Hey everybody, sorry for the long time between posts...but before you accuse me of being blogging lazy, I am working on some new blog projects.

First, I'm really excited about the new Small Group Leader blog that I'm running at 2|42 Community Church. You can check it out at groups.242community.com and join in the discussion of all things small groups! You can even see my first video blog here.

I've also been blogging weekly devotionals as a part of what we call the SOAP blog. It uses a YouVersion reading plan to take our community through the bible in a year and every Monday I post some thoughts on one of the daily reading. Feel free to check it out at soap.242community.com.

Life has a certain complexity about it - does it not? A complexity built out of relationships, pains, victories, tension, beauty, aspirations and dreams. A complexity that is so beautiful - because even the pain and tension gives more than it takes. This has been a constant theme in my life over the past few years and a real growing experience in learning to appreciate the bumps and lows of life.

I'm thankful that I can trust my life in the hands of the Potter - and brings me to an old post back when I started this whole blog thing.
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Over that past few weeks I've had the opportunity to connect with friends from college, some of my local homies and my mentors - here are three consistent things I've learned, discussed and seen.
First...
God uses some pretty unique threads, even crazy threads, to weave our life together with. Our lives aren't today what we thought they would be 5 years ago - and they won't be what we imagine them being in 5 more years. But it is God's faithfulness to us, his love that pulls it all together. If you're like me, sometimes from this limited human perspective the weaving looks kinda crappy - but it's these unique threads that when looking back on our life will mean the most. So we can rejoice with Paul in our weakness, celebrate the failures and enjoy the dry, boring season of life because it is God's story.
Second...
It's the struggles that define us. Without the struggle, whatever it is, life would only hold a limited significance. No matter where we are, with or without a job, with or without funds, with our without a purpose - it is our current struggle that calls us to be better and hold closer to God. Today’s struggle, whether small or impossible, only leads to tomorrows struggle, because to struggle is to live.
Third...
Being a friend is messy. A real friend, a true n' blue friend is there no matter what. If I expect to be a friend, I have to be ready for the messy reality of what a deep friendship entails. It means I have to be ready to see them for all that they are and love them. It means I have to be ready to challenge them with tough love, which is a hard thing to do. And I have to be ready to receive tough love, which is an even harder thing to do. It is too easy to write someone off, to give up on them - but a true friend is ready to get down in the mud, be authentic and live the struggle together.

Fluidity is where all theology and practices of life begin. Like fluid, the journey of life takes us from origin to origin, from stage to stage, form birth to everlasting life. Life flows – whether we want it to or not. Time marches on and so we must too. We must learn to ride the flow of life, control what we can, accept what we can’t and appreciate each turn, bend and valley we travel through. Life is fluid.

The fluidity of life, like a river, encounters times of shallowness; times of deep waters teaming with life; times of rushing speeds and times of still, slow progression. And everything we encounter, every good and bad experience; everything we hear and see and feel; every painful memory and all the fun of life is absorbed in the fluidity of who we are.

So …where does a person being to process all they absorb? How does one begin to think through who they are and who they are meant to be? What is the origin of beliefs, religious thought and spiritual experiences for a person? How can I live the best life possible? How can I stand at the end of my life, looking back on my journey and hold the least amount of regrets possible? This question shakes me – it should shake you. As I flow through life I want to do it right, be better and correct my wrongs. I want to be living water.

Rick Warren's Prayer

Almighty God, our Father:

Everything we see, and everything we can’t see, exists because of you alone.

It all comes from you, it all belongs to you, it all exists for your glory.

History is your story.

The Scripture tells us, “Hear, O Israel, the LORD is our God, the LORD is one.” And you are the compassionate and merciful one. And you are loving to everyone you have made.

Now today, we rejoice not only in America’s peaceful transfer of power for the 44th time, we celebrate a hinge point of history with the inauguration of our first African-American president of the United States.

We are so grateful to live in this land, a land of unequaled possibility, where a son of an African immigrant can rise to the highest level of our leadership. And we know today that Dr. King and a great cloud of witnesses are shouting in heaven.

Give to our new president, Barack Obama, the wisdom to lead us with humility, the courage to lead us with integrity, the compassion to lead us with generosity.

Bless and protect him, his family, Vice President Biden, the Cabinet, and every one of our freely elected leaders.

Help us, O God, to remember that we are Americans—united not by race or religion or blood, but to our commitment to freedom and justice for all.

When we focus on ourselves, when we fight each other, when we forget you—forgive us.

When we presume that our greatness and our prosperity is ours alone—forgive us.

When we fail to treat our fellow human beings and all the earth with the respect that they deserve—forgive us.

And as we face these difficult days ahead, may we have a new birth of clarity in our aims, responsibility in our actions, humility in our approaches, and civility in our attitudes—even when we differ.

Help us to share, to serve, and to seek the common good of all.

May all people of good will today join together to work for a more just, a more healthy, and a more prosperous nation and a peaceful planet.

And may we never forget that one day, all nations--and all people--will stand accountable before you.

We now commit our new president and his wife, Michelle, and his daughters, Malia and Sasha, into your loving care.

I humbly ask this in the name of the one who changed my life—Yeshua, 'Isa, Jesus [Spanish pronunciation], Jesus—who taught us to pray:

Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name.

Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread.

And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.

And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, for Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever.

Amen.
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Of course a Christian Pastor praying before millions at the inauguration is going to stir up controversy, but this article made me laugh. People are mad that his prayer was too 'Christian?' Really? He's a Christian, how would he pray and not come across Christian? Maybe you can disagree with Obama's choice of who would pray, but you sound close-minded to judge Warren's prayer as anything other than who he is.

Thoughts?

Saw this over at Taylor Lyall's blog and it really affected me.



This video comes at a time when I've been wrestling with my responsibility in this world I live in. I do feel that my inaction adds to the problem and that my comfortable life too often pretends everyone's life must be comfortable too. And though I do care, the life style I live says otherwise.

I often wonder why I was so lucky to be born in affluent America, why did I deserve that? Why do I get to make more in a day than most people make in a month? Why are my concerns more about wants, while so many struggle for needs? What am I supposed to do with this dilemma?

Thoughts?

When I think of stories from the bible and their lessons, their value comes not just in that they happened, but that they happen. If the story of Moses, the burning bush, the 7 Plagues, the freeing of millions of Hebrew slaves from Pharaoh, ect, is currently happening, it is seen in God's constant pursuit of His creation and desire to free us from that which enslaves us.

It is interesting to see the 7 Plagues through the lens of the Egyptians of that time. Each plague showed the dominance of I AM, the God of a Hebrew named Moses over the gods the Egyptians worshiped. And though I never want to be accused of 'over-spiritualizing' it is not hard to imagine current day plagues coming in the form of an economic down turn, a credit crisis, global uncertainty, the rising unemployment of not just 'others', but much closer to home with our friends and our families. It is not a far stretch to see God's hand moving to realign His creations perspective and dependency from themselves to the only thing that is truly constant.

In a number of recent conversations, many people are feeling the inconvenience of all our modern day conveniences. And for those who subscribe to the teachings of Jesus, our constant struggle with faith and life has been so diluted in the conveniences of our consumerist culture. If we are honest, we know little about true dependency on God, because we have rarely had to depend on Him for anything. A problem we have not yet fully come to realize.

But as our world continues to seemingly fall apart, at least for a moment we are gaining new clarity. A clarity we had previously only scratched the surface of, but never really wanted to come to grips with, or needed to for that matter. And consumerism has not just replaced our need for dependence on God, it also offers services to handle our identity, security and stated value in this world. It tells us that we can be who ever we want, pursue a life of comfort, consume more than is needed, live beyond our means to somehow achieve the 'dream.'

May we all take heed of the moment and reevaluate our priorities, dependencies and securities. If we are learning one thing, the economy, our leaders, the dollar, banks, CEO's, pensions and the so called American Dream are fleeting and lack the substance to offer us little more than self-centered quick-fixes. May we all seek something bigger than ourselves, something with an eternal perspective that gives us mission for this lifetime and lives on when we die. I'm convinced that at the end of my life my regrets will hinge on my selfish pursuits and not what I did and sacrificed for others.

Ever since The Shack hit the shelves, it has been all the rave in the Christian fiction arena - some hailing it as one of the best contemporary Christian pieces. So naturally I'm excited to read it and finally picked a copy up last month. In the meantime I'm still wrestling through another book that is a weighty, exciting and slow read called The Forgotten Ways, review to come - but I haven't had a chance to get into The Shack yet.

But in fielding my excitement for the book, a few interesting discussions transpired around the feminine image of God used in the book. Two women who I love and respect very much, put the book down after getting about 70 pages in because God was a girl. I was taken back by there refusal to continue reading the book everyone else is talking about. It's not like you have to agree with it to read it - right? Moreover, I was taken back by their refusal to even consider that God is a girl - or at least to consider that He is neither.

I admit I have a total man-crush on Rob Bell, but his recent Nooma video 'She' (preview clip below) sets the table for the discussion and a fuller understanding of who God is.



Does this mess with your theology or understanding of God? It doesn't with mine.

The Hebrew word Rob refers to is 'rechem' and literally all throughout the Old Testament, every time God is referred to as compassionate or having compassion, it is the same word for womb - feminine imagery for God. And in Job 38.29 God uses the analogy that creation was birthed from His womb, I mean Her womb. I understand that for ease, we label God as a man, or a He - but at best that only refers to half of who He is, because the other half is understood in the attributes of a women, who She created in Her own image.

But to be more accurate God is niether male or female, because that is what makes god, God. If only we had gender-nuetral pronouns for God, then the male dominated traditions of our history would not have limited our understanding of God and God's compassionate side.

Thoughts?

I love spoken poetry and I recently found Peter Nevland and his site the Spoken Groove. He has a potent message intertwined in a unique style. You should check him out.



So, what have you been waiting for someone to legitimize? Though no one may have told you, you were created for a reason - are you doing it? Whatever it is, you should be pursuing it, developing it and building your dreams around it!

Thought John Piper raised some great challenges for us to think about in our current political scene.

What do you think?

[I need to preface 3 things; 1st, if you don't know who Ted Haggard is - just google it, you'll get more than you wanted. 2nd, if you do know Ted and you remember what happened 2 years ago, you probably just said, 'Crap, 2 years ago already?' - yeah, life is going too fast. 3rd, my own wife doesn't even agree with the entire contents of this post - so I won't be offended if you don't because our journeys have been different. All I ask is no anonymous stupidity.]

Ted Haggard returned to the public spotlight for the first time in 2 years when he spoke at a church in Illinois this past weekend...news I celebrate.

As a Pastor-been-fired-for-messing-up myself, I not only know what Ted has gone through (much smaller scale obviously) but have also felt the sting of church judgment. It brings up thoughts of second chances, God's enduring love and the frailty of human beings.

It is a powerless feeling to know that you can never change the perception that others have of you when your screw-ups become public knowledge. It is unfortunate that church culture has created socially acceptable tiers of sin. Though the impact of Ted's sin was widespread, the sin itself, the mistakes were no different than the gossiper, the glutton or the lustful thinker. He missed the mark, he fell short, he acted outside the God-set boundaries he believed in, just like you and I do all the time.

I think there are 2 major lessons from Ted that we can learn.

1. We are all human. Just human. Pastors and Christian SuperStars will never be more than human, which means they are completely capable of failure - just like you and I.
2. We should stop pretending we are so right and just live out the redeeming story of Jesus with humility. We should live in such a way that when we fail and when our leaders fail it only reinforces the powerful story of God's grace in our weakness.

The week following Ted's mistakes becoming public, Bill Maher said this,

"The legacy of the Religious Right will be that: Despite all their Holy pretenses, they made politics not cleaner but dirtier, because when you're so sure your right, you wind up acting so wrong."

I don't agree with much that Bill Maher says, but this has a stinging truth to it. Ted was outed by the prostitute after openly (on air) condemning homosexuals leading up to the elections in 2006. The Christian voice and the Conservative Right have become synonymous with hypocrisy. A hypocrisy made more potent when a Holy pretense of perfection clashes with the frail reality of human brokenness.

So, for those that are followers of Jesus, may all of our failures only reinforce the beautiful story of faith we subscribe to, as we live humbly.
And for those that do not follow Jesus, may you begin to see God outside the hypocrisy of human failures and see Him for who He is in the complexity and perfection of His creation.

I think everyone has a few of these, they are verses of God's word that consistently echo in your head and speak to your spirit. Some of these were epiphanies for me as I grew in my understanding of God's design for my life. Some spoke right to where I was at a certain moment in my journey and continue to remind me of how far God has brought me.

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Jeremiah 15:19 -
"And if you extract the precious from the worthless, You will become My spokesman."
Matthew 26:41 -
"Keep watching and praying that you may not enter into temptation; the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak."
Mark 8:38 -
"If anyone is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when he comes in his Father's glory with the holy angels."
John 4:23 -
"But an hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth"
Hebrews 10:20 -
"a new and living way which He inaugurated for us through the veil, that is, His flesh"
1 Thessalonians 2:8 -
"Having so fond an affection for you, we were well-pleased to impart to you not only the gospel of God but also our own lives"

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Do you have any?

I joined on for another blog tour with Random House publishing for a journal called 'Me, Myself & I AM.'

This was the first time I wasn't able to completely finisth the book before reviewing it - but I am enjoying it. Here's the summary...

A new experience of God comes one question at a time in this fun and provocative journal. Made up entirely of insightful, profound, and occasionally ridiculous questions, Me, Myself, and I AM invites you to open to any page, open yourself to God, and be the author of your own story.

Questions range from spiritually intriguing—

You overhear God talking about you. What do hear him saying?

to thought-provoking—

You are on a long car trip with a close friend who is not a Christian and the conversation turns to faith. What is your biggest fear about what your friend will ask or say?

to challenging—

Do you believe that all of Jesus’s followers have a responsibility to tell others about him?

to just plain fun—

If your life before you became a Christian were a movie, its title would be:

Animal House

As Good as It Gets

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

It’s a Wonderful Life

Me, Myself, and I AM will entertain, inspire, and get you thinking about your spiritual life from brand new angles. Whether you use Me, Myself, and I AM as a reflective tool, a way to start conversations with friends and family, or as a spiritual time capsule to look back on years later, their own words will create a powerful journey of self-discovery.

If we could wear our faith like a Letterman Jacket, it would look quite different; quite different in the unusual usual way of Gods upside down kingdom. A faith whose power stems from the foolishness of man, from the innocence of a child, from the humility of broken people and from the boasting in ones weakness not strength.

If we could wear our faith as a statement of who we are, it would be so different than others. Our world endorses the perceived power of ones own ability. Our society accomplishes itself by consuming to no end, in a world that believes success is defined by how much you own. Our culture gives lip services to the ideas of character and generosity that merely scratches the surface. Our worlds idea of sacrifice is to give in proportion to what you'll get back, absolutely strings attached and does more for your sponsors and your own PR.

Our culture adorns it's Letterman in what man has conquered, in what man's athletic ability has achieved, in what power man's intellect possesses. The American culture letters in physical beauty and medals in fictitious standards of size, shape, color and style. We commit to being lifetime Letterman of consumerism, medalist in the square footage of our homes, the sportiness of our cars and the number of unused toys in our garage. We know it doesn't bring happiness, but the bigger our TV's are, the more channels we have access to, the more gadgety toys we possess, the better we feel about ourselves and our lives (and we have the mortgages, the car loans and the credit card bills to prove it).

But if we could wear our Christian faith, like a Letterman, it would counter our cultural ideals with humility and simplicity. We would adorn ourselves in how often we've failed and how our God's faithfulness is written through out those failures. We would medal in being more child-like; learning, asking and enjoying the world God has created. We would speak not of what we have done, but rather of what God's grace has accomplished in our lives. The Christian Letterman would not put on the facade of perfection as so many other jackets do in our culture, but would whole-heatedly admit to the fragility of our broken human condition and the greatness that lies in the story of Jesus.

But maybe the real question does not revolve around if we could wear our faith, but rather if we could more accurately follow our faith?

But does it?

Is faith ridiculous, irrational and stretching at times? Yep, which is exactly why it is called faith.

I don't have to be ashamed of my belief in creation, God or Jesus, because the evolutionist, the scientist and I all have faith in something. Some have belief in a Big Bang and that belief fills in the gaps between eternal matter and chimpanzee's evolving. Others have faith that God created all we know and that He has a design for each individuals life, and that belief fills in the gaps of a love and a greatness we can't wrap our minds around.

One's faith is atheist and says there is no God.
Another's faith is agnostic and says there might be a God.
Other's faith says there is a God or many gods or Allah or Budha or Self or...

We all have faith in something. All of us. So faith isn't an option, it's a recognition and a struggle between our minds and our hearts. Faith is a marriage of our soul and our mind that brings us, all humanity to an application of that reality. What will it look like for me? How does my faith change me, make me better, make this world better?

Is my faith scientific, non-committal, religious, based on past hurts or based on a relationship with a greater power that seems to be at work holding this world together?


It's Personal - A Former Atheist Speaks from dewde on Vimeo.

This is a great follow-on to the 'Judged' video I posted earlier this week and is (at least for me) a captivating thought.

So right, we're wrong is the title of a chapter in 'Out of the Question, Into the Mystery' by Leonard Sweet and the thought has never left me. I read it about 3 years ago and it has changed the way I think about the world and my faith. If you've never read it, it is awesome. In a nutshell, Leonard challenges us to stop trying to have all the 'answers' about God and start enjoying the mystery of who He is - I mean think about, if we had all the answers then He wouldn't be God - mystery is a part of faith.

Anyway in the chapter Leonard shares a story about how his neighbor's basketball hoop fell over and hit his car and scratched the door. Naturally, Leonard held the neighbor responsible and asked him to pay for the cost to fix it. The neighbor refused - Leonard [naturally] was frustrated and felt justified.

Then it hit him, what is more important here; the relationship or being right? What's more important getting the scratch fixed, getting legal involvement if necessary and destroying the relationship with a guy who knows he is a Christian, or forgiving and being willing to be wronged for the sake of what is Right?

I think we do this a lot. We forget what is most important, forgetting others and the greater purpose of our lives and seek justification for ourselves and our needs. I think we Christians have spent a lot of time defending how right we are on matters both small and large, that we've become wrong. Our faith calls us to do what does not come naturally, it is unnatural to love like Jesus, forgive like Jesus and be the peacemakers in a world of full of tension.

I'm not saying we are wrong on our stance for protecting life, but we have become so right, so elitist, so righteous that we wrong the name of Jesus, we wrong the greater cause. We have been too willing to sacrifice the life of the one aborting to try and protect the aborted life. They both need our love. We have been too willing to divide, fight and justify on the grounds of 'rightness' - that we've become the wrong voice in our culture.

Judged from David Tate on Vimeo.

"The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope."

- Barbara Kingsolver