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.

“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.

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.

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.

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.

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”.

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.

“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.