On love and trust

We trust someone because we love them. We do not try to trust someone so that we can love them.  It would not be very loving or trusting to do it that way.  Trust has to be risky by its very nature.  There must be some sort of leap involved or there is not real trust.  You do not trust someone because you study that person.  You trust someone BECAUSE you love them.  If you are only studying and looking for proof you are not actually trusting at all. I actually trust God BECAUSE I love him.  If I only trusted of God what was proven, I would not have trusted at all.  I do not trust SO THAT I will love God.  My love for God drives me to trust him.

Sure, I wrestle and fight with that trust all the time.  There are times in my life when that trust is tested, but I remember, then, how much I love my Father.  When I remember how much I love my Father, I can remember if I really loved I would trust Him.

I may cry out to God in hurt, pain, and misunderstanding as long as I ultimately cry out, "Abba, I give you my spirit;" as long as I can say, "Thank you" even if through clenched teeth.

Hate the church

You do not hate the churchbecause this is what church is... and you actually like us a whole lot

What you hate is that and I actually hate that too.

Belated Gratitude

* journal entry on Thanksgiving Eve The morning before Thanksgiving, and I am not as grateful as I really should be. I really honor and respect those who remind themselves to make lists of things they are thankful for throughout the year and not just during one week of November each year (if that). I am not so inclined, and I really need to be.

I am thankful to have a job at all these days. Though it is a ministry job at a respectful church who is completely debt free and has all finances in the black via budge and salary cut backs, at least they have never had to cut jobs all together. I am grateful and thankful.

I have a healthy daughter and a healthy one on the way. With so many friends close to me having experienced miscarriages and even more painful loss, it hardly seems right to complain that we were not exactly "ready" for this second child-to-be. I am thankful and grateful.

I am thankful for my wife and our marriage continuing and fighting against any societal norm. Nearly every day in ministry there is reference to another church marriage coming to an end or on the rocks near an end. Conversations reveal one or both are simply unwilling to humble themselves and grow up to be adults willing to do the hard work of maintaining a loving marriage. My wife has stood by me when I have been numbed out of emotion and affection. She has not given up or walked away. We both love one another by learning to love more and better and more humbly. I am thankful for her and our marriage.

I am thankful for God's grace and mercy on me. Though my heart and soul are distant more often than not, I am always brought back to his grace and love. Though my natural heart resists the pure and holy spirit of God and pursues the lies a true enemy would want my heart to be convinced of, my cries to God have been heard. He remains close and near. I cannot help but be thankful for these things.

There is far more to be thankful for in my life, and my heart would do well to actively remember those things far more often than I do.

Temptation ain't that bad

There is no shame in temptation.  That is, there should not be any shame in temptation.  We too often allow shame to strike us when we are tempted.  When we find ourselves being tempted, we will often tear ourselves down for having been tempted.  Something within us believes we should not be tempted.  I am not sure why I believe that though.  I am not sure why I forgot that even Jesus was tempted.  There is no shame in being tempted. We need to quit understanding temptation as sin.  We would do our spirit a favor by RE-understanding temptation as a choice; as an opportunity for choice.  Ultimately, temptation presents us with a choice that needs to be made each time.  We have wrongly convinced ourselves that temptation is an opportunity to sin, but we don't realize that it is just as much an opportunity for righteousness.  Temptation is a reality of life daily and even moment by moment.  Temptation always comes with a choice.  We have to begin understanding temptation as an opportunity for a choice, and temptation is an equal-opportunity choice; you may choose sin...but you may also choose righteousness.

Novocaine

When you have dental work done on one tooth, you will usually want the novocaine.  The dentist gives you the shot to numb the area around the tooth.  But its never the one tooth, is it?  That tooth and the area surrounding it is often numbed with the one pinpointed shot.  That is the way novocaine works.  You try to dull the pain of one tooth, and in so doing, dull the feeling of the entire surrounding area. How interesting that pain is pain and numb is numb! When something happens to cause us emotional pain, we do what we can to get rid of the pain.  We don't want to hurt; to feel pain.  So we numb it out with whatever we can.  For some, its with drugs and alcohol; for others its with relationships or sex.  For me its often with denial or indifference; I can escape the pain by simply not feeling it or ignoring it.  I numb the feeling of the pain that situation brings.

But like novocaine, its never just the pain that gets numbed.  A lot of times, its not just "pain" in general that gets numbed.  Like novocaine, I pinpoint my pain, numb it, and find out that it inadvertently numbs the surrounding areas as well.  I find in my attempt to numb the PAIN of a situation, I can end up numbing other emotions.  I become incapable of FEELING much of anything. 

When you numb one thing in your life so you don't have to feel, that emotional novocaine is going to affect more than the problem.  Numb is numb! Even though I purposefully numb the pain, I also end up numbing, simply, the ability to FEEL.  Numb is numb!  Now you cannot feel joy, affection, love, anger, sadness, and other emotions in the surrounding area.

We have to feel!!!!  Even the pain!!  Pain motivates us to change something, and if we only numb the pain, we do not change; and we numb other emotions in the process.

Deeper things of wounds

We are all wounded people, and all those wounds left alone to infect will hinder our ability to know God more intimately.  They hinder our ability to relate well.  For this reason it is with each wound healed that the voice of God grows that much clearer.  That is my ultimate goal; for the voice of God to grow clearer and clearer to me each day.  I hear God's voice in my soul clearer than I did a year ago, a month ago, yesterday because I have gone into myself with God's guidance and "Unchangeable Light". That has not been easy, and is often met with some fear and some hurt, but the Unchangeable Light goes with me into the darkened and FORGOTTEN recesses of my inner self to shed some of that light upon the wounds which have affected my ability to hear the voice of God more clearly and thus to relate to Him.

But as light is shed on a wound, I am faced with a choice.  Will I continue to anesthetize it, numbing it, forgetting about it and thus hindering my ability to know God a bit more clearly?

OR...

Will I FEEL the pain so I can realize what is wrong and then go about the fearful and sometimes painful process of mending so that I may hear the voice of God a bit more clearly and know him more intimately?

You HAD logs?

Check this out!  Next time you read Matthew 7:1-6 about "Judging Others" look at this.  Verse 5 has been grabbing my attention the last couple days. We always read about the plank and the speck as telling us not to judge people.  This is true, but I am not too sure we have read verse 5 for all it's worth.

"You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye."

This says something very influential to me.  This is saying more than just "Don't judge people!  Cuz you ain't perfect!"  But that is what we have always read this to mean.

There is more!  The whole thing is Jesus' challenge to work on your own 'ish SO THAT you may be able to see your brother's speck, his 'ish, more clearly.

This is not telling us to leave our brother's alone because "Hey, you ain't perfect."  The direct challenge is to remove your own plank so you may see clearly to remove your brother's speck.

This means I have to realize what my plank is.  My plank could be a sin I am struggling with, but it may also be an issue I have; a wound, a hurt, an issue to be healed or repaired.  Once I do the work of finding healing or repair for the ish in my life, I become able to see more clearly the people around me.  I become capable of compassion because now I can see them more clearly.  I can actually help remove their speck; walk along in their wounds, and hurt, and 'ish.  But I can only do that if I have removed the plank that hinders my ability to truly see.

Christians commonly do whatever they can to "help" others because if I'm helping someone else with their 'ish I don't have to pay any attention to my own.

We call this 'compassion' or 'benevolence' or various other Christian terms, but if I am not or have not done the work to pursue healing and repair for my own 'ish, its really just what we call ENABLING......or even......wait for it..... CO-DEPENDANT.

Never trust a Christian who...

A quote I read a few days ago by Alan Chambers says, "Never trust a pastor who does not walk with a limp."  The quote was fantastic.  His point was that pastors should be the first to share their vulnerabilities and transparency.  I agree with that statement, but I would further the challenge to say, "Never trust a CHRISTIAN who does not walk with a limp." As we desire to reach out to the world and culture around us, we may do this when people truly know us.  Nobody wants to have a relationship with someone who seems perfect.  Look at the more "successful" ministries and churches in our country.  They are commonly those who foster an environment of openness, honesty, vulnerability and struggle.

Though I agree this has to be modeled from the top down, the challenge still remains for the other members of our communities.  As we desire to go out and reach the world and culture around us, there has to be a certain honesty and vulnerability.  That openness is what draws people into a relationship.

Never trust a CHRISTIAN who walks without a limp.

Intimate quotes of connection

"So then, let us not be like others, who are asleep, but let us be ALERT, and self-controlled." -1 Thessalonians 5:6 "Why are you sleeping? Get up and pray..." -Luke 22:46

"The basic human problem is that all men are bored." - Kierkegaard

"When we MEDITATE, our eyes are taken off ourselves...our eyes are FIXED on Jesus." - Brennan Manning

"The one sign of discipleship is INTIMATE CONNECTION with Him, a knowledge OF [not 'about'] Jesus Christ which nothing can shake." - Ozzie Chambers

Jesus is wrecking everything

Ozzie Chambers writes, "Have you ever heard the Master say a  hard word?  If you have not, I question whether you have heard Him say anything." I am reminded today of how destructive and abrasive the words of Jesus should be to our lives.  Most of Jesus' words and commands should be wrecking our lives.  We are to obey a drastic call to be counter-cultural.

We in America are rich young rulers (Luke 18), and we are being called to many things that are going to be very hard for us to obey.  They are difficult because these are not things we are used to and comfortable with.  Many of the pursuits...MOST of the pursuits of our culture are not as Jesus has called us to live.  Jesus intends to wreck our lives...as they are.

Most of the time, I am a rich young ruler, and I walk away sorrowful because I cannot bring myself to fully follow Jesus.  Jesus never comes running after me begging and pleading.  Another day my desire will bring me back to Jesus; he will challenge me to something that will require a sacrifice on my part, and I will be faced with a difficult decision as to whether or not to do it.

Some days I follow Jesus; other days I walk away from Him and His command on my life with my head hung low because, once again, I am unable (unwilling) to fully obey and follow.

Jesus has not quite wrecked my life, but He's always trying.

Be Here Now

I came across this last week thanks to my friend, Malisa. It is worth your next 5 minutes. I assure you. Just stop...and check it out. [vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/15715921 w=400&h=225]

BE HERE NOW from blaine hogan on Vimeo.