiential and later theoretical, an order of things that has always characterized authentic Christian understanding and confession. We may even say that whenever theory has claimed pride of place over experience, the result has been some form of heresy, as for example in the Arian controversies of the fourth and fifth centuries.” That in itself raises all kinds of questions about what we experience as Christians vs. what Scripture tells us we should experience as Christians. But back to the original quote, let me just say that this is such a beautiful thing! Now, we can pray like Jesus prayed! We can call God “Abba” (if you know any Brennan Manning, that word carries a special meaning to you)!

I sit here, I think, wow some Jews really saw some incredible things happen after they prayed and Jesus told his followers that certain great things would only happen by prayer. I am empowered much more than the disciples were when Jesus was alive on the earth. That thought really challenges me because I really don’t live demonstrating that empowerment. In Mars Hill sermon 399, Rob says that Jesus wants to save Christians from having to have all of the answers because we are simply to demonstrate his presence and then proclaim that this is God renewing and reconciling all things.

As I get ready for Passion07, I am hoping to be reenergized and motivated to live as a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, crying out Abba as the Spirit empowers me to pray like Jesus did.

Chris Tomlin Interview

2006-12-18T11:33:00.000-08:00

I am so pumped for Passion07. I highly recommend the Passion07 podcast. There are interviews with John Piper, Louie Giglio, Chris Tomlin, Beth Moore, and others where they talk about the Passion vision for God’s RENOWN. In an interview with Chris Tomlin, he said that he loved the sentence, “There is something about the morning that awakens a God who never sleeps.” He then referenced PS 30 – Weeping lasts for a night but joy comes in the MORNING, the miracles of manna that were provided in the MORNING, Joshua assembling the people early in the MORNING to march around Jericho, and the women who went in the MORNING to find the tomb empty. I thought about this for a second and thought, its not the morning that wakes God up do something, it’s the morning that wakes us up to what God is already doing. This is the whole principle behind “be still and know that I am God” and the Sabbath. Relax, because while you were sleeping, God was hard at work doing things you could have not even asked Him to do or imagined Him doing. Actually, I think this has something to do with why the Jewish day started at nightfall. When the Jews woke up in the morning, they weren’t ready to start the day, instead they were ready to jump into a day that was already going full force. In light of that, my prayer at the beginning of the day is not for Him to do something awesome through me or for something to happen the way I want it go. My prayer is a prayer of praise for what He has been doing already and a request to be used by Him in that work.

So, may you wake up, looking to see what God was doing through the night and asking that He bring you on board for that activity and may you give glory to God in Christ Jesus throughout all generations.

Jesus Evangelism Question #1

2006-11-30T21:58:00.000-08:00

The professor of evangelism at Beeson Divinity School says that Jesus' earthly ministry was characterized by three actions. (I first wrote this post saying that the ministry was characterized by three things, but that is not specific enough. These are actions, not attitudes. Some example answers would include "walking on water" and "turning water to wine". Obviously those arent the answers because we only have it recorded that he did those things once each.) What do you say those three things are?

2006-11-21T00:12:00.000-08:00

Crowder talks about Lake's death and A Collision

2006-07-09T22:31:00.000-07:00

Check out this interview with David Crowder in Christianity Today. Pretty good and a must read if you are a Crowder fan.

Christians that set the pace for culture

2006-07-07T02:28:00.000-07:00

These thoughts came after listening to Louie's message at the Jump Conference held earlier this year at NPCC.

One of the things I want to stamp on kids in my youth ministry is that Christians need to be setting the pace for culture. I want the word out that if you want something done well, then you need to get a Christian to do it because they do everything like they are doing it for God. Here is a glimpse at a pair of Christians across the pond that are doing just that.

Natasha Bedingfield (born November 26, 1981 in London, UK) is a pop singer and is also the sister of fellow pop singer Daniel Bedingfield. Before going solo, she was a member of a Christian worship band named The DNA Algorithm with her sister Nikola and brother Daniel. She went onto co-write a number of Christian worship songs at the popular Hillsong London Church. Her debut album, Unwritten, landed at #1 on the UK Albums Chart in September 2004. By the second week it went platinum, and it is now triple platinum. She also had a #3 single in the UK Singles Chart titled "Single" in May 2004 as well as a #1 single titled "These Words" in August 2004.

Not only is Natasha the third solo singer in UK history to debut at #1, but she and her famous brother Daniel Bedingfield recently made it into the Guinness Book of World Records as the only brother and sister to have solo number ones in UK chart history.

May you set the pace for culture

Kyle Lake's last sermon

2006-07-06T23:55:00.000-07:00

I wrote this on July 4th

I just finished reading Kyle Lake’s last sermon. It is inspiring. I really like it. Some might say that it is too light on theology…heck…I might say that. But inspiration, creativity, connection to the speaker, and connection to God are what I think are the cornerstones of a good sermon. This sermon has them all. If you know me, you know that I think Rob Bell and Louie Giglio are the greatest preachers around today. Now, I want to get my hands on some Kyle Lake stuff so I can see what he was all about and have my preaching style shaped somewhat by his preaching style. This sermon was never preached because he was electrocuted on Sunday morning just before he was to deliver it. Good thing for us that he didn’t prepare his sermons like me and walk up there with an outline written in crayon during the announcements. Here is the conclusion. Maybe it will tempt you to read the whole thing.

Live.
And Live Well.
BREATHE.
Breathe in and Breathe deeply.
Be PRESENT.
Do not be past.
Do not be future.
Be now.
On a crystal clear, breezy 70 degree day, roll down the windows and FEEL the wind against your skin.
Feel the warmth of the sun.
If you run, then allow those first few breaths on a cool Autumn day to FREEZE your lungs and do not just be alarmed, be ALIVE.
Get knee-deep in a novel and LOSE track of time.
If you bike, pedal HARD… and if you crash then crash well.
Feel the SATISFACTION of a job well done—a paper well-written, a project thoroughly completed, a play well-performed.
If you must wipe the snot from your 3-year old’s nose, don’t be disgusted if the Kleenex didn’t catch it all… because soon he’ll be wiping his own.
If you’ve recently experienced loss, then GRIEVE.
And Grieve well.
At the table with friends and family, LAUGH. If you’re eating and laughing at the same time, then might as well laugh until you puke.
And if you eat, then SMELL.
The aromas are not impediments to your day.
Steak on the grill, coffee beans freshly ground, cookies in the oven.
And TASTE.
Taste every ounce of flavor.
Taste every ounce of friendship.
Taste every ounce of Life.
Because-it-is-most-definitely-a-Gift.

If you want me to email you the entire sermon manuscript, then just say so in the comment box.

So now...may you LIVE and find inspiration from the great crowd of onlookers that watches every step you take in the race!

Underoath, church, Jesus, and forgiveness

2006-07-06T02:26:00.000-07:00

Current reading: Can We Do That?, Relevant Magazine
Current listening: Hyperstatic Union, Practically Speaking Podcast

“It’s a big deal to us to burn all Christian stereotypes because, unfortunately, those stereotypes are often true. Ninety percent of Christians turn their back on people and make you feel uncomfortable and awkward. In my experience as a child growing up in the church, people were like, ‘If you don’t believe what I believe, then you don’t belong here.” - Spencer Chamberlain and Aaron Gillepsie from Underoath.

The stereotype - Christians are unforgiving and like to point out your wrongs while they hurry to cover up theirs.

WOW!

When one of the key themes of the gospel is forgiveness, it seems like we have turned out much like the Pharisees trying to keep a list of do’s that American organized Christian religion has out there (unwritten of course). So, what is the solution. How do we get forgiveness back to the center of the cause of Christ followers? How do we break the stereotypes?

Underoath members have at least two reactions. The first one is to say forget about church and just focus on your personal relationship with Jesus. Ummm....no thanks to that suggestion. The reasons are too many to list here.

The second though seems like what Jesus was going after when the Pharisees caught a woman in the act of adultery and dragged her in front of Jesus for judgement. Chamberlain says that the new album is going to be more than heavy. It will be more honest as well. “Its important to the band, both personally and artistically, to be raw and transparent in their songs. My trash is all out in the open” says Chamberlain. If we are going to join the ranks of worshipers like this woman and the woman that washed Jesus’ feet, wetting them with her tears and drying them with her hair, we must be like Isaiah when he cried out that he was a man of unclean lips who came from a people of unclean lips. We must realize the greatness of the separation that is between God and every man I am a man of unclean lips, eyes, mouth, ears, hands, feet...I have wronged over and over, but I sit here forgiven! That separation was bridged by JESUS!

So...may you forgive widely and very Jesus like out of the great sense of forgiveness you have received yourself.

Dreaming For God's Glory

2006-07-04T19:03:00.000-07:00

Current Reading: Erwin Mcmanus - Seizing Your Divine Moment
Current Listening: David Crowder* Band - B Collision

When I was in third grade my teacher wrote on my report card that it seemed that I was “out to lunch” during class. I was then and still am a daydreamer. I think of awesome things, incredible things, and things I probably will never do. Some things I think of excite me and some things scare me. Sometimes when I drive over a bridge I think of what it would be like to drive off of the bridge, my car flying through the air and landing in the water.

Would I live?

Would the Ranger XLT sink quickly?

Not that I want to hurt myself at all, but the thought of the event and the exhilaration are painted perfectly in my mind in an instant. Sometimes I have to shake myself out of my dream world because it seems so real. Dreams are exciting! They give us something to live for. We aren’t going to live above what we dream about. My buddy Jance put it like this, “If all you dream about is flipping burgers, then that’s all you are ever going to be.” I think God wants us to dream big and dream wild.

So, as I thought about our dreams I wrote down “dreams are always better than reality.” I read it out loud thinking about it and it was like the Holy Spirit spoke to me directly and said “but it doesn’t have to be.” Now first off, if that was the Holy Spirit, He doesn’t use proper grammar, but hey…they Bible is full of things that wouldn’t be considered proper grammar in English today. When I presented this idea to my youth group (Dreams are always better than reality…but they don’t have to be) one kid insisted that daydreams would always beat reality. He said that nothing could happen that could beat something he could imagine. My mind immediately went to a statement made by Paul when he was writing to the church in Ephesus. Here is Eugene Peterson’s translation of Ephesians 3:20…God can do anything, you know - far more than you could ever imagine or guess or request in your wildest dreams! He does it not by pushing us around but by working within us, his Spirit deeply and gently within us. So here is the dichotomy…We aren’t going to live beyond what we dream about, but we can live beyond our wildest dreams!

So…may you dream big and go for it and may God take you beyond all that you could ask or imagine.

God still speaks prophetically through His servants

2006-06-29T02:52:00.000-07:00

Its 4:51 am. I just went to Duff's huge house to drop off his Toyota Land Cruiser and pick up my Ford Ranger to drive it back to my tiny apartment. On the way I start thinking. I hate driving this crappy truck and I start getting down on myself about some other stuff. It wasnt a good trip home. When I get home, I get an email from Brian. I can see the first few words while it is still unopened in my inbox because of how GMAIL is set up. The words I see are Dude, there were some NLers talking about you and... I think to myself, "Great! What did I do wrong now?" I opened the email to find the following message.

Dude, there were some NLers talking about you and the direction of the youth Weds night. They all had awesome things to say about you and where you're taking the teens.

It's coming bro. I think you're doing some great stuff. We all knew you were capable. Just keep it up and God's gonna honor your willingness to serve. Love ya bro.

I sent him back an email with a gladness in my heart that God still speaks prophetically through His servants. Those were the EXACT words I needed in that situation.

So, now...may God speak through you and may you, when He is speaking through you, be an open pipeline to those who need to hear.

To all of the faithful blogers...big up yourself!

2006-06-26T01:30:00.000-07:00

This is me and Becki at our Valentine's dinner at Chez Fon Fon

I think I am back in the world of blogs after reading this post from www.evotional.com. Its the top ten reasons why he posts.

#10 Blogging is a form of digital discipleship. Neo-scrolls.#9 Blogging is the way I share what is happening in my head and my heart.#8 Blogging is cathartic. It helps me process what I'm thinking and feeling.#7 Blogging is the way I leave a trail. My kids and grandkids can read it someday.#6 Blogging is a sermon supplement. Actually, sermons might be a blogging supplment.#5 Blogging is a way to carry on a conversation with lots of people at the same time.#4 Blogging is a form of auto-biography.#3 Blogging is one way of capturing the things God is revealing to me.#2 Blogging helps me remember what God doesn't want me to forget.#1 Blogging is a stewardship issue. It's one way I share what God is teaching me.

So...may you continue your faithful blogging and may your teaching, relating, and living be fuller because of it.

Letting Scripture Read You

2006-01-23T22:29:00.000-08:00

Here are some of my thoughts after reading some more in A New Kind of Christian.

What if, instead of seeing the Christian faith like a building (built on one foundation – The Bible) we saw it like a spider web (having many anchors such as spiritual experiences, exemplary people and institutions we have come to trust, and the Bible.)?

What if faith was more like the earth than a building? Faith could never be stable in the way God intended it unless there was come kind of forward momentum and if that momentum was not in the field of the gravity of God. Birds in flight, bicycles, and ships all use movement in relation to larger forces to get their stability.

John Wesley – The church gets its stability from the interplay of Scripture, tradition, reason, and spiritual experience.

Maybe we are working from a much too static model of authority and we need to be called to a higher point of view to see that our situation is much more dynamic, much more predicamental.

Approach the Bible on less defined terms. Instead of approaching it with our modern assumptions and expectations and our aggressive analysis, maybe we need to read it less like scholars and more like humble seekers trying to learn whatever we can from it, in the context of our sincere desire of love for God and do what he wants. I guess that would be the momentum – the desire to do God’s will. Maybe we need to read it with more of that desire and less of our critical analysis. Maybe postmodern is postanalytical and postcritical.

Instead of reading the Bible, let the Bible read you. How does a scientist approach a frog in dissection, a detective at a crime scene, now how is that different from a teenage boy approaching a girl? You would be less aggressive and controlling and more relational. Even further though, what if you were a patient with cancer and you were meeting your oncologist for the first time? What feelings would you have then?

What would happen if we approached the text less aggressively and more energetically and passionately? What if we honestly listen to the story and put ourselves under its spell and instead of going to the text to get our questions about God answered, we went trusting God to use it to pose questions to us about us? What would happen if we just trusted ourselves to it – the way a boy opens his heart to a girl, the way a patient trusts herself to an oncologist? The practice of lectio divina does this.

Where the cross meets the dream catcher

2006-01-12T12:46:00.000-08:00

What would you think if you saw a cross and a dream catcher hanging in the rearview mirror of a car? Is that person messed up or is there something messed up in the way we have been presenting the cross?

My mechanistic view of God

2006-01-11T17:11:00.000-08:00

I was reading A New Kind of Christian ( the book Rob Bell...it all goes back to him doesn't it...haha...and his wife read right before starting Mars Hill) and I was wondering if any of this hit you guys like it hit me.

First off, do you ever think of modernity vs. postmodernity? That is a huge discussion in itself.

Is it possible to have a faith that transcends the historical situation we find ourselves in?

What does it mean to say that God is in control? When we think of the word control, we think of someone controlling a car or a machine. We probably can not think of it without thinking of it mechanistically. But, before the modern world, there were no complex machines. Whatever a person in ancient Biblical times would have meant by saying "God is in control" is almost certainly very different from what we mean today. For that person, God's control was associated with farmers controlling animals or parents controlling children or kings controlling subjects - all very different from an operator controlling a machine.

What would that do to the question of how can God be in control if there is so much evil in the world now that the definition of control has been radically changed? If a driver wrecks a car, then its the drivers fault, but if a child is raised to do right and then when he is older he doesn't, then its not the parents fault. Even though the child is thought to be under his parents control, he is still free to make his own decisions.

That example of control is just the tip of the differences between looking at God through a modern lens and looking at Him through a medieval lens or even a postmodern lens.

What do you guys think?

Bought and OWNED!!! (Romans 1:1, Isaiah 26:8)

G