Stumbling Over Our Own Two Feet

Stumbling Over Our Own Two Feet

I have grown up in church.  Like many of you.  Growing up in the church has amazing, life-changing pro’s as a result of having a relationship with the Lord for so many years, but let’s get real here.  If I was to show you my “I’m Down with the D.C. Talk” shirt, you would immediately know that growing up in the church also means that I have some major issues to overcome that come from having a relationship with the church…for good and for bad.

This paradox became evident to me when we moved to Korea when I was 21 years old.  It wasn’t the kimche that started to get to me (although that will get you “clean” quickly), but a Bible study of Korean women who met in my house each week.  The study was taught in Korean and one sweet woman translated the words into English for the multi-language-challenged (me).  It was there, sitting on a tea-pillow, listening to Hawang-Song’s words of wisdom that I realized how much culture had mixed in with my doctrine.  When women from a completely different walk of life, an Eastern mindset instead of a Western read the words of God and interpreted things just slightly differently….something began to crack inside me.  It was a good cracking, a breaking of my religious ties that kept me chained to tradition instead of relationship.  But even more amazing was this…they viewed some of the teachings of Jesus totally differently than I did…they had a different take on this story or that story, but it didn’t change the message.  They loved him, they knew him in a way that was different than the way I knew him, but it was still the same Jesus. 

Let me go ahead and give this disclaimer, because I know some of you starting to narrow your eyes and wonder if I am about to walk over a doctrinal cliff here.   You are wondering if I am talking about the things “that matter.”  Let me set you at ease.  I’m not.  I am not talking about those things that we will call “salvific,” i.e,  those things that are necessary for salvation.  The salvific things are not open for personal interpretation.  I am talking about the things that the Bible clearly left open to interpretation…because I believe there is a beauty in interpretation that has been lost on us. 

It has been lost because it has been abused.  It has blended into something, morphed into the proverbial square peg trying to fit into the round hole.  Interpretation is not the enemy.  Changing the gospel, misinterpretation, and taking the word out of context and character…that is the enemy.  But we seem to have blended these two into one.  We fear allowing someone to have a different opinion than we have because what if…what if they are wrong?  Well, my answer is….what if?  What if we allowed others to search the Word, to wrestle with it like Jacob and the Angel, and trust that in the end Jesus will set them straight, even if they limp a little afterward?  What if we pray and walk along side each other as we wrestle with the Word and help sharpen each other in genuine love (remember the iron sharpens iron admonition?) instead of closing the book and taking our toys home because we don’t agree on predestination or once-saved-always-saved? 

Divisiveness in the church.  This has become, dare I say, the number one stumbling block to the American church.  The fact that we cannot sit side by side together in church because we differ on things that are not salvific in nature.  Often, when we talk about a stumbling block and of Romans 14:21 which says, “it is good not to eat meat or drink wine or do anything that causes your brother to stumble,” we lean heavily on the word drink.  We focus in on it like it’s in red in a red-letter Bible.  It’s not.  I checked.  And in Alabama, no one ever mentions the meat part…we like our ribs and steak too much.  And Famous Dave’s BBQ sauce…cause man, oh man, that’s good stuff.

Alcohol, not drinking, we focus in on this verse when we talk about stumbling blocks so often.  But, here is the thing…Romans 14:21 is talking to the church, because we create more stumbling blocks for ourselves through our hard-earned, hard-taught lines in the sand than anyone else does.  Our greatest stumbling block is the fact that we are a divided church in America.  We do not work well with each other.  We judge each other for not having the same convictions, for not seeing the picture exactly the same, for wanting to use red in the sanctuary and not tan or using loud music or great hymns.  We divide ourselves over baby food and forget that we are suppose to be eating meat…that we are suppose to be building the Kingdom of God together. 

“Do not for the sake of food, destroy the work of God” Romans 14:20. 

The entire chapter in Romans is talking about not dividing over things that don’t matter.  Not passing judgment because we do things a little differently, not getting so upset about the little things we build into mountains that stop us from walking the path of righteousness.  What do we most often refer to in this chapter?  The one word drink.  We are missing the point.  We have to stop being concerned with doctrinal differences that are dividing the body of Christ and start working together to remove the stumbling block of division.  Because, while we worry over alcohol, or predestination, or age of accountability, or levels of modesty, or cessation, or transubstantiation, we have become a very real stumbling block to the Kingdom of God by wasting our time arguing  with our brothers and sisters and not doing.

So I ask that we will start this conversation.  How are we being a stumbling block to the church, by arguing over non-salvific matters?  Are we, the church of America, destroying the work of God for the sake of food…of things that do not really matter in the great plan of the great commission? 

For the Kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking but of righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.  Romans 14:17

Awaken...the Sleeping Giant

I saw the streets of America look like the streets of war last night.  I watched as crowds of angry, frustrated people threw molotov cocktails into gas stations and stole everything they could get their hands on while shooting at police officers.  I saw an old man stirring the crowd with his old manipulation tools, which were thinly veiled by words such as peace, justice, and personal rights.  Because…evil must be repaid with evil.  That is justice…

Then I watched the plight of many in a desert place.  Children covered in their own filth, mothers who looked as if they would drop dead of exhaustion if it were not for the tiny hand that held onto their skirts, fathers who had no answers, no way to protect his beloved family.  And behind them…in hot pursuit of the hunted were angry men with guns, screaming of religious cleansing, of a war for Allah, and holy jihad.  Because their god calls for it, their god demands it.  That is justice. 

Then I saw the crushed stones that used to be houses.  Bullet holes in the sides of buildings.  Bombs flying through the air when a time of truce was supposed to stop them.  War on a people because they have the wrong blood, the wrong God, all in the name of Allah.  All in the name of holy jihad.  Because their right to life supersedes all others’ right to life…that is justice.

We, the sleeping giant of America, the church, have become a cowardly thing.  We have somehow adopted the lie that our greatest days are over, that we are no longer relevant to this world.  This world is at war, this world is hurting, this world is on fire and we cannot play our fiddle while it comes down around our feet. 

I hear the drums in the distance; I hear the calling of the Lord.  Rise up, O sleeping ones!  Rise up and be the church I called you to be before the foundation of the earth was laid!  Walk the ancient path of truth…Seek Justice, Love Mercy and Walk Humbly before Me! 

Our greatest days are not behind us.  Christendom might be coming to an end in America, but Christ is not!  He is once again standing in our churches, reading from the sacred scroll as he did that day in Capernaum…

The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is upon me, for the LORD has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to comfort the brokenhearted and to proclaim that captives will be released and prisoners will be freed

We must do our part.  Bring the good news, comfort the brokenhearted, proclaim to the captives his truth and SET THE PRISONERS FREE!

Rise up…O Sleeping One.

My two dead friends

Because it’s Read from the Great’s Thursday….(If you are thinking I just made that up…you are right…and you should stop being so cynical)

I wanted to recommend 2 ladies who would be my very best friends.  Who would sit and talk for hours over a hot cup of coffee or a delicious glass of Red with me.  Who would laugh at all of my funny jokes (cause they are Hil-AR-i-ous…to my mother and myself), and who would undoubtedly want to do brunch…every Thursday.  These two ladies would do all of this with me…if they weren’t dead.  Having dead friends is hard, and could get you a very special bed in a very special closed-off wing of a mental hospital.  So…here are two dead ladies that still have the power to move my spirit and bring me to the deeper places of life where God’s mysteries are found. 

The FIRST lady in my dead best friends club is Amy Carmichael.   Amy was born in 1867 in Ireland.  She lived her entire life as a servant in India.  She  worked for 55 years in the trenches without any furloughs.  She was a woman who followed God into her calling without anyone behind or beside her.  She lived her last days after a terrible fall in immense pain, but choose to write and glorify the Lord during that time as well.  She rescued women and children from temple prostitution in India; she fed the poor and loved the least of these.  This woman had grit and perseverance.  I like a woman who gets her hands dirty and sees her hands better for it.   

 Here are some of my favorite quotes from this amazing woman.

“We profess to be strangers and pilgrims, seeking after a country of our own, yet we settle down in the most un-stranger-like fashion, exactly as if we were quite at home and meant to stay as long as we could. I don't wonder apostolic miracles have died. Apostolic living certainly has.”

“God’s way of passing by, of letting His “hem” come near us, is to take some single word in His Book and make it breathe spirit and life to us.”

“Have you lost your reputation?  To lost it—and to keep on being willing to lost it daily for His sake and for the sake of those for whom He died—means this: To take up your cross daily.”

“A crucified life cannot be self-assertive.  It cannot protect itself.  It cannot be startled into resentful words.  The cup that is full of sweet water cannot spill bitter-tasting drops, however sharply it is knocked.”

Her Books:

I Come Quietly to Meet You  (excellent collection of her writings put into a daily devotional…good meat for breakfast)

IF (will ROCK your world)

Plowed Under

Candles in the Dark

(any many many more!!!  Go look her up online)

SECONDLY, I want to introduce you to my dead friend, who seems so alive on paper that she might just jump up and slap yo’ grandma.  Not really…she was a nun…so she probably didn’t slap a lot of people.  Spiritually, yes she still slaps me each time I read her.  

            Meet St.Teresa of Avila.  Born in 1515 in Goturrendura, Spain, she was committed to nunnery after a scandalous relationship with her cousin.  Which could have been scandalous or could have been as innocent as talking without a proper escort around.  Praise the Lord for women’s freedom in America.  I would have been put in a nunnery by the time I was five with all my sassiness. 

            Teresa, (we are on a first name basis), not only flourishes in the nunnery she does something amazing.  She finds and cultivates a relationship with the Lord that is so deep, so inspiring, that the Spanish Inquisition could not kill and time cannot weaken.  In her book, The Interior Castle, she paints a picture of the soul which longs for the Lord so eloquently that the words I read hold on long after I have put the book down.  She writes of prayer.  How to break through the ease of prayer and get into the seven dwellings of meditation, transformation and the very presence of God. 

“Be assured that the more progress you make in loving your neighbor, the greater will be your love for God. “

“Humility is the ointment for our wounds.  If we are truly humble, then God, the great physician, will eventually come to heal us.”

“Remember: all you have to do as you begin to cultivate the practice of prayer is to prepare yourself with sincere effort and intent to bring your will into harmony with the will of God.”

“The soul in the state of prayer is like the silk worm, it dies to the world and emerges a little white butterfly.”

She has spunk and her personality can be found between the lines of the pages.  She writes such things as, Have I already told you about this thing?  Well, I am old and cannot remember everything, so I will just talk about it again.

And she does.  And it is awesome.  Her book opens a door to a disciplined prayer life which walks you into the depths of God. 

The Interior Castle by St.Teresa of Avila

These are two women who can inspire us today, just as if they were here to talk over a cup of coffee.  So, for Read from the Great’s Thursday….Amy Carmichael and St. Teresa of Avila. 

Let me know if they are in your best-friend club as well….or share other names you have in your club!

Warning: Graphic Apathy

I thought about walking out of church this morning.  It wasn’t that the songs were not the right ones, or that the message was not the right message, or that the coffee was too hot or the cream too cold.  It wasn’t the childcare or the lack thereof; it wasn’t the hypocrisy of the people or the kindness in their handshakes.  It wasn’t because they asked for too much of my money during offering time or that they didn’t call on me during Sunday school.  These things, the things that I, at some point in my extremely entitled life, have complained about were not what caused me to almost walk out of church today.  Those things don’t matter.  It wasn’t something that the church did that caused the weight to build and ache in my chest, it was what they didn’t do. It was this that I could not stomach: We didn’t pray for the Christians in Iraq, we didn’t even mention them. 

In the middle of the third song about my relationship with Christ, my need for grace, my need for help from the Strong Tower, something seriously cracked inside of me.  Heat ran through my body and I felt the need to hide my face.  I was embarrassed in front of the Lord.  I was embarrassed that we, the sleeping giant, the American church sing songs and pray for ourselves more than we pray for the church.  I felt embarrassed that in Sunday school we spent 20 minutes on prayer time for ankle surgery, and travel mercies and only briefly mentioned the hurting church.  Y’all, I know you are thinking I’m being harsh, that these things matter (and they do), but we need to be a little harsh on ourselves.  We need to realize that the rest of the world is falling apart, that Christians are being murdered in the streets, that mothers are holding the bodies of their decapitated children and crying out to the Lord for mercy and we…we…we are singing songs about our relationship with Christ and praying for our very blessed ankles. 

I would like to hear from you today.  Did your churches pray for those who are for the first time in my life, being murdered in a way that even the Nazis would find brazen?  Was it a simply mention over coffee with sad eyes and chatter of how terrible it is for ‘those people’?  Or was it a church, getting down on their faces and crying out for our brothers and sisters? 

I wonder…is it denial?  As I listened to a very nice sermon this morning… good words, from the Good Book, I could not help but wonder.  When did we become so disconnected from the rest of the church in the rest of the world?  When did we become so internally focused that we don’t even mention the systematic genocide of our brothers and sisters in church because it might be disturbing or unsettling for our members?  When did we forget that we are the body of Christ, and they…those we see on TV, those are our arms and legs that are being cut down for their belief in Jesus?  When did we become so apathetic that we believe that the chasm between us and them is too great for the Holy Spirit to bridge through prayer and fasting?  That in the wake of one of the worst persecutions the church has seen in my lifetime, we don’t even mention in it church.

This is the time to put away our differences, those things that we make soapboxes out of when there is something out there that truly, truly matters.  Lets start today caring less and less about if alcohol should or should not be drunk, if offering should be 10% or more, if we should sing hymns or choruses, if we can use instruments or not, if we can raise or hands or sit still, if we like this speaker or that one.  Let us let go of what divides us and be united this day in prayer.

This is a time to rip our robes, to put ash on our foreheads, to cry out to the God of the Universe and call for action!  This is a time to remove the cloak of apathy that we wear over our hearts in the name of self-control and order.  Tear your clothes, put ash on your foreheads.  Let us mourn for the dead and let our voice rise to the heavens for those living in the midst of hell on earth.  Because who will sing  for them if not us…their brothers and sisters? 

God said, IF my people pray….IF.  So I am asking us all to do something.  To not sit by and sing a comforting song about Jesus being our refuge in the hard times, to not simply quote the verse that all things work out for the good for those who believe in him…but to care enough to fast and pray.  This week I will fast and pray on Tuesday and Thursday.  Will you join me? 

Because this morning when I sang the words…I have decided to follow Jesus, no turning back, no turning back.  I saw this picture in my mind and my soul cried out, “I have no idea God, no idea what those words mean.”

Join me in prayer and fasting this week.  IF MY PEOPLE PRAY…

How to train your dragon Part 1

How to train my dragon:  Identity

  Recently I have started an on-going dialog that sounds very schizophrenic in nature but truly is just a healthy dose of brain-storming (or so we tell myself) about how to train my dragons, a.k.a, my loving children.  With all of the child-focused parenting books coming out in both Christian and secular literature, I find myself wanting to hide away in my reclusive mind that screams, “What was so wrong with the 50’s?  They seemed to raise children pretty well….right?”  They didn’t wear helmets, and didn’t have car-seat wars, bottle competitions, sleeping routine relay races, formula v. breast feeding wrestling matches (may the breast one win), or spend hours a day deciding how to discipline and whether spanking would permanently damage their child’s deep inner spirit.  I mean, if you ran away when you were a child, wait for it…..wait for it……they DIDN’T come to find you!

  The mothers of old were wise enough to watch their eight-year-olds pack up luggage for life and walk out the door in an angry huff.  Then they calmly turned around and started making dinner.   These mothers knew in their infinite wisdom that dinner would call the child home like a pied piper.  Herein lies the crux of the matter (the one that can either keep you up at night biting your fingernails down to the bone or just scare you into a complete frozen state of paralysis): They raised children well……but those children still ended up running around buck naked and painting their faces with flowers and whatnots all for the sake of “love and peace.”  Fruitcakes. They raised a bunch of fruitcakes.  Great, so what went wrong?  How am I supposed to train my dragon? 

The first hurdle I want to tackle, because I believe it affects several areas in the training arena for our little dragons, is the over-emphasis and the over-indulgence our society has placed on Identity.  Identity has become an altar of worship in our culture which we build to our own little peanut-butter covered, juice-cup flinging in the minivan, tantrum throwing, loving little children.  We should build them up based on truth.  We should as parents instill a sense of healthy pride in our children.  They are wonderfully and miraculously made.  They are image bearers to the most High God!  They are  amazing gifts and amazing creations who have been created to serve the Lord with their whole hearts.  This is truth, but we seem to start with this truth and then push it so far that it becomes a self-serving lie, just like most everything in our culture.  Want a little bit of butter on your pancake?  Yes?  But wouldn’t the entire stick be even better?  Yes?  Need a new pair of shoes?  Yes?  But wouldn’t the entire fall catalog be even better?  Yes?  Need a new bumper on your car?  How about a whole new car, or a new kitchen or a new bathroom or a new face because the old one is all road-kill looking from raising your little dragons?  We start with truth and then we keep on pushing and giving and slathering and dunking and pouring it on until we have created self-serving, egocentric, demanding, ungracious little dragons who eat their young (just watch one episode of MTV Teen Mom) and believe social manners are outdated (again, have you seen the food court at the mall?). 

How do we combat this type of parenting?  How do we raise a family unit instead of focusing so much on individual children?  How do we raise servants instead of masters when we are living in a master-focused culture?  This morning I am focusing on Mark 10: 43-44.

But whoever would be great among you must be your servant and whoever would be first among you must be slave of all.  For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.

I think it starts with a good foundational question that we must allow to ruminate in our minds until it saturates our spirits.  How do I raise a Christ-like servant who is willing to serve at the Lord’s table all of his life?  Maybe we start here.  Maybe we teach our children to bow to the King before they stand up for themselves.  Maybe we teach them to serve with their talents before we build an altar to their talents.  Maybe we teach them that to sacrifice everything is better than to gain the whole world?  Maybe if we train our little dragons to be children of God first, then the other things will fall where they should……right into the hands of their Creator.

When the world says The.End.

The End.  It feels so final, so over, so done.  When the story concludes and the lights come on and we are left trying to collect our trash and move sluggishly towards the exit signs.  A story, a life’s work, a life’s journey or a day’s hike all wrapped up in a nice two- hour package and then presented with a bow of lights, camera, action on top to make it legit.  Two hours of entertainment and a good ending.   Maybe it is this concept of quick endings that has crept into our gauge of normalcy that has affected our view of the long road, or to be more specific, life’s journey. 

Recently, I was enjoying a great glass of wine and discussing those things in life that really matter with a person that really matters all while sitting where we could see the sun go down through tall, glass windows in beautiful Georgia.  We both shared similar stories of friends, loved ones, who had known the truth of God and then decided to somehow……walk away.  Walk. Away.  Turn completely around and declare what once was truth is no longer, what once was living water had dried up and become nothing but dust and wind.  It is a hard thing to see.  To watch as one stands in the rain where abundance flows and then turn to see the dry, arid, death of the desert and choose to walk there instead.  Because it seems more real?  Because it seems more practical to be thirsty and dry and surrounded by the buzzards of a cruel, hard world that circle you until death?  Because the truth of the hard desert, of the lonely road must be more true than the peace of God? 

I have watched this happen.  I have watched a man who loved the Lord, a man who moved the earth with prayer and song, a man with purpose and calling, starve at a table full of food because he put down his fork and knife and started to question if the food in front of him was real without eating another bite.  He sat at the table of the Lord, ate and was full, learned and changed, was healed and cleansed, and yet he still pushed his chair back after many years and walked. away. 

This is not an unexplained phenomenon to the Lord.  It is no surprise, no loop hole in the plan.  Jesus knew what fickle creatures we are.  Over and over he warned us to protect the heart, to abide in Him, to stay connected to the vine so that we do not wither and die. 

Here is where the two-hour movie approach to theology causes a problem.  Many will want to lament that my dear friend’s time at the table of the Lord was not effective enough, or didn’t really change him, or was just a season in his life but not transformation.  That his walk with the Lord is over.  I do not see this in the word.  Stories are so much longer in the Lord, so much broader and deeper than a simple two-hour movie.  Look at Israel, the prodigal son, and Moses.

Moses was born into God’s chosen people.  Born for purpose and calling, to rescue and set free.  He was born a child of God, raised in a stranger’s house with shadows and lies as gods and seemingly separated from the Lord.  He murdered a man and fled to the desert for 40 years.  In movie terms, that looks like the end of the story.  Manis  born, man grows up rich and pampered, man murders another man and runs away never to be seen again.  The. End. 

But God is not a respecter of our movie theology.  The. End. does not define him or hold him captive.  The.End. is an opportunity for the Lord to start working, to start reviving life and to break through the rules of this earth to bring what was dead to life again.  When Jesus died on the cross, many thought that was THE END.  It was actually the opposite.  It was the beginning. Where the world says it’s the end, the Lord is just beginning. 

It is not the end of the story, just because your child, your friend, your husband chooses to walk away from abundance and truth and into the desert of disbelief.  Do not believe it.  Do not claim it as truth.  Hold fast that the Lord is faithful to complete what He has begun.  He has not turned the lights on and started rolling the credits just because it seems hopeless and final to you.  That is when so often the Lord starts us on the journey to Him.   He begins the true story when the world says the story is over. 

Two wombs One Purpose

“ Will you read the Bible while we eat?”  Mattox turned to the bag that sits by our kitchen table full of journals, bibles, and great books that I cannot part with to take all the way to the bookshelf.  With forks in hand, we started reading the story of Nicodemus.  Nicodemus was a Pharisee, a man of the cloth, you might say, a learned man who spent his life studying the law of God.  He had heard about Jesus, the man who performed miracles and he was curious to talk with him.  So, in the dark of night he slipped through the streets of Jerusalem to find Jesus.

Jesus tells him that he must be born again in order to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. 
“What?  How can we be born again?”  Mattox scrunched up her nose and held her corn on the cob sideways to get a better view of the picture in the story.  “That is exactly what Nicodemus asked.” 

I explained the words of Jesus, rolling them around in my head while I broke it down for my six year old.  Born again, a spiritual concept, life from two wombs: a physical one and a spiritual one.  Born again: a requirement for peace, an invitation for eternal life.  

Nicodemus and Mattox wanted to know how they were supposed to crawl back into their mother’s womb to start life again.  How can we go backwards? How can we start fresh? how can we forget the life that we have lived and the mistakes that we have made.  How can we forget and start again?  How can we change that much? It seems too hard, an impossibility, to start again. 

I have a dear friend who is struggling with this now.  Too many mistakes have been made in life, hurt has changed her reality, and shaped her future.  Life has been hard at times, and left her feeling less than worthy to claim its goodness.  How is she supposed to forgive herself and forget?  How is she supposed to live this new life that Jesus is explaining?  How can she crawl back into her mother’s womb and start over? 

It seems impossible, like the Mount Everest of spiritual concepts.  It seems like that, until you start climbing.  One hand in front of the other, one foot planted solidly until the other one can find its place. 

Jesus was not giving an impossibility to a man in the middle of the night.  He was giving him hope, peace and a way out of the brokenness of this life.  He was offering him goodness that saves and restores.   To be born again.  To start fresh, to know peace for the first time in his life, to find that the hard of life, no longer consumes but stretches and causes growth, to experience a depth of understanding and love that no man alone is capable of doing, to find his purpose and to know the God of the universe. 

To be born again.  To start fresh.  To surrender and be called worthy of everlasting peace.