Runny Noses and Itchy Eyes

Yesterday and the rest of this week the blog will be in an allergy-induced coma. Mornings are kinda hard with the breathing and sneezing and phlegm and what not. I'm sure God has things for me to see in it, but mostly I just feel miserable. So, hopefully they will calm down over the next few days and I will get back to un-medicated thought patterns and the blog next week. Until then, run after Jesus!

Monday Wonderings (and Wanderings)

Can a church be both strategic and organic? I love the structure and drive of creating strategy,  but I also believe that if we can strategize the church, then we can quickly create our own kingdom instead of God's. How to balance those is a big question in my mind.

Oh Denver Broncos... I'm glad I couldn't watch. Quit losing please.

I wonder if there will ever be a day that my to do list actually shrinks. It feels like it often grows longer throughout a day. Today that is certainly the case. 

I think there are not very many people still deciding who to vote for when the Presidential election happens in 5 weeks. I don't follow that world really at all, but I don't hear many stories of people changing their minds about who to vote for. Also, I love these "campaign commercials" made by Ellen.

Will my Teva's officially fall apart soon? I've had them for 6 or 7 years, but they are about to officially bite the dust. This makes me sad. It really makes my feet sad. I've been thinking I might try Chaco's this next go around. Thoughts?

Allergies suck. A lot. I signed up for a 5k and since signing up have been mostly unable to breath and completely unable to sustain any type of exercise. I think this 5k for me is going to feel a lot like being beat with a blunt instrument for whatever ridiculously long amount of time it takes me to complete it.

What do you wonder today?

Fear and Satisfaction

I'm overweight.

I don't like it. In fact, I mostly hate it. I get tired too quickly, physical activity is harder than it should be, my clothes don't all fit... The list could quickly get very long.

And I've tried to lose weight. And I've lost some and regained some and lost some and regained some. Many of you can relate. But here's the thing: I'm a little bit afraid to lose all the weight, because what happens if getting to my "ideal" weight doesn't bring all the "happy, happy, joy, joy" that I feel like it should?

What if I'm still a broken person struggling with insecurity even when I'm skinny? And deep down, I know that is the truth. Being skinny will not fix my humanity. Neither would being taller or faster or smarter or anything.

And so I, and you, have to unpin our hope in this life from our circumstances in this life. We can't hang on to flimsy promises that life will be better when... Because sometimes the "when" doesn't turn out picture perfect like we imagined.

I have friends that went to the doctor last week expecting the all clear in a fight against cancer. Instead they were told that they had another year of chemo with radiation to face. They have to know, that even though this was horrifyingly bad news, that there is hope outside of anything that happens with the 'c' word. Or this little girl that has been fighting for her life just weeks after her family moved to Africa to help free women and children from the sex slave trade. This wasn't the way it was supposed to work out. This isn't what is supposed to happen when you move to a 3rd world country to free slaves... it just isn't. 

But if our hope is found in health or things working out just like we dreamed... then we are missing the beauty of Jesus. He makes beauty from ashes and causes things to grow in the drought of our hearts. 

I need to lose weight, but not because it will fill all my dreams or something, but so I can be healthy for my family and to do what God has set me on this earth to do. I will leave my hope of fulfillment and perfection squarely in his loving and good hands.

Hebrews 12:2-3 (Message)

Keep your eyes on Jesus, who both began and finished this race we’re in. Study how he did it. Because he never lost sight of where he was headed—that exhilarating finish in and with God—he could put up with anything along the way: Cross, shame, whatever. And now he’s there, in the place of honor, right alongside God. When you find yourselves flagging in your faith, go over that story again, item by item, that long litany of hostility he plowed through. That will shoot adrenaline into your souls!

Pursuit of God Chps 1-2

I've been reading "The Pursuit of God" by A.W. Tozer. A few quotes and thoughts as I've started reading it.

Everything is made to center upon the initial act of "accepting" Christ (a term, incidentally, which is not found in the Bible) and we are not expected thereafter to crave any further revelation of God to our souls.  We have been snared in the coils of a spurious logic which insists that if we have found Him we need no more seek Him. (16)

Acute desire must be present or there will be no manifestation of Christ to His people. He waits to be wanted. (17)

When religion has said it's last word, there is little that we need other than God Himself. The evil habit of seeking God-and effectively prevents us from finding God in full revelation. In the "and" lies out great woe. (18)

The roots of our hearts have grown down into things, and we dare not pull up one rootlet lest we die. Things have become necessary to us, a development never originally intended. God's gifts now take the place of God, and the whole course of nature is upset by the monstrous substitution. (22)

C'mon! There is so much there, out of just the first two chapters! Oh my, the God-and part just wrecks my heart! Oh how I love the other things that I try to include in following God. Pick up the book and give it a read. I'll leave you today with the prayer that Tozer writes at the end of chapter 1.

O God, I have tasted Thy goodness, and it has both satisfied me and made me thirsty for more. I am painfully conscious of my need of further grace. I am ashamed of my lack of desire. O God, the Triune God, I want to want Thee; I long to be filled with longing; I thirst to be made more thirsty still. Show me Thy glory, I pray Thee, that so I may know Thee indeed. Begin in mercy a new work of love within me. Say to my soul, "Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away." Then give me grace to rise and follow Thee up from this misty lowland where I have wandered so long, In Jesus' Name, Amen.

Culture Shock

Proverbs 23:17-18

Don’t for a minute envy careless rebels; soak yourself in the Fear-of-God— That’s where your future lies. Then you won’t be left with an armload of nothing.

Are you sure, God? Does my future lie in you? I'm going to be honest, a lot of the time that doesn't feel very true. A lot of the time I think my future lies in whatever I see making other people happy. 

And God, can I tell you something? It's a LOT easier to envy careless rebels and those who don't follow you than it is to fear you. They make everything look so fun, carefree, and simple.

But I know it's a lie.

Because I know when it's just faith and hope and love that are left, those things that I envy will be gone, they will be nothing. And a lot of people will look kinda silly while they stand around trying to hold all of their nothing (I guess a lot of times it already looks kinda silly). They will strain under the weight of their nothing. And it will reward them with nothing.

Or

I can carry your weight. You say your weight is easy and light. Some days it feels awfully heavy to me. But I get what you mean. You hold my future, my hope. I won't be left holding a bunch of nothing. I will be left being held by you and in that, I will have everything. 

God, rid me of useless jealousy for things that aren't you. Let me SOAK in you because you are love and you are my future.

"Give me Christ or else I die!"

The Power of the Pause

The church staff I work on has recently started a new practice. Each day at 10a and 2p, we stop whatever is happening in the office, close the office and spend 10 minutes in prayer together. We generally read a Psalm from the Paraclete Psalter and then spend time in silence or prayer. We have been doing this for about a month. Here's what I have learned:

• There are a lot of Psalms I am not familiar with. (Like Psalm 29- that one wrecked me last week. The voice of the Lord... Wow!) I have read the Psalms a few times, but as we pray the Psalms together, I hear then in new ways as I allow them to wash over me as offerings to and from God.
• I work with some awesome people. If you've never prayed with anyone on the church staff, just come in and ask, they all love Jesus, and it comes out when they pray. 
• The power of pausing. 

That last one... Stopping each day at 10 and 2 is really hard. I will be right in the middle of something and all of a sudden I have to stop. That is really hard for me. I am a very distractable person already, and having to stop when I am "in the groove" can just feel unfair to me. 

But I kind of think that's the point of fixed prayer times like this. To get the opportunity (or be forced!) to stop and see God and refocus my world towards him. As a pastor, it seems like it should be easy to always be focused on Christ as I work. It is not. But pausing helps me remember what I should be remembering, and in that remembering I find life and energy.

So, stop by at 10 or 2 sometime and pray with us, or set your own times throughout the day to "pause".

If you're going to pause, leave a comment about the when and the what!

The Weight of Debt

How many of you have ever been in debt? Even if it's just a small amount of money, it can be overwhelming. I remember when Shiloh and I signed the papers for our first home loan. I was almost physically sick knowing I would owe someone SOOOO much money for 30 years.

When you're in debt, it can often create a pit in your stomach that eats away at you. You feel this sense of urgency to remind you to get out of debt. Or you can be completely overwhelmed by both the feeling and the debt. You work harder or pinch extra pennies to pay it off. Whatever the case, when we are in debt, we FEEL it. 

Let no debt remain outstanding except the continuing debt to love, for whoever loves has fulfilled the law. -Romans 13:8

As I read Romans 13:8, I think about how the debt to continuing to love makes me feel.

Because all too often it produces no urgency.

No extra work.

No sense that I have to do something now.

It is really easy to forget that we owe a never-payable sized debt to God for the love that he showed us in Jesus Christ. And we pay it back by loving others. (I am in no way suggesting that we can pay it back or that it earns our salvation. Just that it is a debt we owe that we can only make payments on with our love.)

This isn't a "be nice to others" love, either. It isn't easy. It is self-sacrificing. It chooses to see, and then know, people that are invisible in our culture.   (If you don't know where these people are, go to wherever the low income housing assistance in your community is located, and buy someone there a meal.) We need to feel the urgency and love others with radical abandon. 

What a beautiful debt to owe! May kingdom-sized love abound in your life!

How are you loving others?

"Give me Christ or else I die!"