I needed AAA... from Jesus

Someone recently shared with me that my most meaningful blogs are the ones where I actually share about my life.  He felt that vulnerability and honesty about my own "true stories" were much more effective than the typical "chicken soup for the soul" variety of true stories.  He said this to me nicely and with an encouraging motive.  After taking some time to think about it, I agree with him.  I think blogging about the power of true stories from little analogies here and there does not have the same effect as sharing the depths of my heart.  Still, I believe the little stories here and there are lighthearted and are easy to read in the morning when you get to work.  In my future writings, I have determined to find a balance between the enjoyment of an easy read and the complexities of my personal adventure to find God's heart and my own.

I spent time on the telephone last  night with an older Christian brother and mentor of mine named John.  We had not talked in months and it was very nice to speak with him.  I poured out my heart as he listened to my good news and my bad news, my praises and my concerns.  He simply listened until I finished and responded with empathy as well as encouragement and affirmations.  God had certainly arranged the telephone call, almost as if Jesus Himself was calling to check in.

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I paced around my front yard as we spoke, looking up at the sky here and there.  I often imagine God to live up there.  We know Jesus ascended into heaven, so I think that's why we always look up.  I picture God on this throne and He is just kind of hanging out up there, looking down, listening, sending His Holy Spirit and His angels to do things here and there.  I have been enduring the pain of a starving heart lately, longing for answers, affirmation and acceptance (the AAA of the emotional world).  I wanted Him to come down from "up there" and hang out "down here" for a while.  I could use some emergency roadside heart assistance because my emotional tire has been flat.  It felt like John was my roadside assistance from heaven.  He came to put the donut on until I could get into the shop and Jesus could fully repair it.

I encourage us all today to remember that we can be emergency roadside assistance to someone.  When the Lord places that person on your heart, reach out to him or her with a spirit of love, gentleness and humility.  There are those in our lives that God has assigned us to be roadside assistance for on a regular basis - our children, significant others, those we lead in ministry, etc.  There are two types of roadside assistance: (1.) the dispatched trucks who respond to a problem and (2.) those who patrol the highways looking for those in need of help.  We must balance both of those means of assistance in our lives, loving those who reach out to us and also being sensitive to know that pulling over to help may be the best decision.  We can do this by listening intently to the hearts of others, withholding advice and offering encouragement and prayer.  We must also be in community with Jesus so that He can dispatch us to someone who needs help or so we can notice those who are in need but are not saying anything.  John is in the habit of loving others, so responding to a call from the Holy Spirit was easy for him.  The first step is to find community with Jesus through prayer and reading His Word.  The second is to ask Him to lead us to those that we may build up, encourage and love.

All things in this world point to Jesus in one way or another.  I like to find how they do.  Roadside assistance, check.  True story.

Revolutionize LOL

The earth beats a hypnotic rhythm that lulls its habitants into a trance of dissociation from the real.   With each beat of the electronica of the world, humanity participates in a rave dance of distraction from the artist who pumps the pulse of creation.  Lost in a daze of fleshly ecstasy that neither pill nor sensation can appease, we choose to wave our metaphorical glow sticks in a performance that fades more quickly than the vapors of a morning fog.  And when the beat ceases and the sounds fade, humanity looks to its left and its right and recalls that the rave was only designed to distract us from the real.  We must all return home to our lives, our responsibilities, our fears, our unmet desires and our thirst for an unknown drink that we cannot seem to find.

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All of earth exists to lull us into mediocrity.  The enemy of our Heavenly Father plays a hypnotic tune that draws our hearts into complacency.  Elimination of the Kingdom is not the goal of the forces of darkness.  No, ineffectiveness is the target.  To destroy the Kingdom of God is a goal the enemy cannot accomplish.  He has tried this before and has failed miserably.  He now sings his lullaby of self sufficiency and dissatisfaction to believers throughout the world to distract us just enough to cause us to question the legitimacy of faith and risk.  He has taught us words like “safety” and “comfort.” He permeates our thoughts with seemingly Biblical ideas of “guarding our hearts” and “denying ourselves” in an effort to ensure that we never fulfill the calling that God places upon each of our lives.   Our spirits are paralyzed.  We have been told too often to “wait upon the Lord” and have neglected the scriptures and parables that teach us that we must prepare for the harvest before the rain arrives, that faith without action is dead.

We have turned our gaze to the strobe lights and supposedly exciting beats of the earth, which prohibit us from finding the genuine light and perfect excitement of living out the fullness of our callings.  We must end the trance, leave the earthly matrix of spiritual inefficacy and monotony.  Fullness of life is not found in achieving the status quo.  We must redefine the standards by which we judge our success and find that in the midst of comfort and pleasure that God may actually call us into a realm of uncertainty and sheer vulnerability.    We must “LOL” in a very different way than we have been doing.  We must revolutionize LOL.  We must not only be “laughing out loud,” but we must be “living out loud.”

We can drastically alter the course of our futures by murdering the idea that we must continue in the way of the generation before us, but that we can be the one who through the authority and power of a God who is living out loud to end our generational curses and say enough is enough.  We have accepted that because we are created we cannot too create.  Yet, we are made like God and in His image because we can create just like He has throughout eternity.  We can create opportunities and life change by living out loud, living out the callings that God has placed on our hearts and souls with a fearless passion that confuses even the holiest of men.

I believe we can change the world. True story.

I'm a hoarder (sorta)

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I spent time cleaning my room for a bit last night.  Over the past few days (okay, weeks) I let some clothes build up on the floor and I had some sorting to do.  I separated the clean clothes that needed to be folded from the dirty clothes that needed to be washed.  As I folded the clothes and sorted through the chaos, I began to see my floor once again.  I was a neat freak living in a messy room and that really caused me some frustrations.  Once I sorted through the clothes, I began to feel a bit more ease. Seeing what lay underneath the clothes (my floor) was nice, though it took some effort.  I vowed to myself that I would not let this happen again.  It will happen again.

God does the same thing with our hearts.  We ask Him to lead us, direct us, guide us and shape us.  We ask Him to be the center of our beings and to create within us a new heart.  Jesus, in His everlasting faithfulness to us, walks into our hearts and begins renovation.  "This is dirty, this is clean.  This needs to be folded, this needs to be donated and this simply needs to be thrown out."  I imagine when Jesus does this we turn into those people from the television show "Hoarders."  "Don't throw that out, I need that!  You can't get rid of my defensiveness, it might come in handy!  I need my 'I've been hurt too many times' excuse, please don't get rid of that.  Donate time and energy from my heart to love someone else besides myself?  Please not now!"  And yet, Jesus knows better than to listen to us.  He continues to sort, separate and clean.  

Throughout this process, despite its pains and trials, Jesus gets to the bottom of the matter and reaches the floors of our hearts.  Suddenly, we feel that peace and ease that comes with seeing the floor again.  "Ah, this is who I am.  This is how it's supposed to be."  We breathe a sigh of relief, recognizing that underneath the chaos is the fullness of life that God designed us to enjoy.  

Allow God to clean up your heart.  I struggle with this myself, struggle with the idea of God throwing away the things I think I love.  Nevertheless, I would rather endure the pain of organizing my emotional and spiritual hoarding so I can see the floor than pretend that the mess is really what I want.  True story.

P.S. - That picture is not my room and I am not an actual hoarder...possibly just a metaphorical one.

Floating through life might be easier than walking

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I went hiking by myself last week to pursue God's heart and to build my own.  I have declared that I am on a quest to discover the depths of my own heart, to excavate and demolish the rooms of my heart that may host anything but the presence of the Holy Spirit.  I am raging war against myself, finding that most sin comes from within my own flesh and heart.  I understand that is a controversial statement, but I find again and again that the our sin nature is in continuous battle with the spirit man.  This ought not to be a new a concept, considering Paul writes about these things throughout the New Testament.  Surely if the Holy Spirit now lives in my heart, there is no room for these carnal squatters who have trespassed through the hole in the fence in my heart's backyard.

One of the things that I have longed for in my life is significance.  My heart is torn between two desires, one evil and the other righteous.  I desire to perform a significant role in the Kingdom of God that I may participate in the glorious work of the ministry of reconciliation of nonbelievers to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  Furthermore, I feel specifically called to motivate Christians to live a lifestyle worthy of the calling before them.  As a man who continually falls short of that lifestyle and calling, who does what he ought not to do and does not do what he ought to do, I feel continually convicted by the misdeeds of my heart and mind.  My desire for significance in the Kingdom often transforms into a desire to achieve a certain level of importance in the world.   I measure success by my finances, the letters at the end of my name (some of which are yet to be earned should I be led to pursue them), the number of readers I have, and so on.

As I have been readings the Psalms lately, I am continually reminded by God that our lifestyles are similar to vapors.  When I went hiking and reached the castle at one of the flat tops of the small mountain, I could see the clouds floating over the valley.  The clouds were hanging rather low on this day.  The bottoms of the clouds were touching the tops of the castle.  The vapors of moisture passed by my face.  I reached out my hand in a futile effort to capture them, wishing I could hold onto a cloud and perhaps float away with a little harp in my hands to travel the world shooting arrows at love-struck young people.  And though I failed at capturing the cloud the first time, I tried again and again.  As soon as the vapor arrived, it passed away.  It was so frustrating, so challenging.  I wanted to enjoy these wisps of cloud, to float away in freedom from all of the burdens of earthy life.  Yet they continually passed away.

I am like these vapors.  I arrive on earth for but a time and then I vanish away (see James 4:14).  The letters at the end of my name, my ministry, my future marriage, my career, my possessions - all of these things, like a  midst, will fade away.  Perhaps some of the fruits of the Spirit and acts of obedience to the Lord will provide someone who sits on a mountaintop with a moment of pleasure or mystification, but ultimately I am a blip of the radar of eternity.  Still, the actions that occur during this blip can effect my eternal dwelling place and the authority I have in the Kingdom of God to come.  Actions that influence my eternity and the eternity of others ought to be considered worthy of attention and effort.  I will continue to serve as a mist, valuing myself as the Lord says I ought but not more than what is righteous.  The problems of this world seem so less significant when I remember that mists do not solve problems; we float through them as we are led by Jesus.  True story.

Many are affected by spiritual ventricular fibrillation

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I recently spoke at Sanctuary, Black Rock Congregational's Sunday evening service, about taking our faith and putting into action.  As the second speaker in a summer series on James, my sermon was based James 2.  "In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead" (James 2:17 NIV).  I used several different analogies to make the point that if our faith does not spur us onto action, then we ought to reexamine our faith and the motives of our hearts.  One of the illustrations that I used to make the point that faith without action is nonsense is a body with a heart that does not beat.  A body can be in perfect shape and can look really healthy, but if the heart inside the body is not beating then that body is dead.  In the same way, if we have a really nice looking faith but it is not alive and producing something, then what good is it?

So I spent some time with Jesus this morning because sometimes I feel like I am a walking cadaver.  Sometimes I feel like I am going through the motions, slowly watching my heart slip into ventricular fibrillation (VF).  Very simply, ventricular fibrillation occurs when the heart's electrical impulses have gone haywire and the heart can no longer effectively pump blood.  The heart quivers, almost as if it were having its own anxiety attack, and has become nearly useless.  Automated external defibrillators (AEDs) are used to shock the heart out of this electrifying pattern (or lack there of) into a useful rhythm, restoring its ability to pump blood.

I feel like so many of us are on our way to VF.  We are caught up in the problems of this world, lost in the adventure of protecting ourselves from others and even from God.  We have sacrificed vulnerability for security, exchanged loving sacrifice for selfish comfort, and have planned out the days our lives without once asking the Lord of the universe what He has in mind.  Or perhaps we have given up the idea that Jesus has anything in store but work, bills, and family life.  We have lost our hearts of adventure, believing that God stopped granting us the desires of our hearts a long time ago.  In fact, I would dare write that some of us look back on the days of our sin and ask, "Wasn't it easier then?"  Friend, no road that leads to hell is enjoyable or easy.  All of these things that I mention (and many more) indicate that our hearts are operating in this horrible condition of spiritual ventricular fibrillation (SVF).

In my time with Christ this morning, I asked Him to restore my heart.  I asked Him to make me the man He designed me to be.  I told Him that I am on a quest to find my heart and to discover the valiant warrior He has placed inside of it.  In this brief conversation with Him, the image of a human heart flashed across my mind.  The heart was in ventricular fibrillation and there were two hands adjusting the "wires" of the heart.  When the hands were done with their work, the heart was shocked, nearly jumping out of its place, and then the image disappeared from my mind.  I felt peace, knowing that Jesus is shocking my heart back into a rhythm that pumps His mercy, love, forgiveness, grace and compassion into me and in turn, the world.

He starts with out hearts.  We must lay the on operating table of the Lord and allow Him to shock our hearts into their original rhythm so we may enjoy the circulation of peace, love and mercy.  We ought to take the medication of God's word and worship, participate in the exercise of fellowship and Godly accountability, and remember that we do not live on bread alone but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.  True story.

Goodness gracious, I caught on fire.

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Despite my sin and the error of my ways, the Lord has been making the presence of His Holy Spirit known during worship for me.  I have been asking God to push my faith to the next level, to draw me closer to Himself and to increase my spiritual gifting.  Of course, He answers these prayers but the spiritual forces of darkness exist to destroy our hearts to prevent us from practicing these gifts or living in obedience to the King.  I have seen this battle intensify in my life more recently.  With each failure and victory, I thank the Lord for His mercy and grace, answering prayers that teach me how to be a better man.

We sang "Fire, Fall Down" during worship on Sunday evening.  I have always prayed that the Holy Spirit would unleash fire from heaven and consume His people with an overwhelming passion for His glory.  I believed that fire would cause revival and renewal, that this fire would encourage us to live life with boundless faith.  As I prayed that God's fire would fall down, the Lord presented to my heart what fire falling from heaven would actually mean for me.  He presented the image of me being alone in a room with all the people and things that I value.  The room was so crowded, filled with people and things that I have used to fill space in my heart. In fact, I could not really see beyond what was next to me.  Suddenly, everything was gone and the room was on fire, beams from the top of the ceiling falling.  In the front of the room was a man, clothed all in white and surrounded by bright light.  He walked towards me and then stopped, looking at me as if He were gazing into my heart.  All of this took about fifteen seconds and it was suddenly over.

Fire had consumed everything that stood in the way of me seeing Jesus.  Fire destroyed all things in my heart that shared a room with Christ, that tried to rent a room when it was already occupied by the Holy Spirit.  I could almost sense a challenge.  "Do you really want My fire to fall down?"  I did not have much of a response, but to remain quiet and worship Him.  The fire wasn't going to be sent to get people emotionally excited about worship.  If fire fell down, it would consume every Tower of Babel that we have built in our lives.  I remembered that God is a God of wrath and that He mollifies His own wrath with His love for us.  Moments like those remind me of Jesus' sacrifice and its significance in our standing before God.  I wonder if we really want His fire to fall or if we just like the intensity of the lyrics.

I do not write this because I think Jesus wants to destroy everything in our lives, but to have everything in our lives utilized to give Him glory.  Jesus is to be the center of our existence and the reason that we live.  Through Him, all things were made.  And when we seek Him first, all things are added onto us.  There is reason why the entire universe revolves around the sun and that the sun is a bright ball of fire.  If we do not revolve around the Son, then all might be consumed by his fire.  True story.