DownshoreDrift

I've started teaching through the Pastoral Epistles (1 & 2 Timothy, Titus) this Sunday in the Sunday School class that I do. I did a lot of background stuff on Paul's relationship with Timothy and Titus, his letters, his missionary travels, and his church planting efforts. This afternoon, I had a thought:  If Paul were alive today and he were to write a letter to the evangelical Church in America, or the Church in the American South, what do you think he would say? Keep in mind that Paul ALWAYS said good things in his letters, even to the church in Corinth. But, he also always had instructions, rebuke, and correction as well. Without being just overly negative and angry, what do you really think Paul would praise the church in America for and what would he warn us about and correct? Obviously, I have my ideas, but I would like to hear yours first, if you have any thoughts. I'm speaking of the Conservative Evangelical church and even Southern Baptists, by the way. So, lets stay away from critiquing the Unitarian Universalists or something like that, okay?

So, what do you think? How would Paul write to us to encourage us, remind us of God's plan, and get us back on track? If you can think of the type of language that Paul used, that would might make it interesting as well. I don't know if anything will come of this, but if we can't think this way from time to time, we will have a problem being prophetic in our witness.

Tim Keller, pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in NYC says that. I think that he's right.

I've been asked by a couple of people over the past week about repentance - what it is and how you do it. I preached about it on Sunday as I happened to be at that point in the Book of Acts - Acts 3:19-20, which says, "Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord, and that he may send the Christ, who has been appointed for you—even Jesus."

Now ultimately, Biblical repentance is about salvation. It is about turning AWAY from your sin and rebellion and turning to God through faith in Jesus Christ. Too many people make repentance into something like, "stop doing bad and start doing good." But, there's no power in that. True repentance means that we turn AWAY from sin and turn TO faith in Jesus.

Repentance means to turn around. A man might say, "I was headed for a cliff, but I repented. I turned around and went the other way and lived."

Repentance is more than just being sorry. It means that we turn around - we forsake our sinful thoughts and activities. It is not a burdensome thing, but rather, it is extremely lifegiving. When we repent, we step into who God has truly made us to be as we place our faith in Jesus.

Who needs to repent? Paul, in Acts 17:30 says that repentance is for everyone: "he (God) commands all people everywhere to repent." We all need to repent because we have all sinned and fall short of God's glory. And, repentance is not just a one time thing. Jesus told the church in Ephesus in Rev. 2:5 that was doing so much right, to "Remember the height from which you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first. If you do not repent, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place."  Turn around from the direction you were going and turn to Christ. Even Christians.

So, I thought that I would list some steps to repentance. Repentance, for the Christian, renews our relationship with God and puts us back on the right path. It involves a looking away from and forsaking past behavior and attitudes and a looking to Christ. It seems that many do not know how to repent. Here are some thoughts:

1. Ask God to search your heart (Pslam 139:23-24). We are all pretty subjective. If it is my job to search my heart, I will often rationalize attitudes and actions that God would get rid of if I would just submit to Him. When asking Him to search my heart, it is helpful to read the Bible and focus on passages like Colossians 3.  What from that passage do I need to believe and incorporate into my life? What do I need to deal with?
2. When God shows you the areas that you need to deal with, confess them to God. Confession is basically agreement with God that we have sinned (1 John 1:9). When we agree with God about our sin, we admit that He is holy and that His character is in tact. We confess our sin and claim His forgiveness. We agree with God about what we have done, give it to Him, and begin to receive His forgiveness. This enables us to walk with Him. Amos 3:3 says, "Do two walk together unless they have agreed to do so?"
3. When you confess your sin, forsake it. Turn away from it. "Put off the old" (Eph. 4:22).
4. Turn to Christ in faith. It is not enough to just try and stop doing/thinking negative things. We must additionally turn to Christ. He makes us "new in the attitude of our minds" (Eph. 4:23). In this, we receive His unlimited forgiveness and mercy.
5. We must put move on. We put on the new self and enter into times of refreshing (Eph. 4:24).

Repentance has gotten a bad rap. It has this image of being this guilt induced experience that makes us feel awful and very ashamed. That is not so! Biblical repentance is liberating and it leads to life! It is a way that God has given us to throw off our sin and turn to Jesus to find true life! It is an avenue to wholeness, because we are only truly whole when we walk with Him. We all need to be in an attitude of repentance all the time. We never become so holy or perfect that we do not need to continually realign ourselves with God's work, will, and purposes taking place around us. Who do we think we are?

I am not talking about feeling bad all the time. But, I am talking about having a basic understanding that I need to realign myself to what God is doing and His holiness and not the other way around. I need to turn around from the direction that I was headed, and by faith, turn to God. It seems that we make repentance too hard on people and they miss an incredible blessing of laying down their will to take up the yoke of Christ. We have made another blessed means of knowing God more deeply into a shameful and legalistic exercise that is only for "really bad sinners."

Well, I am here to confess that I need continual repentance. I need to consistently realign my life with God's will and purposes. I am not ashamed to admit that, because that is a place that I find refreshing, life giving, living water from Jesus. Sometimes it is difficult for us to admit that we need to keep turning our lives over to God, but it is true. And, there is life in recognizing the we still need a Savior each and every day.

May we engage in true heartfelt repentance this week. May we confess our sins and our desperate need for Christ and also the victory that He has for all who believe in Him. Then, by faith, may we receive the incredible grace that God lavishes upon all who call upon Him and move on into the path that God truly wants us to walk - a walk in agreement with Him.

Probably one of the best statements I've ever read on the church and Christian community comes from Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Life Together. It comes from pages 26-29. I have been preaching through Acts and this fits quite nicely. Stop everything you are doing and read this right now!  You won't be sorry!

Innumerable times a whole Christian community has broken down because it had sprung from a wish dream. The serious Christian, set down for the first time in a Christian community, is likely to bring with him a very definite idea of what Christian life together should be and to try to realize it. But God's grace speedily shatters such dreams. Just as surely as God desires to lead us to a knowledge of genuine Christian fellowship, so surely must we be overwhelmed by a great disillusionment with others, with Christians in general, and if we are fortunate, with ourselves.

By sheer grace, God will not permit us to live even for a brief period in a dream world. He does not abandon us to those rapturous experiences and lofty moods that come over us like a dream. God is not a God of the emotions but the God of truth. Only that fellowship which faces such disillusionment, with all its unhappy and ugly aspects, begins to be what it should be in God's sight, begins to grasp in faith the promise that is given to it. The sooner this shock of disillusonment comes to an individual and to a community the better for both. A community which cannot bear and cannot survive such a crisis, which insists upon keeping its illusion when it should be shattered, permanently loses in that moment the promise of Christian community. Sooner or later it will collapse. Every human wish dream that is injected into the Christian community is a hindrance to genuine community and must be banished if genuine community is to survive. He who loves his dream of a community more than the Christian community itself becomes a destroyer of the latter, even though his personal intentions may be ever so honest and earnest and sacrificial.

God hates visionary dreaming; it makes the dreamer proud and pretentious. The man who fashions a visionary ideal of community demands that it be realized by God, by others, and by himself. He enters the community of Christians with his demands, sets up his own law, and judges the brethren and God Himself accordingly. He stands adamant, a living reproach to all others in the circle of brethren. He acts as if he is the creator of the Christian community, as if his dream binds men together. When things do not go his way, he calls the effort a failure. When his ideal picture is destroyed, he sees the community going to smash. So he becomes, first an accuser of his brethren, then an accuser of God, and finally the despairing accuser of himself.

I heard this refrain quite a few times while we were down on the Gulf Coast this past week. Everyone believed in God. Everyone. They all pray. They all have some sort of faith. The Mississippi Gulf Coast is a heavily Catholic region and there is a pervading sense of spirituality and of faith in God.  Yet, so many really do not have a relationship with Christ. They are not sure if they are going to heaven. They hope that God is not wrathful toward them.

As I talked with our team, I told them that we were dealing with people who believed in both faith and works. Our job was to encourage them toward the faith side. We were to pray with them, to talk about Jesus be the only sacrifice for sin, to encourage them to place their full faith and trust in Jesus and to not believe in anything else. At times it was difficult, but at other times, the people were very open.

But, by and large, most saw their faith in God through an individualistic lense. They could pray and follow God on their own, so why did they need the church? Why attend church when God was personal or I could just engage in some type of abstract belief in Him and receive His blessing? All in all, spiritual life was about them, but it rarely reached into their everyday life. Yet, they were so very glad that the Baptists had come. Over and over again I heard from Catholics that if it had not been for the Baptists and the other Christian groups, they do not know what they would have done.

Fortunately for them, all of those Christians who came did not share the same individualistic notions of faith that some of them did. Many want to both believe in God and maintain their own independence. They want to have faith, yet have total freedom. Yet, God set it up where all followers of Christ would gather together in a church, the ecclesia, the called out ones. As we gather together loving God and loving others, we experience His presence and power, both individually and collectively. We also become His hands and feet and we bring His Kingdom into this world - together. Every group that goes down to New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast is giving a powerful witness of the necessity and beauty of God's people, the church, being who they are created to be.  If your church has not yet gone down, you are missing a historical moment that will likely not come around again anytime soon. Sow seeds into the lives of the people of the Gulf Coast region.

Yes, people still say that they don't need the church to follow God. But, they are saying it with much less confidence as they see God's people live out their faith and not just talk about it. Hearts are being turned and people are asking questions. They are opening up to the Lord. That tends to happen when a Baptist group that you have never met travels from Tennessee and rebuilds your house.

Alright, enough complicated talk. Here's story from real life. If you've ever had kids, you can probably relate to this one:

The other night, my wife went to a movie with a friend of hers and I was left home with the kids. I fed them dinner and put them to bed. After the usual, "I need a drink of water," and "I'm hungry," and "He won't leave me alone," they finally got quiet and I no longer heard anything from them. At last. They were asleep and I had some peace!

My wife came home after 10pm and we talked for awhile. She went to the back by opening the door to the hallway that separates the back part of our house from the front. She walked past the hall bathroom and came and got me. There was a HUGE mess in the bathroom that was not there previously. She assumed that Caelan, our 23 month old did it. I told her that it could not have been him - I put him in the crib. This had Kieran, our 4 year old written all over it. Since I was home when the mess occurred, it was my job to clean it up. That logic made sense to her - to me, not so much. But, on my hands and knees I went.

There was some "poop" on the floor. There was also a toilet full of "poop." Apparently, we had run out of toilet paper in the bathroom, and instead of calling me, Kieran went looking for something to, ahem, wipe with. He found three washcloths under the sink, apparently. He used the washcloths for sanitary purposes, put them in the toilet like he would toilet paper, and thankfully (and predictably) he did not flush. I fished the washcloths out of the toliet and proceeded to begin to clean the bathroom. Ugh. What a mess. My wife still was not sure who did it, but I knew that it was the precocious one.

The next morning, I called him over to me and asked him about it. He put his head down, placed a finger in his mouth, and did not answer me. When I asked him if he used the washcloths, with more than a little fear he looked up at me with nervous eyes and said that he did do it. On accident. I couldn't help but smile. I hugged him and told him that it was alright, but next time, he needed to call me if he didn't have toilet paper. I would gladly get some for him.  He smiled, relieved that I wasn't spanking him silly, and said that he would call me.

At our Bible study tonight, I was teaching about how we fail to see God the Father as our Source of supply. Instead of calling upon Him for our "daily bread," we look for whatever we can grasp and what makes sense to us. We only end up making a big mess. We grasp at the wrong things and we get our "poop" all over the place. We become fearful over the mess that we've made and we pull away from God. The cycle repeats itself again and again. Fortunately, God has everything we need. He has a plan for us. He has a way that He wants us to live and if we would but come to Him and ask Him for help, he would provide for us.

The story about my son was kind of funny, but it reminds me of how I often live from my own strength and understanding instead of humbling myself and asking my God for help. It actually honors Him and brings Him glory when we call upon Him because we are confessing that only He can meet our needs. He give Him praise when we ask Him for help. We also humble ourselves before Him and He promises to lift us up. Because this attitude honors God, I don't have to worry about being right all the time or having it all together. I have nothing to prove. All that I have to do is call upon the Lord and let Him be my helper and my identity. If others think that I am weak or lack strength, so be it. I will trust in the Lord. Let that be the lesson that I learn from this, and it will have been worth getting on my hands and knees and cleaning up my son's mess.

Anyway, don't make too much out of the story. The analogy is endless. But, I thought that it was interesting for me to see that God was teaching me something, even in the midst of the mundane and more than slightly aggravating occurrences of daily life.   

Romans 5:8 says, "But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us."

Vacation was WONDERFUL!!! My family and I spent a week at the beach and it was great. I have a ton of pictures that I will be putting up later this week. The time away was much needed.

Here and there I was able to peruse some of the reaction from the SBC Annual Meeting. Let me just say that I am more than glad that I have decided to bow out of all of this. I will be limiting my involvement in SBC issues to being a contributing writer for the new SBCOutpost, which will be a group blog effort. Other than that, further participation appears to be pointless.

So, all of that brings me back to the point of my writing: to try and lift up the name of Jesus and to point out where I see God at work in the world around me. I have continued to think about the Fruit of the Spirit, so I wanted to start the week off with some further reflections on Love. We know that God is love. In Romans 5:8 listed above, we see how God demonstrates His love for us by having Christ die for us while we were still sinners. Before we had ever done anything good and while we were still completely stinking with sin, Jesus died for you and for me. It is hard for us to fully grasp that, because we become so convinced of our goodness and righteousness and we begin to feel that we somehow merit the merit of Christ. This is never more true than when we are judging others. Let me tell you a story to illustrate my point.

In the late 1990's, I was a young seminary student at Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary in the San Francisco Bay Area. My wife and I joined First Baptist Church, San Francisco, and from there started a ministry to homeless people. We used to meet with a team of other folks in their 20's on Sunday mornings really early. We started going to the Civic Center park, which bore the popular name of "Crack Park" for obvious reasons. Each Sunday morning, we would pass out sweet rolls, orange juice, and clean socks (homeless people love clean socks) to those who were just waking up on benches or under trees. This was right in the shadow of City Hall and the police and city leadership turned a blind eye to the wide stretch of homeless people laying in the plaza. We were their Sunday morning wake up call, and we would share breakfast with them, offer them prayer, and invite them over to a central place where we would share the Word of God with them. We saw several come to Christ through this and we began discipling them. It was a powerful time.

One Sunday morning I was walking around the park and I was trying to give away the food and bless people through prayer and/or friendliness. Then, I saw the most disgusting sight I had ever seen in a human being. Before me lay a black man who was a homeless transvestite. He had partial make up on with a half grown beard. He was a mess and could not keep himself up. He had his shoes off and his feet were swollen and were oozing pus from open sores. From his body emanated a stench that was nauseating. Actually, I found myself gagging at the sight of this "man", rejected by both the straight and gay community. He was a complete horror show. As I gagged from the sight, smell, and aura of this he/she who was clearly very ill, I knew that I could not turn away. I was being overwhelmed by my own precious sensibilities and I wanted to run, but I knew that was wrong. I wish that I could say that I was just SO compassionate. But, I wasn't. I didn't know what to do.

So, in that moment, I decided that prayer was the answer. I cried out to God and I asked Him to let me see that man the way that He saw him. Immediately, I was flooded with love and warmth. Tears came to my eyes and my heart broke for the man. I saw him as a child of God, broken and bent, but still bearing God's image upon himself. I was overcome by the love of God for him. I don't know if I remember a prayer ever being answered so quickly. I realized that God loved this man so much, that while he was still in his sin, Christ died for him. Love flowed out of me as well. I walked over to the man, offered him something to eat, told him that Jesus loved him and died for him, and then I hugged him. The man was receptive and opened up to me. I wish I could report some miracle regarding the man, but the real miracle happened in my heart. As I experienced God's love for this man who was filthy with sin, my own heart was changed and I felt myself experience brokenness over his alienation from God. I was overwhelmed with God's grace that was available for this man. I was overwhelmed with God's love.

What kind of God do we serve who could love sinners? What kind of God is it that demonstrates His love by dying for us while we are still lost in our sin? If God has forgiven us this way, then who are we to not forgive others? How can we push someone else aside when God has given all to bring us back to Himself? And, having experienced this for ourselves, how can we not extend it to others?

Ephesians 3:17-19 "And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God."

LOVE

The first fruit of the Spirit listed in Galatians 5 is LOVE. I am just going to list some relevant Scripture. Considering all that has been going on and the Convention coming up in the SBC next week, this should be self explanatory:

1 Corinthians 13

1If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 2If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.

4Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

8Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. 9For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. 11When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. 12Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

13And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

Romans 5:8

8But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

1 John 4:7-21

7Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. 10This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. 11Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.

13We know that we live in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. 14And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. 15If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in him and he in God. 16And so we know and rely on the love God has for us.
      God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him. 17In this way, love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment, because in this world we are like him. 18There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.

19We love because he first loved us. 20If anyone says, "I love God," yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen. 21And he has given us this command: Whoever loves God must also love his brother.

Most will probably not read this far because the Scriptures are familiar and this is not controversial enough to draw out interest. But, it is pretty important. If we have everything and have not love, we are not good for anything at all. Also, love is not just a disposition of the heart, but it is always carried out in action. "Peter, do you love me? Then feed my sheep." Jesus showed us true world changing love by laying His life down for us. How can we lay our lives down for those around us?

I have been very frustrated with the events of the past weeks leading up to the Convention in San Antonio.  I am going and praying for change. But, I know that if I go angry and looking for a fight, my spirit will be empty and I will only live out of the desires of the flesh. We all need to be filled with the Holy Spirit. May we never become so focused on what we can accomplish that we forget that our first priority is to love God and love one another - sacrificially. I pray that that attitude overtakes all of us in every aspect of our lives.

At the end of another busy week, I thought I'd just walk through a series of random thoughts and observations . . .

• Regarding the IMB stuff, at the end of the day, my position remains, "Can't we all just get along?" to quote the great 20th Century philospher, Rodney King. I have my position and others have their own, but I still maintain that I would be more than happy to work with or under cessationists, as long as our focus was on Jesus. These issues that are dividing us remain tertiary doctrines and there should still be room for different interpretation. Now, no more on this until San Antonio next month.
• Divorce rates have dropped to their lowest level since 1970. While that appears to be good news on the surface, it is most likely attributable to couples living together before marriage and waiting longer to get married. People are trying to make sure that they can really make it before they get married. According to God, living together before marriage is not the answer either. We should only be sleeping with our spouses and not going from person to person until we "find the right one." While I am glad that less people are getting a divorce, I don't think that the overall situation is any healthier as we damage our souls engaging in immorality again and again.
• I've just about decided that if Fred Thompson runs for president, he has my support. I am completely underwhelmed with the field yet again, but since Thompson can speak in complete sentences, has a commanding presence about him and seems competent, and shares the same values I share, he seems like he won't be an embarrassment. Plus, he did a great job on Law and Order, right? The last time we had an actor in the White House things turned out pretty well, so why not again?
• Family Time Trumps Church Involvement: This study from Leadership Journal came out last year, but with summer approaching, I thought it interesting. According to recent inquiries of pastors, the number one thing hindering local church ministry is the "family trump card." Families are begging out of church involvement because their kids are involved in tons of activities or because they are constantly tired. My opinion: Since family time has been held up as the most important thing for the lives of Christians by ministries like Focus on the Family and others, a situation has been created where families are sacrificing to have their kids at ball practice, ballet, and other activities all week long (not that FOTF teaches that), but are struggling with discernment regarding how they spend their time. I don't think that families should be at the church every day either, but I do think that we could use a lot more discernment regarding what we spend our time doing instead of running all over the world with our hair on fire and calling it "family time." More on this another time . . .
• A little girl with cancer that we know named Kennis Nix, who I wrote about a while back, has experienced an incredible miracle. She was in such a desperate situation that the doctors had basically said there was nothing more that they could do. Many people prayed for her to God for a miracle, including our family and church. They brought her in last week for scans, and to the complete shock of the doctors, they were clear! The MRI conducted this week was clear as well! They only found 5% of the previous cancer cells in her spinal column, which they feel they have a much stronger possibilty of treating. Praise God! I'll write more on this later, as God did an incredible thing in my life through praying for Kennis.
• Only 111 more days until college football season starts! In the meantime, our church is having a father-son outing on Saturday to a Montgomery Bears game. They are a minor league Arena Football Leage team. They are 3-7, but at least it is football, of a sort, right?
• And finally, Sunday is Mother's Day. I am married to the best mother in the world, my wife Erika. She does an awesome job raising our children and we are so blessed to have her in our lives. I also want to say how much I love my own mother and how thankful that I am for how she loved me and my sister and took care of us so well. I love you, Mom!

Last week at the Baptist Conference on the Holy Spirit, I engaged in a bit of argumentation that is a bit unusual regarding the continuation of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, but it has come to make perfect sense to me.  In 1 Corinthians 12 and Romans 12:4-8, Paul tells us that we are all one body, the body of Christ. The body is made up of different parts and each part needs the other. The eye cannot say to the hand, "I don't need you!" and the head cannot say to the feet, "I don't need you!" (1 Cor. 12:21).  In both passages, the idea of the body is related to the discussion on spiritual gifts. Clearly from context we can conclude that the members of the body operate as the one body of Christ when each member uses his/her spiritual gifts. The body analogy does not make any sense apart from this perspective if we consider the context.

Now, if I lose my eye, hand, or leg, I am considered deformed, right? I am considered to be incomplete and not able to fully do what I was created/intended to do. If I lose my leg, I might still be able to live, breathe, think, make jokes, cook, and drive a car, but I will not be able to run as fast as before, climb mountains as well as before, or be as strong. When attempting those things, I have to compensate by being stronger in other areas, or I just sit around and remember the good old days when I used to run fast.

God has given us spiritual gifts to make us strong and he intends that we keep them till the end. "What then shall we say, brothers? When you come together, everyone has a hymn, or a word of instruction, a revelation, a tongue or an interpretation. All of these must be done for the strengthening of the church" (1 Cor. 14:26). That sounds like a command to me. What about 1 Corinthians 1:7?  "Therefore you do not lack any spiritual gift as you eagerly wait for our Lord Jesus Christ to be revealed. He will keep you strong to the end, so that you will be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ."  (See Also Ephesians 4:11-16). We know from 1 Corinthians 12-14 that the main purpose of spiritual gifts is for the building up of the church.   So, doesn't it make sense that a lack of spiritual gifts would result in a weakened church? Hmmm. What is the state of the church today? Strong or weak? Could it be that we have neglected or abandoned some of the gifts that God has given us in favor of others that are more presentable and seem easier to manage?

Again, if I am missing part of my body, I am considered deformed or unhealthy. It doesn't mean that I am worthless or that I am loved less. It just means that I am not all I could have been if I had been healthy. I am blind in my right eye, and because of that, I was not able to serve in the military like I wanted to. I also have trouble with baseball, ping pong, tennis, raquetball, and night driving because I have no depth perception. I can't see a 3-D movie. Now, I have compensated and can still play those sports and drive at night, but it isn't what it could have been. I am aware of my limitations. I don't think less of myself and I don't think that God loves me less. But, I sure wish I had that eye. One day, I will.

Could the church be that way? Could we have lost some of the gifts that God wanted us to have to be strong? Except, He didn't take them away, we just quit using them and they atrophied. Or, we ran off the people who tried to use their gifts in certain ways because it didn't make sense to those who were not gifted that way. This goes way beyond tongues, miracles, and healings. It goes to the very heart of church life in the West. If all of the people with certain gift are run off, or if they are told that their gifts cannot function or don't exist, then what are you left with?  It kind of becomes like a half put togehter Mr. Potato Head doll. You have an eye here, an ear there, a mouth and an arm. But, it doesn't quite work correctly.

So, where could we have overcompensated? One area is in an overemphasis on the pastoral and preaching offices/gifts in church life. In some churches, everything seems to revolve around the pastor. I fully believe in Biblical church leadership, but I don't see the pastor being the only one in the church who is supposed to function the way we often see. Yet, he sometimes overfunctions and the result is a weak church. "Each one" is to contribute and bring something, remember?

Not all gifts are for the purpose of building up the church, at least directly. 1 Cor. 14:12 says, "Since you are eager to have spiritual gifts, try to excel in gifts that build up the church."  Paul is clearly saying here, I believe, that there are gifts that do not build up the church, otherwise he would not have shown the contrast here. Some build up the user, while others build up the church. The gifts that build up the church are greater (1 Cor. 12:31; 14:1-5), but it does not mean that the lesser gifts are not important as well. Some have said that gifts like speaking in tongues are invalid because they do not build up the church, but instead, they seem to build up/strengthen the user of the gift (1 Cor. 14:4).  Is it wrong to build yourself up in your faith and become strong in the Lord? The Bible doesn't seem to think so (Jude 20; Colossians 2:6-7; Ephesians 6:10).  Don't things like prayer, Bible study, fellowship, and ministry make us strong in the Lord? Then, should it not also stand to reason that exercising our spiritual gifts makes us strong as well? If I am strong, then the whole Body is strong. When I work out my biceps, it makes them strong, but it also strengthens and equips my whole body. So, personal strength is not mutually exclusive of corporate strength, but rather, it aids it.

Is the SBC headed for atrophy? What about our local churches? Will we run off people who exercise gifts of the Spirit that God tells us not to forbid (1 Cor. 14:39)?  Will we put more stock in our traditions and church histories than the clear reading of the text of Scripture? Will we continue to hobble along, overemphasing some parts of the body because we have cut off other parts that were given for the common good (1 Cor. 12:7)?  Just because we don't understand how all of this works does not mean that we should insult the grace of our Heavenly Father who graciously gives us all things. Some say that He gave gifts to the church when she was born, only to remove those gifts within a few decades. I think that Scripture says that without all of the gifts the church would be deformed, crippled, and weakened. I believe that it also says that God, the great gift giver, does not change and is not arbitrary:

16Don't be deceived, my dear brothers. 17Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows. 18He chose to give us birth through the word of truth, that we might be a kind of firstfruits of all he created. - James 1:16-18.

We will be taking a HUGE step toward answering some of these questions this week with the report from the IMB Ad Hoc Committees regarding their review of the new private prayer language and baptism policies (Wade Burleson writes about this upcoming meeting HERE). I pray that these unbiblical policies will be overturned. I pray for a day when we will embrace what God has given us without prejudice. I have written and prayed for the past year and a half to see these policies overturned because I believe that they hamper the Body of Christ and keep her from being all that God intended for her to be. I am a pastor of the church of Jesus Christ, not just my local church, and my desire is to see all of God's people strong and fit for works of service. I pray that we will walk on two legs, with two strong arms, and with a strong heart beating within us empowered by the Holy Spirit and fulfilling God's purpose for us in this generation. This current struggle within the IMB and SBC is soon to be over for all intents and purposes. But, the struggle for the advancement of the Kingdom, the making of disciples, and the strengthening of the church will not end until Jesus returns. May we take the lessons that we have learned here and use them as fuel and sustenance for greater battles with the Real Enemy of our Souls as time unfolds. And, no matter what happens, may God be glorified.

Grace and Peace

Disclaimer: A couple of months ago I said that I was not going to write anymore about Baptist issues and a reader of mine called me on it in the comments section of my last post. I do want to add a few caveats, lest anyone think that I am back in the SBC stuff. I am going to write about the upcoming Baptist Conference on the Holy Spirit that I am speaking at this weekend in Texas because it has to do with God, theology, missions, and God's on going work in the world. There happens to be a Baptist controversy going on right now over those things, but those issues by themselves are important enough to write about and are of interest to me. I will also give commentary on the upcoming reports from the IMB Ad Hoc Committee regarding their review of the prayer language and baptism policies due out in May because that will basically end debate on the issue one way or another. It will be over at that point. For closure, I also plan on attending the SBC Annual Meeting in San Antonio in June - unless God says otherwise, it will likely be my last. I'll write about that because it will be a personal experience in religious something or other. My involvement in all of this stuff started in December 2005 and I want to see it through. The invovlement will end in June and be intentional until then. So, with that said, let's get on to the actual post . . .

As I think about whether or not I should begin to prepare for the upcoming Baptist Conference on the Holy Spirit (kidding), I've also been thinking a lot about the barriers to proper communication on this issue. I'd like some help, if you have a moment. Concerning the continuation of the miraculous gifts of the Holy Spirit, like healing, speaking in tongues, prophecy, miracles, etc., what has been your experience? What has shaped you view on the issue? Are you mainly reactive to abuses, or have you done actual biblical study on your own? Why do you believe what you believe?

I really am interested in what people think and it would be quite helpful. Personally, I think that most people who believe that the gifts are not for today either:

1. Were taught that by someone influential in their life
2. Had a bad experience with abuses and unbiblical extremes
3. Heard about a bad experience with abuses and unbiblical extremes
4. Watched TBN for 15 minutes
5. Have never experienced or seen spiritual gifts in operation so they doubt their existence
6. Other?

How many really come to a cessationist position because of careful biblical study? I know that people do, and I am not dismissing that. I would just like to understand better what passages really informed you that God no longer works that way. How does the Bible support that position? Or, can you honestly say that fear of the abuses and excesses of others have pushed you into a position where you are not open or look skeptically upon such things?

If I get a really good answer (it can be from either position) and I end up using it (minus your name) in my talk on "Defining and Defending the Continualist Position," I'll send you a copy of Paul, the Spirit, and the People of God by Gordon Fee. It is a very readable and excellent book on the role of the Holy Spirit in Paul's letters and the way that Paul saw Him operating in the church. Really good stuff! It is a scaled down version of God's Empowering Presence, which is Fee's magnum opus that is also great but unapproachable for most readers. Plus, it's a lot more expensive. So, help me out and I'll send you a free book!

We have a HUGE day tomorrow. It feels like the night before a huge test, but the results are far more important. Caelan goes in for scans to make sure that the cancer has not returned. He'll have these every three months for a long time, but emotionally, this is the most important one. It will tell us if we begin to return to whatever normal life is and our little boy begins to recover, grow, and start moving past all of this, or if we have to start chemotherapy over again. Please pray that the scans come back clear. If this particular type of cancer returns, the prospects are usually not promising. So, we pray and trust God - falteringly. I can really identify with the man in Scripture who said, "I believe, help my unbelief." We're just really tired right now and have heard SO MANY stories lately of the cancer returning (if you know one, please don't share it). We thought that the completion of chemo would bring a relief and that we would begin to move on, but we are finding that it isn't over and won't be for a long time. Any scan that shows cancer cells means that we start over. Actually, it means that we start over again further behind than before. So, we're pretty nervous about tomorrow.

We trust God and all, but sometimes that doesn't get you very far in the normal, human way of looking at things. What I mean is, we ultimately trust God and know that He is good. We know that He will get us through this one way or another. But, that doesn't mean that we know that Caelan will be alright. God is greater than cancer, yes, but children die of cancer all the time, even the children of Christian parents. There are no guarantees and saying, "Be positive, it will be alright," is really a bunch of junk. Sometimes, it isn't alright. Sometimes it is really hard and it really stinks and you really ache for your little boy, your wife, your other children, and, even yourself. Sometimes, you just want it to be over, but then you realize there is no "over." It just goes on and on, morphing from one phase to another. Every pain and cry has you searching your child for lumps. Your daughter has constant stomach pain because of stress, but you worry that she might be sick as well. It wears on you and churchy platitudes become even more worthless.

We are children of a wild God. His ways are not our ways, nor His thoughts our thoughts. I know that He is bigger than all of this and this life is not all there is, so we shouldn't look for perfection or hold on too tightly to this life. But, the pain that we experience in this human experience can be staggering. You find that there are no simple answers or solutions to life's struggles. It is what it is. Yes, we have a Savior, but in moments of trial and suffering, you realize that you have to dig beyond the basic definition of that word to the Person behind it. Sometimes, as Christians, we follow concepts more than we do The Man, Jesus. Concepts and words are not sufficient. I have to go beyond and press in until I find Him in the midst of this. My heart breaks for the other children and parents that we've met at Children's Hospital. This whole thing slaps you upside the face as being profoundly unfair, but then you start questioning the concept of "fair." Is it fair that we even have treatment? The mother in Somalia whose child dies because there isn't even food could probably tell me a thing or two about "fair." So, you're left thanking God for your blessings and trusting Him to care for you and your family, yet at the same time, you're profoundly aware that things don't always work out as they should and you don't ever really know why.

But, we still believe, don't we? Where else can we go? As Peter said, "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We believe and know that you are the Holy One of God" (John 6:68). I find that denying what I'm really thinking or struggling with in the moment does nothing to increase my faith. It doesn't do me any good to just keep saying, "Everything's going to be alright." No, my child has had cancer, surgery, chemotherapy, radiation, and more chemo. We're going in tomorrow to find out if the cancer has returned or not. Huge. I'm nervous. I'm scared. I don't have any idea what God is going to do, and while I trust Him, I also trusted Him before all of this happened and it happened anyway. Trusting God obviously doesn't always keep cancer away from your children. So, I admit it all. And, I trust Him with that. I invite Him into my uncertainty and fear. I choose to stare down the barrell of a loaded gun, and with stammering lips and a barely audible whisper declare, "Blessed be the name of the Lord," because I have no choice and because I know that He loves my son and my family. As I do that, I realize that He is on the other side of whatever we face tomorrow, be it good or bad. He is not surprised.

So, my hope is not in the test results. I can't pretend like what we are doing is not a big deal. I can't sugar coat it or ignore it. I have to face it. And, in facing it, I have to trust God to be there waiting for us. I have to trust that He'll have the strength that we need to carry us in jubilation or sorrow. Man, this is hard, and I don't mind admitting it. If I don't talk about the hard times, the uncertainty, and the struggle, then how do I know that the Light that I receive from God is real? How do I know that it can sustain me when nothing else can? I really don't. So, I'll talk about the good and the bad, the confidence and the fear. And, we'll keep praying and believing in our merciful God for complete healing, while also bringing our fears to Him as well.

I'm closing comments on this post because I am not looking for encouragement, kind words, or correction. I didn't write this to receive attention over how "genuine" I am or how awesome it is that I am honest about my feelings and struggles. I wrote this because it is real and because I feel that it gives glory to God because I am confessing that He is bigger than my fears. I wanted to write something before I have it all figured out instead of just giving a great testimony later. That is the only way that I know how to praise Him right now, and I am grateful that that is enough.

So, you're prayers are much appreciated. Hopefully, we'll come back tomorrow with great news.

I've been interested in the power of networks and network theory for some time now (see a paper I wrote a couple of years ago called Emerging Network Theory). I believe that society is restructuring to a network based, decentralized organizational system as opposed to a hierachical, centralized organizational system. With the speed of information sharing through the internet, the ease of global travel, and the connecting of people with ideas from all over the world, we are truly stepping into a flat world, as Thomas Friedman tells us. This move to an interconnected world where barriers between people groups and nation states are falling is called Globalization.

Recently, I have been reading two books that have helped to articulate some of the things that I have been observing and sensing intuitively. The first is Glocalization (global + local) by Bob Roberts. I spoke about this book last month HERE. Basically, he takes Friedmans' thesis regarding the flattening of the world through interconnectivity and applies it to the on going, global mission of the church. He uses the fact that each one of us has the ability to be a Kingdom influence on our domains of life through local and global interaction as a wake up call to the church to step into the 21st century and engage the opportunities God has put before us. While fairly simplistic at times, it is an excellent primer on this concept.

The second book is The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations, by Brafmon and Beckstrom. They use the analogy of a Starfish as a decentralized organization (you can cut off the leg of a starfish and a whole new starfish will regenerate), compared to a spider, which looks like a starfish, but if you cut off the head, the whole organism dies. They say that we are headed into a time where decentralized, organic organizations are becoming more effective and are basically unstoppable. Here are the characteristics of a starfish movement compared to a spider organization, which is basically the opposite of these things:

I was pretty worn out last night and I really didn't want to go to church. I was discouraged and really beaten down in many ways. I've been a bit overwhelmed lately, not with work, ministry, or my family, but just with an abiding sense of fatigue and stress. Weary has not been the word to describe what I have felt.

I decided to visit another church last night for the dedication of their new building. They are having a 4 day conference with guest speakers and what not. I am friends with the pastor and got an invitation, and while I rarely go to such things, I felt compelled to go. It just seemed important and like it was the right thing to do. So, oddly enough, on a Friday night I asked my wife if I could go to this thing and leave the kids with her. She said sure, and invited a friend over to watch movies, so everything was working out thus far.

I love to worship the Lord, but last night the sanctuary of that church was the last place I wanted to be - just because I wasn't in a very spiritual mood. As I walked in I followed the inviting pastor's instruction to me to tell one of the ushers that I was there and was invited by the pastor. He led me to the front to sit with the other ministers. This is a large church in our city and they have just taken over a large convention center, so there were lots of guest pastors visiting. Not only did I not want to be there, I definitely did not want to go to the front to sit with the other preachers. Ugh.

As I found my seat, the music started, a lady began to sing praise to God, and about 15 praise dancers came out and lined up on the front with flags and began to worship the Lord. As the band began to play and praise began to pour forth, I immediately began to sense a strange sensation . . . it was the presence of God. Within seconds I felt Him come near in a real way that was beyond words. Tears began to flow and I had an amazing sense of my unworthiness. It was as though the presence of God was pressing in upon me and my reaction was almost to run away. He was so real, and while I felt so unworthy, I did not feel condemned. I felt my heart being drawn to Him and His love, while at the same time, I felt completely overwhelmed by His holiness. I was deeply sobbing at this point with my face buried in my hands, hoping that no one was noticing while at the same time not caring. Strange.

At that very moment strange speech began to bubble forth out of my mouth. Don't worry IMB Board of Trustees - I did not speak in tongues or engage in ecstatic utterances of the Spirit. I began to say over and over again, "I am so wrong. I was so wrong." I must have repeated that 30 times and it almost involuntarily came out of my mouth. I am reminded of Isaiah's reaction to the Lord's presence in Isaiah 6:

5 "Woe to me!" I cried. "I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the LORD Almighty."

As this amazing, unbelievable, unexplainable, beautiful, powerful, majestic, overwhelming sense of the presence of God pressed upon me, causing me to weep deeply, I couldn't praise God or pray until much later. My only initial conscious thought was how wrong I had been about Him. How stupid was I to even think I understood or could explain the majesty and glory of God! I had an incredible sense of His immense power and beauty, and I was but dust. Yet, I must state that I've never felt more loved, complete, or satisfied in my entire life. I felt as though I was experiencing a small taste of His manifold glory as waves of His love brought me to deep repentance over my pride and self-sufficiency - and it was wonderful as I quickly threw those chains down and exchanged them for dependence upon my Lord! I realized that my weariness was a result of my dependence upon myself and my understanding, but in that moment, He took all of that and replaced it with Himself. God had dramatically manifested Himself in my life and I realized at that point that all of my efforts for Him and thoughts about Him were as mere straw, completely inadequate. As I confessed this, inexpressable joy and love began to flow from within me and I lifted my head and my hands to the Lord and worshipped God.

I basically wept for about 45 minutes as the church continued to worship God with joy and abandon. I never wanted it to end. But, eventually, His presence lifted and it was not something that I could conjure up or bring back. It was not mere emotion or sentiment. If it were, I would manufacture it everyday because of how wonderful it was! We then heard an incredible message on submitting ourselves to God's authority, true worship, and what it means to depend upon Him. God reminded me of His love for me through the present ministry of the Holy Spirit as I experienced His peace and joy and worshipped my First Love. The service lasted around 3 hours, and I wish it would have lasted all night. God was so present.

Before you dismiss all of this as some subjective spiritual experience and wonder why I am writing about it, I just want to restate that it is not something that I expected or planned. To my knowledge, no one else was experiencing similar things. Everyone around me was quite sane, as was I throughout the entire time. But, God did business with me last night and I am grateful. He refreshed me deeply. I didn't even realize how tired and discouraged I was, but I can testify that one moment in His presence is worth everything in this life. So, I speak only of the goodness of the Lord to a very tired pastor, husband, and father who could only respond with confession of my wrongness in ever thinking that I had any part of God's ways figured out. His ways are not our ways, His thoughts are not our thoughts.

For that I am extremely grateful. Thank you Jesus - you are more amazing than I ever imagined. I just had to tell someone because I can't keep quiet about Him.

Dearth: noun; lack, a scarcity of something.

I am not implying that we do not have enough "American Christianity," but that, regarding what we have, it is lacking something.  I know, I know. Just about every book you read on the present state of the church starts with, "10 Reasons Why the Church is Dying," or, "We're Losing Our Nation for God," or, "Everything's Falling Apart and It's Probably Your Fault." It's a great hook that Christian writers use to get you to read their book. They start with several chapters about what is wrong with the church, culture, theology, or you, and after you have gazed at the horizon from the top of their particular soap box, they then guide you through the shelves of their solution oriented merchandise. In about 250 pages they have identified the problem and have properly led you to their tidy fixes. Authors, pastors, and speakers are constantly hawking their magic potions to restore our marriages, churches, witness, and effectiveness in a myriad of areas. I am regularly being told how I should be doing more in every area, what I should do to help my church to grow, how I can be a better person, and how I can solve all my problems. When Scripture is used, it is used to show me what is possible and how far away I am from that goal. Again, the opening chapters tell me what the problem is, and the latter chapters point me to the solution. Well, I know that there is a problem, and I don't need Dr. So and So's book for $17.95 to tell me so. But, sometimes the search for solutions IS the problem.

I understand that the methods these authors and speakers use are basic rules of rhetoric and they are how we have learned to advance our arguments. These tactics also seek to asuage the nagging feeling within us that there is something not right by comforting us with a simple diagnosis and prescription for the problem. Dr. Danny Akin of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary sought to do the same thing for us regarding the problems in the SBC when he gave us "The Eight Theological Essentials for Southern Baptists in the 21st Century." Here they are:

1. The non-negotiable of a regenerate Church (John 3; Rom. 3; 2 Cor. 5; Gal. 3)
2. The essential nature of believers baptism by immersion with a biblical appreciation for its significance. (Matt. 28; Acts, Rom. 6)
3. The recovery of the lost jewels of church discipline and genuine disciple-making as essential marks of the Church.
4. The emphasis and practice of a genuinely Word-based ministry (2 Tim. 4:1-5)
5. The vision for a faithful and authentic biblical ecclesiology (Acts. 2; Eph. 4; Pastorals)
6. The continued nurturing of a fervent missionary and evangelistic passion that is wedded to a healthy and robust theology (1 Thess. 1; Eph. 4:11-16; Jude 3-4; Rev. 5)
7. The teaching and preaching of a 1st century biblical model for church planting (Acts 17)
8. The wisdom to look back and remember who we were so that as we move forward we will not forget who we are

These points are elaborated upon on Tom Ascol's blog. Don't get me wrong, I think that these are all great things and I am fully in favor of them. We need to faithfully practice all 8 of these points, because they are right and Biblical. But, the implication, whether it is intentional by the speaker or not, is that these steps will fix our problems.  And underlying all of our best intentions, methods, and approaches to life and ministry, the question must be asked from time to time: Why are we doing all of this?

Over time, I've come to believe that our motives are almost always mixed. I feel like that to be properly understood here I have to give a thousand qualifiers, like, "We should do evangelism," or "Happy marriages are important." But, I'm going to just save some time and skip it. I am fundamentally beginning to believe that what lies behind much of our effort and energy to be holy, have a great marriage, build a great church or a powerful evangelistic ministry, take our nation for Christ, and have revival is a profound insecurity and desire to have things our way so that we will be satisfied, safe, and justified in our "rightness." At least that is much of what I see in the South. In that, we are not much different from the Pharisees of old.

The Pharisees during Jesus' day were all about purity and separation. They wanted Israel to be holy and to completely obey the Law. The idea of blasphemy or idolatry or Law breaking was anathema to them, and they fully prosecuted anyone who got close to doing so. But, lying behind their pious intentions was a blatant fear that God was going to punish them and a belief that if they did everything right, then their autonomy as a nation from the Romans would be restored. The lesson that they learned from the Babylonian Captivity was that worshipping idols causes you to lose your nation and become slaves, therefore, you should not worship idols. But, the greater commandments such as loving God and others were lost upon them because their primary focus was their own security, safety, and happiness. I think that it is often the same with us.

Do we really focus so much on evangelism and missions because our hearts are broken for the lost and God's love is pulsing through us, or because we want to see our churches full so that we'll feel better about ourselves and our success, and so that we can have confidence that God is pleased with us and is blessing our ministry? I've been in churches where everyone was excited and really worshipping God when there were a lot of people there, but when the crowd was low, everyone was depressed. Why is that? I think that large crowds and a big following for our ministries make us feel like we are significant and like God is pleased with us. As if there were not other ways that we could know that (Romans 5:8 "But God demonstrates His own love for us in this: While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.").

In Dr. Akin's Eight Points, I see no mention of Jesus or relying upon the power of the Holy Spirit. Paul said, "When I came to you, brothers, I did not come with eloquence or superior wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. I came to you in weakness and fear, and with much trembling. My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit's power, so that your faith might not rest on men's wisdom, but on God's power."  - 1 Corinthians 2:1-5. Paul pretty much lays out the impetus and power behind his ministry. Yet, I have NEVER heard that text proclaimed as a truth that we need to focus on. Is it too difficult to focus on and fall in love with Jesus? Is it too difficult to have a passion for God be our focus? Do we tell people to ONLY preach Christ crucified? What does that mean? What if our ministries ended up like the prophets of old, or even like Jesus' when he died on the Cross? We are so focused on size, results, power, and effectiveness that we have forgotten what it is to truly walk with the Lord. People are not coming to our churches because we have nothing to offer them. If a walk with the Lord is described by most preachers, it is generally described in terms of what sins we are not to committ, rather than in a positive nature of having our hearts filled with the wonders of God. If trouble comes, there is an immediate fear that we have done something wrong, rather than an understanding that this world is difficult, sin plagued, and full of death and we happen to live in it. We will suffer, but we have a Savior! We are giving people a Christianity that is focused on our needs, happiness, and contentment, while training ministers to put their faith in methods, structures, and right behaviors as though we could call down God's blessing through our effort and ability, instead of through a dependence upon the Spirit's power. Are we broken over our self-sufficiency? Are we yearning for God and the pleasure of His presence? Are we broken over the lostness and emptiness of the people around us? What are the motives that lie behind our actions?

As we near Easter, I have been thinking a lot about the Pharisees and the Jews of Jesus' day. And, I have realized that I am just like them at times. I have tried to use God to get my way, gain significance, and be happy and fulfilled. I have wanted Him to bless what I am doing and I get my worth from revelling in that blessing. I have often wanted to be first in relationships and the Kingdom, instead of following Jesus' words when he said, "For he who is the least among you all - he is the greatest" (Luke 9:48). But, God will not be used - He will only be worshipped. He will tear everything out of us that we have relied upon Him for, until we only desire Him. He is not our "God in a box," that we can bring out whenever we want something and so that our lives will be alright and our churches will function properly. He is God and there is none like Him.

The dearth of American Christianity is that the Jesus of Bible is rarely seen. The power of the Gospel that transforms selfish sinners into selfless saints has been exchanged for easy steps to Heaven and Your Best Life Now. And, this is even true in our very conservative churches that focus on expository preaching and church discipline if those things are just a means to some other end besides Christ. We desperately need Jesus, yet we always seem to run to something else that is good, but is one degree off of The Center. Over time, that one degree takes us miles away, and we wonder why we are so parched, weak, and worn out. The answer is not found in a new method, strategy, or blessing, but in returning to a place of affection and dependence upon our Savior for everything, with His glory as our desire and a sacrificial love for others as our activity. Colossians 1:17 says, "He is before all things and in Him all things hold together." Do we really believe that?

I know that I've been preaching in this post, and few of you have probably read this far (I understand that I broke most of the rules for blogs by writing a really long post). Fewer still will leave comments because we rarely take time to process such things. But, I want to encourage each one of us (I think I write more for myself to have the right focus than anything else) to focus on Jesus, live for His glory, and really think about what it means for us to be the least amongst the brothers, to suffer and join in with others who are suffering, and to take the worst seat and to be a servant to all. That might be considered to be a given, but it is a given that we rarely talk about anymore in our desire for effectiveness, happiness, and growth. So, "Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfector of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart" (Heb. 12:2,3).

What do you think? Better yet, what will you do?

Apparently, blogs are now 10 years old. I've been reading them for about 5 years now, with Andrew Jones being the one who inspired me to get started. I knew Andrew about 10 years ago in San Francisco and lost touch with him. I was thinking about him one day, and did a web search on his name to see if anything came up. From that, I stumbled into the world of TallSkinnyKiwi. From there, I started following his blog roll and met a whole bunch of other bloggers from around the world who were doing incredible things in ministry and writing about it. I first heard about all of the IMB issues from Andrew who had a link to a post by Marty Duren about it. That was around 16 months ago, and I've met a ton of people in baptist life through this as well.

I blogged for sporadically for a little over a year with a Blogger account I started in November of 2004, but then decided to upgrade on December 31, 2005 with my present site hosted by Typepad.  Some people like to link to a bunch of different things and write short journal entries about what they are doing. Some of the blogs that started in this little mircoburst called the Baptist Blogosphere have basically written about Baptist issues. While I've written quite a bit about the Baptist controversy, my blogging is more essay oriented (once I start writing on a subject I have trouble stopping), and I really want to write about where I see God working, or how we can best join in with Him. It has been a great creative outlet for me and I've thoroughly enjoyed the people that I've met, the prayers we've received for our son, Caelan, and the ways I've grown and been sharpened.

Basically, I want my writing to be redemptive in nature and to ultimately focus on Jesus Christ and our ever changing relationship with Him through our daily lives and experiences. How has your blogging changed over time and where do you see it headed in the future? I'd really love to hear from you, even if you only comment. What has been helpful to you in this? What have you learned? What can we do better?

Our church has finally paid off our mortgage (we had it for years!) and we have formed a building team to help us explore what kind of building we can build that would meet our needs as well as enable us to minister to our community. We don't want the building to be just for us. Our only classrooms are in 3 old trailers that were used when we bought them almost two decades ago. They are literally falling apart and have to be replaced. While we pray and work toward a plan regarding our future building, I have been really paying attention to what other churches are doing in this area and I am trying to learn from them. I don't really know how to do this, but I so appreciate the faithful witness of so many churches that trust God and step out in faith to His glory. Some churches are doing some great things by being wise stewards of God's resources and are building functional buildings that meet a variety of needs at the same time. I applaud the vast majority of churches that have done it and are doing it right. Sometimes buildings are necessary, and as much as we do not like to invest a ton of money in them, once your church has some land and a building, you kind of have to keep going with it, or sell it all and move to a local high school. When you build, you have to be really careful to make sure that you aren't just begging your people for money, but they know that you are building a building for Kingdom purposes, instead of your own gain.

But, some churches are not doing it right, in my opinion. Many churches hire outside fundraising companies to come in and raise money from the people, regardless of their economic state and with little reference to vision, mission, or Scripture. It can often border on becoming immoral and unethical (did I mention that these companies get a percentage of the money raised?). Over the weekend, I read some literature from a church in the midst of a building campaign. Obviously, I won't state the name of the church, but it is a large one. This is clearly from a fund raising company that the church has contracted with, but it is shocking to me.

In the introductory paragraph of a letter that gave "Creative Ways to Give to the Campaign Without Taking a Second Job," they tried to disarm the people by saying, "Many people hear a phrase like 'Not Equal Gifts, but Equal Sacrifices' and say, 'If they only knew how little money I have, or 'I'm giving all I can, I can't give anymore,' or 'I'm single, going to school, and I'm in debt up to my ears; I can't give much,' or 'I'm a single parent and I can barely feed my kids. There's no way I can give to the campaign.' (emphasis mine) Believe me, we understand the concerns and empathize with you. That is why we have come up with a list of creative ways to give that you may have overlooked. Each one requires sacrifice on your part, but like King David said, 'I will not offer up to the Lord anything that costs me nothing!' "

Here are some of their ideas:

• Skip a meal each week as a family. Missing one meal a week at an average of $20 per family to devote to prayer or fasting is $3,120 over a three-year period.
• Commit your income tax refund check to the Lord for the three year period.
• Commit an estimated raise in salary to the Lord for the next three years.
• Adjust your vacations. For one or more of the years, do something close and inexpensive like day hikes, picnics, or take a three day vacation instead of a week and save on the airfare and hotel costs. This can save $1,000 to $2,000 easily.
• Continue a bill payment. If you will be paying off a car or school loan in the next year, commit to continue to "pay the bill" by redirecting the money to the stewardship campaign after the bill is paid off. A $100 payment per month over three years is $3,600.

There were other ideas like increase a dollar per week, clip coupons, drink only water in restaurants, don't go to movies in the theatre, but wait for them to come out on video, get rid of your cable, quit drinking Starbucks, put off major purchases and give the money to the building campaign instead, etc. Most of those weren't bad ideas, but here is my issue with all of this: The letter says that it is targeting people who are in debt and can barely afford to feed their kids. Maybe those folks do have extra money that they do not realize, but should we really be going to folks and giving financial counseling just so the church can build a new building? This is why most discussions about stewardship in churches are really a thinly veiled stab at fundraising, instead of really equipping people to be stewards of their resources for Kingdom impact.

How about going to the single mom who barely has money to feed her kids and helping her get on a budget so that she CAN feed her kids and take care of them a little better than she has been able to, instead of telling her children to skip a meal? How about going to the single person in school and in debt up to their ears and helping them find extra money to pay off their debt and give to others in need? I don't have a major problem with going to people who have money and are blowing it on themselves and challenging them to help the church build a building, but are you seriously going to tell a struggling young family to give their raises for three years to the church building fund? To keep paying a bill to the church? To forego a decent vacation after you work hard 60 hours a week, 50 weeks a year, and you want to spend some quality time with your family?

If we're going to call people to sacrifice like that, how about if we consider the starving in Africa or those who are dying from preventable diseases? What about the persecuted church or indigenous church planters who are skipping meals because they have to, not because they want to? I understand the need for new buildings at times (our church needs one, remember?), that we should all sacrifice for such things, that the money has to come from somewhere, and that early Christians gave out of their poverty, but does this strike anyone else as a bit crass? When the building is built and the pledges roll in, will the church that is flowing with money help that struggling single mom put food on the table? In some circumstances, perhaps, but I think that there must be a better way. How is this much different from the TV preachers fund raising gimmicks?

I know that sacrifice is necessary, and as Americans, we are not used to it. But, what if we go about it by calling people to sacrifice for the local and global expanse of the Kingdom? How about if we use our resources to care for the poor and the hurting? If a new building is a tool to do those things, then great, and I'm not saying that churches who build buildings don't do these other things. But, we really need to think about what kind of message we're sending when it appears as though we are asking poor single mothers who don't know where money for food is coming from to fund our building programs in this way.

And, this is all coming from a pastor of a church who is entering into a building program. I know that quite a few people in my church are going to read this, but you can't sacrifice who you are as a church to build a building. Either it gets done the right way, or it doesn't get done. I have a problem with the approach of a lot of churches, but I guess that I am really writing this as a marker to remind myself of where not to go with our people. The heart can be deceitful and wicked, and I don't want to pretend like I am immune to this type of behavior. But I just think that if we are doing God's work, we don't have to plead and squeeze nickels out of our folks. I have to believe that God will speak to their hearts because it is right and they will obey because they love the Lord, if it is God's will that the church build a building. I have to believe that it can still work like Scripture says, so that our people "excel in everything - in faith, in speech, in knowledge, in complete earnestness and in your love for us - see that you also excel in this grace of giving." - 2 Cor. 8:7.

I'm really not trying to be hard on churches who go this route. But, I can just tell you how a letter like this would hit me if I got it in the mail from my pastor. I would feel like he and the church leadership couldn't give a rip about me and they had no idea what daily life was like. I would also lose all motivation to give to the building program. But, maybe that's just me. Am I alone? What do you think?

India really sparked my thinking. I got to spend two days with Thom Wolf at his house in New Delhi (he's working on a paper to present for a university in the picture). It was an amazing time of recharging and renewal. We talked about a million things and he really challenged me. I spent a good bit of time perusing his library, which is connected with his organization The University Institute, and he began to act as my former professor again, giving me reading assignments and then engaging in discussion later on the topics. I needed that more than I can tell you, and the juices are flowing again.  It was great to be able to ask questions and spur one another on over meals, coffee, and through the discussion of big ideas. He is a great man and I am blessed to have met him ten years ago.

After my trip to India, however, and my couple of days with Thom, I am turning my attention back to thoughts involving holistic ministry and our engagement with the world. I am working through four books right now that are absolute must reads. The first is Glocalization by Bob Roberts (many in the blogosphere have already commented on this book, but I didn't get mine in the mail until I returned home). I met Bob at an Intersection Conference in Seattle in 2005. He is really carrying forward the idea of "glocal," in that God is working through ordinary people to bring His Kingdom both locally and globally in all kinds of ways through our interconnected, "flat" world. This passage on page 15 is really guiding a lot of my thinking right now:

In the past, we have been content to live in blissful ignorance. Acts 1:8 instructs us, "But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth." We, as the church, have interpreted it to mean the very opposite of a globally connected world. Our premise has been this: First, we build a strong and big church here. Second, when we're big and strong, we go to our whole country. Third, we go to those near us when we've reached our country - maybe Canada or Mexico. Finally, when we're really strong, we take on the world! Even if it's not explicitly said that way, it is what is practiced.

This is not how the church worked in Acts, nor is it the way the world will be transformed for Christ. Acts 1:8 describes glocal in action. This passage was not describing the one-two-three steps but the dimensions in which the church must be working at all times. It wasn't determining the sequence, but the spheres. This is fascinating because it is exactly what the world has become two thousand years later! The local and the global have come together at many different dimensions.

That is a really important concept. We need to be moving forward in all spheres at the same time. One feeds the other. As we invest in God's Mission globally, we will benefit and become more effective locally and vice versa. It really reflects the idea of sowing and reaping. The more we sow globally and locally, the more we end up reaping in all spheres. That takes faith, but we are seeing God bring the increase on all levels.

He also talks about the concept of domains and says that "When the church glocalizes, it acts as a connection center between believers and all of society's domains (family, economics, agriculture, education, medicine, justice, art, governance, etc.). It focuses on training the people in the pew how to view their vocation as their "Jerusalem" in terms of ministry. From there, it movtivates them toward how they can use that vocation to intersect a domain locally - and globally - throughout the ends of the earth! The churchs connects to society through the natural infrastructures, equipping and sending people through their jobs to affect a particular domain."  We had a conference on this back in September called From the Ordained to the Ordinary. We are trying to move forward in equipping our folks in this area as well.

I would like to start a reading group on this book with some folks in our church in the next month or so because it reinforces so much of what we are already doing. I think it would be fascinating to see what people are thinking in relation to the issues that are shaping our world.

There are three other books that are dramatically impacting me right now, but I will comment on those in other posts. This one got too long, and you have probably stopped reading by now! But, if you read this far, what are some of the books that are challenging you and are helping to shape your thinking? I'd love to know!

Well, it's 2am and I'm up. Jet lag is doing it's worst, as I passed out exhausted around 6pm. I tried to stay awake as long as I could, but to no avail. The trip back was rather grueling, and 36 hours later, I walked into my house around midnight on Friday. I did get to spend several hours in Paris, though. That was cool. On Saturday, I rested and hung out with my family. It is good to be home.

When I have returned from past trips, I have been happy to be back and didn't really miss the area that I had been too. I've appreciated America and all the blessings that we have here. That is changing, however. I am thinking about India and the grinding poverty that I encountered there. India has VERY wealthy pockets, which elevate it on all the global statistics of poverty in the world, but it also has around 800 million people who live in horrible degradation. It really is the tale of two countries.

What is changing in me is a sense of anger over our wealth and waste. We have so much, yet so few doing something constructive with it. I am speaking primarily of Christians here. This is not some rant against the church (that's too easy of a target), but rather, we all need to be doing more. Global travel and communication is so easy now. There is no reason for all of us not to be on the front lines of God's Kingdom work, whether it is locally or globally. The only thing that holds us back is sin, selfishness, and our own grasping at security. When and how will we trust God for the nations? We can no longer send off our missionaries as proxies to do it for us. We must be involved. Marty Duren put up a post the other day saying how we could be involved and he was relatively ignored. I'm going to be giving some ideas this week, I hope, and I expect almost no comments on it either. Oh well, I write for me and the few that want to see change come to a broken world.

India has grabbed my heart. I am tired and weary right now, and I am getting ready for Sunday service. I don't know if I'll be able to go back to sleep or not, but I pray that I am able to communicate some of what I have seen and heard. God is moving in North India and I pray that we join Him. The task is large, but so is our God.

I thought I'd write a fairly personal post for a change of pace. This has been an eventful week. Emotions have run the gamut of extreme joy to severe pain and sorrow, and everything in between. In a way, this week was nothing unusual. At the same time, it was rather extraordinary, because of the people I met and the things I got to do. God be praised.

• Saturday: travelled back from the Baptist Identity Conference with C.B. Scott and Bob Cleveland. We had some amazing conversation on the way. I enjoyed seeing and spending time with friends and fellow bloggers, Marty Duren, Art Rogers, Ben Cole, Timmy Brister, Steve McCoy, Joe Thorn, Wes Kenney, Tom Ascol, and Dwight McKissic. I have been shaped and challenged by men like these through this incredible blogging experience and it is always good to meet and hang out some with the people behind the blogs that are changing the face of the SBC, in one way or another. Plus, the speakers were great as well. If the tone of the conference is where the SBC is headed, we are going to be alright. It also caused me to see that the depth of the controversy in Baptist life is so great and so complex, that I would be well served to back off from it on my blog so that I can refocus on other things that are more positive and redemptive for the time being. It has been a refreshing decision. I will still write on baptist issues from time to time, but no where near as much as in the past (and everyone said, "Amen!"). But, for a good synopsis of a post that I was going to write in response to the Smith article on Charismatics and Baptists, but never got around to, PLEASE read this by David Rogers, IMB missionary to Spain. I couldn't have said it better in a million years.
• Sunday: What an amazing day! I filled in for a Sunday School class on Job and taught through Job 19-22. Then, I preached on Matthew 8 & 9, about the Authority of Christ. God really seemed to move in a powerful way and we had a significant time of ministry for some folks in our church, as well. In other news, we paid off our mortgage! Around 18 years ago, our church took out a loan to build our current sanctuary. As of January 2006, we still owed $153,000. At our current pace of payment, it would take around 4 years to pay it off. We desperately need more space, so it is time to build again. Well, over the past 3 months, we saw the last $90,000 paid off, with the last $20,000 coming from someone outside our church who just wanted to bless us! We needed about $2,100 on Sunday to finish it, so we took a special offering and brought in that amount and more! Praise God! We are now debt free! God has provided in amazing ways! We have drafted a building team in anticipation of this day, and they have started their work of leading us into building a new building. This will be an adventure. I'll give updates and ask for lots of advice as time goes by!
• Monday: I spent the day with a lady in our church and her daughter as we buried her parents. On Thursday of the previous week, I got a phone call that both of her parents had died tragically in a car wreck. There was much obvious grieving, but I saw God work in their lives as they experienced His presence and faithfully looked to Him. God was so gracious to them to give them strength and help them to grieve while He provided amazing comfort. I was asked to share the gospel at the funeral and it was a really interesting experience. The couple who passed away were in their 70's and 80's and were leaders in the Pentecostal Fire Baptized Holiness Church. So, the funeral was held at one of that denomination's churches, outside, in a camp meeting environment. There were hundreds of people there. I don't think that many of them were particularly crazy about a Baptist preacher speaking, but I faithfully shared the gospel anyway. What a day. Please pray for this family, that God would continue to give them strength and comfort and carry them through this tragedy.

Caelan Update: Caelan continues to do well as he takes his treatments every Monday in Birmingham. He is now 18 months old and, according to the latest scans, the cancer has not returned! Praise God! He is still going in for weekly treatments, but he only has 6 more treatments left. We started this whole thing almost a year ago and were facing 48 treatments, surgery, and a very difficult road. God has been faithful, however, and has brought us through it so far. Caelan is weak, often cranky, doesn't eat or sleep well, and is very small for his age. His color is sometimes bad, and he has lost most of his hair. Chemotherapy stinks. But, God is using it to save his life, and for that, we rejoice. At the same time, he is incredibly fiesty and stubborn. He doesn't take anything off anybody and he's as tough as nails. He'll wrestle his older brothers to the ground and give them a good beating as well. He's one of a kind, that's for sure. What a blessing!

• Tuesday: The day started EARLY with two hospital visits for church members who were experiencing surgery before 7am at different hospitals. I grabbed some breakfast at a local restaurant and studied Scripture. Then, I went into the office to try and catch up on all that I had missed over the last several days. There was a good deal to catch up on. Our church has grown from an average attendance of around 175 last fall, to an average attendance of around 230-240 so far this year. Most of those folks are in their 20's and 30's with lots of kids. So, there is always stuff to do. I had lunch with our elders and we talked about pastoral and leadership issues in the church. Those guys are a pleasure to serve with, no doubt. That evening, I took my son to his Upwards basketball practice where we had a father-son game. He had 10 points and around 12 rebounds. The kids beat the Dads, something like 46-14, but I did dunk it once (on the six foot goal!). Man, those 5 and 6 year olds can play! After that, I went to a meeting at a restaurant with John and Bill to make plans for our upcoming trip to India. We were there until late and I was weary.
• Wednesday: I stayed home in the morning, but met Greg and Glen, the co-chairs of our building team for lunch downtown. We worked on a strategy for how we are to move forward. These guys are amazing, and have already put a lot of work into this. They are top notch professionals in their fields, and they are bringing those abilities to this task as well. I can't wait to see what God is going to do through all of this. I then went back to the office for the afternoon, where I worked on a number of things and prepared for the Wednesday Night Bible Study. We are going through The Mind of Christ by T.W. Hunt. It has been an incredible study and Wednesday night was no different. God is really using it to speak to people in a deep way about their relationship with him. I am co-teaching it with an older, Godly man, who has been blessed with unusual insight into God's ways and character. We are seeing a lot of growth in the lives of the people going through the study. I am growing as well.
• Thursday: Engaged in office work, study, and an elongated staff meeting with our administrative staff, since I will be gone for two weeks. This was the calmest day of my week, and I was able to focus on a few necessary things. That evening, my wife and I met with the folks whose house we have been trying to buy for the past month and watched the deal fall through. The home inspector said that the house needed a new roof, a special roof, because of the low pitch of the roof on the house. A $16,000 roof. Oh well. We'll keep looking.
• Friday:  I'm off on Fridays. My 7 year old daughter, Ashtyn, had a lead role in a school play, where she played a clown fish who felt rejected because she told bad jokes and wasn't really that funny. The play was about all different kinds of fish in the sea, and how they all are unique and learned to be friends, despite their differences. She had a whole bunch of lines and did an awesome job. I am so proud of her. She goes to a magnet school in our city, and we are praying that our son, Peyton, gets in as well. He had his interview on Wednesday of this week, so we are hoping. We spent the rest of the day taking care of different things, and then had dinner with a really awesome family that just started attending our church last month. We hung out with them until way too late and talked about everything under the sun. We had a great time.
• Saturday: Today was a lot of fun. This morning, I took Ashtyn to her ice skating lessons and then, the whole family showed up for Peyton's last basketball game of the year. He played really hard, and I was so proud of him when he went diving head first for a loose ball. I love that! When we returned home, I wrestled with my boys on the floor for a good long while (Kieran, my 3 year old, is a real firecracker - he loves jumping all over me and his older brother, Peyton - It's great!). After that, we were all pretty tired from a hectic week, and rested during the afternoon, before we returned for Peyton's Upwards Basketball Awards ceremony this evening. We saw a woman spin 10 basketballs at one time, and then share the gospel! She was pretty talented. We participated in Upwards at a local megachurch, but folks from our church were all over the place. Three of the teams were coached by people from our little church. It was great to see those guys participating with the larger Christian community in our city.

All in all, it was an eventful week. Of course, I didn't mention the diaper changing, baths given, meals prepared, phone calls, errands run, conversations, and other things. I just scratched the surface. Sometimes, it is good to sit back and reflect on the things that you've been involved with on a daily basis. Overall, my week focused more intensely on my church and family than outside things, mostly because I will be gone to India for the next two weeks. But, this exercise was helpful because it causes me to ask some questions: Where did I see God move? How did I experience His presence? How did I interact with others? What do I need to change? How much time did I spend with the Lord and did it make any difference in my daily life? How much time did I spend with my family? Others? While I ministered to people within my church, I realize that I didn't share the gospel with anyone this week. I was tired a lot. I didn't pray as much as I should have. I was pretty discouraged about some things at times. But, I praise God for His faithfulness and grace. I pray that I will continue to grow in Him and learn to depend upon Him more and more. As I look back, I am grateful for all that happened this week.

Tomorrow we take Communion as a church. I preach about Jesus. In two days, I go to India for almost two weeks. I'll miss my wife and children terribly, but I am excited about what God has in store for us!

I've recently run across a new blogger named David Cecil. David is a pastor in Texas and he blogs at Jester4Life. He is an excellent writer and has some really interesting thoughts on all kinds of topics. Basically, David is writing the way that I set out to before all of this SBC stuff kind of got me derailed again. I highly recommend that you check David out and leave a comment or two. His thoughtfulness is beyond the ordinary and he really gets you to think beyond the surface. Welcome David! May your tribe increase!

According to psychologist Cliff Arnal, the answer is yes. Saints fans would probably agree. You might have seen this on MSN today, but I thought it was interesting. He uses a formula that takes into account the following:

Arnall’s so-called formula looks like this:  [W + (D-d)] x TQM x NA.

All of the letters and symbols apparently represent a sort of mathematical code to track the following:

W: How bad the weather is at this time of year.

D:  Amount of debt accumulated over the holidays minus how much is paid off.

T:  The time since the holidays.

Q: Amount of time passed since New Year’s resolutions have gone south.

M: Our general motivation levels.

NA: The need to take action.

Read the rest of the article HERE. His formula has been attacked as bad science, but I thought it was kind of interesting and can see his point. This is a time of year when it is cold and dreary and there is little extrinsicly to look forward to. Depression is a very real thing for people, and I can understand how it can get worse this time of year.

But, as Christians, we have joy that lives within us! The Bible tells us to "Rejoice in the Lord always, again I say rejoice." Whenever bad things happen or I'm having a bad day, I say, "Well, I guess this is the "always." If I can start to praise God, even in the midst of depressing or difficult times, I begin to get God's perspective and I realize that every day is a day that He has made and He has beautiful things in store for us each day. We should be the most optimistic people on the planet, because this world is not our home and God is always working to redeem and make things new.

So, as you run into people today, take some time to spread some encouragement and point them to Christ who fills us with hope and joy as we look to Him. They just might be struggling today and need it.

Paul said, in the Second Letter to the Corinthians, chapter 11, verses 2-4,

2I am jealous for you with a godly jealousy. I promised you to one husband, to Christ, so that I might present you as a pure virgin to him. 3But I am afraid that just as Eve was deceived by the serpent's cunning, your minds may somehow be led astray from your sincere and pure devotion to Christ. 4For if someone comes to you and preaches a Jesus other than the Jesus we preached, or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received, or a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it easily enough.

This passage makes me think of many of the problems that have erupted in the SBC recently. It also makes me think about how we do church and live out our lives. Is Christ our focus? Are we passionate about Jesus, or about ministry? Do we love Christ, or love our churches, positions, and ministries? When I frequent Christian web sites and blogs, I rarely see Jesus mentioned. There was a paper put out recently by Dr. Malcolm Yarnell of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary that many of you have already seen and commented on, where he gets all excited about the Baptist Renaissance at Southwestern. He mentions "baptists" 68 times in the article, and Jesus or Christian only 7 times. I know that the point of the article is how great it is that SWBTS is getting back to it's strictly Baptist roots, but if we are taking time to exalt our denomination, church, or ministry in a way that leaves out Jesus or uses Him to accomplish our own purpose, we are in error. If only we could have a renaissance of simple and pure devotion to Christ in the SBC or in our churches. Or, in our hearts.

What else has grabbed your attention? What are you using Jesus for? To have a better life? To grow your church and/or ministry? To give you what you want? To help you with evangelism or missions (those things, as good as they are can miss the point if we see Jesus as a means to an end)? Is He looked to so that you can prove your theological points? That would at least be something, because we rarely even refer to Christ in all of our religious talk, unless to say we are Christians or we are doing this to honor Jesus Christ. I wonder how honored He really is, when we use Him to further our own ends.

Jesus cannot be owned by us. We cannot use Him to make ourselves feel better, to have a better family or personal life, or to have a more successful ministry. He is not to be used to win theological arguments. He is to be worshipped because He is worthy of our praise and we are to be devoted to Christ alone. Jesus is not a method for church growth so that we can feel better about ourselves and be "successful" or "effective" in ministry, nor will He give our blessing to our triumphal pronouncements of how right we are on everything. Devotion to Christ demands humility because we begin to understand how amazing He is and how dependent upon Him we are - for everything.

Our church is growing right now at a fairly rapid pace. And, I don't know why. Of course, we have wonderful people who love the Lord, but what I mean is, there is no method that we are using. I can't look at 3 steps to church growth like I was taught in seminary and in the books I've read and explain why people are getting saved, growing in their walk, inviting others to church, and gathering in small groups to disciple one another. I've tried to figure it out and I can't. Well, there goes the book I was going to write and the church growth conference! All that I can say is that we continue to lift up the name of Jesus and trust the work of the Holy Spirit in the lives of our people. He is doing it. God is at work all around us and people are responding. They are taking submitting their own lives to the Lord and something supernatural is happening in their lives, that is actually natural for the Christian. We are just simply looking to Jesus and letting Him do what He wants. It is quite liberating, actually.

I guess I am learning that we cannot own Jesus. We can't get Him to work for us, no matter how many prayers we pray or how much we obey so He will bless us. The New Covenant requires that we live our lives in RESPONSE to His gracious initiative.  It means that we are free from striving and trying to earn God's blessing because He has truly paid the price for our sins and He gives us new life in Him. He was free, yet took our burden, so that we could be free. Do we believe it? Or, do we continue to construct our own burdens that we try and lift so that somehow, someway, God might bless us. Well, He already has - in Christ. But, we are too busy running after other things to notice.

I leave you with some poignant lines from a Rich Mullins song, "You Did Not Have a Home,"

Well you had no stones to throw
You came without an ax to grind
You did not tow the party line, No wonder sight came to the blind
You had no stones to throw
You had no stones to throw
And You rode and ass' foal
They spread their coats and cut down palms
For You and Your donkey to walk upon
But the world won't find what it thinks it wants
On the back of an ass' foal
So I guess You had to get sold
'Cause the world can't stand what it can't own
And it can't own You 'Cause You did not have a home
Birds have nests, foxes have dens
But the hope of the whole world rests
On the shoulders of a homeless man
You had the shoulders of a homeless man

May we all be reminded of the simplicity of devotion to Christ in all things. May He receive the glory.

Here are a few photos of the kids over the last couple of weeks, enjoying a family outing, posing for Christmas cards, and spending time with family. I have lots of family and friends that read Downshoredrift, so I thought you might be interested in seeing how the kids are growing (Click on the photo to enlarge). We had a great Christmas and we hope you did too!

Have a Happy New Year!!!

Christmas has come and gone. At times it was an incredible blessing. We gathered with family and friends, ate (like crazy), exchanged gifts, and worshipped the Lord through prayer and gathering with the saints on Sunday morning and evening. At other times, it was difficult. Erika had to take Caelan to the hospital unexpectedly on Friday evening because of a fever, and she had to leave Saturday night and rush him there again because of high fever of over 102. She did not return until Sunday evening because they had to give him a blood transfusion and platelets. Sigh.

In the midst of all of this, with Erika and Caelan absent in Birmingham, the other kids and I delivered Christmas goodies to our neighbors (this was supposed to happen on Friday but was postponed). In the process, we found out that several houses on our street had recently been broken into. People are wanting to come together and get to know their neighbors so that we can take care of one another. The man across the street also said he was interested in helping me get folks together and we pledged to have a cook out in the Spring. So, God seems to have used our little gifts to the neighbors to begin a process of bringing people together and building much needed community in our neighborhood. We even had a couple that we had just met bring us a quiche on Christmas morning as a thanks for the gifts we had brought them!

Once things settled down, we ended up having a great time with my mom and her husband, and my sister and brother-in-law. I can truly say that, in spite of all the hospital visits this month, Christmas has been a blessing as we truly experienced Christ and His presence. He led us into a more missional Christmas this year, and I am thankful for that. Through focusing and living out the theme of the Incarnation, whether at peace or in crisis, we truly experienced the amazing redemptive presence of Emmanuel, God with us. I pray that your Christmas was a blessing as well!

Well, Christmas is almost here. This will be my last post until after Christmas. I've got family coming in tomorrow and LOTS needs to be done to get ready and to finish up all of our Christmas preparations. My wife would not be happy to see me sitting on the computer while she does everything, so, this is it until next week. I'm also looking forward to our service on Sunday and our Christmas Eve Candlelight Communion Service (I love that!).  SOOO,  MERRY CHRISTMAS!!! 

We've been trying to make Christmas more spiritual and missional this year. Instead of just focusing on ourselves and receiving, we have tried to find ways to connect with neighbors and friends and serve them. Later this evening, my family and I are going into our neighborhood to deliver little goody packages with a scripture verse on them to all of our neighbors. We don't know the vast majority of them because everyone is so private. We thought this would be a great way to get to know them, pass on a blessing, and start to build some relationships. My wife and children spent the whole afternoon yesterday baking all types of cookies, brownies, fudge, etc., and they had a blast. Please pray for us as we do this. I am trying to teach my kids that Christmas is a great time to reach out to others and bless them, even if you don't know them. They're pretty excited about it.

Along those lines, a group from our church went Christmas Caroling on Wednesday night (see image on left - that was us! Yeah right!). This was the last event in our Time to Serve. We did not have our normal service, so around 40 of us went to the apartment complexes near our church and sang a few songs. Some folks came out to listen, but even though many people were home, people tended to not be very responsive, except for a few (including a Muslim family). I was kind of surprised. How often do you have Christmas Carolers show up near your house? I guess not often enough. We were walking back toward the church, and I was a little disappointed, honestly.

But, then I had a thought. We were walking on the street back toward the church and passed a restaurant/martini bar named Dabbo's. It occurred to me that they might let us come in and sing Christmas carols to their patrons (I'm thinking of an Irish Pub type of thing). I told the group to wait and I went and asked if they would have us. They said "sure!" and told us to come in. There was no one in the restaurant, but there were about 10 people in the bar area. It was a pretty nice place filled with an older crowd that was dressed nicely. We all crowded in (kids and all) and sang our Christmas carols and told them Merry Christmas. Many of the patrons sang along with us. We then gave out little flyers that had some of our church information on it with candy canes attached. In return, they gave us money! I rushed up and kept telling them "NO! Keep your money! We didn't come here for money! We're trying to bless you!" They insisted. They were so happy that we came in, they took up a collection for us and told us to use it for a good cause! It was spare cash they had in their pockets, but it ended up being $30! I went back to the church and assigned it to our benevolence fund. We regularly have people coming to the church and asking for food or gas, so those folks in the bar will help feed some folks in the coming weeks.

So, I thought that was pretty cool. It just shows me that God always has surprises for us when we step out in faith and incarnate the gospel. The Incarnation of Christ into a lost and hurting world has been my running theme this Christmas and I am so excited about what God has taught me. Our God is a missional God and He sent His Son cross culturally to our planet to bring us the Kingdom of God. We have so much to rejoice over and so much to tell people about.

Again, please pray for my family and I as we try and build relationships with our neighbors tonight. We're going to around 25 houses and are praying for friendships to develop with people that we only see in passing. We hope to follow this up with neighborhood get togethers as the year goes on, but everyone is so isolated and private, we thought Christmas would be a great time to break the ice.

I wish each of you a merry Christmas. So does my wife Erika, and my 4 children. Merry Christmas!!!

As a pastor, I get the amazing privilege of being able to minister to children and talk with them and their families about spiritual things. Before anyone is baptized in our church, I meet with them and go through the gospel and what baptism means. We have a lot of kids in our church, and it has been awesome to see many of them confess faith in Christ over the past year and obey God in baptism. God has truly been at work in the lives of our kids, and it has been awesome to see.

I have been really excited to see this in my own children. I know, you think it's a given, right? Well, it really isn't. Just because parents are in church, or their dad is a pastor, it doesn't necessarily mean that the kids are going to be hungry spiritually. But, God has been gracious. My oldest daughter got baptized this year, after she received God's gift of salvation almost two years ago. She has a sensitive heart for the Lord and for others as well. She is such a blessing.

Recently, my oldest son, who is 5, has really begun to talk with me about God. He was given a Bible for Christmas the other day, and he has been bringing it to me to read to him. He wants to read John 3:16 everyday, and everything that comes before it and after it. We started trying that, and he kept asking what came before. Finally, I decided to start reading the book of John to him. He keeps reminding me, listening, and asking questions. I had to take him to the doctor this morning, and he talked to me about God, salvation, and being baptized the whole way. He kept saying, "Daddy, let's talk about God. I want to be baptized." I told him that he needed to wait awhile until he was a bit older and understood things better. He answered, "Daddy, let's talk about God now. I want to understand. Help me understand." I was blown away.

He is asking questions, praying, and seeking God in a way that is far greater than just wanting to go to Heaven.  Almost everytime he says he loves me, he says he loves me more than anything, but not more than God. He makes that very clear. God is truly at work in the lives of my kids and He is drawing them to Him. I am grateful.

Now, my three year old son, on the other hand, was caught carrying part of his dinner to the trash can to make us think he had finished it all so he could have dessert. He was disillusioned to find that that did not go over very well. Ah, his depravity is beginning to show. Lord? :)

David Dockery, the president of Union University, a Baptist school in Tennessee, called for unity among Southern Baptists based on the essentials of the faith (HT: Wade Burleson). This is a really great article and I agree with his perspective wholeheartedly.  Here's a couple of excerpts:

“What I wanted to do was to call us back to a primary focus on the Gospel itself and understand those areas where we have strong agreement about the sinfulness of humanity and their lostness apart from Christ, that our salvation is found in Christ alone,” Dockery said.

“I invite us to move from controversy and confusion to a new consensus and take a step back, not just to commit ourselves afresh to missions and evangelism, as important as that is, but to commit ourselves first and foremost to the Gospel, the message of missions and evangelism, the message that is found only in Jesus Christ and His atoning death for sinners,” Dockery said. “I trust that we can hold hands together for the good of the Gospel beginning here at Union University, which can bring a fresh breath, a fresh wind of God’s Spirit across Tennessee Baptist life and across the Southern Baptist Convention.”

“It is possible to hold hands with brothers and sisters who disagree on secondary and tertiary matters of theology and work together toward a common good to advance the Kingdom of God,” Dockery said. “But we need to be of like mind on first-order issues, issues such as the authority and truthfulness of the Bible, the deity and humanity of Christ, the Holy Trinity and the exclusivity of the Gospel.”

Amen, brother! May your tribe increase! Again, read the article HERE.

And, if you haven't already, check out some of my thoughts on unity last week at my post, Our Real Basis of Unity.

When I was younger, Christmas was ABSOLUTELY my favorite time of year. I loved the presents, family getting together, the Christmas TV specials (I became a big Burl Ives fan), the Christmas carols, decorations, the presents . . . sorry, I already mentioned that. As I got older and started having a family, Christmas became much more hectic, yet still satisfying. Instead of mostly receiving, I was in the position of giving. It was great to see my kids get excited and introduce them to all the Christmas traditions of my past and to make new ones of my own.  My wife and I were married on December 17, so our honeymoon was the week before Christmas and that makes this time of year doubly special.

However, somewhere along the way, I lost my Christmas spirit. I started to get jaded and frustrated. The bombardment of materialism and gift buying and giving started to get to me. My parents divorced almost 4 years ago, so I joined my wife in having a split family. That was painful. When we got together with family for gift exchanges and all the little family Christmases that you have, everyone just gave presents and didn't say much about it. It all began to seem odd, what with all the parties, gifts, shopping, food, and expectation of what? It all began to ring hollow to me.

Over the course of the past 6-9 months I have read three books that have affected my view of the current administration in the White House and have also affected my views on leadership. They are The Great Deluge by Douglas Brinkley regarding Hurricane Katrina, State of Denial by Bob Woodward regarding the failures of our Iraq policy, and Tempting Faith by David Kuo, which was about the office of faith based initiatives.  All three books, though on completely unrelated topics, show the picture of a detached leader who delegated way too much, did not ask hard questions, and led by giving pep talks to subordinates. After reading this trilogy, I was struck by how similar the observations of these men were, even though they did not work together, had no communication, and shared no common agenda. I came to the realization that our president has led in a very direct way on casting vision, but has been very vague on how that vision is to be accomplished. He's left the execution up to subordinates who have been consistently confused about how things were to be done, who was in charge, what the chain of command actually was, and what the real desires of the president were. Many also had their own agendas that were at odds with the president, but because he never asked questions, he did not know. Time after time, I read about meetings in the White House where people would come out more confused than they went in and our President would do nothing to bring clarity, ask tough questions, or get things moving. From the detachment in the wake of Katrina, to abdicating direction of the Iraq policy to Rumsfeld and Paul Bremer, to mouthing empty slogans on faith based initiatives that were not backed up with substance, one gets the idea that our president has determined ideas but very little ability to get people moving so that things happen the right way.   

When George W. Bush became president, much was made of his managerial leadership style. He was the first Harvard MBA to become president, and he would bring with him a business sense to the executive branch that would be much more effective than the political leaders that have come before him. Well, whatever you think of Bush the Younger personally (I am a lifelong Republican, voted for him twice, and understand that he is an evangelical Christian), it is important to learn from his leadership style, if you can possibly track it.

Initially, he was lauded for his determination, focus, and moral clarity. He had a vision and he executed it. He called those around him to "keep the faith," and "stay the course." He was the ultimate vision caster.  He got the vision and he told others where we were headed. In a time of crisis, we all craved this type of direction and decisiveness. Everyone followed him.

But, things did not work out the way that he wanted. The Baker Commission is rumored to be considering bringing in Syria and Iran to help in a possible civil war in Iraq. People died on overpasses waiting 5 days to be rescued from the flood ravaged city of New Orleans. The Faith Based Initiatives Office is now basically defunct and nothing more is being done with the capstone of Compassionate Conservatism. The Republicans lost control of the House and the Senate, not because of liberal media bias, but because of their own corruption, incompetence, and failure to lead properly.

So, what can we learn? Remember, politically, I am a lifelong Republican who does not take the Democratic policies seriously.  Some of their policies are immoral, in my opinion, and I could never support a party that that advocates abortion on demand.  However, that does not mean that I should not critique and analyze my own end of the political spectrum, ask where God is working, and ask what needs to be learned.  Here are some leadership lessons, in my humble opinion:

1. Delegate to enable, not to ignore. Harry Truman said, "The buck stops here." To Bush's credit, he has taken responsibility for mistakes made both with Katrina and Iraq. I admire that. However, the reason for the mistakes was that he put people in position and offered no accountablity. He asked no questions. He did not make sure, on any level, that things were happening as they should, until failure was guaranteed. Delegation is good and vital, but we should not use it so that we can just focus on what we want to focus on. The whole task of the organization is important, and as the leader, you are responsible.
2. Every vision needs a plan for execution.  FEMA had been decimated by budget cuts. There was no plan for the rebuilding of Iraq after the war. Faith Based Initiatives was a lot of talk and little action. We, as leaders, do not need to put forward a vision without some type of reasonal plan to see it come to pass. When that plan is executed, and you assign people to tasks, you need to make sure that you resource the plan effectively. Mere platitudes do not accomplish great dreams. Action does.
3. Know your environment and context.  Jesus told us to "consider the cost." What is your reasonable chance of success? What are your obstacles? Why has this never been done before? Bush thought that he could superimpose democracy on the Middle East with very little understanding of the authoritarian Muslim Arab culture. The State Department was replaced by the Defense Department in the leadership of the endeavor. We said that because it had happened in Germany and Japan after WWII, it could happen in the Middle East. History will be the judge of this strategy, but at the very least, it did not take into account the culture of the people.  Every leadership environment consists of culture and context. You have to know who and what you are working with before you can devise plans to create a preferred future. The Bush Administration seemed to fail at this.
4. Get an accurate view of the situation throughout implementation of the plan. In other words, "how are things going?" The plan needs to be held accountable to some type of measurement. Without that, no one knows what is to happen next. What are the goals?  What do we need to do to accomplish this? We are finally asking these questions in Iraq, but it is too little too late.
5. Define success and fully articulate it to everyone involved. It is demoralizing to work and work with little to show for it and without knowing if you are doing the right thing. From ice trucks stranded in Missouri during Katrina, to miscommunication with generals in Iraq, the Bush administration has consistently been confused about what the goals of the operation were and what defined success.  In the same way, we need to know where we are headed, how we get there, and when we have arrived.
6. Be flexible and open to change.  Every day brings new variables and problems that could not be forseen. It is important to be decisive and stick with your plan, but at the same time, when that plan is no longer working, it is important to assess the situation and make course corrections. This is something that our president was not willing to do until recently, to the great frustration of the American people. He had to lose both houses of Congress before he would reconsider. May we not be so stubborn. It is o.k. to change our course and our strategy. If we are led by defined goals, the most important thing is the destination, not necessarily the route we took to get there.

These are just a few of the lessons that I have learned from watching our executive leader. As I said, I have supported him and I pray for him. I don't think that the Democrats have better ideas. But, the last time I checked, this was America, and it is important for us to learn from our mistakes and apply these solutions to other areas of our lives by asking questions and pointing a better way forward. What about your family? What about your ministry? You job? Your areas of leadership? How can we be more direct and involved in the process to make sure what needs to happen actually happens? Without being micromanagers, how can we all be better leaders so that God is glorified and His purposes are fulfilled through us in our generation? Just some thoughts to ponder.

This is one of my favorite passages in the Bible . . . Colossians 2: 6-7:

So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live in him, rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness.

Are you overflowing with thankfulness? Am I? I don't often know what that means, and I find it easier to be "overflowing with criticalness (new word)," or "overflowing with gripingness."  I'm a pretty analytical guy, so it comes easy for me to point out what is going wrong instead of what is going right. This is why celebrations like Thanksgiving are so important, because they remind us to thank God for our blessings, our family, and for His work in our lives. This is why this blog is so important for me to discipline myself to stop and notice where I see God at work in the world around me, so I can try and connect with Him and be filled with His wonder and grace.

I am thankful to God for loving me and saving me through the sacrifice of His Son, Jesus Christ. I do not deserve His love and I am just a meager recipient of His grace. I am so grateful for forgiveness of sin, for eternal life, and for His Holy Spirit that He has poured out. I am grateful that He loves me enough to comfort me, to correct me, and to teach me His ways. I am so grateful for His church that He places me in to help me walk with Him. I am first of all a follower of Christ; a pilgrim traveller along life's way, and I am thankful that the Great Shepherd is my Guide.

I am so thankful for my wife. She is incredible. Words cannot express how awesome she is, how much she loves me, and how amazingly beautiful she is. I am truly a blessed man, and it kills me how I sometimes take her for granted. My stupidity knows no bounds.

I am blessed with four beautiful children ages 7, 5, 3, and 1. God is so good. They are fun, sweet, smart as all get out, and they love me so much. Often, I find myself busy with other things and I miss the wonder going on around me. God has sent a carnival of life my way, and there are always new adventures, amazing discoveries, and joy, joy, joy all around me. I am so grateful.

I have the amazing privilege of pastoring one of the greatest churches in the world. It is so full of life, love, joy, and grace. On Sunday, for half my message, I just thanked people who were serving alongside of me. I got more out of it than they did. We had our Thanksgiving dinner Sunday night, and the amazing work of God in our midst was put on display for all to see. It was incredible. We grow together, struggle together, and learn to live for Christ together as we share Him with others. Lots of pastors say these things about their church, but I truly mean it.

I am blessed with great friends that I have known since grade school. We still get together once a year and we share life together, even though we live in separate states and countries. I wouldn't be who I am today if it wasn't for them. God is so good.

I could go on and on with so many things. I praise God that we found Caelan's cancer and that it has been removed. I praise Him that we live in America where He can be treated medically. I praise Him for His miraculous sustaining power during this time and how we have come to know the Lord in brand new ways. I praise Him for all the prayers that have been lifted up on our behalf and how so many have stood by us during the most difficult trial of our lives. God is faithful and so is His church. I praise God for that.

And finally, I praise God for each of you. People from all over the world come to Downshoredrift. I am humbled and grateful that you stop by and check out the goings on here. I appreciate every comment left and I have been sharpened and encouraged by each of you. I have made lots of new friends that I never would have come in contact with, and I am so grateful that God has used you all in my life. I look forward to journeying with you as we continue to discover the work of God in our world through all things great and small as we give Him praise!

Happy Thanksgiving!

It's the last day of October, the 31st to be exact, so I thought I'd return to the blogosphere. I took a self imposed blog fast for the last half of the month and I made up my mind not to comment on other blogs or write a post of my own. It was refreshing to not feel the need to publish every thought that was rolling around in my head.  For a week of that time, my family took a much needed vacation to the sugary white beaches of Florida's Emerald Coast (where the picture of the sunset came from). The rest of the time has been immersed in 2007 planning, budget meetings, the Fall Family Fun Night, and ministry.

Another reason why I took a break is because I wanted to clear my head and reset a bit in regard to my writing.  The idea of Downshoredrift is that God is at work all the time, moving us closer to Him. It's like when you are in the waves at the beach and you think you are in front of your umbrella and chair, but in reality you have moved down the beach and you didn't even realize it. That's called Downshoredrift.  Well, God is always at work to draw us to Himself and sometimes, it is so imperceptible that we don't realize it unless we are really paying attention.  I want to continue to write about that and keep giving praise to God.

Sometimes, we can also drift away from God.  One decision leads to another, and before we know it, we have grown lukewarm or have compromised ourselves. It can happen so quickly, that we do not even realize it. Fortunately, grace is greater than all of our sin and coldness of heart, and like a life guard, God rescues us from the waves that would tear us apart.

So, Downshoredrift embodies the movement of God in our life and it also characterizes the battle that we are in to keep our eyes open and to stay aware regarding truth and lies. I want my writing to be both pastoral and prophetic, so that I can call people to the loving arms of their Father God, and also warn against dangerous paths that we might be headed down. Downshoredrift has become a powerful metaphor for me, in that it describes the full range of emotions and activities that present themselves in our daily lives. Fortunately, God is always at work and His grace is sufficient. He is more than enough. I want to live with my eyes wide open and see God at work and give Him praise. I don't want to miss a thing.

So, God has been at work! Caelan, my 1 year old son with cancer, seems to be getting stronger every day as he gets over the effects of his radiation. His appetite is up and his blood counts have been higher. Thank you SO MUCH for your prayers! God is faithful!

God is really working in our church as people are growing in their relationship with the Lord and others are coming to Christ. God is adding to our church in awesome ways and we are reaching out in our workplaces and neighborhoods like never before. We had a big Fall Festival type gathering on Sunday night that was probably the biggest event we've ever done, and there was a lot of joy. So, praise God!

I have been reading about the continuing issues in the SBC in regard to the gifts of the Holy Spirit. This continues to grieve me and I'm going to be writing quite a bit about it later this week and in the future. But, I know that God is up to something and I pray that we all submit to Him in this.

We are facilitating several trips to South Asia next year, and I might be going on two of the three. We'll see, but there are some really incredible opportunities opening up for us. I'll keep you posted.

Well, it was good to reintroduce myself! Let me leave you with this verse, Job 42:4-6:

4"You said, 'Listen now, and I will speak;
       I will question you,
       and you shall answer me.'

5 My ears had heard of you
       but now my eyes have seen you.

6 Therefore I despise myself
       and repent in dust and ashes."

May we all have encounters with God this week that moves us from the realm of hearing about Him to truly experiencing His presence for ourselves. May we all be brought low before the magnificence of Almighty God, the Creator of the Universe. May we trust Him completely and throw our lives into His care with reckless abandon. May we see the Lord and worship Him.

I'll be back to the blog around the end of October.

Please keep praying for Caelan and keep looking for where God is working in your life.

I'm going to focus on living a bit more over the next couple of weeks.

Let's see how far down the shore of life God's grace moves me  .   .   .   .

If you've never been to Tallskinnykiwi, the blog of Andrew Jones, you regularly miss some incredible insights and discussion where he writes about the emerging church, technology, and his missionary travels and experiences all over the world. Andrew is from New Zealand, has lived all over the world, and now resides in Scotland. He took a blog fast for the month of September and has come back in October on fire. I went over there today and discovered reason #4,387 why I love Tallskinnykiwi: Andrew and Tim Keller were engaging in a discussion on the future of the church in the comment section of a post on John Piper's take on the emerging church during his Desiring God Conference. If you don't know who Tim Keller is, PLEASE inform yourself. He is the pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian in NYC and is doing incredible work.

I first ran into Andrew and his wife Debbie in San Francisco in 1997. He was doing work with street kids in the Haight-Ashbury District and was living in a flat with his family and about 10 other people on Ashbury Street. He pastored a store front church on Haight Street of about 25 people and it was amazing. My wife and I went there for several months, and every afternoon, we would go into Golden Gate Park with Andrew and others and hang out with the hippie kids and feed them sandwiches and have a picnic. We'd sing, hear about their travels, and through conversation, talk with them about Jesus. We prayed with them over their fears and even saw a guy come to Christ. On Monday, they had a time of study and conversation at Andrew's home where they would let the kids get showers, etc. I learned so much from Andrew and his family about incarnational ministry and a missional lifestyle.  He was also heavily influenced by Thom Wolf, so we have that in common as well.

I ran across his blog several years ago and it is usually insightful and inspiring. I actually started to blog because of him, and if you think I'm confessional and personal in my posts, just read Andrew for a week or two! I got to spend the night with he and his family in London two years ago, as well, and was there for one of his famous pizza nights, although, I couldn't keep my eyes open from jet lag. I even used to email him a bit, but now that he's an international blogging celebrity, I refrain. So, Tallskinnykiwi is back, and you should check it out.

I performed my first wedding this weekend and I was really nervous. I can preach in front of a thousand people and it never phase me, but weddings and funerals freak me out. They are pretty formal affairs, and it doesn't seem too appropriate to ad lib. You pretty much better know what you're going to say and stick to it. I stink at that. When I preach, it is a living thing and I tell a bunch of stories as I interact with the text. It is dynamic and I'm able to be myself and speak from my heart. Weddings seem much harder and the bride and her mother are probably not going to be too forgiving if you screw it up. So, I was feeling the pressure.

But, it all seemed to work out rather well. God showed up in answer to a great deal of prayer, and people seemed to be really blessed. Oh, and the couple got married too (I really shouldn't make this all about me, but it is my blog, so I guess I can write what I want!). Seriously, they are an awesome couple, and I pray that God richly bless them in every way.

There was a great reception afterwards. It wasn't one of those Baptist receptions where the wedding is in the sanctuary and everyone slides over to the fellowship hall for a rowdy throw-down of punch, cheese straws, cashews, and cake. Nope, this was one of those full blown affairs with food and everything! We even had a DJ and a dance floor! Now, I can cut a mean rug, but I have to say that it was great fun to party with the church folk. Seriously, we all danced with our wives (gasp!) and the kids were twirling about as well. We laughed and shared life together. We didn't want to leave. It reminded me of a wedding that Jesus went to in Cana, but without the wine (we are still baptist, for crying out loud! We had sweet tea!).

A few things I'm thinking about today as we start off another week . . .

Ernesto seems to be moving east toward Florida. I don't wish a hurricane on anyone, and my sister lives in Orlando, but I am very glad it is not projected to hit Louisiana-Mississippi. They truly can't take it. The tens of thousands of people living in FEMA trailers would again be homeless. I just pray that this hurricane season remains relatively quiet.  This week is the one year anniversary of Katrina and the memories are strong. I'm going to write a bit about my memories from last year. Even though I didn't go through it, we were down there four days later and my family went through it. It was a horrendous time and I want to get some thoughts down.

We had a great day at church yesterday. I preached on Philippians 3:17-4:1. Powerful passage. We talked about how Paul's example and pattern were the "way of life in Christ Jesus" (1 Cor. 4:16-17), and how that is so different from just moral behavior alone. Rather, it is finding your righteousness in Christ by faith and allowing Him to live through you and transform you. That leads to moral behavior, but Christ is always our starting and finish point. He is our guide and our goal. The message notes and audio will be up on Gatewaylife.net later this week.

I ran across this article this morning about a little boy who drowned when the levees broke in the Ninth Ward in New Orleans when Katrina hit. He was 6 years old. Here is an excerpt:

The foul floodwaters swept little Montava Trueblood away, snatching him from his mother as New Orleans fell into absolute horror almost one year ago. Montava slipped off a rooftop in the Lower 9th Ward and into a violent sea of destruction on Aug. 29. He never got to enter first grade. He never got to celebrate his 7th birthday in December. Instead, he slipped beneath a pile of debris and drowned.

Only days ago, Montava was finally given a proper funeral, as the world prepares to take notice of the one-year anniversary of the worst natural disaster -- and arguably the worst engineering failure -- in the history of the United States. Preachers comforted the 30 or so mourners inside Littlejohn's Funeral Home on Aubry Street. On Aug. 15, the boy's remains were identified by the Orleans Parish coroner's office through a DNA sample his mother gave mortuary officials a month after the storm, the Trueblood family said.

When the child's ashes are placed in a plot at Resthaven Cemetery, he will not be alone. Montava will be laid to rest in October alongside his mother and his baby brother who, after barely escaping the floodwaters, perished in a fire in Milwaukee in December, a few days shy of his mother's 32nd birthday.

I just dropped my kids off at school and I had a picture in my mind of losing my Ashtyn (7), Peyton (4) or Kieran (3) to such a horror. A great deal of emotion welled up in me and I couldn't bear the thought. I love them so much and want to protect them with all that I am. But, we are all just a moment away from death and the tragedies that we see on television are real people. It is only by God's grace that we have not experienced such a tragedy. We have become so calloused and self-centered, that we don't even realize what people have gone through. If you truly take the time to read about what happened in New Orleans and the hell that it became, you have a better understanding of the anger and hopelessness that was displayed at the Superdome and Convention Center as people waited 5 days to be picked up.  My heart breaks as I realize it just as easily could have been my family going through that. How would I have handled it?

Can any of you imagine losing one of your children this way? How would you respond? The mother and baby died in an apartment fire in December when she fell asleep while smoking up in Wisconsin. How depressed do you think she was? How much pain was in her heart?

There are hurting people all around us and we entertain them unaware. Perhaps God has placed you where He has or is sending you somewhere today to bring some hope and blessing into someone's life. Or, maybe it's you. Maybe you have experienced a terrible blow and are wondering if there is any hope for you. Our prayer is, "Come quickly, Lord Jesus." We ask that Jesus would return and deliver us from this world of decay. But, in the meantime, we ask that His presence would rest upon us and that He would comfort us in all our troubles so that we, in turn can comfort others. This life is hard. Real hard. But, there is a God who comes to us to bring redemption, hope, and comfort through His Son, Jesus Christ. May God live through each one of us today so that we can bring hope to the hopeless.

2 Corinthians 1:3-5  "3Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, 4who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God. 5For just as the sufferings of Christ flow over into our lives, so also through Christ our comfort overflows."

May we comfort the afflicted today.

A guy in our church passed this song by MercyMe on to me the other day. It's a lot better with the music, but the lyrics are powerful:

"Bring The Rain"

I can count a million times
People asking me how I
Can praise You with all that I've gone through
The question just amazes me
Can circumstances possibly
Change who I forever am in You
Maybe since my life was changed
Long before these rainy days
It's never really ever crossed my mind
To turn my back on you, oh Lord
My only shelter from the storm
But instead I draw closer through these times
So I pray

Bring me joy, bring me peace
Bring the chance to be free
Bring me anything that brings You glory
And I know there'll be days
When this life brings me pain
But if that's what it takes to praise You
Jesus, bring the rain

I am Yours regardless of
The dark clouds that may loom above
Because You are much greater than my pain
You who made a way for me
By suffering Your destiny
So tell me what's a little rain
So I pray

Holy, holy, holy
Is the Lord God Almighty

May we all learn to praise God, especially in the midst of difficult times. In the message last Sunday, I made the statement that whenever hard times come, we should not ask God, "Why me?" Rather, we should ask ourselves whether we are going to let this circumstance push us to the Lord, or away from Him to something else. Suffering can have a powerful effect in our life in that it teaches us to cling to Christ (James 1:2-4; 2 Corinthians 4:7-12).

Could it be, that in an affluent, success based, materialistic American culture, one of the BASIC discipleship lessons that we should be passing on to others is how to praise God in the midst of suffering? May we not just pray to Him when we face tough times, but may we REJOICE in the Lord always (Phil. 4:4). We can rejoice in the Lord, because no matter what we go through, He is the same. He never changes. His provision, grace, and love never fail. And, even when we die, this life is not all there is. We will be with Him forever and we will be praising Him! We might as well start now.

Yesterday, I ran across an interview that outgoing SBC President Dr. Bobby Welch gave after the convention in Greensboro (HT: John Stickley). As many of you know, there was a resolution that was passed against the consumption, use, manufacturing, and sale of alcoholic beverages.  Obviously, every Baptist is against drunkeness and agrees with the Biblical prohibitions regarding that issue. That is not what the debate has been about. The debate has concerned whether it is permissable for a Christian to have even a glass of wine on a rare occasion. The resolutions says "No."  Many have countered the resolution by pointing out that there is no Biblical injunction against having a small amount of alcohol in moderation and even Jesus turned water to wine. Anyway, it has been a big debate and I have been kind of bored by it because everyone just snipes at each other and no one really listens, it seems. I have tried to stay out of this debate to follow the admonition of Romans 14: 19-23 that tells us to do what leads to peace and mutual edification and to not cause your brother to stumble. It also says that whatever you believe about such matters you should keep to yourself so that you will not be condemned by what you approve of and that everything that does not come from faith is sin. So, I see little benefit in coming down on one side or another of a non-essential, unless it becomes a gospel issue, which at times it has. 

But, when I read the words of Bobby Welch in an interview he gave on June 27, I had to take issue, not over the alcohol issue, but over bearing false witness against your neighbor. The Ninth Commandment in Exodus 20:16 says, "You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor." I believe that Bobby Welch did so. Here are his words:

I've spent a good deal of time over the past week putting together a blog/web based magazine for our church. I keep thinking about how effective blogging has been for me to meet new people, get ideas out there, and to be able to receive feedback, prayer, and encouragement. What if a church created a community where it could take part in that together? What if we put what God was doing in our lives on display and invited others in our church to take part in that? We decided to launch gatewaylife.net and see what happens. It just started yesterday, so we are in the experimental phase, but the folks that have been to it are really excited. As always, it will take people a while to start leaving comments, but already ideas are flowing about putting bible studies up and having them be interactive and sharing testimonies. So, this should be interesting.  By the way, please don't go on there and leave any negative comments. They will be immediately deleted. That site is not the place to criticize people's thoughts or theology. Save it for here. I can take it.

Also, I've been invited (actually volunteered) to be a contributer at Dr. Andrew Jackson's RedBlueChristian.com.  It is an offshoot of his SmartChristian.com and it is meant to look at political issues from both a conservative and liberal Christian viewpoint in the hope that dialogue between the two sides can occur. I am decidedly conservative, but I often find myself at odds with Republicans on many issues. Of course, I am pro-life, against gay marriage, and very conservative on social issues, but I find that to be consistent with what the Bible says means that I am not always in agreement with Republicans. That is as it should be. We should always maintain a prophetic witness and never be beholden to a political party or a nation-state for that matter. Our Kingdom is not of this world. So, I'll be writing on political issues from time to time over there and will provide links from here. Hopefully, I'll present a reasoned, Biblical perspective.

The aforementioned causes me to ask: What would you, the readers of Downshoredrift, like to see discussed from a political perspective? I might not take all your ideas, but some ideas might provide food for thought and get me thinking. I'm working on an article on the crisis in the Middle East right now and how we should be addressing the entire issue. I'm learing a ton and it is fascinating. Other issues?

UPDATE:  I just posted my first article at RedBlueChristian.com. It is called the Fallacy of Trusting in Politics. It is basically an introductory post on how I believe that Christians should seek to maintain a prophetic Biblical witness and not be tied to any one political party because our Kingdom is not of this world. Pretty tame stuff, really. But, it's a start. Check it out.

Daddy, if God and Jesus and a jaguar were to race, God and Jesus would tie and the jaguar would lose.

                                                                        - My son Peyton, 4 years old.

I really can't add anything to that.  He just walked up to me out of the blue and told me that. It's amazing what kids think about, isn't it?

One of the great treasures of Montgomery, AL, where I live, is the Alabama Shakespeare Festival.  It is a playhouse that obviously focuses on Shakespearean plays, but also has many other plays as well. The productions are first rate and are truly amazing. In case you didn't know: The Alabama Shakespeare Festival, located in Montgomery - Alabama's state capital - is the sixth largest Shakespeare festival in the world and attracts more than 300,000 annual visitors from all 50 states and over 60 countries. Pretty cool.

Anyway, last night for my birthday (thanks Laura for the tickets), my wife and I went to see The Man of La Mancha,  which is the Tony Award winning musical that is an adaptation of Miguel Cervantes' story of Don Quixote de la Mancha.  Most people are familiar with the story of Don Quixote, the knight errant, who jousts windmills and lives in a fantasy world of castles, ladies, and the evil Enchanter. With his manservant, Sancho Panza, Don Quixote brings chivalry and color to a drab, practical world.  The duo embark on a quest to defeat the Enchanter, and in the process happen upon a "castle" (it is really a tavern/inn, full of mule drivers and a harlot/kitchen wench named Aldonza).  Aldonza is being groped and propositioned by the vile mule drivers during the dinner she is serving and she, with great hardness of heart, accepts money from one of them for services to be later rendered. 

The beautiful thing about this story is the relationship between Don Quixote, who sees a fantasy world where everyone else sees reality, and Aldonza. When Don Quixote sees Aldonza, he immediately calls her, "My Dulcinea," which means "something akin to an overly elegant sweetness" in the Spanish of the time.  She keeps wondering why he calls her that and she keeps begging him to see her as she "really is."  Despite her vile nature and her occupation as a whore, Don Quixote continues to call her pure, beautiful, and virginal.  Over time, his unwavering love changes her character and in the end, she sees herself as "Dulcinea," instead of as the whore, Aldonza.

Obviously, the biblical imagery was gripping.  We are no longer seen by God as sinful, rebellious people. We are not seen as vile, broken, and utterly depraved.  When we are brought to Christ and are regenerated by His work, we are seen as a new creation, as holy, dearly loved, precious, clean, and righteous. We are given the righteousness of Christ, and we are treated as though we had never sinned. Everything is changed because of the complete work of Jesus Christ on the cross. We love because He loved us first, and He showed His love by sending His Son, Jesus to us as an atoning sacrifice for our sins (1 John 4:10-11).  Jesus calling us by a new name changes everything.  The rest of this world becomes the false system, and the Kingdom view of Christ, though it is invisible, is the ultimate reality.  We spend our lives learning about this new reality, and by faith, we learn to accept and live from our new position as Sons of the Living God.  Just like the evil Dr. Carrasco and the mule drivers in the play, Satan attacks us and tries to get us to forget the Kingdom vision and live according to what is seen and return to our idols, instead of living by faith.  However, God calls us to live our lives as a response to His initiative of grace and to be free in His unending, unconditional love. 

The analogy breaks down in the end, in that Don Quixote is just a man and not the living God. But, he does transform Aldonza into Dulcinea.  In the same way, we are transformed from lowly, broken sinners into the Bride of Christ. I left the play thanking God for the transformation He has and is working in my life. May I live by faith and believe what God says about the love He has for me and may I accept it and live my life as a grateful, worshipful response.  Well, that is how I found grace at The Man of La Mancha.

The Washington Post has a very interesting article on pastors who blog and why they do it (HT: Smart Christian). Hmm. Maybe I should try this. It sounds like it might be worth it . . . Seriously, I found that I resonated very well with the tone of the article. The real reason that I blog is that I want to keep a journal of how I see God working in the world all around me and our response to that. Sometimes I deviate from that a bit to just share observations. But, mostly, I am very intrigued with how I see God working. I think that is a story worth telling. Downshoredrift is when you go to the beach and you keep getting pushed down the shore by the waves, at times, imperceptibly. I believe that God works that way in our lives. Waves come crashing in and we think they are going to take us out, but in reality, they move us further down the shore. God works in our lives through the good things and bad to move us closer to Him and to reveal Himself in our lives. God is trustworthy and He is always at work. I like to write about that and give God praise. He is worthy!  What about you?

Michael Spencer (Internet Monk) writes a very provacative post on the seductive nature of entertainment in the church and in American culture entitled American Idolatry: What's Entertainment?   This post should be required reading for any discussion on ministry, parenting, or life in America in the 21st century. It is that insightful. Here is an excerpt:

Getting our bearings on the idolatry of entertainment is difficult. There is no doubt that American culture is addicted to entertainment, and that this addiction is now in a stage of consuming almost all aspects of our culture. For evangelicalism to exist in American culture, it will breath the air of this entertainment addiction. It is language, thought, the content of vast tracts of our cultural, family and individual lives.

This addiction is so deeply and completely part of our culture, that we are largely unable to talk about anything without judging it by its entertainment value or to conceive of improving it without causing whatever is being improved to become more and more “entertaining.” Our lives are empty, and entertainment promises to provide something- some feeling, some stimulation- that makes us real and alive. The promises of the Gospel to give us living bread and thirst-quenching water are covered over by bells, songs, lights and big screens.

Work must be entertaining. Education must be entertaining. Marriage must be entertaining. Family life must be entertaining. Children must be entertained. Our lives must be full of more and more entertainment. Entertainment will save our economy. Entertainment is the ultimate judge of talent, worth and value. We are entertained from cradle to grave. Leaders provide it, and the mob insists upon it. Of course, religion, church and God must all be entertaining, or we will have nothing to do with them.

Wow. I think he's right. As a pastor, I definitely see that in so many of the people who come and visit our church. In the discussion on whether our church is right for them, so often, what is meant is, "Is it entertaining for us and our children?"  God help us.

What do you think about this? Have you noticed this tendency or addiction in your own life? In your children's lives? How can we change this?

Just a few random thoughts on a Saturday night:

Tomorrow, we start a summer sermon series on the book of Philippians. We will preach through it until around Labor Day, I think. I'll start tomorrow with Philippians 1:1-2 on the grace and peace of God. To open many of Paul's letters, he says, "Grace and Peace to you." How much we need to receive grace and peace from the Lord and give it to one another. I'll have my notes up from the message in a couple of days, maybe.  A neat thing about this is that our elders and student minister will be preaching on 5 Sundays in June and July on different sections of Philipppians. It'll give me a break and will allow our church to hear from their other pastors. I'm excited about it and pray that we grow this summer.

I also, along with a couple of other guys start a class on varying views of Jesus that will go for 10 weeks during our morning Bible study time. I'm going to start with questions raised from The Da Vinci Code (by the way, I saw the movie last night, and what a dog! It was awful, in my opinion, and not just because it was so untrue - the acting and especially the directing was atrocious. Probably no need to boycott it - it fades from memory before you walk out of the theatre).  We'll move on to talk about how we are moving into a spiritual age that is not necessarily friendly to Christianity and we will spend the last few weeks talking about what other religions like Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam think of Jesus. It will be kind of a Christology class in reverse, by looking at Jesus and the Bible through the eyes of their critics and then showing what the Bible says and answering questions raised. It should be interesting.

Tomorrow afternoon, we will have a forum at our church on the emerging SBC Issues that will be coming up at the convention in Greensboro, NC June 13-14. I am going to the convention, and I wanted to give an opportunity to educate my church before I went.  I have not mentioned these things to our church as a whole, but I wanted to provide an opportunity for folks to learn about what is happening. I'll save you the commentary right now. I'll post some of the general response to the issues from rank and file church member this week. It should be interesting.

We will also have a farewell dinner for all of our military folks who will be leaving us this summer. It will be so sad to see them go.  They have contributed a great deal to our church this year and it has been awesome to get to know them. They will be transferred to other bases around the country. I pray that God will bless them and use them mightily in His Kingdom.

Caelan is still doing great and is playing at my feet right now. We had birthdays this weekend for two of my children (they are only 3 days apart - 4 years and 3 days, actually!), so it has been a pretty busy weekend. Right now, I am relaxing, perusing the blogs (mostly SBC stuff in preparation for the convention in June), and am enjoying a HOT, lazy Sunday afternoon.

Today, after worship, we had a dinner for a couple in our church who just got married named Rob and Sherry. After we ate, we were encouraging them and sharing things that we were praying for in their lives. Rob said something that really had me thinking. He said that one of the main things that God has taught him over the past couple of years is to look fully to Christ for all of His needs and then take what he has received from Christ and spread it around to others, because there are a lot of hurting, needy people out there.  Well, that pretty much summed up about 2000 years of practical Christian theology.  Rob has walked through a lot of pretty terrible stuff the past couple of years, and it is awesome to hear that kind of simple, yet powerful testimony from a brother who has experienced God in the midst of trials, has seen Him restore, and is praising the Lord! Way to go, Rob - may your marriage and home be blessed with the grace and peace of our Lord Jesus Christ!

When you are faced with the strong possibility of a child with cancer (or your own weaknesses and sickness, for that matter), you are forced to see life differently. We're still waiting for test results, by the way, so no new news to report. I provided a link in my last post to John Piper's article, Don't Waste Your Cancer.   The basic premise of his perspective (which comes, by the way, from his own prostate cancer), is that this tragedy SHOULD serve to drive us closer to Christ, to cherish Him, and to step away from the pitiful pleasures that consume us as we live life in this world.

This affection for pleasure is so pervasive in America, and especially in the South, where I live, that it is difficult for us to see how it grips our lives. We (includes me) are driven by a desire for comfort, security, and pleasure, to the point that we begin to expect these things as though they were rights.  We fail to understand that the majority of the human condition is one of desperate need, fear, and suffering.  We are so blessed, that we do not even see it, and our blessing has become our curse.  Like the fish who does not recognize that it is wet, or even know what water is, we are so surrounded by affluence and prosperity, that we do not even see our situation or realize that we are prosperous.  Things like cancer, death, natural disasters, awake us from our malaise and remind us (if we are fortunate), what life is really all about.

We are still waiting to hear back from the various pathology labs concerning the results of Caelan's tumor. He is healing nicely from his surgery, so God is answering all of your prayers. He is not sleeping well at night, and (yawn!), that is having it's affect on the rest of the family. He also had an ear infection with a fever of 102, but the doctors have seen him and say that he is doing well over all.  Thank you so much for your prayers and your concern. I'll post an update when we know our futher course of action. As it stands right now, we are waiting until Thursday, when we go back to meet with the doctors.

I have not blogged lately because I have been very busy, we have not had anything new to report on Caelan, and because I also know that of the hundreds of visits a day that this site has been getting, 90% of them are primarily to get an update on Caelan. Thank you so much for visiting and your prayers!  I want to let everyone know that I will return to posting on other things of interest to me that chronicle how God is present in the little things of life to bring us closer and closer to Him (something that I have called Downshoredrift).   If you want to skip all of that and just read about what is happening with our precious son, you can go to Caelan Updates on my sidebar under CATEGORIES or hit the link here.  I just wanted to give a disclaimer before I started writing about other things to let you know that our family is going to return to some sense of normalcy, and part of that will be shown in my blogging on other issues, including Caelan. I hope you will track along with me through my other observations as well, but if not, hit the Caelan link and keep up that way.

Your comments are always appreciated and have been so encouraging to me and my family. I plan to print out these posts, put them in a book, and let Caelan read all of the prayers for him during this time when he gets older. Can you imagine how it will affect his life, when he is 16 and he reads about how during this time that he cannot remember, so many people prayed for him? I pray that God uses this in his life and the lives of others to draw many people to Himself. More later . . . God bless each of you!!!!

By the way, here is a great link from John Piper concerning his cancer. I thought you might find it interesting:  Don't Waste Your Cancer.  What do you think? Some of it is really good and I am still working through other parts.

I saw this on Liquidthinking and I thought, "Wow, that's definitely how I've felt some days." Life seems to be going really well, you are enjoying God's beauty and creation, all the while, danger is lurking right behind you. This picture is kind of funny, but it also reminds us to be on guard and aware at all times.  You could actually draw a bunch of different lessons from this.  What are yours?

The guys at Liquidthinking also have some great thoughts on the Kingdom and the Gospel that are worth checking out.  I especially like what they are saying about God having a course marked out for us ahead of time as they tackle the concept of predestination in Ephesians 1.  I think that we misinterpret the predestination verses and give too much weight to eternal decrees dictating the future, rather than looking at it more from the perspective of God's will for His creation, including us. This is not to take away from His soveriegnty or to allow for an open universe, but to recognize that He is working and involved in the redemption of the world through us and His own activity. 

Here's another interesting picture that I ripped off from the same site.  It illustrates the same point as before. Just when you think you're having a great day . . . 

(Picture of Point Reyes, CA, near SF where we lived in the late 90's - it illustrates Downshoredrift, which I'll talk about later in the post)

It's late and I can't sleep.  I have a lot on my mind. Sure, I went to bed a few hours ago, excited about turning in early, but I keep spinning, thinking about all types of things. So, I prayed and prayed, and still my mind raced. I've got a lot going on, I think, and I keep trying to get a handle on life.  Sometimes, I find it hard to settle down.

I haven't blogged much lately, and obviously have not gotten my message notes up from the last couple of weeks like I wanted to. I've been really busy and distracted, it seems, living in the tyranny of the urgent, so to speak. Blogging is a good practice, I feel, because it disciplines me to think through stuff, get my thoughts together, and hopefully, it provides an opportunity for feedback from my church on things we have been talking about.  So, hopefully the message notes will be up this week, but I've had life going on quite a bit.  Here are some things that have been going on the past week that has me up late tonight thinking:

Well, I'm a bit behind in getting my message notes up for the past two weeks, they should be up by tomorrow.

Things have been really busy lately as I've been getting to meet with a lot of folks and and have seen God move mightily in people's lives.  The biggest problem that we have, at times, is the we lose faith in the Lord and we look to our circumstances more than Him. We need each other so that we will continue to remind each other that all things hold together in Christ (Col.1:17). If my life is falling apart, that means that I am not living in Christ, because in Him, all things hold together. That has become a really good test for me as I go through my day. Am I living my life in Christ (The life I live in the body I live by faith in the Son of God - Gal. 2:20), or am I living in my own strength according to my own thoughts?  If I am falling apart and life is overwhelming me, then perhaps I need to repent of trusting in myself and my own resources to control my life, instead of trusting in Christ, because in Him, all things hold together.  We often do not counsel someone who is really struggling with stress or depression to repent, but repentance just means that we turn from what we have placed our hope in to Christ. He is our hope. He is our strength. He is our life (When Christ, who is your life appears, then you will also appear with Him in glory - Col. 3:1-4).

Anyway, those are some things that I am thinking about right now. Pray for us as we have the big community wide Easter Egg hunt this coming weekend. We had over a hundred folks from the neighborhoods around our church come out last year, and it was a great time to interact with those God sent our way. I pray that this year we have the same experience!

We arrived in Florida yesterday to spend a couple of days resting during Spring Break. Yes, as a 31 year old with four children, I get to enjoy Spring Break again!  The reason is that my daughter is in 1st grade, and spring break is the only time to get away during the school year. We'll be here the next couple of days and are so grateful for the chance to get away, rest, refocus, and spend some time with the family. God is so good and it is wonderful to reflect on His blessings like this.  We also get to spend time with another family that we love, and celebrate their daughter's 9 year birthday. Happy Birthday, Ashton!!!!

I got to return to the Mississippi Gulf Coast and New Orleans on Friday. I went with a friend of mine who has been working with the Katrina restoration from the beginning. A major reason why we went was to help and introduce our folks in Waveland-Bay St. Louis (Charlie & Martie Elgin) to Kevin Clifton, the pastor of Bay Vista Baptist Church in Biloxi, MS to see if we could partner together.  They are doing incredible things on the coast and are really reaching into the community. Our folks are moving from Shoreline Park Baptist Church to establish another mission to continue the redevelopment work and to bring an evangelistic focus. Our thinking is that if we can develop affinity relationships with others who are doing amazing things, we can pray, share resources, support, and gain spiritual strength from what God is doing all along the coast. I am really excited to see what God is doing through Bay Vista, while I am so grieved as to what is going on on  the Coast. Joe McKeever has a good article on the situation in New Orleans here.

This a great article on repentance by Tim Keller, the pastor of  Redeemer Presbyterian   in New York City. I placed a link to his articles and resources on my sidebar.  Here is a great quote:

It is important to consider how the gospel affects and transforms the act of repentance.  In 'religion' the purpose of repentance is basically to keep God happy so He will continue to bless you and answer your prayers.  This means that 'religious repentance' is a) selfish, b) self-righteous, and c) bitter all the way to the bottom.  But, in the Gospel the purpose of repentance is to repeatedly tap into the joy of our union with Christ in order to weaken our need to do anything contrary to God's heart.

This is a short (page and a half) paper, but I think you will enjoy it.  Read the rest of the article here.  Thanks Steve McCoy!

Wade Burleson has a stirring post on The Subtle Power of Spiritual Abuse today.  Do you live and minister by grace or by fear and control? Have you ever been under someone who was more interested in getting their own way and asserting their "vision" than in truly helping others be all that God wanted them to be? The Bible calls for Servant Leadership - Luke 22:24-30, but often our lives and ministry exactly mirrors the rest of the world.

When we are truly serving one another instead of Lording it over others to get our way or push our agenda, we see things WAY differently.  As a pastor, I have had to step back many times and ask myself the question, "Am I taking this action because I really believe that this is best for this person and for their growth, or am I working in a way that benefits me and advances my agenda?"  If I ever do the latter, I am forsaking my call of being a shepherd. A shepherd lays down his life for the sheep, he does not use the sheep for his own enhancement and benefit. May God deal with me ever so strongly if I begin to do that and may my church hold me accountable.

In reality, we are all fallible in this and it is so imporant to stay focused on Christ and remember that He is the head of the Church and that He is in control and our Source of life. We start grasping when we think that it is all up to us to get our needs met and to gain significance. This attitude destroys our relationships, our marriages, and our ministries. May God protect us and keep us dependent on Him.

This thing with the cartoon and the Muslims is getting out of control.   MSNBC posts here that Muslims in Indonesia have now stormed the U.S. Embassy:

Updated: 2:47 p.m. ET Feb. 19, 2006

JAKARTA, Indonesia - Hundreds of Muslims protesting caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad tried to storm the U.S. Embassy on Sunday, smashing the windows of a guard post but failing to push through the gates. Several people were injured.

Pakistani security forces, meanwhile, sealed off the capital of Islamabad to block a planned mass demonstration and fired tear gas and gunshots to chase off protesters. In Turkey, tens of thousands gathered in Istanbul chanting slogans against Denmark, Israel and the United States.

I don't want to waste time bashing Muslims or saying how wrong they are. I firmly believe that they are blinded to the truth by the prince of darkness and are acting as unregenerate people would. But, I am praying that as the Church of Jesus Christ, we are seeing what is going on and are interceding for the souls of the millions and billions that are caught in this web. O, that the power of the Gospel of Jesus Christ would break through and set people free. The Bible tells us in Ephesians 6:12 that we are not fighting against flesh and blood, but against spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. In case there was any question about that, the article goes on:

Christians are targets
Christians also have become targets. Pakistani Muslims protesting in the southern city of Sukkur ransacked and burned a church Sunday after hearing accusations that a Christian man had burned pages of the Quran, Islam’s holy book.

That incident came a day after Muslims protesting in the Nigerian city of Maiduguri attacked Christians and burned 15 churches in a three-hour rampage that killed at least 15 people. Some 30 other people have died during protests over the cartoons that erupted about three weeks ago.

In Jakarta, about 400 people marched to the heavily fortified U.S. mission in the center of the city, behind a banner reading “We are ready to attack the enemies of the Prophet.”

We should not be surprised. If they persecuted Christ, they will persecute his followers as well. It reminds me of Nero blaming the Christians for the burning of Rome. Christians had nothing to do with the Danish cartoon, but Satan misses no opportunity to "make war against the rest of her offspring - those who obey God's commandments and hold to the testimony of Jesus." - Rev. 12:17.

Let's take time today to pray for peace in the Arab world. That every Muslim would know the true meaning of submission to God through His Son, Jesus Christ. When I was in Jerusalem last year and saw the hatred between Jew and Palestinian, I knew in my heart that there would never be peace here, absent the Return of Christ or an explosion of His Gospel. And, please do not think that my interest in this has anything to do with end-time prophecy - ugh. It is just that God wants all of the people that we are seeing on our televisions who are so angry and full of rage find peace with Him. He wants them all to be reconciled to Him through His Son. Jesus died for each and every person we see so full of anger and rage. Let's remember that this is a spiritual battle and we should be interceding for our brothers and sisters in these lands. I know of two personally who are in Pakistan right now that are serving Jesus and need our prayers.

This is an amazing picture. It is taken by the Hubble Space Telescope and it is of the X-Structure at the center of the Whirlpool Galaxy 31 million light years from earth.  Isn't this incredible? Yeah, this could be anything, but the Hinge of History is Jesus' death on the Cross. The one who called the starry hosts by name and called the heavens into being leaves reminders of His work all through the cosmos.

I saw this tonight at the Chris Tomlin/Matt Redman/Louie Giglio Indescrible Tour at Auburn University. It was an incredible time of worship and teaching concerning the greatness and majesty of God. He is great and huge and we are not - yet He loves us enough to come for us and die for us. What an amazing God. I'm just kind of filled with wonder right now and I wanted to make sure I got this image posted. It is truly incredible.

How we should be praying for Bono from U2. I ran across someone today who has had similar thoughts about Bono as I have, namely, that he claims to be Christian, but is very worldly has has used bad language. While I definitely do not condone that, it seems that God is using this man in extraordinary ways as I posted yesterday. Kevin Bussey has a quote from Bono himself that I found here:

"Look, the secular response to the Christ story always goes like this: He was a great prophet, obviously a very interesting guy, had a lot to say along the lines of other great prophets, be they Elijah, Muhammad, Buddha, or Confucius. But actually Christ doesn't allow you that. He doesn't let you off that hook. Christ says, No. I'm not saying I'm a teacher, don't call me teacher. I'm not saying I'm a prophet. I'm saying: 'I'm the Messiah.' I'm saying: 'I am God incarnate.' . . . So what you're left with is either Christ was who He said He was--the Messiah--or a complete nutcase. . . . The idea that the entire course of civilization for over half of the globe could have its fate changed and turned upside-down by a nutcase, for me that's farfetched."

"That's between me and God. But I'd be in big trouble if Karma was going to finally be my judge," says Bono. "It doesn't excuse my mistakes, but I'm holding out for Grace. I'm holding out that Jesus took my sins onto the Cross, because I know who I am, and I hope I don't have to depend on my own religiosity."

O.K. So, this guy is really trying to walk with the Lord, as imperfect as he might be. I really want to recommend that you read the transcript from the Presidential Prayer Breakfast the other day where Bono spoke to the attendees. This is an ecumenical event, so he speaks to Jews and Muslims as well to find common ground, but his words and his actions are astounding. It is printed here in USA Today.  An excerpt concerning his own pilgrimage:

I presume the reason for this gathering is that all of us here—Muslims, Jews, Christians—all are searching our souls for how to better serve our family, our community, our nation, our God.

I know I am. Searching, I mean. And that, I suppose, is what led me here, too.

Yes, it's odd, having a rock star here—but maybe it's odder for me than for you. You see, I avoided religious people most of my life. Maybe it had something to do with having a father who was Protestant and a mother who was Catholic in a country where the line between the two was, quite literally, a battle line. Where the line between church and state was… well, a little blurry, and hard to see.

I remember how my mother would bring us to chapel on Sundays… and my father used to wait outside. One of the things that I picked up from my father and my mother was the sense that religion often gets in the way of God.

For me, at least, it got in the way. Seeing what religious people, in the name of God, did to my native land… and in this country, seeing God's second-hand car salesmen on the cable TV channels, offering indulgences for cash… in fact, all over the world, seeing the self-righteousness roll down like a mighty stream from certain corners of the religious establishment…

I must confess, I changed the channel. I wanted my MTV.

Even though I was a believer.

Perhaps because I was a believer.

I was cynical… not about God, but about God's politics. (There you are, Jim.)

Then, in 1997, a couple of eccentric, septuagenarian British Christians went and ruined my shtick—my reproachfulness. They did it by describing the Millennium, the year 2000, as a Jubilee year, as an opportunity to cancel the chronic debts of the world's poorest people. They had the audacity to renew the Lord's call—and were joined by Pope John Paul II, who, from an Irish half-Catholic's point of view, may have had a more direct line to the Almighty.

'Jubilee'—why 'Jubilee'?

What was this year of Jubilee, this year of our Lords favor?

I'd always read the Scriptures, even the obscure stuff. There it was in Leviticus (25:35)…

'If your brother becomes poor,' the Scriptures say, 'and cannot maintain himself… you shall maintain him… You shall not lend him your money at interest, not give him your food for profit.'

It is such an important idea, Jubilee, that Jesus begins his ministry with this. Jesus is a young man, he's met with the rabbis, impressed everyone, people are talking. The elders say, he's a clever guy, this Jesus, but he hasn't done much… yet. He hasn't spoken in public before…

When he does, is first words are from Isaiah: 'The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,' he says, 'because He has anointed me to preach good news to the poor.' And Jesus proclaims the year of the Lord's favour, the year of Jubilee. (Luke 4:18)

What he was really talking about was an era of grace—and we're still in it.

I think we might be with Bono in heaven, and I think that quite a few more people might be there because of his witness - what do you think?

For all that are holding candle light vigils and engaging in hunger strikes, don't worry:  I'll get my  sermon notes and Wednesday night teaching notes from this past week up really soon. I've been pretty busy and also fairly slothful with the blog thing this week. But, I'm injecting some new life into it by writing about other things besides just reprinting my teaching notes (which I will continue to do.  My biggest issue is always taking the time to put my thoughts into print.

By the way, I went to an incredible presentation by a lady named Darcy Gill from Voice of the Martyrs. My heart was touched as I heard about the persecuted church and what so many Christians go through each day in this world. Did you know that every three minutes on this planet, a Christian is killed for their faith - approximately 180,000 per year!  What a tragedy. We all need to be in prayer. 

Liberty University as a Division 1-A football powerhouse? That is the plan of Jerry Falwell the Chancellor of Libery University according to Dennis Dodd writing for cbs.sportsline.com.  Dodd tells Falwell to get ready to compromise the stated mission of the university, however, because making the jump from a 1-10 1-AA team to a Division 1-A powerhouse might be harder than he thinks.  Falwell, 72, has decreed that this must happen before he dies to make the university complete.  I'll keep my thoughts on this basically to myself and let you be the judge, but does this not smack of kingdom building, and not of the Biblically correct kind? How about athletic competition for the sake of competition? Statements of greatness for the glory of God ring hollow to me and to the world as well. It seems to be more for the glory of Jerry Falwell.

Well, it's been a week since I posted. My rule here is to try and get something up several times a week. As with all things, sometimes the rule is not followed. I went down to Mississippi and New Orleans this past week and that kind of threw me out of the loop. I was gone for only two days to work on some stuff with Charlie and Martie Elgin at the camp down there, but when you go out of town mid-week, it seems to throw off your timing. On top of that, I've had a cold for about two weeks now that morphed into something akin to a stomach virus - ugh! - and found myself incapacitated for the weekend. Enough complaining. Overall, I really think that I needed the rest. I find that when I am going and going and going, I tend to get sick, get a lot of sleep, and then kind of recharge. Maybe it's God's way of making me slow down.

Unfortunately, my wife got sick too, and today was her birthday. No fun at all. We'll probably celebrate it this weekend though.

My message notes will be up tomorrow for all of you who are waiting with great anticipation. I know you have come here throughout the day, eagerly waiting for the notes, and have been terribly disappointed (this is all tongue in cheek). They'll be up tomorrow. The message was on the inbreaking of the Kingdom of God through the ministry of Christ and how God wants us to consistently pray and act so that His Kingdom comes into all of life here on this planet. My friend Andrew Jones has some interesting thoughts along these lines if you want to get a head start. He talks about the Missio Dei (mission of God) and how God's desire is to redeem "whatever" needs redeeming.

Joe McKeever, the Director of Missions, is quickly becoming one of my favorite writers. If you have not read his blog, you HAVE TO - RIGHT NOW!!!  Sorry, I didn't mean to yell, it's just that this guy really loves the Lord and has amazing insights.  Check out his latest article called Love Indeed. Yes Indeed.   Here is an excerpt concerning a meeting he was at where the future of small, struggling local churches in New Orleans was discussed:

I told the group that in a recent article on this website, I said, "We do not want a lot of tiny, struggling churches." One reader took issue with that, saying "That is precisely what God wants." I never responded to him, but what I thought was he does not have a clue what he's talking about. These small struggling churches spent their time and resources on themselves, their money trying to pay their light bill and insurance, their work and energy on keeping the ship afloat. Drive around this city and you'll see New Orleans did not need any more churches; it had hundreds and hundreds. You'll see several on a block, often side by side. So why was the city so crime-ridden, such a haven for drug-dealers, a dangerous place to raise one's children? The churches were isolated from one anonwardly focused. They did not reach out to one another, joining hands with other believers in that neighborhood, building a unified witness. It was every man, every church, on his own. We don't need any more of that. God has put so many of our struggling churches out of business, giving us a chance to start over and get it right this time.

He also writes about hoping that the St. Bernard Housing Project is not rebuilt and that it's residents find good lives elsewhere. His reasoning is sound and very compassionate, although the relational toll on displaced people must be incredible. I am heading to the Mississippi Gulf Coast and New Orleans on Tuesday and Wedesday to try and meet with pastors and coordinate some things.  Keep me in your prayers, if you would.  These people are continuing to endure and persevere and we must come alongside of them.

Here is an example of a community of faith in Italy that really spoke to me.  It is a group of Catholics, which of course, I am not - but, it shows what can happen when people take the gospel seriously.  I found this on the onmovements.com site.  I hope that this inspires you as much as it did me.

Sant’Egidio — The Weak Strength of the Gospel

December 9th, 2005

In his book, Desire of the Everlasting Hills, The World Before and After Jesus, historian Thomas Cahill tells the story of The Community of Sant’Egidio. For Cahill, the worldwide movement of Sant’Egidio provided a living capstone to his book on the legacy of Jesus.