"It cannot be overemphasized that where the cross of Jesus is not exalted and proclaimed as the central act in all of history and in our own redemption, the church is not present." Mark Driscoll, from the book Vintage Church

"So be very careful to love the LORD your God." Joshua 23:11

"Not that we are competent in ourselves to claim anything for ourselves, but our competence comes from God." 2 Corinthians 3:5

"We do not dare to classify or compare ourselves with some who commend themselves. When they measure themselves by themselves and compare themselves with themselves, they are not wise." 2 Corinthians 10:12

"Salvation does not come from knowing the truth of Jesus Christ but from intimately knowing Christ himself." John MacArthur

"Living becomes an awesome business when you realize that you spend every moment of your life in the sight and company of an omniscient, omnipresent Creator."--J.I. Packer, Knowing God

What does biblical literacy look like? Have we lost our passion to be biblically literate? Why? Stay tuned, Dear Reader!

"Let love be without pretense..." Romans 12:9 (JB)

Risking Much, Part III

Dear Reader, I have been meaning to finish this series of posts for a while. I would love to get some feedback about these last three posts when you get the chance.

Okay, so we've talked about the paradigm of confession. We still need to discuss the place of community of confession. What i love about the place of community here is that we have been empowered with an authority to forgive sins. John writes, “And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, "Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you withhold forgiveness from any, it is withheld." As a community of believers, we have been empowered by the Holy Spirit to aid our brothers and sisters in Christ in releasing them from the shackles of sin! (20:23) In I Peter 2:9, we learn that we are, "a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.” I think Dietrich Bonhoeffer sums it up best when he says, “A man who confesses his sins in the presence of a brother knows he is no longer alone with himself; he experiences the presence of God in the reality of the other person. As long as I am by myself in the confession of my sins everything remains in the dark, but in the presence of a brother the sin has to be brought into the light.”

What are the necessary elements for confession? The first is examination. We need to begin by asking God to shine light on those things that are not pleasing. Psalm 139:23, 24 gets us on the right path. “Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! And see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.” However, when we ask God to do this, get ready for things to hit you that you may or not want to recall. The second element is sorry. This is the way of taking confession seriously. Jesus told us in Matthew 5:4, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.” Yet, this sorrow should not consume us. God declared in Jeremiah 31:13, “Then maidens will dance and be glad, young men and old as well. I will turn their mourning into gladness; I will give them comfort and joy instead of sorrow.” We must also have a determination to avoid sin. As I John 1:9 says, “If we confess our sin, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”

We finally see that the paradigm of confession and the part community plays in confessions leads us to a plan for repentance. Confessing to another allows light to shine on the sin. It also helps to forge a plan for repentance—to turn away from the sin.
To whom do we confess? Who is qualified? We have to ask God to lead us to someone who is spiritually mature. We must also ask to be led to one who possesses wisdom and common sense. We also need someone who is compassionate. We also have to confess to a person who has a good sense of humor and is not given to gossip.

The discipline of confession brings us to the end of pretense. As we saw here in Nehemiah, the children of Israel desired to end pretense. God calls us, as believers, to be a community of both saints and sinners so that the church can confess its frailties, its humanity. May God burn a desire in each of us to experience the life-giving power of forgiveness and grace.

Risking Much, Part II

Dear Reader, I know that the posts are out of sequence, but the latest post was actually part one of this post. It was long, so I thought I'd break it up into two.

Ultimately, one needs to gain a proper understanding of confession. Dallas Willard says that confession, "Is both a grace and a discipline." What he means is that it is a grace because confession is founded in the cross. Without the gift of God's grace, we have nothing here. Yet, it is also a discipline because as we work out our salvation (Philippians 2:12), we see that we need to practice the discipline of confession to grow in a deeper relationship with God. Proverbs 23:12 states, "Whoever conceals his transgressions will not prosper; but he who confesses and forsakes them will obtain mercy.” (ESV) Additionally, confession is both and individual and corporate discipline (see 1 Timothy 2:12 and James 5:16).

As we learn and grow in our understanding of confession, we learn the place of community in confession. As you know, I like reading Dietrich Bonhoeffer. In his beautiful treatise on community called Life Together, Bonhoeffer helps us to understand this role. He states, “He who is alone with his sin is utterly alone. It may be that Christians, notwithstanding corporate worship, common prayer, and all their fellowship in service, may still be left to their loneliness. The final break-through to fellowship does not occur, because, though they have fellowship with one another as believers and as devout people, they do not have fellowship as the undevout, as sinners. The pious fellowship permits no one to be a sinner. So everyone must conceal his sin from himself and from the fellowship. We dare not be sinners. Many Christians are unthinkably horrified when a real sinner is suddenly discovered among the righteous. So we remain alone with our sin, living in lies and hypocrisy. The fact is that we are sinners!” This fact can be horrifying to most if we are not intentional in our pursuit of God and loving each other as he commanded (Mark 12:29-31). Brennan Manning puts it this way, "God loves you are and not as you should be." 3) As we mature in Christ and learn to intentionally love each other, we learn that, just as God wants you, so we should learn to love another the same way. Confession helps to strengthen community because we learn to remove the veils from our faces.

Dear Reader, I must leave you with these thoughts. Hopefully this pacifies your need to know what's happening. As Numbers 6:24-26 says, "The LORD bless you and keep you; the LORD make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you;the LORD turn his face toward you and give you peace."

Blog update: I wanted to see if this worked. Will post more soon.

Risking Much, Part I

At my church, we have been studying the book of Nehemiah together on Sunday mornings. Reader, you will recall that Nehemiah was a cupbearer to Artaxerxes I, the king of Persia. Nehemiah then goes to Jerusalem to inspect the broken down walls. The purpose of the book is to record the return of the Jewish exiles from Babylon and rebuilding of the walls around Jerusalem. Most had grown up in captivity, most did not understand what it meant to be Jewish. They matured in a culture of mixed marriages, which led to mixed beliefs. This led to a strong possibility of being assimilated out of existence. However, we see Nehemiah taking a strong stance to safeguard the Jews. Yet, we need to realize that this was not only a cultural problem—it was a spiritual problem, too. Nehemiah understood this and took action. In chapters one through seven, Nehemiah centers on the building of the wall. You will see that chapters eight, nine, and ten deal with returning to the traits that identify the people spiritually. These marks were confession, community, and repentance.

For those who belong to God, these qualities must be evident. Yet, these qualities require us, as believers, to engage in risky behavior--to open ourselves up to the possibilities of ridicule, shame, and scorn from our peers. Yet, if we do not risk much, we will not be able to see the rewards that are associated with the risk. This life that God promised us as believers will never be easy. That is a given. Yet, he does desire for us to have an abundant life. However, the believer who does not engage in the actions of confession, community, and repentance, will find that their lives are left wanting and empty.

Buy His Record!

Probably not the best video, but this guy, Nathan Lee, is the real deal.

Quick Update

I have some thoughts that I want to post, but I am still processing through some of them. Great things are happening at church. I also went to Chicago for the Fourth of July, and I hope to get back there soon.

Hopefully, I can get something posted soon, dear Reader. In the mean time, continue to pray for me to love God and others intentionally and without condition.

Catching Up

Wow! If there are any readers, I apologize for not blogging in a while. Things are moving in some different, yet positive ways in life. The month of June has been particularly illuminating.

To start, I was challenged by some friends at the beginning of the month to get involved in God's word on a more intentional basis. I began Psalm 119. It has always fascinated me. As I studied through the Psalm, I picked up a book I had purchased a few years back entitled, Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Meditation on Psalms. The passage I read in Bonhoeffer's book was Psalm 119:17-24. Here are the verses:

Do good to your servant, and I will live;
I will obey your word.
¹⁸ Open my eyes that I may see
wonderful things in your law.
¹⁹ I am a stranger on earth;
do not hide your commands from me.
²⁰ My soul is consumed with longing
for your laws at all times.
²¹ You rebuke the arrogant, who are cursed
and who stray from your commands.
²² Remove from me scorn and contempt,
for I keep your statutes.
²³ Though rulers sit together and slander me,
your servant will meditate on your decrees.
²⁴ Your statutes are my delight;
they are my counselors.

Bonhoeffer's commentary on verse 19 struck me with both humility and confidence. It stated, "No word is said here about our true home. I know that this earth cannot be it and know that the earth is God's and that I am, even while on this earth, not only a stranger, but God's pilgrim and alien (Psalm 39:12). But, because on earth I am nothing as a stranger, without rights, without support, without security, because God himself has made me weak and poor, therefore he has given me for my goal a pledge, unfailing: his Word. This one certainty he will not take away from me. This Word will hold me to him and will let me feel his power. When the Word is familiar and close to me, I can find my way in a strange land, my justice in injustice; my security in uncertainty; my strength in work; my patience in suffering. 'Do not hide your commands from me.' That is the prayer of the pilgrim in a strange land."

There is still that emptiness in my heart because I do not depend on God's word, and, ultimately, God Himself like the Psalmist. However, I continue to be motivated to draw nearer to Him and know him well enough to have that face-to-face, eye-to-eye relationship that God desires (see Psalm 32:8). The journey is rough, but, as Jimmy Dugan said in "A League of Their Own, "It's supposed to be hard! If it wasn't hard, everyone would do it. The hard... is what makes it great!" Like baseball, this journey is never easy. And, while the effort may seem fruitless, it is joy to know that the pursuit is not in vein.

Today, as I have prepared for a church retreat this weekend, I ran into a great quote. It is from a Relevant Magazine article for the July issue. The quote stated, "Christianity is a robust culture in which anything can be asked and everything can be said. The call to worship is a call to complete candor and radical questioning." Wow! Yet, that complete candor and complete questioning calls me, as always, to lay in a raw, unedited state before the God of the universe.

There is so much more, but I don't want to bore you, dear Reader. Until next time....

Remembrance

Today marks the 41st anniversary of Senator Robert Kennedy's assassination.  Robert Francis Kennedy was shot on June 5, 1968 at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, California shortly after claiming victory in that state's crucial Democratic primary. He died in the early hours of June 6, 1968 at the age of 42 years old.

Here is a speech to the City Club of Cleveland, Ohio he gave on April 5, 1968 (http://www.rfkmemorial.org/lifevision/onthemindlessmenaceofviolence/):

This is a time of shame and sorrow. It is not a day for politics. I have saved this one opportunity, my only event of today, to speak briefly to you about the mindless menace of violence in America which again stains our land and every one of our lives.

It is not the concern of any one race. The victims of the violence are black and white, rich and poor, young and old, famous and unknown. They are, most important of all, human beings whom other human beings loved and needed. No one - no matter where he lives or what he does - can be certain who will suffer from some senseless act of bloodshed. And yet it goes on and on and on in this country of ours.

Why? What has violence ever accomplished? What has it ever created? No martyr's cause has ever been stilled by an assassin's bullet.

No wrongs have ever been righted by riots and civil disorders. A sniper is only a coward, not a hero; and an uncontrolled, uncontrollable mob is only the voice of madness, not the voice of reason.

Whenever any American's life is taken by another American unnecessarily - whether it is done in the name of the law or in the defiance of the law, by one man or a gang, in cold blood or in passion, in an attack of violence or in response to violence - whenever we tear at the fabric of the life which another man has painfully and clumsily woven for himself and his children, the whole nation is degraded.

"Among free men," said Abraham Lincoln, "there can be no successful appeal from the ballot to the bullet; and those who take such appeal are sure to lose their cause and pay the costs."

Yet we seemingly tolerate a rising level of violence that ignores our common humanity and our claims to civilization alike. We calmly accept newspaper reports of civilian slaughter in far-off lands. We glorify killing on movie and television screens and call it entertainment. We make it easy for men of all shades of sanity to acquire whatever weapons and ammunition they desire.

Too often we honor swagger and bluster and wielders of force; too often we excuse those who are willing to build their own lives on the shattered dreams of others. Some Americans who preach non-violence abroad fail to practice it here at home. Some who accuse others of inciting riots have by their own conduct invited them.

Some look for scapegoats, others look for conspiracies, but this much is clear: violence breeds violence, repression brings retaliation, and only a cleansing of our whole society can remove this sickness from our soul.

For there is another kind of violence, slower but just as deadly destructive as the shot or the bomb in the night. This is the violence of institutions; indifference and inaction and slow decay. This is the violence that afflicts the poor, that poisons relations between men because their skin has different colors. This is the slow destruction of a child by hunger, and schools without books and homes without heat in the winter.

This is the breaking of a man's spirit by denying him the chance to stand as a father and as a man among other men. And this too afflicts us all.

I have not come here to propose a set of specific remedies nor is there a single set. For a broad and adequate outline we know what must be done. When you teach a man to hate and fear his brother, when you teach that he is a lesser man because of his color or his beliefs or the policies he pursues, when you teach that those who differ from you threaten your freedom or your job or your family, then you also learn to confront others not as fellow citizens but as enemies, to be met not with cooperation but with conquest; to be subjugated and mastered.

We learn, at the last, to look at our brothers as aliens, men with whom we share a city, but not a community; men bound to us in common dwelling, but not in common effort. We learn to share only a common fear, only a common desire to retreat from each other, only a common impulse to meet disagreement with force. For all this, there are no final answers.

Yet we know what we must do. It is to achieve true justice among our fellow citizens. The question is not what programs we should seek to enact. The question is whether we can find in our own midst and in our own hearts that leadership of humane purpose that will recognize the terrible truths of our existence.

We must admit the vanity of our false distinctions among men and learn to find our own advancement in the search for the advancement of others. We must admit in ourselves that our own children's future cannot be built on the misfortunes of others. We must recognize that this short life can neither be ennobled or enriched by hatred or revenge.

Our lives on this planet are too short and the work to be done too great to let this spirit flourish any longer in our land. Of course we cannot vanquish it with a program, nor with a resolution.

But we can perhaps remember, if only for a time, that those who live with us are our brothers, that they share with us the same short moment of life; that they seek, as do we, nothing but the chance to live out their lives in purpose and in happiness, winning what satisfaction and fulfillment they can.

Surely, this bond of common faith, this bond of common goal, can begin to teach us something. Surely, we can learn, at least, to look at those around us as fellow men, and surely we can begin to work a little harder to bind up the wounds among us and to become in our own hearts brothers and countrymen once again.

Chew on This

As I continue this journey, God raises different places along the way that I can call "Ebenezer".  Each of these spots give me great help.  The newest one is a book by Henri Nouwen called Spiritual Direction.   The book takes the writings of Nouwen and distills his thoughts on spiritual direction (obviously) and the life of the believer.  In the preface, Nouwen is quoted to say, "Without solitude, it is virtually impossible to live the spiritual life."  Yet, the thought is expanded and changed to describe what Nouwen learned later.  The statement reads, "Yet we cannot live our spiritual lives alone.  Although we need solitude to know God, we require a faith community to hold us accountable.  We need to learn how to listen to the word of God, ever present within our hearts.  We need disciplines of study and spiritual practice to discern the word of God in words of scripture.  We need a church or faith community that provides opportunities for worshiping and sharing, engaging in mutual correction and bearing of burdens, confessing faults, offering forgiveness, and celebrating life.  We also need guides:  spiritual friends, a spiritual director, or a spiritual accountability group that can function as a safe place to bear our souls." (italics added)

I think these are things that one needs to continually seek--both a personally intimate yet open relationship with the Father and others.  May God direct us all to those safe places where we can grow together, encouraging one another to love and good deeds and intimacy with Him.

Submission and Simplicity

I read this excerpt from A. W. Tozer's book, The Pursuit of God and I wanted to share it with you:

Father, I want to know thee, but my cowardly heart fears to give up its toys. I cannot part with them without inward bleeding, and I do not try to hide from Thee the terror of the parting. I come trembling, but I do come. Please root from my heart all those things which I have cherished so long and which have become a very part of my living self, so that Thou mayest enter and dwell there without a rival. Then shalt Thou make the place of Thy feet glorious. Then shall my heart have no need of the sun to shine in it, for Thyself wilt be the light of it, and there shall be no night there. In Jesus' name. Amen.

Waiting 101

A friend of mine, who blogs here, asked whether I was blogging more because the last time he looked at my blog, I discussed the sad state of the University of Oklahoma football program. While that was a year ago, and OU played much better in their last bowl game, I really didn't have much to discuss. Yet, here I am.

As I posted earlier, I've been enrolled in "Waiting 101" for a long time. It feels like I'll never graduate from this class. Yet, lately, I've learned to enjoy this process. I've been learning about this process of waiting is both passive and active.

I am also learning about the joy of obedience. I picked up a copy of Thomas Kelly's book Testament to Devotion. As I read it, I am consumed by an overwhelming sense of guilt for not being as obedient as I should. Yet, as Kelly encourages his readers to not be deterred from obedience. I am motivated to be tenacious in my obedience.

So, Reader, won't you pray with me as I journey in obedience?

Country Music, Lessons Learned, and What's Next

For those of you who know me, I am a fan of country music. I tend to find myself listening to "classic" artists like George Strait, George Jones, or Roger Miller. But, I also like more of the contemporary artists like Dierks Bentley and Brad Paisley. Lately, I have been listening to a new group called Lady Antebellum. One song I have particularly enjoyed has been "I Run to You", which is, consequently, their newest single. They will perform it on Conan O'Brien's show this week (now I feel like a groupie, so I'm going to get to the point). What does this all mean? How does a song help with lessons learned? I'm glad you asked, Reader. Stay with me, it will get clear, hopefully, soon.

I run my life,

Or is it running me, Run from my past

I run too fast, Or too slow it seems

Remember my last post where I talked about my trip to the monastery? I think I also said that I would blog more, and we all know that didn't happen. I apologize. Anyway, as I left there, I began to feel like I needed to move in a more "forward" direction. So, I began to ask God about career choices, church choices, and just choices in general. It landed me in a place of uncertainty. So, I got discouraged when I wasn't hearing "answers". As Hybels states in his book Too Busy Not to Pray, he discussed that God answers prayer in three distinct ways: Yes, No, and Grow. As I have sought counsel and reflected personally, I find myself in a great place of waiting. Waiting for a plethora of things. I love reading in John's letters when he calls the believers, "little children." I love it when Jesus address the little children and says that we need to become like little children in Matthew 18:3. Yet as a little child, I tend to get hurried and want to run ahead and lose sight of the guidance that God gives (see Psalm 32:8, 9).

So this course is one I've been enrolled in for a LONG time--Waiting 101. As the Psalmist wrote in Psalm 46:10, "Be still, and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth!" (ESV) I am currently learning that waiting, as a believer, is not a passive process. Those who I consider much wiser than I am have done a great job of being honest with me about what it means to wait, and they have encouraged me to not live with misdirected zeal, to not live always expecting God in the big things. Rather, I've been counseled to wait and listen, to desire intimacy with God and others.

This world keeps spinning faster,

Into a new disaster, so I run to you,

I run to you

And when it all starts coming undone

You’re the only one I run to

I run to you

So what's next? I don't know. By, I do know, that the longer I wait, the sweeter whatever "it" is will be is exactly what God desires and it will be in his time. I'm learning that it is better to close my mouth and listen rather than talk so much. And, in all things, as Matthew 6:33 says, "Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things will be added to you." (ESV)