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!

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?

schizophrenic prayer life

Just a few moments ago i began re-reading some of my prayers that I had written down a few months ago and I was struck with this curious wonderment about how God must hear our prayers. For example, just a few months ago i was praising God for the way he works in my life and how he takes care of me, and for what he is doing through our church. Then a few months later i am righting about how confused I am and trying to discern where to lead the people and all my doubts and frustrations. Sure enough, the prayer I wrote today was about how I know he supplies every need and holds me in his hands.
I can't help but wonder, as my schizophrenic, bipolar prayers reach God's ears if he isn't just ready to say, "ENOUGH ALREADY!" Yet even as I wonder at this, Exodus 14:14 pops into my head that shows us Moses standing between the Israelites and the Red Sea, speaking for God saying "God will fight for you, you need only to be still." God knows that when the people cross the red sea they will be praising him for his goodness, and at the same time he also knows that in just a few short weeks, or even days they will be giving a golden calf the credit for their deliverance from Egypt. Yet he still tells them that he will fight for them.
Once again, God's goodness is overwhelming; I'll have to remember that next month!

Eat Your Soup!

Last week, Albertein made some awesome potato soup that I absolutely love and am quite sure I could eat my weight in! It's full of bacon, cheese, and of coarse potatoes and for some reason Jackson got it into his head that he just would not eat it. Well, the way it works at our house is that what we have for supper is what we have, and if you don't like it well, tough. So as Jackson made his displeasure known, I informed him that he was going to have to sit there until he ate his soup and that was that, and of coarse that caused more whining, which in turn caused my temperature to go up and so on and so forth. Anyway, after quite a while of this, Jackson decided that it would be better to just suck it up and eat his soup than to have to sit at the table all day and night and low and behold, he found out that he loves potato soup. As I watched him scarf down his soup that he finally tried I said, "See Jackson, isn't it so much easier when you just do what I ask?" And in my mind or heart, or both I heard God say "Yes Luke; isn't it so much easier when you just do what I ask?"
Why is it that the majority of the time we fight so hard against what God has for us, and yet when we finally shut up and follow Him, we find out that following Him is where we always wanted to be.

Following closely

So yes I realize that it has been forever and a day that I have written anything on here and that probably everyone has assumed that I have abandoned this whole blogging thing forever but, here I am, and I pledge to do better with this whole thing. With that being said . . .
I was listening to one of my favorite pastors the other day discussing his "conversion experience" or in layman's terms how he began to follow Jesus. He explained that he really didn't know anything about what he was doing, he just knew that he had been forgiven, and that he now had a hunger for scripture and a longing to live however God wanted him to live. Because of this hunger, he began to read his bible every morning and every evening; not out of a legalistic sense of having to, but because he wanted to know what he was supposed to do. He explained that he also had a lot of baggage, like a filthy vocabulary and as he read what God was all about, he realized that the way he talked didn't match up with who God was, so he changed the way he talked, and so on. The thing that I found very interesting about this (and it certainly isn't anything new) is that Chip didn't change because he set out to specifically change this or that about himself, he changed because he realized his actions didn't add up to what he now knew.
One of the problems that I have to be mindful of is the fact that I get to focused on the action; in order to be a better Christian I must do this, this, and this. The action then becomes the important thing, and if I don't do these actions in a certain way then I have failed. In actuality, I believe that God isn't about the actions. What I'm going to do is not focus so much on the actions, and instead focus on who God is, on who Christ is and then think, if I want to be closer to Jesus, these things in my life can't stay. If I want to be closer to Jesus, I need to talk to Him, I need to spend time with Him. If I want to be a Christ follower I need to know Him more so I can follow Him more closely. Makes sense, doesn't it?

Ability Vs. Choice

I've been thinking all day long about the difference between ability and choice. This started yesterday when I was talking to one of my youth guys about the movie the Hangover, and in the middle of talking to him about it he stopped and said, "Oh, you probably can't see that movie can you?" I found this question very interesting, and thought provoking because of the implications that it unknowingly carried.
The assumptions that this guy was voicing was that because I am a pastor, and more importantly a Christian, there are some things that I am incapable of taking part in; but is this assumption correct? What many don't realize is that just because a person becomes a Christian, their ability to take part in non Christian activities, such as movies that promote sin for all to see is in no way hampered. We could still take part, but as a Christian, why would I want to? The focus of Christianity should be to become more Christlike in all that we do, and so why would I then want to take part in something that will inevitably drive me further from my ultimate goal?
When all is said and done, it isn't about one's ability to do this or that, it comes down to the motives behind why we do what we do. I heard a story recently about this guy who was leaving early for a work trip and so his twelve year old daughter got up before him, and made him his coffee; why? She made him his coffee, not out of some unspoken obligation, not out of guilt, not out of a desire to be a better daughter, but simply out of love for her dad. Galatians 5:13 says "You my brothers were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature; rather, serve one another in love." So again, it isn't about ability; we are free to live our lives. It's about motivation, it's about love, it's about choice.

A Willing Heart

This past Sunday we wrapped up a four week long discussion on how to unlock your God given potential, and through it all the main theme has been commitment; how committed are you to seeing God work through your life. I've had a lot of people come up to me these past four weeks expressing concerns that they don't feel like they are doing enough for God. Or people are wondering how they can hear God more clearly because maybe there's more that he is wanting them to do. If we aren't careful, when we begin to focus on questions such as these our Christianity can very quickly turn into a question of "how good am I?" Or "How much can I do?"

I shared last Wednesday about how in 2Chronicles 30, under King Hezekiah the people were taking part in the passover for the first time in a long time. It was basically a revival where people were earnestly seeking God, and yet the problem was that there were a lot of people who, when the time came to eat the passover they were, according to the law, unclean. Then in 2Chronicles 30:18-20, Hezekiah asks God to pardon the ones who had their hearts set on seeking God, and yet were unclean according to the rules of the sanctuary. It then says that "the Lord heard Hezekiah and healed the people." So what was the most important thing? Being clean according to the rules, or having a heart set on seeking God?

Now don't get me wrong, the law was very important but it was a means of drawing the people to God. God's focus and his desire was for a relationship with his creation, not that they were perfect! Even today we get so hung up on, and worried about how well we can perform as Christians, and how often we have our quiet times, and how much we put in the plate, and how many Sunday school classes we teach, and how we don't drink, or smoke, or cuss, and how clean we can look on the outside that ultimately we miss the fact that Christianity is all about having a heart set on seeking God! Again, Jesus said that the greatest commandment was to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength; there were a lot of other commandments but this was the most important one!

And so as we strive to be disciples of Christ, and as we work to be holy as God is holy, we must remember that above everything else we must ask ourselves the question: "Is my heart set on seeking God?"

Engaged Christianity

So, two weeks ago we went down to Sea crest Beach, Florida right outside of Panama City Beach for a week long vacation, and for the most part it was good. The weather wasn't all that cooperative but we made the best of it, and the beaches were absolutely beautiful. I would say that the only part of the trip that was frustrating and disappointing was my dad. Here we are in beautiful Florida, staying in an amazing house and pretty much all he wanted to do was lay on the couch, talk on his cell phone, and watch the hunting channel, which I don't even know why that is a channel by the way. It was frustrating because; first of all he doesn't get to spend a whole lot of time with my kids in the first place and so I assumed he would want as much face time with them as possible; and second I haven't hung out with him in forever and I assumed he would want to do a little catch up. But sadly neither seemed to be true for dear old dad. Now admittedly I am being hard on him, but aren't you aloud to do that with family? I mean isn't your family supposed to want to be in deep relationship with you? Aren't they supposed to want to engage you and share their lives with you? It seams as though some family members are just OK with being family in name, and not in any relational sense of the word and as I began to think of this more over the past few weeks God began to reveal something about this to me.

He began to reveal to me how many times in my own life I have done this very thing to Him. Like my dad, I have settled so often for a relationship with God in name only. I have assumed that adopting the title of Christian means that I am one, and instead God wants so much more. Again, like me with my dad, God desires a deep, involved relationship where we aren't just satisfied with him being around somewhere in the background. This is easy to fall into though isn't it? With family it is easy to simply take them for granted and just simply be there, but not really be engaged but in reality this just doesn't work. Again, like with my dad, my kids aren't really going to have any memories of him from this trip because he wasn't really there. Jesus tells us that in the end when we stand before God, he will either say yes I know you, or no I don't, and many people will be surprised at what they hear. Matthew 7:21-23 "Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?' Then I will tell them plainly, 'I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!'"

The question is, do you have a relationship with Christ or not, not how much have you done, or how many Sunday school classes have you taught, but do you know Him?

commitment phobia

As I set here on vacation in Florida, a few of the people who are here with us are watching the season premier of the bachelorette, which has to be one of the worst shows ever conceived; alright I can think of worse ones, but it's close! Now, I admit I have watched a Bachelor episode or two, and I have held my breath as that final rose was handed out, but as I hear this episode playing in the background I am just struck with how wrong the whole concept of the show is. Here's this lady who is basically trying out an endless line of guys, initially judging them on their surface attributes. Then as the show goes on she'll kiss this one, and this one will get a special weekend away with her, and everyone will cry at least once. Then in the end she will pick one of these guys that has turned out to be her "soul mate", hand him a rose, and give him a commitment to maybe someday possibly become engaged to him. Maybe.

I believe that this show illustrates the problem that our culture has with commitment incredibly well. Seemingly in everything we do, we have this fear or phobia of being too committed. We lease cars, we have tract phones, and we move in with the one we "love" instead of getting married to them, just in case. this phobia has even crept into our spiritual lives as well. We have this idea, or attitude that we just want to date Jesus. Nothing serious, just a promise here and there, maybe go to church every now and then but we want to keep our options open, just in case. However nothing could be further from what we are supposed to do, and what we are supposed to be.

Jesus tells us that unless you hate your father and mother, then you can't be a disciple of mine. Meaning that the relationship we have with Christ has to be so far above our most intimate relationships that they look like hate in comparison. Jesus isn't looking for a casual relationship, he is calling us to a deeper, all in commitment that makes everything else pale in comparison. The question is, are we willing to accept?