....knowing God from an early age

J.T. mentioned having had a real sense of knowing God from an early age. He related his experience of realization happened while serving as an alter boy in the Catholic Church. J.T. commented that after sharing this at a leadership conference, someone exclaimed that he had had a "John Wesley experience!"

I googled John Wesley and found that at the age of five, John was rescued from the burning rectory. This escape made a deep impression on his mind; and he regarded himself as providentially set apart, as a "brand plucked from the burning."

I would have to say that my parents and grandparents instilled in me an early faith in Jesus. I remember conversations about God and heaven that I had with my granddad as a young boy. One of these conversations was after I had had a fight with my older brother and he was giving me the silent treatment. I was mad because I knew that the only way to set things right with my brother was to apologize. I told my granddad that this situation made me angry because I always seemed to be the one who apologized first. My granddad empathized with my position, but proceeded to explain that Jesus had said, "Blessed are the peacemakers for they will be called sons of God" (Matthew 5:9). I've never since, struggled much against being the first one to say, "I'm sorry" in a conflict.

I have a vivid childhood memory of entertaining myself by singing "He's got the whole world in His hands" while running and jumping on the sidewalk out in front of my grandparents house. I spent that summer with granddad and grandmother. We attended the First Baptist Church across the street. I remember the sense of pride that I had because my granddad helped build that church and my grandmother taught Sunday school.

undiscipled disciples....

I met a woman in Borders a few weeks ago. She was in the religious book section and looked like she needed assistance. I asked her if I could help her find a specific book and she volunteered in frustration that she had been going to church all her life but she didn’t know why she did anymore. She confessed that she was looking for a book, but didn’t have any idea what she wanted. Although this woman shared that she went to church it was obvious that she was disheartened about her Christian faith. I encouraged her to read Bruxy Cavey’s book, The End of Religion.

Unfortunately, many Christians never experience the “abundant life” promised by Jesus. Dallas Willard says this disparity has come about because of the “Great Omission.” Christ commanded Christians to go out into the world and make disciples of all peoples. Willard believes that discipleship is to often viewed as optional or for “Super Christians” rather than an imperative choice for all Christians. Yet Jesus called believers to follow him, to be disciples or apprentices. Being a disciple is more than just asking Christ in our life and heart, and goes far beyond baptism or our church membership. The Christian life is more than an “insurance policy” or “free ticket” to heaven or the eternal hereafter.

Others wrote about the “Great Omission” in the “Great Commission.” A.W. Tozer called it a “great heresy” and Dietrich Bonhoeffer called it “cheap grace.” The British preacher Martyn Lloyd-Jones used to say that in most Churches we hear only half the Gospel. We preach eternal salvation by grace but often fail to encourage the changed or sanctified life. A sanctified life is a life set apart as or declared holy, a consecrated life. The disciple is a student; one who follows or learns from a teacher. Discipleship is more than right thinking, it’s right living. The Christian who fails to see the value of their salvation beyond their eternal security has missed the point. Dallas Willard says, that this is like being a Christian Vampire, “I’ll have a little blood, but I want to live my life now and I’ll see you later in heaven.”

....in the Spirit

I've been reconnecting with the joy of my salvation!  I'm overwhelmed with gratitude towards God, in Christ Jesus for the grace that is continually showered on me.  Dallas Willard says, the Kingdom of God (meaning: the reign, government, rule, leadership, control, administration, regulation, management, supervision of the Spirit) should be characterized by righteousness, peace, and joy in the Spirit.  This righteousness is more than goodness, it is God's transforming life working in me changing my very nature.  This is an ongoing supernatural phenomenon!  In the same way God's peace is pervasive, transcending even difficult times, when I give it to God in prayer. It is a peace that passes all understanding.  The peace that comes from life in the Spirit gives me freedom.  Allowing me to freely love my neighbor, family, coworker, house-mate, and even my "enemies," whoever they may be.  The joy that should characterize every disciple of Jesus is rooted in our identity "in Christ."  We love God because he first loved us.  This love was not a one time thing.  It is not pass tense or just something that happened once in the history of my conversion.  God is always loving us.  The Apostle John did not write that God was loving, he said, "God is Love."

....without distinctions.

Two years ago, I decided to attend Saint Stephens Episcopal Church.  I thought that I needed a different worship experience. I was feeling discouraged about my faith and thought a change in practice and place would help. Sometimes when people talk about their “spirituality” they speak about having the need to experience more of the sacred. Unhappy with my own tradition, I thought that the rituals and traditions in the Episcopal Church would possibly instill a sense of the sacred in me. I found the liturgy and celebration of the Eucharist every Sunday to be a solemn and sacred event, but it wasn’t what I was looking for, it eventually left me feeling hollow.

I worked at the Mount Hermon Christian Conference Center, located in the redwoods near Santa Cruz the summer after my freshman year of college.  When people would come to the retreat center on pilgrimage to the redwoods, it was common, almost cliché to hear them ask, ”What’s it like to live in God’s country?”  Is God especially present, more apprehensible or closer in some places more than others? “Taking their cues from the teaching of Jesus, the earliest followers finally came to realize that they didn’t need holy buildings or special places to meet with God.  They saw themselves as living stones, built together into a new organic temple, made up of the people of God.  They believed that the Spirit of God dwelled within this relational temple, this sanctuary-as-community (see 1 Corinthians 3:16-17; Ephesians 2:19-22) and that their entire lives were altars upon which to offer sacrificial love to God and others (see Romans 12:1).  Because of Jesus, they understood that all of life is holy and every relationship sacred.”

In a lecture series during the Missio Conference at Fuller Theological Seminary, speaker Alan Hirsch said, “What we’ve ended up with are vague reflections of what Jesus was in the gospels.”  He points out that the reason for this is that we have built our religious systems over the top of it.  In doing so we haveobscured the centrality of Jesus in our lives. Hirsch refers to the writings of Jacques Ellul, The Subversion of Christianity.  He insists that one way we have subverted the Gospel is by the sacralization of time and space. The idea that some days are more holy than others and some places more sacred can be subversive when these things become important in themselves. The Scriptures point out that all of the earth is the Lord’s, without distinctions.

Bruxy Cavey says, “The Western practice of referring to church buildings as ‘churches’ (rather than the building where a church meets) can work against our ability to see this truth.  Some Christians not only call the buildings they meet in ‘church’ but they also call a special room where they hold Sunday services the ‘sanctuary,’ a word that means the sacred place where God dwells.  And, to confuse our minds just a little bit more, at the front of the sanctuary is often a big table called the ‘alter,’ a word that refers to animal sacrifice in the Old Testament ritual.  But the only alter, the only place of sacrifice Christ-followers should need, is the alter of daily decisions of our lives, where we offer God our energies and agendas, our choices and our lives, where we offer God our desires as “living sacrifice” (Romans 12:1).

Like my hope in finding something more in the Episcopal Church or the sacral adoration of nature, I have often sought a “sense of the sacred” rather than the face of God.  But on a positive note though, Leonard Sweet says, “Ritual is not the way, the truth, and life, but ritual is a reminder that there is a way, a truth, and a life. Rituals fix you in space and time. Change your rituals and you change your ‘fixings.’  Change your ‘fixings’ and you change your realities.”  These limits and directions can help us frame our activities; fix a center, orient ourselves. All places are not the same; just as all days aren’t the same. Setting them apart establishes differences that can help provide order to life.

Dan Fogelberg....

I was sad to hear news that Dan Fogelberg died today. He was a great singer/songwriter. I still play his songs whenever I pull out my own guitar.

Dan Fogelberg said, "My grandfather gave me my first guitar, an old acoustic with palm trees and dancing girls painted on it." He's also quoted as saying, "My dad was vehemently opposed to electric guitars. He did not look on that kind of music as legitimate in any way." But luckily he ignored his father's distaste for electric guitars, having said,"Strats are my favorite electric guitars, and I've got quite a collection."

I remember seeing Dan Fogelberg in concert once. I went with Erin, Bill and Jenene. Bill used to visit my college dorm room with his guitar. He was a much better guitar player than I ever was, but we used to have a lot of fun playing together.

I sang or played Dan Fogelberg's "Longer Than" at more weddings than I can remember.

Check out the youtube video of Dan Fogelberg playing "The Leader of the band."

....with singleness of purpose

Martin Luther dealt with the matter of simplicity in the most profoundly practical way in his book, The Freedom of a Christian. What he saw in acutely sharp focus was that the liberty of the gospel sets us free to serve our neighbor with singleness of purpose. If our salvation is by grace alone, we no longer need to keep juggling a myriad of religious duties to get right with God. We are free from constantly taking our own spiritual temperature. Our freedom from sin allows us to serve others. Before all our serving was for our benefit, a means to somehow get right with God. Only because the grace of God has been showered upon us are we enabled to give that same grace to others.

Luther expressed this thesis in his famous paradox, A Christian is a perfectly free lord of all subject to none. A Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant of all subject to all. Through the grace of God alone and not by any work of righteousness of our part, we come into the glorious liberty of the gospel. We are all lords and kings, and priests, as Luther put it. We are set free from the law of sin and death. But this freedom is not for our sake alone, it is also a freedom to serve others. Until we are righteous we cannot really do righteous deeds, no matter how hard we try. Luther said, "Good works do not make a good man, but a good man does good works. Evil works don't make a wicked man, but a wicked man does evil works." Lets illustrate this matter in a simple way. A poor artist may paint many pictures, but he will not paint any good pictures. An inferior contractor may build many homes, but he will not construct any good homes.

The person who is still bound to sin and enslaved to others is not free to truly love his neighbor. A moments reflection on our part confirms the truth of Luther's insight. If we are still in bondage to sin our serving will flow out of that center. We will not have the single eye that gives light to all we do. Pride and fear and manipulation will control our actions. We will not be free to serve our neighbor in simplicity if we are still in bondage to others serving will flow out of that center. We will be controlled by a desire to impress them or receive their help. Without gospel liberty we will forever measure who we are by the yardstick of others. We will not be free to serve our neighbor in simplicity. But once the grace of God has broken into our lives we are free. When we are free from the control of our neighbor, we are able to obey God. And as we obey God with a single heart we are given a new power and desire to serve our neighbor from whom we are now free. We have become servants of our neighbors and yet lords of all. We know simplicity of life. Luther concludes, "A Christian lives not in himself, but in Christ and his neighbor. Otherwise he is not a Christian."
(Excerpt from Richard Foster, Freedom of Simplicity)

....in all things and in all

I find you, Lord, in all things and in all

I find you, Lord, in all things and in all
my fellow creatures, pulsing with your life,
as a tiny seed you sleep in what is small
and in the vast you vastly yield yourself.

The wondrous game that power plays with Things
is to move in such submission through the world:
groping in roots and growing thick in trunks
and in treetops like a rising from the dead.

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926)
Born in Prague, Austria

This poem is from The Book of Hours 1905. Rilke is said to have written these poems and a book of thirteen connected short stories called, Tales of God “out of his experience of Russia and Nietzsche and Lou.” Rilke was greatly influenced by “Nietzsche’s Zarathustra, who had given a name to the yearning place that the young poet had already hollowed out in himself: the death of God. And Nietzsche had defined the task of art: God-making.” Lou Andreas-Salome was the woman who Nietzsche had fallen in love with and had proposed to at age eighteen. The story has it that her refusal led to Nietzsche’s derangement. At age thirty-four she took Rilke for a lover and had accompanied him to Russia on two trips. She later became an associate of Sigmund Freud. The poems are written through the persona of a Russian monk. Rilke later worked as a secretary in Paris for the sculptor Rodin.