changing location

Just to let anyone know who pays attention to this that I'll probably be doing all my blogging from now on at our church website www.faithevanchurch.org so come check it out.

My Utmost for His Highest / April 16th

I just had to share this, it comes right out of the devo book My Utmost For His Highest by Oswald Chambers.

John 12:36 "While you have the light, believe in the light . . ."

We all have moments when we feel better than ever before, and we say, "I feel fit for anything; if only I could always be like this!" We are not meant to be. Those moments are moments of insight which we have to live up to even when we do not feel like it. Many of us are no good for the everyday world when we are not on the mountaintop. Yet we must bring our everyday life up to the standard revealed to us on the mountaintop when we were there.
Never allow a feeling that was awakened in you on the mountaintop to evaporate. Don't place yourself on the shelf by thinking, "How great to be in such a wonderful state of mind!" Act immediately - do something, even if your only reason to act is that you would rather not. If, during a prayer meeting, God shows you something to do, don't say, "I'll do it" - just do it! Pick yourself up by the back of the neck and shake off your fleshly laziness. Laziness can always be seen in our cravings for a mountaintop experience; all we talk about is our planning for our time on the mountain. We must learn to live in the ordinary "gray" day according to what we saw on the mountain.
Don't give up because you have been blocked and confused once - go after it again. Burn your bridges behind you, and stand committed to God by an act of your own will. Never change your decisions, but be sure to make your decisions in the light of what you saw and learned on the mountain.

We Are the Body???

Last night, my wife Ali and I attended a Casting Crowns concert in Cedar Rapids along with like 3,000 other people. I have to say first of all that I love Casting Crowns and Mark Hall! I feel as though they are extremely down to earth and they sing truth in every one of their songs. The concert started out with the song until the whole world hears which is a new song of theirs that I really neither like nor dislike but as I sang the words with those 3,000 people, the question began to dawn on my mind, "Do we mean the words that we sing?" The song says that we'll keep singing until the whole world hears and yet so often it would appear that we could care less if the world hears the gospel! After this song they began to sing one of my favorites, We are the Body and as they sang the words "Jesus paid much to high a price for us to pick and choose who should come, and we are the body of Christ." I couldn't help but feel a mixture of extreme conviction and anger. The truth of the matter is that we are the actual Body of Christ, His ambassadors on this earth and yet what we portray to those around us is NOT love, is NOT acceptance, is NOT understanding but rather indifference at best and down right hate at worst! I am increasingly convinced that we are, for the most part living in ignorance at the call God has placed on the hearts of those who call themselves His disciples. Oh God, that we would actually begin to live like we were the Body, that we would actually begin to reach with His hands, see with His eyes, and love with His heart!

what is important?

How do we teach our kids the things that are truly important? We tell them this or that is important. We correct or discipline them when they do things that are contrary to what we teach them as important. We do our best to show them by example the things we hold as important. This however brakes down somewhere along the way. We tell our kids that it's important not to lie but when someone calls who we don't want to talk to we tell them to say we aren't here. We tell them that it's important to care about others but when the guy on the street is asking for money we grumble something about how they would probably just use it for drugs and speed on by.
As followers of Jesus we do the same things. We say that we care about people and yet only reach out to the ones who look and sound like us, or we avoid those who may smell. We say that we are a follower of Jesus and yet do things that he would never do, go places he would never have us go, or say things he would never say. I went to hear a guy named Andy Kampman speak last night about reaching the world and I wondered when our comfort became so important in serving God? I realized that I say I want to follow Jesus, but cringe at the thought of being outside of my comfort zone. I sat I am about loving people but when was the last time I committed myself to praying for God to send workers to those people who are dying without knowing Christ? Or when was the last time I prayed for those who are trying to reach them. How dare we call ourselves Christians and not hold to what Christ saw as important! Forgive us God for this injustice! Forgive us for dragging your name down to our level of comfort! Forgive us for misrepresenting what you see as important!

a broken heart and new perspective

Recently I feel as though God has begun to do a new thing in my heart, waking me up to the reality of the lost. It amazes me at times how naive I and many others can be about the reality of unreached lost people in our so called modern world. I just recently realized that a little under half of the world's population have never heard the gospel message, a little under HALF! Doesn't that strike you as impossible? We hear the gospel every day and yet there are millions of people living and dying that don't even know the name of Jesus. So what does that mean for them? This is also something that I have been struggling with because my human logic tells me that a loving God would never send someone to hell who has never heard. But isn't this the same logic people use in our culture for explaining why there can't possibly be a hell, because God is to loving? However the Bible tells us that the only way to heaven is through Christ and also, Romans 10 says "How then shall they call upon Him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in Him whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher? And how shall they preach unless they are sent?" To be honest, this disturbs me. I believe it is God's will that none should perish, but we also live in a fallen world plagued by sin which makes us enemies of God. So I guess what I'm saying is that as Christians this should dominate our prayer life and as Jesus said, we should pray to the Lord of the harvest to send out workers into the field, and then ask yourself, am I to be one of those workers?

sacrifice?

This past weekend was Acquire The Fire in Minneapolis, MN where we joined 5,000 other people in seeking to encounter the love of God. These events are always high emotion and high energy and as we began the weekend the MC screamed to the crowd "Are you ready to see God move this weekend?" The crowd yelled back in agreement. Then he yelled "Are you ready to have God change your life this weekend?" Again the crowd yelled in agreement and as I watched what was happening I couldn't help but ask myself if those youth actually knew what they were agreeing to. I don't think we comprehend the life that God is calling us into, we don't grasp the fact that this isn't just another religion, not just another job, not just another list of rules to try and keep. We don't get the fact that God want's to give us everything but in turn we must give Him everything. We must give everything we are, everything we think we have, everything that we might be, we give it all sacrificially and then walk where He tells us to walk. We wrongly assume that this is a price to high to pay but in reality all that we really have to offer is brokenness, pain, confusion, and death. In return God gives us hope, joy, peace, and life.

Stand and Fight

Allow me to rant. I love war movies! Saving Private Ryan, The Band of Brothers, Braveheart, anything with a lot of action and heroic speeches I'm hooked. I think the reason why I love these movies so much is that it speaks to a deep desire within my soul to give my life for something bigger than myself. In these movies you see men dying for a greater good, for this idea of freedom, for their brothers at arms, and then after a few hours of on screen action I return to the real world. The real world of bills, and repairs, and office hours. The real world dealing with drama, and feelings, and monotony. And I have to wonder, where is my great cause? Where is my battlefield? Where is my defining moment in the heat of battle where I decide to either lay down and die in the mud, or pull myself up and face my enemy gun in hand?
I feel all to often like the men towards the end of Band of Brothers when the European conflict is all over, Hitler is dead and they find themselves without an enemy so they begin to fight each other. I feel as though I am so ready to stop talking about being more, and giving more, and engaging the enemy; that time has past. I feel as though it is time to rally the troops and storm the gates of hell, and yet I am without a direction in which to march. I am sick of the status quoe, sick of inactivity, sick of half hearted commitment. I feel like the guy on the horse in front of the army, or the guy standing on the battlements yelling to the troops, "Who will join me? Who will fight? Who will die if necessary for the sake of the King?" So, will you join me?

fresh snow over fresh poop

I know the title of this sounds a little odd but let me explain. Some of you may know that for my birthday, Albertein bought me a dog. His name is Neo and he is a golden doodle, which is a mix between a poodle and a golden retriever. We knew that he wasn't going to be a small dog, and we knew that he would probably grow to around 50 pounds; however we, or I, didn't know how fast he would actually grow. Because I wanted a bigger dog, Albertein made sure I knew that if she were to get me a bigger dog then I would have to clean up the yard, however I didn't realize how large of a task that would actually be! I thought about this again yesterday as I saw all the places Neo had dropped good sized loads in our front yard and now as I watch the fresh snow fall I am thankful of the fact that at least I wont see his poop until the snow melts. Unfortunately we can all see the problem with this line of reasoning: the snow will soon melt and the poop will remain only sloppier than before and I'll let you make your own applications from here.

God's Will?

At times I find it comical that we are so prone to extremes, or perhaps I shouldn’t lump everyone into the same mold. I guess you can just read this and see if it applies. I started reading a book today called “Just Do Something” where the author makes the argument that there are times when we find ourselves guilty of not doing anything because we are waiting on God’s will. He claims that there are times when believers try and find God’s will in a situation when maybe God is indifferent to that situation. Now granted I am only half way through the second chapter but it is an intriguing idea.
On the other hand, my devotions this morning form Oswald Chambers claimed that if there is any doubt in the heart of a believer about a situation one is in, then the believer is not in the will of God. He states that we must wait until God’s will is absolutely clear before we make a move lest we run ahead of God’s plan and mess the whole thing up.
Well, what is one to think? It can easily be tempting for believers to adopt one or the other extreme: to just run through life doing whatever pleases you, all the while claiming it is the will of God; or to not do anything, take no chances, exercise no faith because you feel a shred of doubt and so therefore it must not be God’s will. I’m sure that both of these authors would agree that it takes equal amounts of both views to follow God’s will. In scripture we see where Jesus’ disciples tried to run out ahead of God’s will and had to be reigned in. On the other hand we see where God wanted His people to move but they were afraid of what that might mean for them.
Ultimately I believe that when we are truly seeking God we do not have to fret about whether or not we are or are not in his will. In Isaiah 30, the prophet is telling the Israelites that when they repent and come back to God, He will receive them and forgive them. Then in vs. 21 he says, “Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you, saying, ‘This is the way; walk in it.’” Meaning that when we truly seek God, we can take comfort in the fact that he will guide our steps, the only thing we have to do is keep following where He leads.

After Christmas

I really hate this time of the year! Christmas is over but the snow is still around for another two months, It is so cold that I don't even want to go outside, and the Christmas lights are still up but everyone knows they have to come down soon. I think it might be this last thing that is the most depressing to me. The lights are so beautiful and before Christmas I love to look at them because they point to Christmas. It's almost like every house that is lit up with lights is a reminder that Christmas is almost here. Now, however the lights mean nothing. Oh there still beautiful and I still love to look at them but they have a sort of hollow beauty now. Not to overspiritualize everything but I couldn't help but think of how this is a good illustration. To me it represents so many who really do look the part. They try so hard to be put together, and shine as brightly as they can and yet there's is a hollow beauty. We need to realize that if Christ is not who we shine for then we are nothing more than disappointing to those who stop to stare at our efforts to shine.