I don't know what I don't know...

There are few activities that I enjoy that can sustain my attention for more than a half hour, but I like puzzles - crossword puzzles, strategy games, mysteries, etc. If I hadn't gone into youth ministry, I think I would have been a math teacher. I like to find the solution to problems. In most puzzles and math problems there is a clear and defined answer. With a little effort and sometimes critical thinking, you eventually figure it out.

I've applied this concept to other areas of my life as well. When I'm in conversation with someone, I think about what they are saying, why they are saying it, how they are saying it, and I formulate a response based on what I've figured out about this person's situation. After one conversation, I feel like I've heard enough to throw in my two cents. This quick and easy solution usually leads to another problem: I don't really know anything about this person. The problem with applying formulas and solutions to people is that you see them as a math problem, a dilemma, that could be fixed if you just found the solution. I recently watched again the movie, Patch Adams, a story about a medical student in the 1960's and 70's with a vision to treat people instead of problems. A psych ward patient through a simple illustration helps Patch to realize that "...if you focus on the problem, you can't see the solution."

For a long time, this is how I approached my walk with Christ If I could just find the formula that tells me how to overcome the sin in my life, or if I studied the scriptures enough, I wouldn't have so many questions about it. It would start to make sense. What I've found is that there is no formula. The deeper I dig into the Word and study what it means to follow Christ the more I am humbled to learn that I know very little about who God is, or what He is doing in the world.

This past weekend our pastor spoke from Jesus' Sermon on the Mount. We read Matthew 7:7-8 which says:

"Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened."

I wish this was just a formula, that there was a question box to ask my question in, a clear path to follow, and a door in front of me to knock on. What I learned is that, seeking Christ is a journey. It requires a persistent asking of God to reveal himself to us, a constant seeking for the Truth of his Words, and finding ourselves on his doorstep repeatedly knocking, waiting for the door to be opened so our eyes can see His glory.

Our culture has taught us that there must be a solution. That if we think long enough and hard enough about it, we will find the answer we are looking for, but reason and logic won't lead us to Truth or understanding. There is beauty in the unknown and the journey to find it. It requires the faith of a mustard seed and a willingness to surrender our own solutions.

Someone told me once that you can't truly love someone until you know their story.  God has loved us unconditionally, but if we are to love Him, we must seek to know his story. It's being told through scripture, through songs, other people, and in our own life. Just as His story promises life without end our journey to love and to know him is also without end. God's ways our not ours and we can't find the solution through our own means, but if we ask, seek, and knock, he will be found.

I started blogging about a year and a half ago. I was steady for a while, then took a break because I didn't feel I had the time. I started up again and stopped, but this time for a different reason. I realized that most of what I blogged about was something I thought I had "figured out." In finding the answers, I felt the need to tell others of my discovery, often to the point of condemning others. The beauty of blogging with few readers is that I'm really just throwing my thoughts out without much accountability. With grace, you read along and thought about what was said. I like to write and with such an active mind, it's great to get my thoughts out, but hopefully these words will lead others to ask, seek, and knock. I have no answers. I don't know what I don't know.

"Blessed are the detached, for they do not ache"

Recently I have been in email conversation with a parent who has recently taken a job as a substitute teacher at a local middle school. Day in and day out she is overwhelmed by mess that the youth in the schools are in. The other teachers and counselors have basically told her that it is best to keep her distance emotionally. In pain and frustration she wrote at the end of an e-mail "blessed are the detached, for they do not ache." She doesn't feel this way, and cares deeply about the youth she interacts with, but it's been challenging. This is not a response to her or advice on how to handle it (she is a prayerful parent), but some thoughts on how we view our role in caring for the world and the people in it.

"Blessed are the detached, for they do not ache." This phrase was particularly intriguing to me. I've only been working full time with youth for about a year, but it's obvious the mess that their world can be. Whether or not we were caught up in it, we have all been down the hallways of high schools where students were disrespectful, got a hold of drugs and alcohol, slept around, hurt themselves and others. We hear stories so often that we become detached from the reality. It's not that we don't believe that it's happening, we just don't feel it anymore. We have left those hallways.

How about in the world? The past few months have been full of stories of war, tragedies, and natural disasters that have taken many lives, but for most of us it's a story on the news. It sounds terrible, but we are detached emotionally. It can seem like there are too many issues and problems to take care of so why bother? How can we? We can't go to Japan and Alabama and Missouri or send enough money to help each of them adequately or change anything about the devastation that is left behind. Can we?

I don't believe I have the answer, but I'm not sure detachment is the answer. Detachment gives the impression that we don't care, that it doesn't matter to us. Truthfully, if we put all our energy into all of the world's problems we would be constantly heartbroken at our inability to make things better. I do believe we are suppose to care, but we can't expect the change anything. That sounds dismal, but let me explain. 

All of our efforts to make the world a better place will be in vain if we lack trust in how God is moving in the world. When God burdens our hearts with the mess that the world is in, I think he is breaking our hearts for what breaks his, but he has a better picture in mind. 

2 Corinthians 5

In this passage Paul is talking about his heart for a people. Like, Paul we want others to know the love and the freedom that is offered in Christ. It’s not on our shoulders to fix the world, but God will use us in the process of reconciling all things back to him, but it’s never quick or easy and the work won’t be done until he sees it to completion. 

When we live our lives for Christ, it's impossible to be detached. God is relational and attached to all of his creation. He calls us to be imitators of Christ in love and our attitude, so when our hearts are broken for the pain around us, there is a response required. I don't think that response is always to give money, or go to another country. Sometimes it's as simple, but powerful as prayer. Paul says this:

"We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God." (v.20)

We are ambassadors to Christ and are called to his service. We can give all our money away and travel the world helping people, but nothing will be as powerful as prayer. In communion with God, he will guide us to the places we must give our time, energy, and money and he will intercede for those we lift up to him in prayer. If we believe in the power of prayer it's the easiest thing to do, but too often we feel like if we don't fix it, nothing will happen. Prayer is not an excuse not to act when you feel God has called you to go somewhere or speak to someone, but prayer is not inaction either; it's far from it.

"Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal." ~ 2 Corinthians 4:16-18

Does Love Win?

I recently picked up a book called Love Wins by Rob Bell. To be honest, I only picked it up because it was controversial. Many in the Christian community were in an uproar about it because they believe Rob Bell is teaching universalism. I have to say I was disappointed with all the commotion.

I met this book with similar feelings to my conversation about music in the church. I believe Rob Bell is a christian trying to figure out how to live for God and to encourage others to be disciples. I believe he is a praying man and he knows his scriptures. Due to his human nature, in the process of his writing, he probably took some things out of context,and uses the Word to prove HIS point instead of the clear and precise message of the Gospel (which each and every one of us has our own interpretation of). None of us would ever do that right?

I don't agree with some aspects of the book, but it does bring up many questions like what does it mean to be saved? How do we get to heaven? What is hell? Where is it? What happens to those who die without having heard the Gospel, or haven't been baptized or saved? The man on the cross next to Jesus was told he would spend his life in paradise not ever attempting to follow Jesus, but the Bible says that we have to be born again and baptized and to forgive and then we will be saved. Rob Bell raises all these questions and best answer I can think of is that in Isaiah 55:8 God tells us that are ways are not his ways.

We spend so much time trying to put God in a box, trying to explain the eternal and spiritual truths that God has not brough into the light yet. Asking these questions means we are seeking understanding, but when we try to answer them in the context of something that we are not experiencing, we hold our own theology and worldview above the scriptures. God challenges us through His word to be disciples, to care for the widows and orphans, to share the good news,  and ultimately to love Him above all else.

The actions we take and decisions that we make in this life have an impact in the kingdom. A few weeks back we talked about Esther at our youth group. Esther's decision to go before the king saved lives. Noah built the ark and followed God blindly. The disciples who followed Jesus started the first churches, prayed, studied, and healed. God initiated each of those relationships, but the choices and decisions that they made had an eternal impact.

How we spend our time, energy, money,  and thoughts is to be a reflection of the mind of Christ. When we seek God in our lives and live out the call he has put on our lives without trying to condemn others and to put Him in a box, the victory of love that has already been won on the cross begins to shine through God's people.

No Guilt in Life, No Fear in Death

Scripture is a love story from the beginning to where it leads us today. God created us in His image. He created us to walk in His ways and to worship him, but from the very beginning we have been failures. Our sinful nature and our selfish desires, ambitions, and actions have kept us from experiencing the fullness of God's love. God recognized that his people were in need of a Savior. His desire was for us to know Him, but He couldn't in all his glory be in the presence of sin, so He sent His Son to redeem his people. His Son brought hope, redemption, and freedom at the cost of His own life, but through His death we have life.

This past week, I've been in conversation with a couple of youth about God's love for us. The youth were struggling with the thought of God loving us even if we did things that made Him angry. It may sound childish to some of us, but I think most of us can relate to this paradox. It doesn't make any sense from our perspective. If someone does something that hurts you and they continue to do it over and over again, you wouldn't want to be around them much, but God, for some reason never leaves us (Hebrews 13:5). His love is perfect. It keeps no record of wrong and most of all it never fails (1 Corinthians 13).

We can't wrap our heads around this and I am not going to pretend that I have figured it out. In Hebrews 10, the author talks about Christ's sacrifice once and for all. In the Old Testament it was mandatory for the Jewish people to bring their sacrifices to the temple. Each sacrifice had specific instructions depending on what it was for: guilt, sin, fellowship, grain, wave, etc.

The law is only a shadow of the good things that are coming—not the realities themselves. For this reason it can never, by the same sacrifices repeated endlessly year after year, make perfect those who draw near to worship. Otherwise, would they not have stopped being offered? For the worshipers would have been cleansed once for all, and would no longer have felt guilty for their sins. But those sacrifices are an annual reminder of sins. It is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins. (Hebrews 10:1-4, emphasis added)

Although sacrifice was mandated by the law, it could not cleanse anyone of their sins forever. They had to repeat the same ritual every year, but Christ came as the sacrifice once and for all. "Once" as in one time, the last time that blood would be shed for the sins of God's people and "for all" God's people:

"For by one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy. The Holy Spirit also testifies to us about this. First he says : 'This is the covenant I will make with them after that time, says the Lord. I will put my laws in their hearts, and I will write them on their minds (Jeremiah 31:33).' Then he adds: 'Their sins and lawless acts I will remember no more (Jeremiah 31:34).' And where these have been forgiven, sacrifice for sin is no longer necessary."(Hebrews 10:14-18 emphasis added)

 Most of us know this or have at least heard that our sins our forgiven and that Christ's death has freed us, but we don't live and walk in it. We don't believe that He could love us that much. This type of unconditional and sacrificial love doesn't exist in our lives. We don't see it in the media, in the culture, and sometimes not even in our families, so how can we understand it? I don't believe we will until all things have been reconciled back to Him, but the life we live while we are here on this earth matters and God desires for us to know Him.

We keep ourselves from knowing God by hiding behind our sin. We try to explain that God couldn't love us this way because we feel guilty and we are ashamed of who we are. If God hates sin, which I believe he does, he must hate us, but this is inconsistent with the message of the Gospel. It's a lie that Satan uses to distract us from our Kingdom purpose. Christ's death, His love and grace, His mercy is sufficient for you. Nothing can separate us from this love (Romans 8:38-39). No matter what we do, his love remains the same. We have been failing since our first breath. That is why Jesus had to come.

As we approach Easter and the celebration of His resurrection, I pray that each of you would know this in your hearts and be confident in the Truth that He died for our sinful nature so that we could be free in Him. We can't hide behind our sins because everything that we keep in secret, God knows and sees. Let us fall to our knees before the cross in recognition of our brokenness and the life that he gave so that we would not be bound by the chains of sin. His love covers all sin and to think He is incapable of saving you is to doubt the victory that He claimed on the cross.

Removing the Veil of Self

This past few weeks has been a whirlwind of emotion as I am having conversations with families and church staff about ministry growth, preparing for a wedding, planning youth events, and seeking to follow God better in my own life. I have read or am in the process of reading about seven different books, all with a different focus, but this past week God seemed to bring everything together.

From the conversations last weekend with the parents and all the wisdom that is being poured into our hearts and our leadership, most of us have come to the same conclusion. Christ wants us to be disciples and as such to spread the good news to the world. This is no easy calling and it requires radical obedience to him. I wrote a few months ago about the cost of discipleship, but God has recently revealed to me the one thing that hinders us most from pursuing Him.

I was reading A.W. Tozer's classic, The Pursuit of God, with the associate pastor and was convicted by the truth Tozer shared. The third chapter of his book is called "removing the veil." He firmly believe that our experience with God must born of the spirit. He quote St. Augustine, "thou hast formed us for Thyself, and our hearts are restless, until they find rest in Thee." We were created in God's image for His purposes. We learn to be like him and to love Him only because he first loved us (1 John 4). We can't in all our efforts create a spiritual encounter with God. it must come from Him, but Tozer explains that many of us "are satisfied to rest in our judicial possessions and, for the most part, we bother ourselves very little about the absence of personal experience." He goes on to say later that this:

"The world is perishing for lack of the knowledge of God and the church is famishing for want of His presence. The instant cure of most of our religious ills would be to enter the Presence in spiritual experience, to become suddenly aware that we are in God and that God is in us ."

Most of us fear to be in the presence of the Lord, because everything in us will have to be brought into the light (Ephesians 5:1-20).  We will have to surrender ourselves to His will. This is the hardest thing for us to do, to deny ourselves and follow him. The message that God put on my heart  was at the end of this chapter when Tozer says, "Self is the opaque veil that hides the face of God from us. It can removed only in spiritual experience, never by mere instruction."

Love of ourselves is a sin that we can hide from the world. On the outside we can appear humble and confident, but our thoughts and the reasons why you make the decisions we do or take the actions we take can be hidden from all except God. It will hinder us from seeing what God is doing in our lives and the lives of those around us. Christ tells us we must deny ourselves if we want to be disciples (Matthew 16:24-25) and we are all called to be disciples and to spread the good news to the world.

Ask God to reveal Himself to you not just through teaching and instruction but through a real encounter with his power and strength. Seek him with all you have. It won't be easy, but it is necessary for your life and those around you.

 “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it." (Matthew 7:13-14)

Worship at the Altar(s)

I have been thinking lately about worship and talked specifically about music in worship recently. In that post I mentioned that worship is really about how we live our lives. I traveled this weekend to a place of worship and God was working on my heart as I considered what it means to worship Him, to remember the places in my life where I felt truly alive in Him.

The Old Testament is full of stories where God's people built altars to honor what the Lord had done at that place: when God called Abram (Gen 12:1-9);at the foot of Mt. Sinai where Moses confirms his covenant with the Lord (Ex. 24); David to stop a plague in Israel (2 Sam. 24:18-25) and many other places of reverence. God actually commands the Israelites to put an altar "...wherever I cause my name to be honored, I will come to you and bless you (Ex 20:24)." Others see the altars set up by their ancestors as reminders and worship the Lord for what he had done for them. These altars became sacred space, holy ground, reminders of the glory of God.

I had the chance to visit the camp where I was saved as a teen and worked at in college this past weekend and I couldn't help but feel like I was walking on holy ground. Camp was covered in snow and I was overwhelmed by the cleansing that God showered on me through that place. I stood and looked out from the place where I shared my testimony for the first time, where I wrote down my sins on a piece of paper and one by one threw them into the fire as a symbol of my decision to never go back to who I was before Christ was a part of my life. I glanced over the field and walked by the cabins where, as a counselor, I sang the same silly songs, played the same games, and listened to the same story  week after week as lives were transformed. Christ allowed me to be a part of the His walk in the lives of so many youth. It was an incredibly beautiful weekend.

I have had many experiences like those since then in my own life and see Christ in the lives of others and this weekend I began to think of those times and places as altars to honor what the Lord as done. They are places where many will go after me and continue to worship Him and to share in His glory, to build their own altars there. They also serve as places where I can go back and be reminded.  I believe that God delights in our worship at all times and he reminds us of the places we have been so that we can go forth with confidence in what he is able to do, so we can build more altars and worship Him at the altars of our brothers and sisters who have gone before us.

I pray that there are moments in your life where you can look back and see how the Lord has worked in your life. I also pray that he provides you with every opportunity to see his love in your life and throughout the world. If you find yourself in a dark time in your life, try to remember what God has shown you in the light. He is faithful to complete his work in you (Phil. 1:6)

More Than a Song

I love to worship. It's in worship that I feel most alive and full. My favorite time to worship is right after church or youth group because I'm excited about what God is doing and I want to hold on to the experience and hear his voice whisper in my hear. Sometimes I'll go into the sanctuary and worship at the top of my lungs consumed and surrounded by the presence of God.

Pause.

What am I talking about? What does it mean to worship? This is the question that has been wrenching at my heart, well, for at least the last five years. I grew up going to church often, but not all the time. We moved around a little, but most of my experience was singing hymns to a piano or organ. When I was in high school, our church started a praise team that played what I now call "old contemporary."  When I entered college, I learned what Contemporary Christian music was. I played guitar for three different praise teams and we played it all Chris Tomlin, Hillsong, Israel Houghton, Getty and Townend, some of the "old contemporary,"  and plenty of others and I loved it. God was reshaping my life at the end of high school and through college and music was my outlet. As a camp counselor and worship leader, I grew a heart for worship. I was on worship teams and I lead worship, and I loved worship.

Worship according to Dictionary.com is defined as reverent honor or homage paid to God or a sacred object. Our pastor spoke this past week about idolatry in the ways we worship. Churches divide and people leave because the church sings a different way or uses different instruments. Worship is defined in my limited experience as singing. I believe singing is certainly worship, but it's so much more than that. We idolize a style of worship and begin to praise the worship rather than the God we are to worship, the created over the creator. John Koessler stated this way in the March issue of Christianity Today:

"We think of worship as something that originates with us, our gift to God. Perhaps this is why so many of us are conflicted about it. We consider worship to be an expression of our personal devotion. So when the musical style or some expression gets in the way, we don't feel like it is our worship at all. It is someone else's idea of worship. Perhaps the worship leader's or that of the majority. But not our own....The biblical portrait of worship moves in the opposite direction. The trajectory of heavenly worship begins with God and descends to earth. This trajectory is reflected in Psalm 150, where praise begins in the heavenly sanctuary and resounds throughout the domain of God. From there it is taken up by those on earth, who praise God with a variety of instruments and dancing, until 'everything that has breath' praises the Lord (Ps. 150:6)."

Koessler is still talking about music here, but brings up challenging thought: worship isn't about us. It's about God and when we enter into worship, we aren't stirring up something, we are joining with all creation and with choirs of angels as we stand before the throne and it's more than voices being lifted up. The Psalmist wasn't singing the way we sing hymns or with a guitar, but few would argue that it wasn't genuine worship. Worship is about how we live our lives. It's about where our heart is when we enter the sanctuary and when we turn to go into the world. How do we show "reverent honor" to God?

In order to worship with "everything that has breath", I sometimes have to put my assumptions and criticisms aside because every worship leader, hymn writer, dancer, poet, and artist sits before God and says "God, how can you use me?" They offer their life up to the Lord and the Spirit pours out on His people and all creation joins in and worships the creator. It's a beautiful picture when we all join in one song not just with our voice but with our lives. God doesn't need us to worship Him, but we can delight in being a part of a greater story as we sing and dance and move and breathe.

We worship when we sing or dance. We worship when we pray and when we share the Gospel. We worship when we sit in church and hear the voice of God speak into our lives through scripture, liturgy and sermons, as we give our offering. We worship when we listen to a friend or sit around the table with our families. Our lives are full of opportunities to honor God, to truly worship Him, to join in with all creation.

I long to worship him forever, because it's in true worship that we feel most alive and full because the world looks different. We see the brokenness and we know that God is coming to reconcile all things back to him, that there will be no more division. Every tongue will confess that He is God and that will be more than enough.