How do I know?

I might not know everything, but I know more than my four year old. That’s not a very risky statement. Nor is it setting the bar all that high. Fortunately, by saying the aforementioned statement, I’m not so much saying anything about myself, but instead, about my four year old.

There should be more times that I’m explaining stuff to my four year old in teaching, directing and correcting, than saying, “because I said so”. Because at the end of the day, I want him to be able to make wise choices based on the wisdom of the choice, not because daddy said so. I want him to understand “it”, not just obey “it”…whatever “it” is.

But he still needs to do things, or not do them, even if just for the moment, the reason is “because I said so”. Explaining and understanding may come later. This is possible, based largely on two things.

First, we have a relationship that extends beyond following any set of rules. My four year old and I play together (though probably not enough). We eat together and ride bikes together and do other stuff together. Rules, in our relationship, certainly aren’t the defining aspect, though they are present.

Second, deep down somewhere within, he knows that I know more than he does. Now, I know my four year old does not have the ability to openly reason a statement like this: “I don’t know why I shouldn’t do this, but dad says not to, and since I know my dad knows so much more than I do, even though I don’t completely understand, or even agree, Ill go ahead and do what he says because I know he has more information than I have, and I know he loves me”. Yeah, he doesn’t say that. But I know, to the extend a four year old can, that he knows it.

How do I know?

Because when he’s scared, or hurt, he comes running to me. At a moment of crisis, my son knows that my knowledge, experience and strength has a far greater chance to overcome the situation than does his. That’s what makes me his dad.

I find it to be the exact same with God.

There’s lots that I don’t understand. But I trust him. I believe he’s good. I know that he has way more information and understanding of the situation than I do. And if he didn’t, frankly, he wouldn’t be much of a God.

So today, pray this: “God, use me today to make a difference that is utterly disproportionate to who I am”.

And then trust him with what you don’t know.

unusual

I’m reading a book right now with a few other friends called, “Immersion: Live the Life God Envisioned for You”, by Mark Mcnees, a pastor in Tallahassee.  Today, in my reading, I came across this line:

“I love the description of Moses’ encounter with God in the burning bush, ‘Why isn’t that bush burning up?  I must go see it.’  Notice his question.  He first had to recognize something was unusual.  He could have very easily kept doing what he was doing, attending his flocks.  But he was aware that something was unusual and tune his attention and followed his curiosity to something outside his original plan for the day.  It was not until Mosts deviated from his plan and followed his curiosity that he heard God’s voice.”

He noticed something unusual, and he deviated from his normal plans for the day.  Then he heard from God.

This is amazing.  Here’s what I know.  If you’re a follower of Christ, you are wanting – right now – to hear something from God.  Maybe it’s been a while, and you’re panting for it.  Maybe the last time you heard from his was recently, and it just left you wanting some more.  Either way – you want it.  My guess is, if you haven’t heard from him in a while, you might be too busy.  You might be undistractable.  You may be so focused on attending to the normal routine of your day, that you just haven’t noticed anything unusual.

If you’ve been around Palm Harbor Church much recently, I hope you’ve noticed something unusual.  If you haven’t been around, or you haven’t noticed, you’re missing out.  Something is happening.  There’s something in the air.  God is moving, and speaking, and people are hearing.  I hope you’ll take some time out of your busy routine this weekend, and notice something unusual.  If you do, you just might hear something that will change your life.

 

now

There’s a difference between doing only what you can afford to do right now, and doing only what God has for you right now. The first is settling, the second is dreaming.

The first says, “this is good enough”. The second says, “this is best”.

Most of our problems, as individuals, families or organizations, isn’t what we can’t do. It’s what we fail to do that we are perfectly positioned for, now.

God gave them up

If you read Romans 1:24-32, you’ll see several statements, which may alarm you, that begin with the words, “God gave them up…”.  Those words certainly alarmed me.  How could God, who is infinitely loving, patient and kind “give someone up”?  When I think of God, I think of someone who offers unconditional love.  Someone who is unwavering and unchanging in his character and his affections.  But the idea of God giving someone up, frankly, does not conflict with any of that.

Sometimes, the most loving thing you can do for another person is to let them go.

One thing the scriptures are quite clear on is the fact that God will not impose himself on anyone.  He is quite interested in us choosing him.  He would love for us to love him.  He wants what’s best for us, that being him.  But he’s given us the choice.  He’s given us the choice to either choose him, or reject him.  And I also think he’s given a choice to those who have “chosen” him: to pursue him with our whole lives to the point that our complete and total identity is found him.  In other words, it’s not enough to just acknowledge God for who he is.  Not for him.  He wants us all in.  He has no interest in casual.

I find very few people in life whose relationship with God is something more than casual.

Look back at Romans.  What did he give these people up to?

1.  He gave them up to impurity – for most of us, when we think “purity”, we think “not sinning” or “being morally upright” and it often has a correlation to sexuality.  For Paul, it’s much simpler than that.  It’s defined here as “choosing the creature over the Creator”.  Impurity happens when we prefer anything over God.  If football is more important than God to me, then, I’m impure and God may lovingly give me up to it.  That is, he will to the best of his ability, give me my hearts desire, as I make much out of boys who play a silly game.

2. He gave them up to their passions – a passion is something you lust after, or something you hunger for.  In Romans, Paul uses sexuality as the example, because the craving for sex most adequately illustrates what our passions do to us.  They consume us.  Passion is not wrong.  In fact, it’s created by God and it’s good.  But our passions expressed in something other than him, something other than his work in people’s lives (including our own), in something other than what Jesus described as most important (which is loving God and loving others), is something God is willing to give us, if that’s what we desire.  And so he releases us to those passions.

3. He gave them up to their minds – in Romans Paul calls this a “debased mind” which means “to reduce in quality or value”.  In other words, God gave us our intellect to ponder and reason what’s most valuable and most important.  Too often, our minds are reduced to our own skepticism and experiences (which we should admit are quite small).  Our sarcastic postures take over and we don’t believe anything good about anyone (including God).  In fact, subtly, we begin to think that we are the only ones who truly understand, or can see the holes in someone else’s beliefs or reasoning.  Our minds have not been transformed by the power of the Gospel to see God and others they way we were designed to, because he has given us up to our simplistic, arrogant and narrow minds which produce lethal thoughts.

Heart.  Soul.  Mind.

Maybe God does what us to be happy.  Maybe that’s in his top 3.  If so, I suppose it’s also possible that God is willing to aid us in that happiness, even if in the end it brings us to our own destruction – as long as it makes us happy, because evidently that’s what most of us deem to be important.

If only our happiness, and our joy, were found in him.  If only our hearts, souls and minds, were squarely fixed on him, and God didn’t give us up to something else we longed for.  But instead, he gave us everything, because we longed for the one who has it.

May God help us as our hearts desire something else, our lives our pursuing something else, and our minds are fixed on something else.

high def

I love HDTV.  It is awesome.  I daresay the birth of HDTV was more monumental that the change from black and white to color.  I just think it was that big of a deal.  I only get to watch some things in HD, but I normally finding myself not watching anything, if I can’t have it in HD.  I mean, why bother?

A nearly equally nifty discovery was the ability to view TV in 3D.  I mean, talk about “high def”.  HD is great, but it’s still just 2-dimensional.  Add that 3rd dimension to high definition, and you’ve got yourself one heck of toy.

One thing I realized recently.  I’ve never seen myself in 3D.  Every time I look at me, it’s in 2D.

Anytime I look at others, it’s 3D.

For me, the ideal of “high definition living” is pretty important.  I have one life.  I don’t want to waste it.  I’ve wasted so much of it, the life I have left, I want to make count to the highest extent possible.  In other words, I want to live in high definition.  And it’s possible that the most elite version of high def is 3D high def.  If that’s true, I better stop looking at me, and start looking at people who I can see in 3D.

the And

A lot of people tell me I need to pick a side.  I don’t agree.  I mean, I’ve picked Jesus and all that, (or Jesus has picked me, depending on how you want to view it), but there’s not too much else I care about.

Okay, if you force me, here’s one: Mac or PC?  Mac.  But even that’s not all that true, because we still have 2 dinosaur Windows machines here at the church that I have to regularly associate myself with.  I wash my hands after each torture session.

But that’s not what I’m talking about here.  What I’m talking about is the divide between the focus, identity, or even manifestation of a church.  The predominant expressions are these: Missional and Attractional.

If you look around not too hard, you’ll find many people on both sides espousing how their version is more like Jesus, because they love him more than the other people.  Well, they might not say that, but they think it.  Or, at least I did.  But there’s this whole other section of church folk who think way differently, and if forced to “pick a side”, I choose this one.  It’s the side of the And.

Is a gospel-centered, Jesus-faming church supposed to be Missional?  Yes, I believe they naturally will be, really without even trying.

Are they supposed to be Attractional?  Same answer.  I think they will be, without trying all that hard at all.  Sure, there are parts of mission and attraction that they’ll have to work on, but those areas will mostly be programatic, or organizational.  If you follow Jesus, you as an individual (and equally a part of a “body” called the church) will be about mission and about attraction, albeit still a broken, selfish, jacked up individual surviving on the nourishment of grace.  By definition, the person who is being “regenerated”, as the scriptures describe it, is being made into a new person, or a new creation of God, who looks less like the person they were before, and more like the person of Jesus, who by the way, was extremely mission and attraction oriented.  This is a natural, and organic or even instinctual progression of life, just like babies normatively, and eventually, and even automatically, grow teeth, learn to crawl, and start talking in the same language as the people around them.  They don’t have to try; they don’t even know they’re supposed to.  They just do.

Likewise, this is the church.  And by “church” I mean both the individual who is a part of the “Church”, and the organization that all these individuals belong to, known as the local “church”.

At Palm Harbor Church, we actually don’t use terminology like “missional” and “attractional” all that much.  We do some, but it’s not very regular.  One reason for that is because we believe that if you have to talk about it, it probably means that you’re not.  Another reason, and a more practical one, is that it requires too much explanation.  It’s not normal vernacular.  There are ways to say it that, at least to us, make more sense.

One of those ways is this: gathering and scattering.  Now these are words we use a lot.  Maybe every day.  For us, the expression of gathering and the expression of scattering are not in competition.  We don’t think one is more spiritual, or more important than the other.  We do think that either can become the source of idolatry, if at any time, the ministry of Jesus becomes more important than the person of Jesus.  We happen to think that as we Love God, Love People and Follow Jesus, the natural result of that will be that we gather together (both in missional and attractional ways), and that we scatter together (both in missional and attractional ways).

Another way we might say it is this: we’re here for the fame of Jesus and the benefit of the city.  We say that a lot too.  Because everything we do is primarily about the fame of Jesus, and that fame always benefits the city.  So if we are doing something, either programatically or normatively, that’s focused on making Jesus famous, we do it equally out of a desire to be “missional” and “attractive”.  Likewise, if we are doing something that’s focused on benefitting the city (like a Block Party, the Hustle in the Harbor, or a Blood Drive) then we are doing it because Jesus is both missional (meaning he is pursuing you and me more than we him) and attractional (meaning he is better than anything else).

So, no matter how you shake it, I just don’t think you can separate the two concepts of missional and attractional; of gathering and scattering; or of making Jesus famous and benefitting the city.  Maybe the most important set of letters are the ones that form the word “and”.

There is only one who is good

The simple answer to the question that we all ask (though not a great answer at the time a person is asking, because they are typically asking out of hurt, not cognitively) “Why do bad things happen to good people”?, is that they don’t. Because we’re not.

The better question to ask is, “Why do good things happen to bad people?” That is the question that will awaken us to the kindness, mercy, grace and reckless acceptance of a God that is way better than all us think He is.

adoption and freedom

From Tim Chester’s book, “You Can Change”….

“It was Sophie’s first day with her adoptive parents.  She stalked nervously around her new home, fearing one of the beatings she was used to getting if something got broken.  The toys in her room went untouched; she couldn’t quite believe  they were hers.  At dinner she secretly stuffed food into her pocket: you never knew where your next meal would come from when you were on the streets.  That night she felt so alone in her big room.  She would have cried if she hadn’t long since learned to suppress her emotions.

Now listen to her mother one year later; ‘She crawled into bed with me last night because she was having a bad dream.  She curled up next to me, put her head on my chest, told me that she loved me, smiled, and went to sleep.  I nearly cried with contentment.’

Sophie had a new identity on day one.  She’d become a child in a new family.  But initially she still lived like a child of the street.  Her actions and attitudes were shaped by her old identity.  Christians too have a new identity.  And we’re to live out our new identity, to be what we are.  So don’t live like a slave when you can live like a child of the King of heaven.”

So many deeply believe that God seeks to restrain; yet the truth is only so, that He is the only one who truly frees.

Idols

If the root of all sin is idolatry, and if it’s true that the heart is an idol factory, then the reason that it’s so difficult to kill sin is that the heart is very much in love with its creation.

DRIVE

Last Sunday, as we started the DRIVE series, we talked about The Destination.  The Great Commission is one of the most central sections of scripture for the Christ-Follower, because it tells us what our job is: which is to Go.  But after we’ve accepted the general order to Go, we’ve got to ask the specific question of “Go where?”  In Acts 1, Jesus gave us four basic contexts of our going:

First, “Go where you failed”.  That’s Jerusalem.  The first place the disciples are instructed to Go, is where they all pretty much denied and/or deserted him.  Someone cranked up the heat, and they dispersed.  Instead of just writing that area off, so they didn’t look foolish, this is where Jesus tells them to go first.  ”Go where you failed, where you denied me, where people saw your true colors”.  But get this part, because it’s crucial: Jesus didn’t send them where they failed so they could make up for it.  Jesus sent them where they failed so others could see with their own eyes that even failures have a place in the kingdom of God, and that Jesus is big enough to work in and through us, despite our own personal limitations.

Second, “Go to your neighbors”.  That’s Judea.  Go where people are like you.  Go where your friends are.  In other words, Go where it’s easy.  I mean, the task might not be easy, but the company sure will be.  In fact, when the task gets really tough, you’ll at least be in the midst of it with people who get you, who will take a bullet for you, and you for them.  So, wherever you Go, don’t Go alone.  This is one of the essential elements of “church”, which in this context means “christian community”.  Our relationship with Jesus is certainly personal, but never meant to be private.

Third, “Go where people are not like you”.  That’s Samaria.  In fact, it’s not just where people are different, but it’s where the people are who you don’t like; who don’t like you.  Why?  Simple.  Because this isn’t about you.  This (that is, church) isn’t about your preferences, or getting your needs met, or making you feel comfortable, or even loved.  I mean, some of that is in play for sure, but it’s not the point of it all.  The point of it all is two-fold; the fame of Jesus and the benefit of others.  So in our gathering and in our scattering, what we do is not about me, and it’s not about you.  What we do is about them; even those whom we don’t particularly like.  One of the coolest by products of that, by the way, is the realization that there is nothing more unifying than the love and worship of Jesus.  It blends every boundary conceivable.  

Fourth, “Go everywhere”.  That’s the ends of the Earth.  Kind of ambiguous, isn’t it?  I mean, that kinda leaves the door open for literally anywhere.  And how do you suppose we figure out where, specifically, that might be?  Yep, you guessed it.  Prayer.  Ah, now we’re starting to see how Prayer = Risk.  Because this type of prayer is risky.  God just might give you orders, or even a desire, to Go somewhere where it just doesn’t make sense.  When prayer becomes mostly about God providing me with comfort, safety, and security, rather than risk, it’s probably because I’m doing a lot more talking than I am listening.

So that’s the Destination.  But remember, as we head out to our Destination, it’s very important that we put gas in the car, or else we’re stranded.  And that’s the conversation for this weekend as we continue DRIVE: The Fuel.