calling defense

I was reading Earl Creps’ latest update on his blog today and on it he makes an announcement: he’s planting a church. If you read this blog back in January at the beginning, I reviewed Earl’s book, Off-Road Disciplines. I think it’s a great book and now I look forward to following his adventure into church planting, especially since I’m toying with the same idea.

He gave some of the “factors” that have led him to this decision. Check them out at his blog.

Some of the factors were eerily familiar, but one really stood out to me. He said that his wife told him, “We have no defense against this.” In other words, what defense would they give for not planting a church?

It makes me think as well, what defense do I have from the calling God has placed in my life? Do I have a choice? Sure, but will I be happy? Probably not. Our calling is so ingrained within us; I think it’s buried in a spiritual strain of our DNA. It is a blueprint of who we are and what we are to become. It beckons to us in the quiet times, in the times of discontent, the voice that speaks, not what we can’t do, but the possibility of what we could become…what we could do.

I am reminded of the famous passage from Psalm 37:4: “Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart.” I believe it is not just saying, do what God wants and you’ll get what you like, though that may be part of it. But I think the real message of this passage is that it is God who places these desires in our hearts. And as we enjoy our relationship with God and grow in it, we will find that he can bring these desires to fruition. Makes me want to dream…

be faithful to the gospel

“She was just the nastiest person…”

This was a comment from a co-worker of mine today as we talked about religion. She was telling me about visiting a church this Sunday and how it was good, more contemporary than she was used to, but it was a good experience anyway. She and her husband were helping her son to find a church he felt comfortable to attend and it began a conversation about what styles of worship we connected with. She related how she could go pretty much anywhere, but she wouldn’t go to a Pentecostal church, because of a person she met at a former workplace.

This person was a gossip and “the nastiest person,” always telling the rest of her co-workers that they were “heathens and going to hell.” Then she would pray in tongues at work and scared this friend of mine. It turned her off from a whole section of the church.

As she talked, I thought of, and shared with her, the scripture, “if I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, it is as a gonging symbol.” But it got me thinking again about how bad a job the church does sometimes at fulfilling the most simple of Jesus’ commands: Love your neighbor.

How was gossiping and condemning, then trying to display a spiritual gift in front of others, showing the love of God to this group of people? It did the very opposite than I am sure that this woman believed it would. I am sure she probably felt very justified with herself, having “shared the Gospel,” without any regard for those who were being “shared with.” I am sure the next line of thought was to blame the co-workers, because they weren’t open to the “full-gospel” or whatever, and justified her condemnation of them even more.

In this Lenten season, let us pray that we, as the Church, represent Jesus well, without our own prejudices and judgments bleeding through our messages to the world around us. Let us live the Gospel. It reminds me of what the layman said in the Ash Wednesday service as he placed the ashes on my forehead:

“Turn away from sin…be faithful to the Gospel.” Amen.

scandal of grace 6

It has been quoted that Michelangelo used to say that inside every piece of marble was a masterpiece, it only needed someone to remove the stone and rubble to reveal it.

This is how God sees us. He sees the masterpiece inside, in spite of what we see on the outside. Paul said it like this: “He who has began a good work in you will continue to complete it until the day of his return…” (PJ’s paraphrase.)

In the Message version of the Bible, Paul writing to the Romans makes a good summary of this truth about grace:

“So here's what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don't become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You'll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.

I'm speaking to you out of deep gratitude for all that God has given me, and especially as I have responsibilities in relation to you. Living then, as every one of you does, in pure grace, it's important that you not misinterpret yourselves as people who are bringing this goodness to God. No, God brings it all to you. The only accurate way to understand ourselves is by what God is and by what he does for us, not by what we are and what we do for him.”
Romans 12:1-3 MSG (Italics and Bold, mine.)

If we are to truly learn how to live into this grace, we must first believe the truth that God loves us and accepts us just the way we are. No, we will not stay there. No, this doesn’t give us license to sin, but it does give us liberty to run after God will passion and trust, without fear of loss of love and without the fear of judgment, if we stumble along the way. It is my belief that the reason why so many of us never truly pursue God like we want is because we have a tarnished view of this loving Father and we are afraid that if we mess it up, we’ll lose everything. So if we risk nothing, we lose nothing.

But Jesus’ response to us is this: If we seek to keep our lives, we’ll lose them, but if we give them, we’ll keep them. As we enter this season of Lent, of focusing on the sacrifice made on our behalf, let us embrace what God has done for us and give ourselves, body…soul…spirit, to God with passion and without fear. He loves us and invites us to live into His grace.

scandal of grace 5

The truth is that Jesus came to set us free from religious standard keeping. What do I mean by that? Aren’t there rules and laws of God that we should obey? Of course, but where the church misses it is in the idea that our worth comes from keeping those rules, keeping “our noses clean” is not what guarantees acceptance by God. The gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ. Plain and simple, you didn’t do anything to deserve or earn salvation, it was bought for you. Most Christians would agree with that statement and thank God for it. But from that point on they are continually striving to keep God’s love, or to ensure that they don’t “fall” out of grace. It becomes work to stay in with God, now that they’ve got there.

I watched a video not long ago that outlined a philosophy taught by a conductor, Benjamin Zander. He and his wife, Rosalind, have written a book called, “The Art of Possibility.” And in this book, Benjamin shares about when he teaches a group of musicians he starts out his class by announcing that everyone in his class receives an “A” and that the only thing they have to do to qualify for that “A” is to write him a post-dated letter (for the end of the semester) and tell him why they will have deserved the grade. He says that so many people focus on trying to attain the right grade, in class and in life, that they are more cautious and afraid to take the risks involved in becoming better musicians, or students, or people in general.

He says that giving the “A” is a possibility for them to live into and not a standard to live up to.

As I chewed on this concept, I thought, “This is what God does with us.” Grace gives us an “A.”

Think about it. When you come into a class, for example, the grade book is empty. Everyone is striving to get good grades to fill up the book and equal out to a passing grade. We all start as zeros in the book. But starting everyone as an “A” student takes away that pressure to perform and they can focus on really learning the subject. (Of course, you have the opportunity to be a slacker too, but that would be up to you, the benefit is not the “A” but what you have gained from the class.)

But this is what grace has done for us. We have all come to God as “zeros in the book.” But because of Christ’s sacrifice on the cross, He took our failures and sins, and replaced it with an “A.” Now when we come to God in faith and believe the sacrifice of Christ is for us, we are brought into relationship with God and given a status that would be unreachable for us on our own. We get an “A.” God sees us in the image of His Son.

If, from this vantage point, we can begin to see ourselves as accepted by God the way we are, we can begin to explore our relationship with Him without fear of not measuring up, without the fear of failing Him, of being cast aside. It gives us freedom to grow and learn from the Teacher without the pressure of having to measure up to the standards of the others around us. We can return home with assurance that God’s love hasn’t changed toward us and even if we’ve never left the house, we can experience Dad’s goodness, instead of working blindly with resentment and fear. We can become free…

my joanne

Today is Valentine’s Day, and I have to take an interlude on this blog series about the scandal of grace to say something about a wonderful woman named Joanne.

Joanne is my wife, but more than that, she’s my confidant, she is my lover, my friend, my biggest cheerleader. This has been the hardest year of our lives it seems, having had to walk away from a church and ministry that we loved and had devoted our lives to. I’ve have to change in every area of my life, but this has not changed…the woman I love has stood beside me. She forgives me when I fail, she believes in me when I dream. She knows me better than I know myself. And I know all these sound so cliché, but they are true.

So Happy Valentine’s day, Joanne, I love you.

scandal of grace 4

“What are you doing??? How dare you forgive him and throw a party for him? I’ve worked so hard for you and never have you done this for me!”

The older brother believed that Dad had been holding out on him. The scriptures say that “out of the heart, the mouth speaks,” so he exposed his inner feelings about Dad here. He had been very devoted. He worked hard. He loved his dad. None of this is in dispute. But really knowing his dad, he didn’t. He had believed a lie, that his dad had been keeping something back, holding a standard over his head. He had feared not working hard for Dad, because he feared the loss of relationship. Now that his brother had blown it, he expected his suspicions (that he had set his lifestyle on) to prove out and he figured Dad would kick little bro out.

But this was not the character of his dad, and it is not the character of our God either. The amount of experience of God is related to the amount of knowing Him. The older brother had bought the lie of religion, that we have to perform for our God to receive His love. This had colored his relationship with his dad and kept him from truly experiencing all that dad was willing to share with him.

“You’re always with me. Whatever I have is yours.”

How many times have we let performance and legalism keep us from truly experiencing and knowing the grace of God? How many times have we believed the lie that God will not love us should we fail to perform better? How often have we believed the lie that God is holding out on us? But isn’t it dangerous to believe that God loves us just the way we are right now? Isn’t that taking Him for granted?

scandal of grace 3

In biblical times, if a son would leave home with an early inheritance and embarrass his family by blowing it all, the elders of the city would watch for them to return and meet him at the gates of the city. There they would break a clay pot at his feet and refuse to allow him to return home. He’d be turned away, banished.

For this reason, the prodigal’s dad sat on the porch every day, with his binoculars, checking out the horizon to make sure that he saw his son first. He knew his son would blow it, he knew the kid’s character, he was no dummy. But all the same, he loved his son and waiting patiently to see the silhouette of his boy on the horizon. And when he did, he took off running to meet him, embrace him and return him home before the elders could stop him from returning home!

This is a picture of the scandal of grace. Where anyone else would have turned him away, would have rejected this kid who had so blatantly disrespected his father and was disloyal to him, the dad of this boy refused to let the sin stay in the way of his love. It is the same with us. Nothing can separate us from that powerful, overwhelming love of God. He doesn’t care what we’ve done, where we’ve been and who we’ve been with, he just wants us to come home! It was a scandal to the elders, to village, but even more so to the older brother who had never left his dad’s side. Why was the brother so upset? The voice of religion had spoken to his heart and made him deaf to love…

scandal of grace 2

Remember with me now the story of a young man, old enough to leave home, becoming disillusioned with life at home, working for dad on the farm. He demands his inheritance and leaves to find himself. But all he finds is himself homeless and broke.

Coming to his senses, sitting in a pig’s pen (which was the lowest place a Jewish man could ever be, because they considered swine one of the most unclean animals), he realizes that in dad’s house the servant get better treatment than this. Surely even servanthood is better than eating pig slop. So he humbly starts the long road home.

How many of us have found ourselves in the pig’s pen before we came to Christ? We know what the slop tastes like and what it smells like. So we turned to God…and what did we find?

Here is the beginning of the scandal. If we were reading a tabloid or a gossip column from that period, there would be pictures of this influential man’s son in with the pigs and a whole article about who he’d been partying, sleeping with, and so on. What would happen when he returned home?

scandal of grace 1

Imagine being raised in a world where your importance, your status in life is measured by how well you play by the rules. These rules, so stringent that even the most pious among your people struggle to live up to them.

Imagine watching those who delighted to make even more rules snubbed those who couldn’t live up to the standards they imposed, even refusing them an audience or access to the holy places of the culture. Labels like sinner, demon-possessed, heathen are thrown around with disregard for the person’s feelings.

Imagine all your life thinking that even if you wanted to know God that he is far from you and will remain so until you change who you are and become something you feel like you never will be. God is impersonal and distant to say the least. In the worst case scenario, he is following you around with a notebook, taking note of every infraction and every failure to live up to someone’s idea of who he is. Imagine.

Maybe it isn’t hard to imagine, because maybe that’s exactly how you feel, maybe that’s exactly where you are. Do you believe that Christianity is full of rules and regulations written by men who have no concern about who you are and what you deal with? Do you feel God is further from you than you could ever reach? And if you ever caught up with him, what do you think he would say to you? How would he respond? Would he turn away in disgust or would he be impressed with your spiritual prowess?

Imagine again, if you will, this world where rules of religion reign and those who make the rules reign even more supreme. Imagine a man coming into that culture and telling people that they do not have to live up to that standard anymore, but they already have been brought to that standard. Imagine him telling you that God is not distant, but present, right here—right now, with you and is not embarrassed by your failures or your struggles, in fact, he is proud that you even want to try to serve him. Imagine the responses of those who have staked their lives in this rule based society that has given them the power they wield over those who listen to their word.

It would be a scandal. And even so it is today…the scandal of grace.

Sarah's Big Day

Today, my baby turns 8 years old. I can’t believe it. If you know me, you know that I hate to admit the fact that my little girl is growing up. I cry every year that she starts a new grade at school. And today she turns eight. My mind automatically turns to she is only going to be in school ten more years and then college and what then?? I know I sound demented and a sad case, but I really love being a dad and love being my little girl’s daddy in particular. She is a joy to me. I love to stand in the door in the dark mornings before I leave for work and listen to her breathe.

I pray for her this day of celebration of her birth that God will always surround her. Keep her safe and draw her to His side every day. I pray for the right friends, right boyfriends, eventually a godly, righteous husband who I will love calling my son-in-law. I pray that she will follow the dream God gives her and that a counterfeit dream/vision/plan for her life she will not follow. I pray that she will always be in love with God and have an intimate personal relationship with Him and that the gifts and callings that are on her life will become real and alive to her even now as a young girl. I pray that her mom and I will always have a close relationship with her and that the enemy will not divide or cause separation in our family. She will grow and mature and spread her wings when it is time and not in rebellion, but in the timing and purpose of God. I pray for strength of character for her, leadership ability and continued intelligence to go along with whatever she wants to do in life. I pray that she will always be healthy, whole and strong with the strength and life of God in her body, soul and spirit.

Bless you, Sarah, today and forever. Daddy loves you.

Wrestling with God, Pt. 2

So here is Jacob, wrestling for what must seem like his very life, all night long. This would prove out to be true enough, as his life would be changed forever in this nighttime encounter.

God, in the form of the angel, tells Jacob to let him go, but he refuses, not until he receives a blessing. I can almost see God grin as he tells Jacob that he will no longer be a deceiver, but now he would be called Israel, a prince with God. He had prevailed with God. The Almighty makes sure that Jacob realizes, too, that at any time God could have “taken him,” by merely touching his hip and throwing it out of joint, leaving Israel with a limp for the rest of his life. This was a reminder that God had met him, blessed him and that he no longer had to be who he had been. What God had done in him over the long years at Laban’s house would not be in vain, but they pointed him to a true Father, the same One who had been the God of Isaac and Abraham.

Laban had been a “father-in-law.” No offense to father-in-laws, as one day I will also probably be one, but a father-in-law is still not your father. Many people are fathers in the church world, and there is much talk and teaching about it right now. But I believe that the Lord is challenging the church not to allow their fathering to be done “in-law” (control and manipulation), but to let their fathering point the children (spiritual and otherwise) toward the true Father of us all. Laban was an example to Jacob of who God was not. God was not holding out anything from him. God did not take advantage of Jacob’s skills and talents. God had given them to him, and He took pleasure in watching Jacob develop in them.

But now, after leaving his “father-in-law,” he found himself encountering the presence of God in a new way this time. Then it was in vision with angels going up and down, but now it was God in a personal form, challenging Jacob to wrestle him for his destiny, for his future.

Have you left Laban’s house in this journey? Are you in a period of wrestling with God for your destiny? I believe I am and would love to hear your story if you would like to share. Leave a comment or email me. This is a year of wrestling with God. The good thing to know is that though God could “snap us like twig,” He does not, because He loves to wrestle, to work in us and with us to develop our trust in Him, that we can find and have our destiny. My walk will be different soon. You may even see a slight limp in my step, but I will glory in the wound left by the One who loves me and calls me His own.

Wrestling with God, Pt. 1

Jacob didn’t meet God until he left Isaac’s house. He was on his way to Laban to find himself a wife, far from the anger of his brother.

There, on a stop over night, he saw a ladder with angels ascending and descending. This place he declared as the house of God, because God had been there and he hadn’t perceived it. This is a picture of God’s previenent grace, which goes before us to make a way for us to experience God even when we’re not looking for him.

After sanctifying the place and dubbing it “Bethel,” he moved on to Laban’s house. This house, though he found his true love, was one of hard work and blessing in spite of Laban’s abuse. Maybe the abuse was even because of the blessing that Jacob experienced. I believe Jacob had experienced God at Bethel, but here his character was challenged and sharpened by the circumstances presented to him. Eventually though, like David leaving Saul, Jacob had to also flee from Laban to find his own destiny, because his father-in-law would never permit him to come into his own. Laban even still called his adult daughters and Jacob’s children his own property.

Now humbled, and again facing his brother Esau, he spends the night alone once again in the wilderness, but this time, he is not visited by a dream, but by God in the form of an angel and he begins to wrestle with Jacob. There is destiny in the balance here. There is future in the balance here. There is identity in the balance here. What and who Jacob will be is decided in the midst of this wrestling…