I listened to one of my favorite's this morning. Here are some of the lyrics...
For years you've met our thirst, Still deserts we have roamed
But we'll be done dust with dirt when the ocean calls us home
We'll fall into the arms Of a cool and sweet embrace
Under stars and waving palms We'll shed our sin like snakes
And time will cease to stalk us and death will be undone
And we'll shine with the light of a thousand blazing suns
It is a song called Weary Saints by Dustin Kensrue. I recommend it to you all, and if any of you are still around when I meet my end, tell someone to play this at my funeral. And when the song is over I want everybody to cheer that My Father has brought me home to be with Him.
I have felt weary recently. Of course my wife noticed before anybody else. My response to be being tired, to not having answers, to not knowing what to do is usually a shutting down of my normal personality and assuming escapism. Golf, video games, books, sports, give me anything but reality. It's not that I am necessarily afraid to take on the things put on my plate, but I don't know what to do with them. So I just do what I know what to do. And I do not do what I should.
Once Niki pointed out my shut down (hence the lack of desire to update this blog), I started thinking about what questions I have that are really unanswered, what thirst do I have that has not been met, what part of my life has really been left without direction? Yeah, our church is in spiritual and emotional turmoil (the elephant in the room), my job does not seem stable, we live upstairs in our parents house, and we have a little baby coming soon and very soon. But at what point has Jesus ever left me to figure out these sorts of problems on my own? He has always fed the ravens of the air and clothed the lilies of the field and He has always met my thrist in the past, so why would any of that change today?
I read Proverbs 30 this morning and God reminded me that he is God, that His every Word has been proven true and that He is my shield and refuge. The writer of proverbs says that he only really needs two things, truth and food. What one of these things do I lack? I have the truth of a God who has sacrificed His Son for my sake, so there is no longer any condemnation for me. And I have the promise of the God of all creation, that He will provide for me. In fact, I probably eat too much (as my gut is testament to). What problems do I have that won't be solved in time?
I am not saying we don't face legitimite problems in our lives. We do. God Himself said that suffering will be part of our reality. My point is that if we take a good long look at our lives, our communities, our churches, and our families, what indiction has God ever given that he will not provide for those who earnestly seek Him. Shoot, the Bible says he even provides for those who don't seek Him.
God is going to provide. The questions I have today will be answered and more will come, and there will be more opportunity for me to trust that God will provide for those. At points, I will be tired, and at points I will want to give up, but God gives to those who give it up to Him. And one day, for those that have believed in the power of Christ's blood for redemption, we will go home and we will be at peace and we will be with Christ. And that in itself is enough of an answer to keep me from wondering what is next.
Proverbs 30:7-9
Two things I ask of you;
deny them not to me before I die:
Remove far from me falsehood and lying;
give me neither riches; feed me with food that is needful for me,
lest I be full and deny you and say, "Who is the The LORD?"
or lest I be poor and steal
and profane the name of my God.
God will provide for our community, he will give us answers, and he is faithful even when we are faithless.
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Thursday, October 8, 2009
Scripture
So I really have every intention of updating this blog on at least a bi-weekly basis, but I have been staying with a couple of the guys from my youth group while their parents are in Germany and their is no wireless Internet. It is actually kind of ridiculous how much our lives revolve around all these little signals floating through the air. It's also kind of liberating when we are forced to go without.
Having not yet decided what the main purpose of this blog is, I figure I will just keep updating whoever reads it about some thoughts I have had on the Christian life. Not really expect to blow any minds or anything, I am just going to spill out my version of what I have been learning. If its wrong or if you disagree, feel free to let me know. Mostly, I just hope the things I write will serve as an encouragement for you to draw closer.
A couple days ago, I sat down with a cup of coffee to spend a few minutes in Scripture before I really got my day going. I realized that I was not really all that enthusiastic about the subject matter. I had the Bible opened to Proverbs (what I have been reading recently) and I thought "Why am I reading this book in the first place?" It is not that I do not want to read the Bible, but I found myself wondering what the heck is it actually going to say to me on this particular morning that is going to pertain to my particular life? I mean realistically, what does ancient wisdom literature have that could possibly pertain to a suburban culture driven by consumerism?
So I stopped reading and attempted to answer my original question, "Why should I read this book?" I thought about it for a couple of minutes and this was the answer I gave to myself.
I wrote...
"It is the Word of God, the eternal one, given to His people to declare His plan of salvation and reconciliation to an unworthy people through His Son, Jesus Christ. In its pages I find eternal truth, hope, joy, and love."
Later on that same day, I spent some more time reading Bonhoeffer's Life Together. This is what he wrote..
"Reading of Biblical books forces everyone who wants to put himself, or to allow himself to be found, where God has acted once and for all for the salvation of all men... We are torn out of our own existence and set down in the midst of the holy history of God on earth. There God dealt with us, our needs and our sins, in judgment and grace... It is not in our life that God's help and presence must still be proved, but rather God's presence and help have been demonstrated for us in the life of Jesus Christ. It is more important for us to know what God did to Israel, to His Son Jesus Christ, than to seek what God intends for us today. The fact that Jesus Christ is more important than the fact that I shall die... I find no salvation in my own life history, but only in the history of Jesus Christ."
How many times do I come to Scripture with expectations and a desire for pithy advice? To put it simply, there have been countless occurrences that I have expected to open the Bible and have it speak to my immediate situation. It goes like this "God, I'm really struggling to understand such and such and I really need your word to point me in the right direction." At this point I open the Bible and expect to find the immediate answer written evenly across the face of the epistles, psalms, proverbs, or gospels. But rarely do I walk away from a Bible encounter thinking "Man, all of the sudden I feel like everything has just been answered!! All my wondering and wanderings have been solved and I have no more questions!"
Why doesn't this happen? Why don't all our questions get answered when we approach the most revered book in the history of the world, the book we believe to be the inspired and holy word of the only Eternal God? I think the answer is us. We, Me, I, Us. We are constantly trying to force God's word to give its opinion on our life when we shoud simply be reading it to understand who God is. We approach the word of God looking for Chicken Soup for the Soul and we find nothing. We approach it looking for the revelation of God given in actual history to a crooked and depraved generation through Jesus Christ and we find our meaning. As Bonhoeffer said, we find more meaning in the history of God then we ever will in our history.
It is not until after we find out who God is that we can start to recognize who we are. So the next time you come to Scripture, look for God, not for answers. Find out who God is and what he has done in Salvation history and than you will find out who you are and what your purpoe is.
Anyway, that is what I have been thinking about the last couple of days.
"I am the alpha and the omega," says the Lord God, "who is and was and who is to come, the Almighty."
Revelation 1:8
Having not yet decided what the main purpose of this blog is, I figure I will just keep updating whoever reads it about some thoughts I have had on the Christian life. Not really expect to blow any minds or anything, I am just going to spill out my version of what I have been learning. If its wrong or if you disagree, feel free to let me know. Mostly, I just hope the things I write will serve as an encouragement for you to draw closer.
A couple days ago, I sat down with a cup of coffee to spend a few minutes in Scripture before I really got my day going. I realized that I was not really all that enthusiastic about the subject matter. I had the Bible opened to Proverbs (what I have been reading recently) and I thought "Why am I reading this book in the first place?" It is not that I do not want to read the Bible, but I found myself wondering what the heck is it actually going to say to me on this particular morning that is going to pertain to my particular life? I mean realistically, what does ancient wisdom literature have that could possibly pertain to a suburban culture driven by consumerism?
So I stopped reading and attempted to answer my original question, "Why should I read this book?" I thought about it for a couple of minutes and this was the answer I gave to myself.
I wrote...
"It is the Word of God, the eternal one, given to His people to declare His plan of salvation and reconciliation to an unworthy people through His Son, Jesus Christ. In its pages I find eternal truth, hope, joy, and love."
Later on that same day, I spent some more time reading Bonhoeffer's Life Together. This is what he wrote..
"Reading of Biblical books forces everyone who wants to put himself, or to allow himself to be found, where God has acted once and for all for the salvation of all men... We are torn out of our own existence and set down in the midst of the holy history of God on earth. There God dealt with us, our needs and our sins, in judgment and grace... It is not in our life that God's help and presence must still be proved, but rather God's presence and help have been demonstrated for us in the life of Jesus Christ. It is more important for us to know what God did to Israel, to His Son Jesus Christ, than to seek what God intends for us today. The fact that Jesus Christ is more important than the fact that I shall die... I find no salvation in my own life history, but only in the history of Jesus Christ."
How many times do I come to Scripture with expectations and a desire for pithy advice? To put it simply, there have been countless occurrences that I have expected to open the Bible and have it speak to my immediate situation. It goes like this "God, I'm really struggling to understand such and such and I really need your word to point me in the right direction." At this point I open the Bible and expect to find the immediate answer written evenly across the face of the epistles, psalms, proverbs, or gospels. But rarely do I walk away from a Bible encounter thinking "Man, all of the sudden I feel like everything has just been answered!! All my wondering and wanderings have been solved and I have no more questions!"
Why doesn't this happen? Why don't all our questions get answered when we approach the most revered book in the history of the world, the book we believe to be the inspired and holy word of the only Eternal God? I think the answer is us. We, Me, I, Us. We are constantly trying to force God's word to give its opinion on our life when we shoud simply be reading it to understand who God is. We approach the word of God looking for Chicken Soup for the Soul and we find nothing. We approach it looking for the revelation of God given in actual history to a crooked and depraved generation through Jesus Christ and we find our meaning. As Bonhoeffer said, we find more meaning in the history of God then we ever will in our history.
It is not until after we find out who God is that we can start to recognize who we are. So the next time you come to Scripture, look for God, not for answers. Find out who God is and what he has done in Salvation history and than you will find out who you are and what your purpoe is.
Anyway, that is what I have been thinking about the last couple of days.
"I am the alpha and the omega," says the Lord God, "who is and was and who is to come, the Almighty."
Revelation 1:8
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
Presently...
I have been thinking about starting a blog for quite some time. My hesitancy has been rooted in the idea that I have no new ideas, so why add my voice to the hundreds of thousands (millions even) who are shouting into the blogosphere about the importance of their existence and how everybody ought to know about it? Presently though, I feel a burden on my soul to speak and so I decided to write and see what happens.
Everything has been falling into place for me. Marriage, baby on the way, church life is great, enjoy my job there, very little debt. The youth I pastor are a blessing to my soul and I get paid to play my guitar and sing praises to Jesus every Sunday. Recently though, my very simple and pleasant life has been flipped from peaceful to struggling. Due to the decisions of someone close to me, the bottom seems to have dropped out. I know many of us have experienced this sort of feeling, so perhaps you can identify with me. I do not want to use this blog as a means to complain about my situation though. I would like to use it to give reason as to why I have a hope resting deep within my soul that no amount of trouble or pain can ever shake.
The title of this blog comes from the first chapter of Life Together by Dietrich Bonhoeffer and what he calls "The Hour of Dissilusionment."
"By sheer grace, God will not permit us to live even for a brief period in a dream world. He does not abandon us to those rapturous experiences and lofty moods that come over us like a dream. Only that fellowship that faces such disillusionment, with all its unhappy and ugly aspects, begins to be what it should be in God's sight, begins to grasp in faith the promise that was given to
it. The sooner this shock of disillusionment comes for an individual and to a community the better for both. A community that cannot bear and cannot survive such a crisis, which insists upon keeping its illusion when it should be shattered, permenantly loses in that moment the promise of Christian community. Sooner or later it will collapse. Every human wishdream
that is injected into the Christian community is a hindrance to genuine community and must be banished if genuine community is to survive... Thus the very hour of dissillusionment becomes incomparably salutary, because it so thoroughly teaches me that [none] of us can live by our own words and deeds, but only by that one Word and Deed which really binds us together - the
forgiveness of sins in Jesus Christ."
The hour of disillusionment is simply that point when God reveals the facade that has covered the reality of what our lives really are. At the moment that our illusions are shattered, we are shattered. When our dreams fall apart, we fall apart. When the safe and happy life we have created turns out be dream, we realize we have never been that safe or that happy. But Bonhoeffer calls this moment grace. It is in those moments when the bottom drops out that we recognize we were not standing on solid ground in first place. And that recognition is God showing us that we need him. In those moments when we are broken, we see that we are fixed by the Word and Deed of Christ on the cross, not our own efforts.
Everything has been falling into place for me. Marriage, baby on the way, church life is great, enjoy my job there, very little debt. The youth I pastor are a blessing to my soul and I get paid to play my guitar and sing praises to Jesus every Sunday. Recently though, my very simple and pleasant life has been flipped from peaceful to struggling. Due to the decisions of someone close to me, the bottom seems to have dropped out. I know many of us have experienced this sort of feeling, so perhaps you can identify with me. I do not want to use this blog as a means to complain about my situation though. I would like to use it to give reason as to why I have a hope resting deep within my soul that no amount of trouble or pain can ever shake.
The title of this blog comes from the first chapter of Life Together by Dietrich Bonhoeffer and what he calls "The Hour of Dissilusionment."
"By sheer grace, God will not permit us to live even for a brief period in a dream world. He does not abandon us to those rapturous experiences and lofty moods that come over us like a dream. Only that fellowship that faces such disillusionment, with all its unhappy and ugly aspects, begins to be what it should be in God's sight, begins to grasp in faith the promise that was given to
it. The sooner this shock of disillusionment comes for an individual and to a community the better for both. A community that cannot bear and cannot survive such a crisis, which insists upon keeping its illusion when it should be shattered, permenantly loses in that moment the promise of Christian community. Sooner or later it will collapse. Every human wishdream
that is injected into the Christian community is a hindrance to genuine community and must be banished if genuine community is to survive... Thus the very hour of dissillusionment becomes incomparably salutary, because it so thoroughly teaches me that [none] of us can live by our own words and deeds, but only by that one Word and Deed which really binds us together - the
forgiveness of sins in Jesus Christ."
The hour of disillusionment is simply that point when God reveals the facade that has covered the reality of what our lives really are. At the moment that our illusions are shattered, we are shattered. When our dreams fall apart, we fall apart. When the safe and happy life we have created turns out be dream, we realize we have never been that safe or that happy. But Bonhoeffer calls this moment grace. It is in those moments when the bottom drops out that we recognize we were not standing on solid ground in first place. And that recognition is God showing us that we need him. In those moments when we are broken, we see that we are fixed by the Word and Deed of Christ on the cross, not our own efforts.
Recently, our dream was shattered, our reality was broken. To myself and to those who live with me in community, this is grace. Now we have the opportunity to see the grac eof God work in an amazing way. We can follow God and serve Him and continue to draw people into His kingdom, or we can run and set up another structure that will keep us from experiencing the true community that God has already bought and paid for by the blood of His Son, Jesus Christ.
"And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore you. To him be the dominion forever and ever. Amen." -1 Peter 5:10-11
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