I’m so excited to post this link to Elemental Project, where the sleep out event is featured on their blog today.
Check it out today and share it across this crazy cyberspace so more people can get excited about what the Micah Project is doing on the streets of Tegucigalpa!!
And here’s a video for your viewing pleasure!
It’s 9:32 pm.
I’ve got dream bars in the oven (with a variation that has me puzzled about cooking time), I’m munching on tortillas with sun-dried tomato hummus (the strangest before-bedtime snack I’ve ever been a part of), and I’m looking at what I picked up at the grocery store: fake milk in a box, chocolate chips, powdered sugar, pumpkin, and oatmeal (wondering why these are my first purchases after paycheck), and I’m thinking it’s a strange day.
Oh, well. I’m sure you have those days too. Nothing especially wrong or out of place, but you feel like you are moving around in someone else’s skin and it’s just uncomfortable. At this point, all of you who haven’t felt this way have at least one eyebrow raised. Which, I guess, is kind of my point.
Sometimes I get overwhelmed with everything I want to do or read or hear or say or know and I go into overload mode. Hm. I imagine this is what a baby bird might feel when it first discovers its wings. There are so many endless possibilities – so many adventures and birdies to adventure with and trees and clouds and…
then there’s that typical picture of the not-yet-ready-for-flight
birdie falling clumsily from the nest.
There’s no better way to explain than to give a few examples, so here they are in NO particular order:
Oh, boy. Now do you understand a teensy bit more? My brain is like a crazy factory! It makes crazy all day, non-stop! I think I should tone down on the coffee.
It’s now 10:17 pm and I hope this day found you less strangely inclined.
let LOVE fly like cRaZy
Is it true? Am I really cracking open the cover of yet another book? I have pictures and napkins and bent pages marking so many books still clinging to “in-the-middle-of” status. Yet, the summer stack (in all its glossy newness) is under my window and it catches the light just right in the afternoon.
I know. I have an unhealthy appreciation for the written word. That aside, today I am starting something different and possibly brilliant. I don’t want to judge a book by its first few pages, but if I did I would be searching for a purple ribbon. Kevin DeYoung is an author I admire and follow not just because I read his books and blogs, but because I know someone who knows him and he assures me DeYoung is the real deal.
So, this afternoon, I picked up “The Good News We Almost Forgot” and I’m headed to a coffee shop to meet up with some students. They will probably be reading Cosmo or NYLON or the newest, trendiest vampire thriller. I’ll be there, with my book about the Heidelberg Catchechism like it ain’t no thing.
I hope (for my more than your sake) that this book uncovers some of the roots the saints in previous generations saw clearly.
And so it begins.
If you think God might be tending to other, more important matters today, here is a very necessary reminder: you are the important matter. God is intimately involved in His creation and the process of our sanctification. He cares so deeply and is so relentless in His pursuit of us, that He offers a transformative grace to draw us into His presence.
Sometimes that grace confuses us because it isn’t peaceful and comfortable and full of relief. Sometimes it means getting broken… actually, I would say more times than not. Read this article by Paul Tripp about the beauty of grace and David’s prayer for broken bones to rejoice in Psalm 51.
He writes,
“Although our greatest personal need is to live in a life-shaping relationship with the Lord, as sinners we have hearts that have a propensity to wander. We very quickly forget God and begin to put ourselves or some aspect of the creation in his place. We soon forget that he’s to be the center of everything we think, desire, say and do…
It’s time for each of us to embrace, teach, and encourage others with the broken-bone theology of uncomfortable grace. Because as long as each of us still has sin living in us, producing a propensity to forget and wander, God’s grace will come to us in uncomfortable forms.”
Pack that up in your lunch today, folks.
I am reading “John Calvin: A Heart for Devotion, Doctrine, and Doxology,” and learning about John Calvin from some of the authors, pastors, and theologians I most respect. It still amazes me how words penned in the early 1500s could be so poignant today. When the Gospel is at the center, your message never wears out, I suppose.
I have been so encouraged as I grow to know a little more about this fascinating man. Most recently, I have been reading the chapter “The transforming work of the Spirit” by Thabiti Anyabwile.
I’m still carrying around the blessing of these words, quoted from Calvin’s original work.
“Hence we are furnished, as far as God knows to be expedient for us, with the gifts of the Spirit, which we lack by nature. By these fruits we may perceive that we are truly joined to God in perfect blessedness. Then, relying upon the power of the same Spirit, let us not doubt that we shall always be victorious over the devil, the world, and ever kind of harmful thing.”
John Calvin, Institutes of Christian Religion, 2.15.5
Wow. I love that word furnished. We are furnished, as an empty house is with furniture, with the gifts of the Spirit. The gifts are IN us and they weren’t before. We were an empty house, except that God saw fit to give us what we did not have to be “truly joined to Him in perfect blessedness.”
Let us not doubt! God has FURNISHED us with the the power to be victorious. Always.
God always wins. Did you know that?
The other day, I was talking to a distraught student in my office who needed to make it through the day. From the look in her eyes, her 10th grade strength was failing and she needed back-up. I had the shortest counseling conversation on record, but I think I’ll be giving myself the same therapy. It went something like this:
“What is your only weapon against evil (bad days, grouchy people, sadness…)?”
(reluctantly)”God…?”
“No, wait, really. What is your only weapon?”
“God. The Bible.”
“Do you believe that?”
“Yes.”
“Do you really believe that?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, so you are going into battle right now and you’ve got your sword, the Bible. Are you protected?”
“I think so.”
“With what?”
“Armor of God.”
“So, you are going into battle with God’s armor as protection and God’s Word as your weapon.”
“Okay.”
“Is there any chance you will lose?”
“….No.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, I’m sure. No chance.”
“Why?”
“Because!”
“Because God always wins.”
Off she went.
You can question my counseling techniques, I don’t mind at all. But, I will say that when she left I felt like God had just given me the same pep talk. It was not a feel-good message about mastering bullies or getting my own way.
It was a reminder that God defeats evil. Always. He hems us in, behind and beside and before and for eternity, in all His victory.
He is always victorious and He has furnished our human houses with gifts of the Spirit. We shall always be victorious over the devil, the world, and every other harmful kind of thing.
That is something beautiful. Evil doesn’t stand a chance.
let LOVE FLY like cRaZY
Timothy Keller challenges us once again to think through some of our assumptions about this time, maybe too quickly labeled “post-modern.” Keller questions whether our labels are justified in the personal accounts of this generation. Towards the end of his blog post, “Late Modern or Post-modern?” Keller writes,
“The underlying thread that ties all this together is the inconceivability of a moral order based on an authority more fundamental than one’s own reason or experience. That was the founding principle of the Enlightenment, and that is the cornerstone of the most recent generation. So how can we say the Enlightenment is over?”
Interesting. What do you think? And does the label matter as much as the question of gospel presentation? Or, is gospel presentation more effective with an understanding of the former?
All good questions to think during my lunch break at my desk!
When I worked in Austin, Texas, I saw this bumper sticker in the parking lot of the university I worked for:
“Don’t pray in my school and I won’t think in your church”
I realize bumper stickers are often cowardly ways to make big, bold statements, but this one rubbed me the wrong way. I wrote this blog post in reflection.
Now, three years later, I want to add a postscript to that blog post. John Piper has a new book out called, “Think” and it examines the questions so many raise and so few answer. Why do we have a mind? What is the purpose of thinking?
The Desiring God National Conference was actually going on this weekend and focused on just that – using our minds to glorify God, enjoy Him and share Him. I get goosebumps thinking about how our minds are made to glorify our Creator!
I’m off to worship this morning in spirit and in truth… glad for God’s design to engage my thoughts with His thoughts.
I wish I could post this video on the back of my car in bumper sticker form. Better yet, I wish I could live life proving this video true. How about that for a rebuttal?
Praise God from whom ALL blessings flow!
let LOVE FLY like cRaZY.
Christians have a bum rap.
Whether or not this title is earned, many people look to Christians for examples of ultimate hypocrisy (oh, how little has changed in thousands of years!) instead of examples of ultimate servants. I was reading this article over at the Desiring God blog and I really believe it’s a message we need to allow to take root in our hearts.
I’ll admit, Christians can be so stubborn and fearful about theology that we miss the point in living out what theology tells us. In our absence, others step in and try a hand at serving, loving, and giving without the power of redemption at the center. Their efforts, no matter how amazing, simply cannot take the place of life-altering redemption and a secure eternity.
The world is groaning (Romans 8:22) for redemption and (NEWSFLASH) Christians aren’t the only ones feeling the pains of childbirth. The human race, along with creation, is desperate to right the wrong condition of things.
But, there is only one option for redemption and that is through Christ. And in Christ alone I am qualified to do good works.
“And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that having all sufficiency in all things at all times, you may abound in every good work.” (2 Corinthians 9:8 ESV)
If the God of the universe is making all grace abound to me, so that I may abound in every good work, I think it is important to seek out the work. Think of it – God is sufficient in all things and at all times and it is HE who makes me able to abound in every good work.
I believe God is calling us to Himself… calling us to obey… and calling us to live in the delight that will come as a result of our committed hearts (Ecclesiastes 5:20 and 2 Chronicles 16:9) working in day-to-day acts of service.
I want to live BELIEVING so strongly in God’s story of redemption that I wake up LOOKING for ways to abound in every good work. It’s not charity or public policy or brownie points… it’s simply life lived in the bounty of His grace to the glory of His name!
Here is the article from the Desiring God Blog, written by Matt Perman as he prepared to speak at the upcoming conference: Christians Are to Be Proactive in Doing Good.
are you going to
.let LOVE FLY like cRaZY.
This morning as I read this article, I was reminded that our comfort and refuge and peace is not a place in the distant future, but a promise for right here and now.
Be encouraged today by Seu’s words and remember that God invites you into His presence to experience His joy and perfect peace. After Hurricane Matthew loomed on the north coast this past weekend, a safe place seems much more urgent. In God’s grace, Tegucigalpa escaped with only rain, but our brothers and sisters in the North are feeling the repercussions of the tropical storm. Always – in times of uncertainty and in times of great promise – we will find a welcome location. Amen?
She writes,
Being “in Christ” was once an abstract doctrine. No more. It is a location. And when I obey His commands, those are doorways that bring me deeper into Him. The deeper into Him, the greater the experience of peace and joy. “Abide in me,” He says, and I had thought it was a metaphor, when all along it was a mystery.
Here’s the full article: God, my place.
MUSINGS IN THE MIDST 