Suckered out of a crisp Lincoln

As a staff we get together every Monday way earlier than should be legal to make sure all our dominoes are lined up for the week and to pray together. To help us stay connected with campus, a few weeks ago we started taking an hour or two every other week to do something as a staff to reach out to our campus. Today was one of those days. I was not in a good mood or interested in talking with anyone on my staff, let alone anyone on campus.

We broke into three groups and took off with five envelopes each. Open one. Do what it says. Open another. Do what it says. And so on. Be back in an hour. My crew’s first assignment was to prayer walk campus for ten minutes, which means spend the time on campus praying for campus. We went to the Rendezvous building, got some coffee and prayed while watching students go about their day. Needless to say none of the three of us were feeling especially inspired to be proactive and speedy about things. Coffee is good. Company is good. It took longer than ten minutes to pray for ten minutes. Slow happens, especially if I’m involved and it’s not yet noon.

Our second envelope had a crisp Lincoln inside with instructions to pray about how to use it. After a few minutes of praying, two of us had no ideas at all and our third wheel thought we needed to go to the Fine Arts Department on the other side of campus. So much for sitting comfortably sipping my coffee. The breadth of campus and an epic puddle later, we arrived in the Fine Arts lobby where we proceeded to wait. And wait. And wait. And wait. Nothing. We started wondering if we’d heard wrong. It’s not a big place and there’s nothing to spend five bucks on so we scattered a bit wandering around looking for someone to give it to. Right about the point it was becoming awkward to mill around anymore She walked in.

Of our trio, I was the only one who happened to be in a spot to hear what She yelled down the stairs to Her friends. “I just suckered some Christians out of five bucks for breakfast!”

I laughed and wandered back to tell my cohorts the funny. They laughed too. And we all concluded She was the one we were waiting for.

Taking the five bucks we went down and asked if She had just had breakfast purchased for Her. When She said yes, we told Her we are Christians praying about what to do with this five bucks we have and that we thought Jesus wanted Her to know He is alive, well and that He wanted to buy Her lunch too. At first She balked at the money, so we told Her to give it away if She didn’t want it. Obviously touched deeply, She burst into tears in front of Her friends and ran off to the bathroom leaving breakfast behind. Not wanting to embarrass Her, we told Her to have a great day and made our way back to meet up with the rest of our staff.

I have no idea what Jesus was doing in all this but He obviously wanted her attention when He sent two of our groups to give her some cash. I think a lot of people, including Her, don’t want to accept gifts like this not because it’s cash but because of Who the cash is really coming from - Jesus. We never even got Her name but Jesus knows and our prayer is that He would continue to surprise Her with more opportunities to sucker some Christians out of tangible expressions of Jesus’ love for Her.

When’s the last time you got “suckered” into tangibly sharing the love of Jesus with someone?

Living in hell because Jesus asked him to

So I'm at this conference over new years called the World Missions Summit. Piles of people from around the world all in one place. You know, a conference. Well, one of the keynote speakers was a surprise for us. His turn comes around and he's introduced and I'd never heard of him. It's sad too because I read the news a lot and the people we hear about all the time should actually be listening to and deferring to guys like this. And I don't even remember his name. He'd probably like it that way too.

He's a pastor in Baghdad.

Under Saddam he led a Christian church in his house and hoped to stay under the radar of the secret police. He didn't. They arrested him and with a death sentence on his life he was thrown into a 7x8 foot isolation cell with six or eight other tribal leaders from around Iraq with similar sentences. They were there for months. No windows. Not enough food. No toilet. No light.

He didn't say much about it, lets just say he and his suite mates weren't treated so well.

While sitting in a room so dark he couldn't see his own hand he began meeting the men with him. After much prayer (and hearing them pray to Allah) he began talking to them about God and faith and Jesus and being where they were. Over the months the prayers of the other men shifted from 'Allahu Akbar!' to 'Jesus...' This guy wasn't trying to convert people, he was just doing his best to love the guys sitting with him in their collection of finely aged feces. And in the darkness and the stink Jesus became real to these guys.

The day before the US invaded Iraq, Saddam opened the doors to the prisons and everyone just walked out. No directions, no showers, no nothing. Just go. So they did. And he wouldn't go home for fear of forever scarring his children with the sight of him. Somehow he found a bath and some cleaner clothes and made his way to his house where his family didn't believe it was him standing at the door; they thought he was still in prison or dead.

And I'm sitting there listening to this humble nobody who still pastors a church in Baghdad, who refuses to leave because even if it means living in hell itself he will only go where Jesus has asked him to go. Sometimes I think Baghdad might just be hell. And he refuses to leave because he loves the people too much. One of the 20 year old women in his church, one of his leaders, so loved her people she chose not to marry so she could better serve other Iraqis. Then she was killed in an attack on one of the markets. But he loves the people too much. The sacrifice is worth it.

I can't help but wonder what might happen in places like Baghdad if the people who are in charge took the time to listen to guys like this who bear the literal scars of love and faithfulness, who aren't in it for the political power but for their love for the people.

prayer request update

My boss, Daniel, with the finger that doesn't work because all the tendons ruptured playing basketball got some awesome news today. The surgeon not only thinks it will heal but he thinks it will heal without surgery! That's a major shift from when it happened and there were fears he would be stuck with a limp ring finger from here on out. Pretty cool answer to prayer. He gets to wear a splint thing for a while and it should heal just fine.

If God is so burning bush how can he be dancing like that?

I think I think a lot.

I lead worship all the time; seems like I'm always using music as a tool to help people connect with Jesus. So I'm thinking about worship in light of several conversations I've had lately about Calvinism and Arminianism, centered around how it seems like the Free Will crowd (Arminians) don't really pay much attention to how upset the Predestiantion crowd (Calvin) seem to be over the Free Will crowd's seeming lack of interest in the Sovereignty of God (They are very interested by the way) and how that seems to make the Calvin crowd even more upset. Complicated? Like I said, I think a lot. And it's not my point so I don't want you to hang out there very long. Here's my deal. I think it's "both and", meaning I think people who insist on God only predestining people to know him or folks who go the other way and say it's all free will both miss the point. It's both. Try looking at both sides of a quarter at the same time. Pretty much can't and see each side clearly, right?

But I digress. I was talking about worship. I think. Or quantum mechanics.

Anyway, God describes Himself in different places in the Bible as Sovereign Lord and King of kings. He is Ruler and Judge and Creator. Mighty and Powerful. From everlasting to everlasting. The first and the last. The one at whose throne every knee will bow. And that's just a few of them off the top of my head. But you get the idea. He is wholly different from us, which is what Holiness means. Righteous. Just. Jealous. Victorious. Warrior. A strong tower.

That sounds pretty harsh. Like a King should be. Immense and powerful. Kings are standoffish. Common people don't get to meet the King. At least not normally. Those who do must enter with reverence and awe and often had a specific way to show respect as they came into the Throne room. Maybe kneeling or bowing or something. You were definitely reverent and on your best behavior in your best clothes. If you didn't the King might just kill you for it.

I think a lot of people see God like this. Unapproachable. So not like us. So burning bush and fire and brimstone.

But then God describes Himself as a Father. Intimate and kind. Compassionate. Slow to anger and abounding in love. Rich in mercy. Prince of Peace. Loving. Full of Grace. Forgiving. Gentle. He sings and dances for joy over you and I. His thoughts about just one person outnumber the grains of sand on the beach. He is all about reconciliation - He is in the business of fixing relationships. Jesus got right down into the dirt of life with his friends. So not like a King. Yet so like a Father. Where it's safe to be yourself, faults and all. To be honest about how you feel and what you think - like you can with family.

I think a lot of people see God like this. Wholly approachable. Like us because Jesus lived on earth like us. So perfect yet so accepting and approachable for the rest of us who are completely not.

So which is it?

Both and.

Which raises my question for worship. How do you lead people to meet and spend time with Jesus and do it in a way that includes all of who God describes Himself to be? The Incredibly Holy and Perfect King of kings and Lord of lords who is truly beyond our comprehension but who is also a loving, intimate Savior who tells us to come as we are boldly before the Throne of Grace.

I think your perspective on the first confusing bit influences how you answer this confusing bit. Calvinists seem to love the Old Testament flair for Holiness and Judgment while Arminians seem to be all about Grace and Love. And both seem to think the other side is missing out because they lack what they have. And they're both right. Both are missing out and it comes out in how we do worship. We end up lopsided in how we represent Jesus and that impedes our understanding of God and that messes with how we connect with Jesus.

So what is worship about? I think it's not just an experience of something. If all we have is an experience that feels spiritual we don't have much. I felt spiritual once just from being up for too many hours in a row. I love a quote by James Torrence and just cannot get away from it - "More important than your experience of Christ is the Christ of your experience." So what happens if we include both sides, as it were, of God; both sides of the quarter? Few bridge the dichotomy. But if we don't we risk misrepresenting Jesus by not revealing in worship as many facets of Him as we possibly can.

Both and.

That's why I'm curious what you think because maybe I just think too much.

But I doubt it.

Strange gift for injury

So a good friend of mine, who happens to also be my boss, walked in to my living room last night with a splint on his ring finger. He has a rare gift for strange injury. Apparently he was playing basketball and kept asking the other players to check the ball because something was wrong with it - the leather had ripped or it was deformed or something. After asking a couple different times, Daniel looked at his hand and realized his finger was dangling limp and he couldn't move it. The ball was fine. His hand wasn't.

Trade you a cheap plastic splint for your wedding ring?

Daniel goes in soon to have his finger looked at but talking with his MD Dad it sounds bad. Potentially the kind of injury there is no treatment for. The live with it kind. There may be new treatments out there but from what his Dad knows, if it is what he thinks it is, there's not much hope for surgery or therapy to fix it.

Being in full time ministry, Daniel uses his fingers a lot writing and typing and all. Having a bum finger is more than just an annoyance for him. It's a career impediment. I believe Jesus is in the business of healing people. Would you pray with me that Jesus would heal Daniel's finger? Thanks.

Poppycock, blathering and heartless ranting!

I’ve been unexpectedly reminded of something over the last months. In more than a few ways it makes me wish I wasn’t an overly intellectual person, that instead I was one of the Simple - those who are blessed to know and experience the love of Jesus with no strings attached. Content with ongoing experience of the love of God the Simple have little need for intellectual understanding or deep theology. Parsing Greek and Hebrew verbs or being able to “Defend The Faith” with cogent quotes from Augustine or Kierkegaard isn't the point. Knowing Jesus is God and experiencing His love for them is enough.

God is Love. If He IS Love then wouldn’t it make sense that we, His adopted kids, would regularly experience His Love since that is who He is? If love is only something God does, then I could understand it being an ebb and flow experience because perhaps He just isn’t expressing love today. But Love is who He is. It’s why the Trinity is essential. If the Father, Son and Spirit didn’t have one another to love, then God would not be capable of loving us. But because He has all three of himself to love, His very nature is love. God the Father, Son and Spirit can’t help Himself. He’s a compulsive lover!

So where is the disconnect? Wouldn’t it make sense that as we kids go to church and do ministry and everything else, we would feel loved by Him? But so often as I do these things I feel completely cut off from Him and all the things I do becomes such poppycock, blathering and heartless ranting.

Then it occurs to me. Jesus isn’t interested in what we do for Him nearly so much as He is interested in being with us. I think this is why the Simple understand so much more of God than I do. They are content to enjoy being with Jesus where so often I get caught up in trying to understand and do for Jesus.

A few weeks ago it was my turn in our rotation to speak at Chi Alpha. It just happened to be in the middle of a series about the Grace of God. So all of a sudden I find myself researching Grace. Since I can't hardly have a thought without following all the dominoes as far as they'll go, I ended up starting in Genesis 1:1 and ending with Revelation 22:21. We talked our way through creation and the fall of Adam and Eve and on to Jesus and why he came to earth. In the middle I realized something I've known for a long time but haven't always experienced.

God is in a good mood. Like a good friend in a brawl, he has our back. He's watching out for us. The image of Him as a loving father is so broken in our society because there are so few loving fathers but it still fits. If a father who truly loves his kid is rejected by his kid, that doesn't nullify the love the father has for his kid, and the father will probably do what he can to restore their relationship. The kid isn't interested but the father is, so the father does the work the kid wont do so that there is a way for the kid to come home if he wants to.

That is Jesus. And that is grace.

So it occurs to me that this God who has loved Himself for all eternity compulsively shares that love with you and I because He can't help Himself. And he does it all the time even when we don't know it. But if we choose to allow Him to love us, to accept His grace, then everything changes. All that we do for God no longer is an effort to earn His approval or His love. Instead because we are loved and accepted, we begin to do things for God as a natural outflow of being loved and accepted.

Matthew 9:13 But go and learn what this means: 'I desire mercy, not sacrifice.' For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners."

And this is Grace. That God has accepted you and I exactly where we are, with our cheese determined to fall off our cracker and all He wants is you and I exactly as we are; that we would let Him love us.

And that, it turns out, is everything.

who are you and what are you doing here?

He lay sleepless in his bed, lost in prayer as he sought to understand some of the Torah he had read earlier in the day. Finally frustrated sleep would not come, the Rabbi got up and wandered out to take a walk hoping the fresh air would help clear his mind. Meandering outside the quiet walls of Jerusalem at night the Rabbi lost himself in prayer. Soon he was startled and more than a little confused to hear someone shout out “who you, and what are you doing?” Stopping to collect his scattered wits the Rabbi didn’t respond.

Again, the voice cried out “who are you and what are you doing?”

At this the Rabbi responded, “First tell me who you are and I will tell you who I am.”

So lost in thought, the Rabbi had walked up to a Roman garrison.

“I am a Roman Centurion, the guard of this Garrison. It’s my duty to keep track of who passes here.”

“Tell me”, said the Rabbi “How much do they pay you to do this?”

“Five Denari a day.” He responded.

“Then I will pay you ten Denari a day to stand outside my door and ask me this question each morning as I leave my home!” said the Rabbi.
****
Who are you, and what are you doing here?
Or
What’s your vision for your life?

One of those great life questions I’ve been pondering lately. Perhaps one day I’ll actually have an answer that matches both what I say AND what I do.