The power of family

The Church can be a very powerful thing, when in balance with God’s heart, word, and spirit amazing things happen; things that can bring the hardest person to a place of falling in love with Christ.  This past week I have seen the power of God’s family coming to life, in spite of what could be explosive, hurtful, and misunderstood.  Although there are some very hard realities to deal with, God is showing each of us that His good will is here to bring us a full life.

When we take steps to be Disciples of Christ first, in all ways, even when dealing with hardships in the Church, we begin to see the big picture, the miracles, and truly experience the Church for what Christ intended – A healing family, a loving family, and a living family.

Grieving

My wife and I just learned some terrible news (the kind that gets your hands trembling) about a family member. No one is dieing, and no one has died. The ramifications are huge, the wake from this news will cause many to feel anger (such as I do), frustration (such as I do), and either move people closer to relying on God or cause people to shut down and continue on like nothing happened, yet slowly becoming more cold.

I wish I could explain it, I wish I could express how I feel in my spirit about the fears that have finally become reality, due to people dwelling on the problem, rather than expecting God to fulfil the needs.

The affect this has on Alexis and I will be one of spiritual and relational challenges.

Please pray for understanding, leaning on God’s word, how Alexis and I should participate, how the people involved should move, for God’s discernment, for healthy confrontation on questions.

Lord I ask for your truth, your wisdom in how I should personally minister in the depths of this event. I know what you have said in my spirit, and I have a tension with others on how to healthily administer the truth. I ask that you give me, all of us, a clearer understanding, and that most of all that circumstances do not tear apart your kingdom. I pray for wisdom in dealing with resources and relationships. I humbly submit to learning a new level of trust in you, and in the people you have placed around us. May the shortfalls of the world NEVER determine the call, relationship, or love we have for one another.In the power, authority, and love of Jesus I pray. – Amen – Make it so.

 

Obligation to love

This Thursday I’m speaking at our young adults group, I’m calling it “An obligation to love”.

We really don’t have a choice to love. Our God doesn’t have the choice, He gave us free will so that we would love genuinely. As a disciple in the teachings, divinity, and person of Jesus, I do not have a choice to do anything but love people. For who they are… human. Everyone sins, we all make mistakes, our flesh is weak. And still I must love, I must accept people’s faults. None of this is a free license to be walked on, beat up, and spat on. No, that would mean I wasn’t loving myself.

To love God, is to give him praise, allow him to speak into my life, and obey Him in his commandments (to love Him and people). To love people is to treat with respect, listen, have sympathy for, speak encouragement, and most of all speak a life of truth. If I notice another brother with red flags in his life (IE, spending habits, the way he talks with girls, etc) than to truly love him I must confront him out of the relationship that I have. Confront someone is not shaming them, it’s not condemning them, it’s speaking truth where it counts (as Jesus did w/ the woman at the well). If a friend is always seeking to be with people, and is feeling lonely when not with friends, than I may probe into the priority prayer in their life.

For our culture, these ideas usually prompt the response of “it’s none of your business” or “that’s personal”. Yes, I know, and because I love you I want to see you grow in that area. The key to all of this is relationship though, and speaking gracefully, the more grace, and the more relationship we have, the more our love for Him and others can be shown.

We must stop being afraid to love in truth. This is what I believe worshipping in truth and spirit is.

Jaded and bitter

There is so much talk “out there” on topics such as the emergent church, homosexuality in the church, drinking in the church, how to do church in today’s culture, how not to do church in today’s culture, and with all of this comes a lot of bitterness, finger pointing, religion, and legalism. I am tired of it, I’m tired of going from one blog to blog, news story to news story, reading about the things people see wrong in the church. Very seldom do I read about the good that the church is doing.

It is easy to be jaded, but much harder to take the higher road and speak the truth of Jesus gracefully and unconditionally. It’s easy to see the things we disagree with, with the Christian community, our own church, and our fellow believers. It’s much more hard for us to challenge people when we see hypocrisy, well for some it’s easy, it’s hard to do it in grace and encouragement that Jesus would have (Now leave, and sin no more, the woman at the well).

I believe we are obligated, as disciples, to encourage, with grace, the truth. The key is with grace, we seem to have forgotten what it means to give grace to people. We can not assume people will simply change their behavior, it takes graceful correction, reminding, retraining.

The key is learning to send and receive correction, grace, and to listen to what God puts in our heart for that moment, not simply regurgitate something we have been told.

Update: Ben (in many more words) describes exactly what I’m trying to say, see here

We are all builders in some way.

In some way we are all builders in God’s kingdom and we all have some kind of impact on other people’s lives therfore we need to pay attention to the relationships in our lives. What exactly are we buildibg in the lives of those around us?

In 1 Corinthians 3:13-15 Paul says:

But there is going to come a time of testing at the judgment day to see what kind of work each builder has done. Everyone’s work will be put through the fire to see whether or not it keeps its value. If the work survives the fire, that builder will receive a reward. But if the work is burned up, the builder will suffer great loss. The builders themselves will be saved, but like someone
escaping through a wall of flames.

Be careful…

So, the last week or so I’ve been thinking that I’m a bit tired of doing proposals, regular maintenance, etc at work… I realized I actually like doing the “fire fighting” stuff (the emergencies, down servers, etc)… well out of the blue one of our clients loses their server, and everything with, despite the fact that they had redundancy and all of the precautionary things to prevent it.

The funny thing, I’m okay with it, yes it is a little stressful having them breathe down my back (their pretty nice about it though, not talking to the air, yet). I like it, weird eh?

PS… Also take a look at one of my buddy’s blog from my small group.

Talking to the air

I think we all know people who “talk to the air” – the kind of people who make comments like “Boy it’s hot in here, why isn’t the window open?”, while these kinds of comments can very well be benign and not mean a thing, many times it should be translated as “I’m hot, can you open the window for me?”

While the example above doesn’t have any big consequences other situations do create bad communication and frustration between people. In the example above, I use to either do one of two things, I would either open the window for the person without asking others, or I would ignore the person (since he/she wasn’t exactly talking to me anyway) because I didn’t care for the window to be opened.

The problem this creates is that someone will not be heard, either the asking person (when ignored) or others… Now when I hear something like that I either ask “Are you hot, do you want the window open?” which allows the person to directly ask what he/she wants to me and others around, or I ask “So, what you are saying is that you are hot and want the window open?” These responses allow full communication.

While the examples are a bit lame, I think the point comes across, full communication is much more healthy and creates a safe enviornment for people to share and fellowship, rather than speaking in codes and adjusting to people’s fears.

Sending and recieving… TX/RX

So God has put on my heart lately a lot about sending and receiving… messages that we hear and say to one another. I know that for most of my life I have filtered the things people say through the experiences of my past. I also know that when I say things to people I expect them to understand the message in the same way I would. Again when I send a message it’s being done through my life filter.

Over this next week I’ll be building a sermon on the importance of being aware of how others receive your messages and how to send messages in an effect way. I figured this is a good place to process since the written word can be much more thought out.

Get the message?

My internal conflictions

A quick list of things that I’m struggling to grasp right now in my life and walk with Jesus.

  1. Raising funds without sounding like a broken record/beggar (see previous post, didn’t the apostles help the beggars though , but they didn’t enable them to continue in poverty, right?)
  2. Dicipling a generation and/or individual people that are not open to confrontation, either they are afraid to confront others about moral issues, or they don’t allow others to confront themselves. The big defense: DON’T JUDGE ME! Where did this reaction start? Where did loving someone into a closer relationship turn into condemnation?
  3. How to love people through differences. I’m a person that loves to disciple people, hates to offend, yet I am a disciple of Jesus, which Jesus naturally offends people. Sometimes I am so passionate about discipling on things like, the importance of living above reproach, all are called to ministry (we all have gifts for the kingdom), the blessing of living and walking in moral authority, that all I want to do is either ring people’s necks who blatantly live lives contrary to this, or I just get depressed and grieve over the state of people I love.
  4. A regular, near daily, prayer-life. A prayer life that focuses on God, and his relationship to me and others, not just a selfish, me-centered prayer life, but one that is about moving forward and listening (such as listening about these four areas).
  5. Added 10:05 – The conflict of our needs, and other’s resources. This is a completely jealous conflict ion, but one none the less that I struggle with. Alexis and I pour a lot of our resources into our calling, our time, our money, and our relationships, it’s all about our calling for discipleship. All around us though we see people spending their time and money on their own desires, cars, houses, that in our opinion (and judgmentally) are well beyond what they need. Why does a single 24 year old need a new Mercedes? Why does a single 25 year old spend over $600 a month in entertainment? Just some thoughts.

So those are the four, now five big things in my life that I feel stuck on right now. I don’t expect to just “get it” one day, I expect though to process through these things, some of them probably for the rest of my life (2 and 3). But I do expect for me to take responsibility in these areas, to do the hard things and ask, to address people on things when I feel conflict yet all in Grace and with the basis that no matter the outcome my care for them won’t change – that my friends is how Jesus lived.

Updated 10:00 am. – Each of these things I think is related to surrender, we/I need to surrender and allow God and his church to do it’s work, unhindered. We have to live as examples, so if we do something that isn’t above reproach – that is against the path that Jesus has called us to live – we must surrender it. It’s not easy, it’s a self-less act that says I will follow my Lord, even though my desire is something different. Sometimes even our God-given desires are not the right path, for the time. I know this, I’ve lived it, I’m living it right now. So instead of crying about it, I’m living my life on the path, and it’s full of blessings! A CHILD! A BABY GIRL. That wouldn’t be such a blessing if I/we had gone on our own whim on our own path.