14 Sep 2009
Don’t Miss Today’s Post!
If you enjoy this post, please see
Right Before He Spoke July 29,
Image-A-Nation July 31
He Looked up and Saw Humans August 13
13 Sep 2009
I really like Grace
At the top of my “What I like about God” list is His Grace. Not the “I can get away with stuff” part. In fact, I am pretty sure that part of Grace is not really grace. I like the “it’s there when I need it most“, and the “it is exactly what I need” aspect of grace.
I fear that some people view grace as this crazy idea that God has suspended His opinion temporarily. As if the church age is a period in history during which God has lowered His standard. He had to right? We can’t meet His standard, so the opinion, (often unconscious) is that God brought the bar down, so that we could all clear it. In our culture, a “grace period” refers to a period of time when we can get away with not following through.
Not a single day passes in which your behaviors and choices have no effect on your life. If there were such a thing, what would happen if you made a good choice on one of those days? Would you miss out on the benefits?
Grace.
Grace is power. Not encouragement, not motivation, not approval, Grace is Power. It can be encouraging, and motivating, and it can help you know you are accepted, but those are the effects, not the substance. Grace is an energizing force, which, when inhabiting people, generates through them the same impact as comes from the Giver of Grace. It is raw energy. I can either manufacture from my will and actions good behavior, or I can receive Goodness from the original source. Grace is the raw energy that enables me to actually be the person that God originally created me to be. On my own, apart from Grace, I am merely a poser and a stumbling imitation. I like Grace because it empowers me to actually be the man that I always wanted to be.
I like that it is available most, when I need it most. We so often focus on the “get away with stuff” thought that we may cheapen and miss the beauty of this gift. “Where sin abounds, Grace abound all the more” Paul tells us. And anticipating the natural human tendency he immediately says, “I am not telling you to sin more in order to get more” As if we need to manufacture more opportunities for us to need Grace. Listen, the need is so constant and great, that the idea of conjuring up one more opportunity to “need grace” completely spits in the face of the One who paid a high price in order to offer us overwhelming love.
I tend toward weakness. My default setting is still selfishness. My mind seems to have, well, a mind of its own, My need for Grace, for an injection of God’s Nature, is ongoing. To make intentional choices to destroy myself and others because I believe God has suspended reality for this age is not presuming on Grace. It is choosing to act separate of the One Power which can bring life instead of death, and health instead of destruction. God will still love you, but you just signed up for pain. He will always have open arms, and fill you again tomorrow, but He loves you enough to allow you to reap what you sow on earth.
I need Grace every day, to flow through me and bring the effects of God into my circumstances and geography. I am grateful I do not have to earn God’s empowering presence. That would send me into a never-ending downward spiral in which I need God in order to change, but I cannot get God unless I change. Thank God, HE offers more of Himself at the times I need it most.
I really like Grace.
12 Sep 2009
Things I like about God
A few weeks ago, I did a short series on “irritating things about God”. It is only fair that I should mention how far the other stuff outweighs the irritations. I would like to get specific and let you know some things I like about God. No guarantee that this will be a series, but this is what is on my mind today.
One of my favorite things about God is this. He is constantly and consistently being and expressing Himself. The Bible (Romans 1:20 to be exact) says that in the visible, natural creation, we see the invisible attributes of a supernatural God. So the question issues from our lips…”why does God do it this way“, or “why doesn’t God just…”. We make these observations of reality and life, and we figure we might know a smarter way to accomplish the same outcome.
So this whole “God expressing Himself” concept, trumps any brilliant idea we might have.
Today it is raining. I began to think, “Why couldn’t God just make things self-sustaining?” I thought perhaps He could make things so that the water supply is built in, and all the nutrients are self contained, and self-generated. I mean, He’s God, and it would have been easy to design things this way. The beauty of my idea is that you don’t have the messy-ness of rain, and the whole ingestion, digestion, elimination cycle. All these cycles, and the messy-ness of them, could be completely bypassed, if the supply of all these needs were just built into our being, right?
Then I got “the tap.”
You know, the sense you have when God begins to interrupt your smugness, and self-congratulations.
If I could put words to it, He seemed to be reminding me of the fact that all these cycles were expressing something about His nature. The cycle of precipitation, weather patterns, etc. All these things tell me stuff about the One who made them.
First, He is always changing even though He is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow. Second, He loves making things new. Generating again, that which has already been generated. Re-creating. Then, I noticed He seemed less concerend about the messiness than I was. Almost like my sense that this rain is inconvenient was about me and my ways of thinking and not about the actual circumstance. Also, like these cycles, He is always passing on more of Himself. Things age, but are renewed. Things are used up but never useless. There is an organic nature to these cycles and processes, in which God is passing life from one system to another.
Wow, God was in a talkative mood.
And all because I started thinking I knew a less messy way to run the universe.
I really like that about Him.
I am still using photographs, generously shared by the amazing Jillian Hamp, professional photographer. Click on her name to see her work, or find out where her work is on display.
11 Sep 2009
Wake Up!!
Eight years ago today we all woke up. Remember? If you don’t remember, it may be evidence of how common it is to become numb. When I say “woke up” I am referring to heightened consciousness not the opposite of “asleep”. I am referring to focus, and clarity. Something happened to our clarity as a nation.
Things that had divided us a day before suddenly meant nothing. Arguments and conflicts that had us all pointing fingers at one another faded into the background instead of consuming the foreground. Our own congress, one of the most divided organizations, filled with self-promotion and manipulation (c’mon, let’s just say it…) stood united on the front steps and sang “God bless America”. Suddenly priorities re-aligned.
We woke up.
It lasted about three months.
Three months. That is how long it took for us all to slide back into distraction and numbness. The details of life gave us all excuses to put fear in front of unity and self back in front of our collective identity. The clarity and heightened consciousness began to give way to fog and confusion. We found reasons to fight one another and allowed the background to become the foreground again.
People often think of consciousness as a “yes” or “no” proposition. I think it is more of a continuum. Consciousness can be heightened.
If we begin to slide, we allow, in the name of tolerance, alleged academics to sympathize with evil men and accuse innocent, grieving families of being responsible for their own slaughter. In our numbness we might again allow conspiracy theorists to twist history into an excuse to criticize political opponents. (Yawn…sorry, I am gettting drowsy…) it takes effort to think clearly, it’s easier to let someone else think for me and stir up emotion and anger.
When I play tennis with my son, and he is about to serve, I focus every bit of my consciousness on what is in front of me. He has a very fast serve. I need to be ready to respond. The expectation is clear. The objective is clear. The opponent is easily identified and I must be focused. My body is focused. My mind is focused. I am alert, waiting. I shut out everything else, and focus.
This is what happened to us eight years ago. Things became clear. As a nation we focused. We drew together. We clearly identified what mattered and what didn’t.
I hope we can do it again.
Never Forget, Never
…Let us be Awake
11 Sep 2009
Three men and a Body
My brother, a hired priest, and a woman I had never met, stood in a small room. In the middle of the room was an inexpensive casket. In the casket, the body of a man I had not seen for ten years; my father. Read more…
8 Sep 2009
Words get in THE WAY…another perspective
Words; both an obstacle and an opening. My last post was about the inadequacy of one of my favorite resources; words. I wrote of what they cannot convey and the limitation of trying to transmit certain realities with syllables. But I feel a bit like I have been critical of one of my best friends. I love words. They can have great power. Wielded correctly they can change lives and partner with the transforming presence of God. When you exhale over your vocal chords, God can add His breath to your words and transform the very atmosphere of a room.
Sometimes I sense something stirring inside me and I reach into this treasure chest of word choices, trying on several before actually settling on the best combination. Ideas that seem bigger than words can actually be broken down bit by bit and shared until whole concepts are shared by a friend, or a roomful of people. How much fun is that?
Words can assure, or terrify,they can heal,or wound, they can clarify thoughts or confuse a matter. Let’s be fair, they are inadequate to accomplish what only the presence of God can accomplish, but they are great tools to lob back and forth while we wrestle with the great experiences and meanings of life and its moments.
I remember a particular counseling session where the woman in front of me was in great pain as her circumstances were collapsing around her, and were outside of her control. I sensed the swirling and growing presence of God in the room, and felt deeply that He wanted to do something very powerful for her. Something so powerful that I felt inadequate to do what I was sensing. I sat paralyzed for a moment by her need, and God’s manifest presence. Then I heard, sensed, grew in awareness of, this thought:
“Just open your mouth”
It was almost urgent. Like God was saying, “I am waiting on YOU!”
“I don’t know what to say” I thought.
Here is what I heard. “Just open your mouth, I will do the rest.”
So I began to speak. Lame stuff, I think. I tried to be inspiring, but it was just words. In amazement I watched as her heart opened and healing began. I was not very clever, nor persuasive, but God had waited on my meager utterings before He delivered. The inadequacy of my words partnered with the absolute sufficiency of God and something happened that was bigger than me.
I love words.
6 Sep 2009
Words get in the Way
We took a trip to Lake City, Colorado this summer. The stark beauty of the place was indescribable. Literally. Every language set, with all the emphasis and attached emotions, fell short of accurately conveying what our eyes had seen, and our beings had absorbed. I finally settled for the “you had to have been there” concession. It is impossible to communicate experience with words only.
Let me try.
The three-hundred-and-sixty degree panoramas, the enormity of the mountain peaks and sheer rock walls, the distance covered by ever-growing mountain streams moving from trickling snow to white-water rivers, are even physically larger than can be described. Add to this scope, the aesthetic of this geography. Things change inside you when you stand and take in this kind of view. Try to impart that kind of change through verbal description.
Now, think of this.
Jesus stood in Heaven from the beginning of time. He could see all things in all directions. Star-creating nebulae, fields of simmering stars, the minute details of each planet, and all of the vistas I just described. He did not only view these things, He uttered something from His mouth, and these things came into existence. These things and more (think; the Great Barrier Reef, The Aleutian Islands, Mt. Everest, Platypus…) all issued forth from His nature, through His mouth and into our sphere of existence.
I can’t help but think of how much fun this process must have been for Him!!!
What was likely not fun for Him was trying to describe these things to narrow minded people who had never left their own geography. He had seen HEAVEN! He spoke to people who thought God wanted to control when we picked wheat!
I noticed this week, as we discussed world-changing ideas and realities, how limiting language was as a vehicle to transmit such things. We all wrestled to transcend the medium of word-use, and impart to a room full of men and women that this same cosmos-breathing Being is intimately engaged in the lives of the men and women He had created.
God came to class with us this week, and thank goodness. Without Him, we would have only experienced syllables. With Him, things inside us changed as we listened, watched and absorbed His movement in the room.
Never settle for syllables when the Living God is available.
5 Sep 2009
I switched off my Brain
I am certain that my friend, Dr. Caroline Leaf could explain physiologically what I am about to describe experientially. She is a brain researcher and the author of “Who Switched off my Brain” as well as a number of other helpful resources about “brain care”. All I know is that this last week, I switched of my brain.
My website is entitled “Thinking Differently” I made a post about “Thinking Differently” My soon-to-be-released book is entitled “Thinking Differently” People always comment on how differently I think.
This week, by the time I got home at night I could barely think cohesively much less differently.
In two weeks time, my team put on two major events. We did a two day intensive ministry/transformation event, which I occasionally write about, called Kairos.
And we just completed forty hours of intensive training for our own team as well as leaders from around the country and around the world. During both of these times, I was intensely focused (try not to laugh), and engaged. I poured out thoughts, engaged my heart, connected spiritually both upward and outward, and engaged in large group, small group and one-on-one conversations about world changing ideas.
And afterwards, at night, my brain didn’t seem to work.
It felt thick and slow. It was filled with fatigue. Simple, normal thoughts didn’t come easily, I certainly wasn’t thinking unusual, creative, or original thoughts. My thoughts were very concrete. And Basic.
“I’m hungry” or “I want cake”
“I don’t want to work out” or “can I just sit here”
That was about the extent of my thoughts. Not much different about those thoughts.
Somehow, my normal (term used loosely) thought processes just weren’t working, normally.
Giving out without taking in seemed to leave me empty. Not existentially speaking, but regarding cognition. I am sure my brain chemistry changed, (right, Dr. Leaf?) because my brain absolutely took in less, processed more slowly and more simply, and resisted anything challenging.
I have a simple day today, and two days completely off. I am hoping my brain switches back on. Then I can start posting again some different thinking. Stay tuned.
To read more about Dr. Leaf and her resources, click on her name.
Jennifer thanks for the Pics
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