Thankful for the sweet blowing wind of silence...

After several years of seemingly unending e-mails, phone calls, and to-dos, the Lord has brought a sweetness of calm to the office and my soul. Although I have only been "done" with many of my AIA duties for a couple of days, the rest has been great. I have spent time logging quotes into a database (being a guy who loves great writing, this has been fun) and spending time in prayer. I am learning to be happy in the ambiguous "in between" time in which we are living and adjusting down expectations for where I am heading. The unknown of the future has been visiting us afresh and has brought about days of uneasiness and days of great trust in God. Will we have friends? Will I fit in with a new team? What will be the actual work I will be doing? Will I regret the decision? These questions have lingered at moments, but surrounding them has been a calming providence, a sweet wind of silence in the heavens that is calling us forward in faith. We are thankful for our friends and partners who have prayed for us in these days. The wisdom and love from a few good men has been an abundant help as well.

Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of a readiness to die. “He that will lose his life, the same shall save it,” is not a piece of mysticism for saints and heroes. It is a piece of everyday advice for sailors or mountaineers. It might be printed in an Alpine guide or a drill book. This paradox is the whole principle of courage; even of quite earthly or quite brutal courage. A man cut off by the sea may save his life if he will risk it on the precipice.

GK Chesterton, Orthodoxy (New York: NY, Image books, 1959) 94. Originally published: New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1908.

Seeking the Lord of the Great Inversion - who calls us to lose our life to find in order to find it. Out ...

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Who is God...

Today I am talking with some Athletes in Action staff about who God is...here are some of our thoughts answering the question "What are some thoughts which come to mind when thinking about God?" Some Ideas which - Groovy, All-Powerful, Grace and Mercy, Unlimited (Infinite). Psalm 78 - still pursues us even in our rebellion - faithful and patience. God is a refuge and help. Our Father - Love. Fearful and Awesome. Holy, Simple in Being, Immutable, Impassible, Loving, Incomprehensible yet Self-Revealing, and Glorious in all His Perfections. To Borrow a quote from Jonathan Edwards, He is an Admirable conjunction of diverse excellences. Morally Perfect in all he is and does. He is our Sovereign Ruler and altogether Righteous, ultimately radiating his glory outward provoking praise and joy in all that he has redeemed and in final fear and trembling to those under his just condemnation.

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Evangelism...

I was blessed to speak to a group of college students and athletes today on the topic of "Overcoming fears of Evangelism." Such a privilege to encourage young people to be involved in the wondrous redemptive plan of God in the earth. I wanted the students to divorce the words "fear" and "evangelism" and marry evangelism with "rejoicing." Here are a few highlights from the message

Your world wants you to believe that evangelism is a strange thing. The very idea that you claim to know God, a God who has a name, whose name is Jesus, who calls himself the Capital T truth – is offensive to some people. If you believe that sort of thing – keep it to yourself. Part of this is our fault – we have made evangelism a fearful thing – an event kind of like a Christian Super Bowl in which only the truly spiritual participate. An exhortation to reject fear in favor of rejoicing...

• Rejoice – the gospel is the power of God unto salvation
• Rejoice – God will use you in his glorious task of evangelism
• Rejoice -- You are secure in him, loved completely
• Rejoice – You may be present like a “mid-wife” in the new birth of life in others
• Rejoice – God is not defeated, never has been, never will be - he will accomplish his purposes in the gospel
• Rejoice – Others will taste and see that the Lord is Good
• Rejoice – Your are an ambassador of the most wonderful and glorious God
• Rejoice – God is using you to seek out his worshippers
• Rejoice – Christ died not in vain – he will save sinners, seeking out his lost sheep using you to do so
• Rejoice – You labor in the Lord is never in vain
• Rejoice – You have a future rendezvous with your Father – well done, well done, good and faithful servant – enter into the joy of the Lord

Don’t waste your life – Mature in your faith, be equipped to give your life away – do not hoard your life, do not hide it from the ugliness of the world, but to give yourself away to it…radically give yourself away!!! Out...

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Thoughts on change in a fallen world

If you leave a white post alone it will soon be a black post. If you particularly want it to be white you must be always painting it again; that is, you must be always having a revolution. Briefly, if you want the old white post you must have a new white post. But this which is true even of inanimate things is in a quite special and terrible sense true of all human things. An almost unnatural vigilance is really required of the citizen because of the horrible rapidity with which human institutions grow old.

GK Chesterton -Orthodoxy (New York:NY, Image Books, 1959) 119.

As we live in a sin-sick world seeking to be transformed, to be changed, to be different, to be more like our Lord it is a startling realization that as we change, so much around us stays the same, even degrades. As God changes us, we still must be ever vigilant to the state of our soul. The unattneded soul soon becomes a darkened post if set adrift in this world. What is the "repainting" in our lives. Worship of God, Digestion of the Truth of God, Practice and exercise of these Truths, New loves and affections for the good, as God the Holy Spirit directs, leads and ultimately transforms us. From glory to glory we change - and here lies therein the key to our becoming. God does not just "repaint" or "maintain" our soul by covering over the wear and the dirt. Unlike human institutions, which we must repaint and maintain with steadfast vigilance, the human soul can be washed, and made clean by living water. Psalm 51:7 Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. The soul needs washing, once and continually, so that we might continue to add paint to the posts of God's world. Out...

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Power of Change...

Too good not to share... I know this feeling fills our epoch, and I think it freezes our epoch. For our Titanic purposes of faith and revolution, what we need is not the cold acceptance of the world as a compromise, but some way in which we can heartily hate and heartily love it. We do not want joy and anger to neutralize each other and produce a surly contentment; we want a fiercer delight and a fiercer discontent. We have to feel the universe at once as an ogre’s castle, to be stormed, and yet as our own cottage, to which we can return at evening. No one doubts that an ordinary man can get on with this world: but we demand not strength enough to get on with it, but strength enough to get it on. Can he hate it enough to change it, and yet love it enough to think it worth changing? Can he look up at its colossal good without once feeling acquiescence? Can he look up at its colossal evil without once feeling despair? Can he, in short, be at once not only a pessimist and an optimist, but a fanatical pessimist and a fanatical optimist? Is he enough of a pagan to die for the world, and enough of a Christian to die to it? In this combination, I maintain, it is the rational optimist who fails, the irrational optimist who succeeds. He is ready to smash the whole universe for the sake of itself. GK Chesterton, Orthodoxy (New York: NY, Image books, 1959) 71 Yours for getting it on...The Revolution of the Crucified One continues ...

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His Divine Power...

Many a skeptic has brought up questions about the faith dealing with the question of God's omnipotence. It is thought that God's omnipotence brings forth all sorts of logical conundrums. For instance if God is a being of unlimited power - he can do absolutely anything. It will be surprising, even to some believers, that there are some things that God simply cannot do. Now before one thinks I've left the camp, think for a moment with me about some basic questions.

1. First - Can God Lie? No, he cannot lie, not even by his omnipotence (Heb 6:18). If God is truth, then he cannot think of intentional falsification.
2. Second - Can God Change? No, he cannot change (Mal 3:6, Heb 13:8), not even using his own great power. With a second thought, God is also perfect and therefore has no need to change for the better, and could not change for the worst. So the idea of God's omnipotence being used to cause change in himself proves absurd right out the gate when considering God's perfections.

So, God cannot intentionally falsify (lie) and he does not change. These attributes consistently define what we mean when we say God is omni-potent, that God can do all possible things consistent with his revealed attributes. Christians have held for centuries that this simply means God cannot perform contradictory things, things which are not logically possible (God certainly can do things that are humanly impossible - raise the dead, create worlds, speak to the wind and have it obey, etc.)...yet he cannot make square triangles, or make rocks so big he cannot move them. A logic professor I had once put it this way...God can do all things, except stupid things. This also has implication for human freedom, but that is another loooooong discussion. Thanking God for these truths...witnessed in a worship song of David... This God--his way is perfect; the word of the LORD proves true; he is a shield for all those who take refuge in him. More of a Great Song - 2 Sam 22

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Grace, Glory, and the Empathy of the Son of God

Last night brought some news to our lives that we will be wrestling with in prayer for some days to come. It is well known that the world we inhabit is well worn with the brokenness of sickness, hardship, and pain. Yet again and again, as such things confront each of our lives we realize that something is very wrong with the world. As GK Chesterton put "This world is like a shipwreck, where we still see and sense the goods that survived the wreck" Our world is good, really good, but wrecked, really wrecked. As we think about how we sense the pieces which are at once good and glorious, yet falling apart I think of the goodness and grace of God and the promise of eternity. Does He care of our plight? Of our pain? Such is the question that each soul asks at the dark hour of midnight. Only in the incarnate Christ do we see a beautiful answer...The God who created all things good has entered the wreckage of this world - into our pain, distress and disease - to show us compassion and empathy. The dual nature of Jesus, the Son of God, the Son of Man - the only unique combination of divinity and humanity, wept in the flesh at the death of a friend. I believe the weeping Son of Man illustrates to us profoundly the utter certainty that the creator God of the Universe will again make all things good and new. Infinitely aware of the shipwreck at hand, he sees things as they will be - as they truly are. As finite creatures, we see now for a little while - a world of hardship, a world of pain...yet we must let the overarching background radiation of the goodness, grace and eternal decrees of God resonate as we face into our current struggles. Wait my bride, behold, a new day is coming...or as CS Lewis beautifully puts it "Aslan is on the move" A heavy yet rejoicing heart today, He is on the move, yet there are hard days ahead. Come Lord Jesus. I'm Out...

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