In the current state of national and international affairs the gift of faith will be required now, more than ever, if we are to correctly see and interpret the times in which we live.
The unbelieving culture of Jesus’ day was much like the culture of our day. They were angry and upset. Into this disturbed culture Jesus said, “Look beneath the surface so you can judge correctly.” (John 7:24)
God is always at work beneath the surface of visible cultural malaise preparing to do those things that are infinitely more wonderful than we could ever hope or imagine. These wonderful things are what our eyes of faith will see if we choose to look beneath the surface of what is obvious to see correctly the works of God that are taking place.
Monday, May 18, 2015
Sunday, May 17, 2015
Getting Simple
I love the scriptures. I trust them. The purpose of scripture is to reveal Jesus - the One who is the Word Himself. He was the Word before scripture was penned into existence. He was there before the beginning of everything and He will remain after everything is finished. As you read the words of Jesus in the Gospels - the words written in red - you are reading words spoken by the Word Himself. All other scripture takes a supporting role to the words spoken by Jesus. Jesus said, “You search the scriptures because you think they give you eternal life. But the scriptures point to Me!” (John 5:39)
I wonder how Paul would respond if he and Jesus were in a room today surrounded by church leaders? Would Paul give more importance to what he wrote or to the words spoken by Jesus? Without diminishing the profound nature of the Spirit-inspired scripture written by Paul and other disciples, I am confident the filter for truth would be Jesus, not the words written by any follower of Jesus, Paul included.
As you attempt to define your faith or find your way through a tumultuous political season, your primary source document for life and cultural interaction are the words of Jesus. As you step into this new season put your Bible reading program on hold and go back to the words in red spoken by the Word Himself. Park your heart and mind in the Gospels. Allow the beautiful simplicity of Jesus’ words to rearrange all aspects of your life. His words will be like a breath of fresh air that blows through your mind removing all the religious cobwebs left behind by an overly-complicated life of faith.
I wonder how Paul would respond if he and Jesus were in a room today surrounded by church leaders? Would Paul give more importance to what he wrote or to the words spoken by Jesus? Without diminishing the profound nature of the Spirit-inspired scripture written by Paul and other disciples, I am confident the filter for truth would be Jesus, not the words written by any follower of Jesus, Paul included.
As you attempt to define your faith or find your way through a tumultuous political season, your primary source document for life and cultural interaction are the words of Jesus. As you step into this new season put your Bible reading program on hold and go back to the words in red spoken by the Word Himself. Park your heart and mind in the Gospels. Allow the beautiful simplicity of Jesus’ words to rearrange all aspects of your life. His words will be like a breath of fresh air that blows through your mind removing all the religious cobwebs left behind by an overly-complicated life of faith.
Tuesday, May 12, 2015
Shaking The High Places
News Feed
Nepal has been hit by two devastating earthquakes. On April 25 a 7.8
earthquake struck and was soon followed by a 7.3 magnitude quake on May
12. These earthquakes have left thousands dead and injured. Heroic
rescue efforts are underway as I write these words. My daughter, Anna,
just returned from Nepal so this tragedy is hitting close to home. The
world is rushing to Nepal and the surrounding nations to bring aid and
mercy.
National Geographic said these two earthquakes were so strong they likely caused permanent changes in the surface structure of the earth. Early reports indicate these earthquakes may also have changed the altitude of Mount Everest - the highest place on earth. Preliminary data provided by European scientists from the analysis of satellite data indicate Everest has experienced a slight decrease in altitude. The city of Katmandu shifted as much as nine feet from its previous position. Because of these two events maps and topographical renderings will need to be redrawn.
National Geographic said these two earthquakes were so strong they likely caused permanent changes in the surface structure of the earth. Early reports indicate these earthquakes may also have changed the altitude of Mount Everest - the highest place on earth. Preliminary data provided by European scientists from the analysis of satellite data indicate Everest has experienced a slight decrease in altitude. The city of Katmandu shifted as much as nine feet from its previous position. Because of these two events maps and topographical renderings will need to be redrawn.
Natural disasters can reveal some disturbing views of God and human
tragedy. My personal understanding of God and His heart is that He is
not the author of tragedy. He loves people. His love motivated Him to
put Jesus on the Cross as our substitute. On the Cross God judged our
sin once and for all. This was a full and complete judgment in order
to provide for us a full and complete salvation. The final judgment of
God will be take place in eternity before His throne. Between the Cross
and eternity God is not in the business of judging anyone and neither
should those who bear His name. In the meantime, a fragile and groaning
earth will provide enough upheaval of it’s own until it is one day
returned to it’s original design. When a natural disaster like the one
in Nepal takes place it is too easy for some to label the tragedy as
“an act of God” giving God a cruel and undeserved label.
I wrote the previous paragraphs to lay the groundwork to share the following: As I read the incident reports detailing the Nepal earthquakes and the information regarding altitude changes to Mount Everest, I heard the Lord say, “As the natural world is shaking, I am about to shake the high places of government and culture. What seemed high and immovable will now yield to My will. I will bring down what seems out of reach and I will raise up what has been forgotten. Watch the high places of position and power. This shaking will be a sign of a coming move of My Spirit upon the earth. I am about to shake the high places. Watch the high places.”
I wrote the previous paragraphs to lay the groundwork to share the following: As I read the incident reports detailing the Nepal earthquakes and the information regarding altitude changes to Mount Everest, I heard the Lord say, “As the natural world is shaking, I am about to shake the high places of government and culture. What seemed high and immovable will now yield to My will. I will bring down what seems out of reach and I will raise up what has been forgotten. Watch the high places of position and power. This shaking will be a sign of a coming move of My Spirit upon the earth. I am about to shake the high places. Watch the high places.”
Monday, May 11, 2015
The Building Pressure of Promise
Some of you are feeling a tremendous amount of internal pressure. This pressure is not the result of a build up of personal frustration or the challenges you face in an unstable culture. Something else is taking place. It would be easy to misinterpret the real reason for the pressure. This pressure has come because the promises of God are being stored up in your life and ready for release. In the Spirit your life resembles a large and powerful hydroelectric dam put in place to capture the energy potential of a large river. God is allowing the capacity of these promises to reach a critical point of pressure before release.
The enemy of your soul wants you to run away from this building pressure because it feels uncomfortable and unusual. God wants you to wait and trust Him. These feelings of pressure are not to be your focus in the waiting. This will not last forever. Release is coming. In the waiting turn around and look downstream. This release will transform the spiritual terrain and relationships that are waiting for you in your future.
The One who faithfully made these promises is to be your focus, not the pressure or even the promises themselves. That focus will be your place of peace in this season of building spiritual pressure.
The enemy of your soul wants you to run away from this building pressure because it feels uncomfortable and unusual. God wants you to wait and trust Him. These feelings of pressure are not to be your focus in the waiting. This will not last forever. Release is coming. In the waiting turn around and look downstream. This release will transform the spiritual terrain and relationships that are waiting for you in your future.
The One who faithfully made these promises is to be your focus, not the pressure or even the promises themselves. That focus will be your place of peace in this season of building spiritual pressure.
Friday, May 8, 2015
More Than A Proverbs 31 Woman
This morning, I read Proverbs 31. Mother’s Day is approaching. I have the significant women in my life on my mind - my wife, Jan and my daughter, Anna. Years ago, Jan and I had a conversation where I asked her how she wanted to live her life and express her gifts and talents. I have supported that decision for the last 35 years as we have lived that definition together.
Recently, I told my single daughter how proud I was of her to have not let the cultural models of Christian womanhood dictate how she would live her life. Both of these significant and unique women express the freedom of a choice they made with God’s leading and permission. They are both beautiful and dangerous. They are beautiful because they are being uniquely defined by God and they are dangerous because they both have broken the molds of what it means to be a woman of faith.
As I read Proverbs 31 - a text that has been promoted as the pinnacle of Christian womanhood - I am bit uncomfortable. If I were a woman, apart from the wonderful character qualities expressed in this chapter, I am not sure I would want to follow that model. I would be somewhat confused about my role as a woman of faith especially having read the New Testament where women traveled with Jesus, ministered alongside Paul as spiritual equals and did all the same things the men did who followed the Spirit’s leading. My confusion would be further affirmed when I read Paul words to the Galatians, “There is not longer Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male and female. For you are all one in Christ Jesus.”
While the image of the Proverbs 31 woman is admirable, it also sounds like a prison, of sorts. Again, not the beautiful character traits of this woman, but the one-size-fits-all model it promotes. I write this as a man, not as a woman. So please bear with me as I process these thoughts from the opposite gender. So much changed after the Cross. Serving each other has never gone out of style, nor did giving permission for some women to faithfully serve their husbands and families just like the woman in Proverbs 31 who accomplished all her daily tasks so her husband could sit at the city gates and be well-respected.
Proverbs 31 is not the only model of life for women. It is not transferable to every woman. In our family I am the one who rose before dawn this morning to cook Jan her breakfast so she could do some of the things that express her calling in ways beyond a limited definition of an Old Covenant model of womanhood.
With Mother’s Day approaching maybe the greatest gift we could give a woman on this special day, whether single or married - with children or not - would be to ask them how they would like to live their lives and then wrap that decision as a gift and give it to them.
Recently, I told my single daughter how proud I was of her to have not let the cultural models of Christian womanhood dictate how she would live her life. Both of these significant and unique women express the freedom of a choice they made with God’s leading and permission. They are both beautiful and dangerous. They are beautiful because they are being uniquely defined by God and they are dangerous because they both have broken the molds of what it means to be a woman of faith.
As I read Proverbs 31 - a text that has been promoted as the pinnacle of Christian womanhood - I am bit uncomfortable. If I were a woman, apart from the wonderful character qualities expressed in this chapter, I am not sure I would want to follow that model. I would be somewhat confused about my role as a woman of faith especially having read the New Testament where women traveled with Jesus, ministered alongside Paul as spiritual equals and did all the same things the men did who followed the Spirit’s leading. My confusion would be further affirmed when I read Paul words to the Galatians, “There is not longer Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male and female. For you are all one in Christ Jesus.”
While the image of the Proverbs 31 woman is admirable, it also sounds like a prison, of sorts. Again, not the beautiful character traits of this woman, but the one-size-fits-all model it promotes. I write this as a man, not as a woman. So please bear with me as I process these thoughts from the opposite gender. So much changed after the Cross. Serving each other has never gone out of style, nor did giving permission for some women to faithfully serve their husbands and families just like the woman in Proverbs 31 who accomplished all her daily tasks so her husband could sit at the city gates and be well-respected.
Proverbs 31 is not the only model of life for women. It is not transferable to every woman. In our family I am the one who rose before dawn this morning to cook Jan her breakfast so she could do some of the things that express her calling in ways beyond a limited definition of an Old Covenant model of womanhood.
With Mother’s Day approaching maybe the greatest gift we could give a woman on this special day, whether single or married - with children or not - would be to ask them how they would like to live their lives and then wrap that decision as a gift and give it to them.
Monday, May 4, 2015
A Published Life
When I wrote my first book, Prayers From The
Throne of God, Dr. Jack Hayford honored me by writing the foreword.
During a phone conversation with Pastor Jack, I mentioned I was worried
about the book having grammatical mistakes. Jack said, "All books have
mistakes. Just publish it!" All of a sudden the weight I carried as a
new author fell from my shoulders as I received the words of a wise man.
This applies so much to how we choose to live our lives. Some of the best advice I could ever give a person would be - Just live it! You will make mistakes, but don't let the fear of a mistake hold you back from what God has asked you to do. A lot of life goes unpublished because we live with the illusion that what we do for God will be without mistakes. This is not true. After my first book was published there were several mistakes found after the proof readers had signed it off as ready for publication. The same thing just happened with book number five. Such is the essence of living. Just live it and give the mistakes to God.
This applies so much to how we choose to live our lives. Some of the best advice I could ever give a person would be - Just live it! You will make mistakes, but don't let the fear of a mistake hold you back from what God has asked you to do. A lot of life goes unpublished because we live with the illusion that what we do for God will be without mistakes. This is not true. After my first book was published there were several mistakes found after the proof readers had signed it off as ready for publication. The same thing just happened with book number five. Such is the essence of living. Just live it and give the mistakes to God.
Sunday, May 3, 2015
The Way Forward
I am more and more convinced the way forward for the Church in the coming season will not be discovered by traveling a known course predicted and planned by our logic and reasoning. The way forward will be discovered within the wind of the Spirit.
Near our home in Jacksonville, Oregon is one of the premier paragliding launch points in United States called Woodrat Mountain. Paragliders fly a cloth wing suspended by cord lines that resembles a high-tech parachute. As I drive through the Applegate Valley, I always glance up toward Woodrat Mountain looking for a paraglider in flight.
This sport has developed a niche group within it’s ranks called vol bivouac. Vol bivouac is fly-camping. These pilots pack minimal camping gear and launch into flight not knowing where they will eventually land. They take an expedition to an unknown camping spot where they will land at the end of the day waking the next morning to do the same thing all over again. Some of these pilots travel hundreds of miles over the course of a week. Only a handful of vol bivouac pilots exist worldwide.
The goal of these pilots is to seek out and enter a rising a thermal of air to capture the upward lift it produces gaining enough altitude to then glide forward in their journey until they discover another thermal. This process of catching rising air thermals and gliding forward is the engine of this form of travel. At the end of the day they try to land at the highest point of altitude. This high place will put them in the best position to launch the next day.
This is such a powerful illustration of how the Church needs to travel into the next season of our history. We have some adjustments to make in how we live or we may end up creating an expression of the Church that resembles a large airliner where we sit in a noisy aluminum enclosure for hours droning along established routes of travel to predetermined destinations. We need to return, and in some cases reinvent, how we interact with God and His Spirit.
The way forward for the Church will not be discovered by flying established routes of religious flight. Our way forward will resemble a vol bivouac pilot. To do this we must rethink how we fly.
I learned some valuable lessons from these fly-camping paragliders.
They Fly Simply
A paragliding traveler packs minimally. Ounces, not pounds, determine what they carry. It is time to offload much of what we think we need as believers and get really simple once again - like the first disciples who walked with Jesus without carrying a lot of excess religious baggage. We carry God’s presence. That is our bottomline. God’s presence within us contains all we will need for the journey. Anything else is just added weight.
They Fly Without Defined Map Lines
While these pilots carry topographical maps they only use them to determine what kind of terrain they are flying through. The rising air thermals dictate their direction. This kind of flight is not planned with straight lines drawn on a map. Many of our religious straight lines are drawn over known pathways or the way we have done things in the past. We have become good at repeating the predictable. God is wanting to launch us into unpredictable spiritual airspace where we can rediscover what it means to live, trust and move in the Spirit.
They Value Altitude Over Distance
A paraglider must gain altitude in order to achieve distance. They search out rising air thermals and once discovered, they stay within the columns of rising air to gain every foot of altitude possible before moving forward. We need to rediscover how to linger in the presence of the Spirit. This is where we will gain spiritual altitude and this is where we are finally able to stop living with the self-imposed requirement that we always have to be moving forward along a straight map line as the ultimate measure of our success.
This ability to linger in God’s presence will be critical if we are going to rise above the cultural terrain we are facing in this new and unexplored leg of our journey. To experience the freedom this kind of flight offers requires that we step off a precipice of predictability and begin to soar within the unpredictable thermals of God’s presence.
http://video.nationalgeographic.com/video/short-film-showcase/these-guys-paraglide-to-their-campsites?utm_source=Facebook&utm_medium=Social&utm_content=link_fb20150502video-paraglidevod&utm_campaign=Content&sf8893541=1
Near our home in Jacksonville, Oregon is one of the premier paragliding launch points in United States called Woodrat Mountain. Paragliders fly a cloth wing suspended by cord lines that resembles a high-tech parachute. As I drive through the Applegate Valley, I always glance up toward Woodrat Mountain looking for a paraglider in flight.
This sport has developed a niche group within it’s ranks called vol bivouac. Vol bivouac is fly-camping. These pilots pack minimal camping gear and launch into flight not knowing where they will eventually land. They take an expedition to an unknown camping spot where they will land at the end of the day waking the next morning to do the same thing all over again. Some of these pilots travel hundreds of miles over the course of a week. Only a handful of vol bivouac pilots exist worldwide.
The goal of these pilots is to seek out and enter a rising a thermal of air to capture the upward lift it produces gaining enough altitude to then glide forward in their journey until they discover another thermal. This process of catching rising air thermals and gliding forward is the engine of this form of travel. At the end of the day they try to land at the highest point of altitude. This high place will put them in the best position to launch the next day.
This is such a powerful illustration of how the Church needs to travel into the next season of our history. We have some adjustments to make in how we live or we may end up creating an expression of the Church that resembles a large airliner where we sit in a noisy aluminum enclosure for hours droning along established routes of travel to predetermined destinations. We need to return, and in some cases reinvent, how we interact with God and His Spirit.
The way forward for the Church will not be discovered by flying established routes of religious flight. Our way forward will resemble a vol bivouac pilot. To do this we must rethink how we fly.
I learned some valuable lessons from these fly-camping paragliders.
They Fly Simply
A paragliding traveler packs minimally. Ounces, not pounds, determine what they carry. It is time to offload much of what we think we need as believers and get really simple once again - like the first disciples who walked with Jesus without carrying a lot of excess religious baggage. We carry God’s presence. That is our bottomline. God’s presence within us contains all we will need for the journey. Anything else is just added weight.
They Fly Without Defined Map Lines
While these pilots carry topographical maps they only use them to determine what kind of terrain they are flying through. The rising air thermals dictate their direction. This kind of flight is not planned with straight lines drawn on a map. Many of our religious straight lines are drawn over known pathways or the way we have done things in the past. We have become good at repeating the predictable. God is wanting to launch us into unpredictable spiritual airspace where we can rediscover what it means to live, trust and move in the Spirit.
They Value Altitude Over Distance
A paraglider must gain altitude in order to achieve distance. They search out rising air thermals and once discovered, they stay within the columns of rising air to gain every foot of altitude possible before moving forward. We need to rediscover how to linger in the presence of the Spirit. This is where we will gain spiritual altitude and this is where we are finally able to stop living with the self-imposed requirement that we always have to be moving forward along a straight map line as the ultimate measure of our success.
This ability to linger in God’s presence will be critical if we are going to rise above the cultural terrain we are facing in this new and unexplored leg of our journey. To experience the freedom this kind of flight offers requires that we step off a precipice of predictability and begin to soar within the unpredictable thermals of God’s presence.
http://video.nationalgeographic.com/video/short-film-showcase/these-guys-paraglide-to-their-campsites?utm_source=Facebook&utm_medium=Social&utm_content=link_fb20150502video-paraglidevod&utm_campaign=Content&sf8893541=1
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