Broken and Annointed

I am excited about a new worship service we started called "Sunday Nite Alive."  We are simply a bunch of misfits desperately seeking the presence and power of God in these days we live.  Every Sunday night, there has been a powerful and healing presence of God's Spirit as we worship.  Teens have been touched and parents picking up their kids have been overwhlemed by the powerful presence of God among us.  I have been studying Mark 14 about the woman who breaks open expensive perfume and annoints Jesus body.  She is so crazy in love with Jesus that she washes Jesus feet with her hair and essentially poured out her entire future savings in this moment of complete abandonment to Jesus.

The question is when it comes to our own discipleshp and following Jesus, how far will we go?  How much are we willing to sacrifice?  How bold are we willing to step out so that we too can fall so crazy in love with Jesus that we hold nothing back from him?  What I am learning from this story is brokeness brings God's annointing.  God loves the broken and contrite person who gives what they can not keep to receive what only God can give.  God gives nothing less but Himself to us.  We don't have to wait to where we feel ready or think we have to be at a certain spiritual place before we can receive from God.  God is looking for broken and poured out vessels so that He can fill us completely up with His life-giving Spirit.  Nothing stopped this woman from coming to Jesus so don't let anything stop you.

Back To Genesis

"GOD KNOWS THE END FROM THE BEGINNING"

As we entered the 21st century era, science and religion, modern education and the Bible seem to be more at war than friends with each other.  Christianity is growing exponentially in countries like China and Africa and South America while Europe and North America, the most technologically advanced societies continue in a downward spiral economically and morally.  One of many areas Christians are grappling and struggling with is how to understand this first book of the Bible.  Genesis means "beginnings" and modern Christians not only have an identity crises but are not sure how to read the first book of the Bible anymore much less the last book which ironically is called "Revelation."

In an Internet information overload world, what the church needs is not more information but revelation.  The church needs to "hear" the Word of the Lord afresh and start putting it into practice.  We see in the first book of the Bible that God is a person who speaks and communicates to us.  The first word is given by God and so will the last word.  We live in the excluded middle with so many life problems facing this planet with many disappointments, much rejection, and too many misunderstandings.  But we learn from the two great book ends of the Bible (Genesis and Revelation) that God is at the beginning of all things and God is at the conclusion of all of life.  Our unlovely middle is connected to a splendid beginning and a glorious eneding.

We act like the universe was created for us but what we learn from going back to Genesis is everything belongs to God.  Life is not about my health, my money, my family, my happiness but it is all about God and God's plans, God's purposes, God's desires and destiny for each of us.  The whole Bible is about God pursuing a relationship with you!  When we read the Bible, understand that it is God's love letter to humanity, it is not hate-mail to those who don't believe in God.  People search Genesis trying to know 'the how' of creation when what they really desperately need to know is the Creator!

The book of Genesis is not about how the heavens go or even how to get to heaven.  It is about how God becomes King on earth as it is in heaven.  So as I have gone back and re-read Genesis as if for the first time, here are some great spiritual truths I am discovering from the first chapter of Genesis.

1.  When God becomes King on earth as it is in heaven, God heals the hardness of our hearts.  The whole book of Genesis and through the whole Bible is about not separating what God has united like heaven and earth.  The book is also about not putting together what God has divided like light and darkness, good and evil, day and night, and what is holy from what is unholy.  God is holy and God calls everyone of us to be a holy people.

2.  When God becomes King on earth as it is in heaven God makes us into a new creation.  God is bringing about a new heaven and and a new earth.  He is creating us into a new family and ultimately into a new creation.  The only thing that matters in the end is not our endless debates or issues we fight over but simply being the new creation God has intended for everyone of us since the very beginning.

3.  God fills our emptiness with the fullness of His Spirit.  We may feel like we are drowning in the deep face of darkenss at times but God's Spirit still hovers over us and wants to transform our brokeness and confusion into healing and confidence in Jesus.  In the end, trials do not show how strong we are but reveal how weak we are without God.  God desires to fill our lives with heaven so that earth can more be like heaven.

4.  God takes our mess and turns it into a message.  The whole Bible story is one that names the darkness and identifies our deepest wounds and needs.  God's Spirit is like a mirror that shows us our true selves and gives us the power to live our lives in victory over everything in life that has tried to destroy and pull us down.  God orders the chaos of our lives.  Our scars are not something to hide but now reveal the deep healing work God has done in our lives.  Each new day can become a new day with God.

5.  All of creation points us to Someone you need to meet.  Jesus is the bright morning star who rises in our hearts.  Satan is the pretender and deceiver who opposes everthing God stands for.  Satan stands for barreness, chaos, confusion, and death.  Jesus stands for fruitfulness, purpose, destiny, and abundant life.  God gives us another day as an opportunity to choose mercy and grace and truth over bitterness, pride, and everything that is false that steals glory from the One who radically pursues us more than we ever pursue the one who made and designed us from the beginning.

St Issac the Syrian

I was able to purchase the Homilies of St Issac the Syrian, who is a revered hermit from the 600-700 ad (not sure what years but it is around there).

Anyway, here is an outstanding article about his Universalism.

Enjoy!

Christian Universalism

I am moving in this direction but I have much more work to do, but this is for Chris to read as it is a powerful little book!

Outcome of Infinite Grace

http://www.tentmaker.org/books/infinitegrace.htm

Another Brick in the Wall

We all wish life could be easier and following Jesus could be made simple.  Discipleship with great benefits and little cost but discipleship simply does not work that way.  I wish it could be as easy as the day I could not find twenty dollars looking through a mountain of clothes.  I said a quick prayer, opened up the dryer and the a twenty dollar bill and a five dollar bill was sticking out and neatly folded like two towels resting on top of each other.  I laughed and thought about how God cares for us in the tiny things and not just in the big things.

When heaven invaded earth that first Christmas, this was not a sanitized Christmas story with cheerful angels and clean mangers.  The Christmas story is filled with scandal like an unwed mother about to have a baby and a young couple on the run from a tyrant King.  The Christmas story is not just a sweet and tender story but a bitter-sweet one filled with fear and violence.  The Christmas story is both messy and difficult to posses just like following Jesus is not an easy task.

Since Jesus came to a community of people and still does, the church needs to get a lot more messier as it turns from being a membership group to a discipleship group.  Things are not going to get easier for the church but a lot harder and many people just don't want to sign up for "hard!"  Just like the early Israelites looked foolish walking around the walls of Jericho, the church may need to get really low and look mighty rediculous to a world filled with walls.  Will the church walk through the walls and do the difficult and neccesary work of God's kingdom building or will it prefer the comfort and safety and retreat within its own man made walls?  God wants to break down the walls and its the church's divine moment to follow God by faith and start walking through walls which only God can bring down in the end.  The world may be placing another brick in the wall but God wants his people to walk through walls like his resurrected Son did among his disciples.  If Jesus walked through walls, isn't it time the church did?

Reflections

In the quiet of the moment, I listen and tremble.  The Lord gave me Isaiah 59:9-21 to meditate on today.  When I read the Word of God, great trembling came over me.  The first part was about the darkness and our sins are ever before us.  We think we see but we are like blind men groping in the dark.  We seek justice but it is no where close to us.  Lies abound and truth fails and has fallen in our streets.  And God looked for one man or woman who would be an intercessor and pray for the people and the land but there was none.  I am striken and struck in the heart.  I must pray and then I must pray more.  I am naked and exposed and I need God's covering.  Great fear will come upon the West.  The coastlands will reap God's fury.  An enemy will come in but have no fear, God will be against the enemy.  God's Spirit gives us words we must speak and we can not keep hidden.  Even our children will arise and speak the Word of God.  Maranatha!

And Now For Something Really Scary

Today is Halloween and I just had my first kids dressed in scary constumes to my door.  These little globlins and monsters still looked cute.  But there are scary things happening in the world right now that simply seems out of people's control.  People are scared about the upcoming Presidential election and who is going to win.  Whoever wins, I pray for God's best for them and the nation as well as all nations around the globe.  Today I went to the local jail to visit someone who is locked away from society for a non-violent crime.  This young man seemed to have a peace about him as he was trusting God and Jail is not a scary place when God is there among even the least and the forgotten.
People have been watching there TV sets viewing the terrible destruction on the East Coast by a devastating hurricane.  Watching people screaming and fleeing their homes in terror as either fire or water was sweeping through their neighborhood leaving a huge path of destruction that will cost billions to replace and repair.  People are scared about the economy and the future yet there is a wonderful peace and sense of joy that goes before me as I know God who holds the future for us.  Maybe even some people are scared of God.  Scared of hell and judgement or think that God is somehow mad at them.  As I have been reading the book of Job, here is a man who lost everything and still put his trust in God.  I wonder if we lost everything, homes, security, lifesavings, insurances, water, power, and the like, is God enough?  Or is our personal happiness and success and prosperity all tied up with the things God has given to us rather than in God?  For Job, the one thing he could not stand was God not being with him in his adversity.  All Job wanted in the end was God.  What do you want in the end?