SEPTEMBER 13 AND 14 2004

WHERE TO BEGIN? GOD DESIGNS THE JOURNEY.

I have so many thoughts swirling around in my head. A few weeks ago Dean invited Shawna to share her story of Dan’s death with the Spring. It was a challenging night for me. I guess the purpose of the evening was to make people begin to think about the “what if’s” and if we would still follow and pursue after God if life ended up not going exactly as we want it to. It was suggested that God may not ever be enough for us apart from His gifts. Not that God isn’t enough but that in our humanity we could never be completely satisfied with Him, alone, this side of eternity. I believe that we all have one (or several things) that if they touched or affected our lives we would be almost incapable of continuing to follow God. For example, losing a spouse, or financial security, or health, may be too great of a burden and leave us with too many unanswered questions to be ok with the tension of the “I don’t knowâ€? and “God is still worth it.â€? For each person it is different. Everyone has their “one thing”. This blows my mind because I have always been taught to believe that if I am a good Christian than God will come into my life and fill all of the pain and brokenness of who I am. He is capable of doing so but, am I capable as this limited being to think it’s enough? I am beginning to believe that we are not intended to attain that fully. And that the point of this life is the journey with Him through our brokenness that He longs for us to have. Is it God’s hope that we would actually just want to know Him (I mean really know Him, not just about Him) and continue trying to get to know Him for as long as we are on this planet? In the end, we will experience complete union but I believe for now it’s all about the journey. I believe this is backed up all throughout scripture. For as much as great men of God—Abraham, Moses, Job, David, etc.—loved God, they did so very imperfectly. They still longed for and depended upon earthly things along side their relationship with Him.

IT’S LOVING JESUS OR ELSE DON’T WASTE YOUR TIME.

God is not an idol, a philosophy, or a means to fill a void. You can always just replace one religious philosophy for another. An acknowledgment of God or embracing of his “waysâ€? so you can live a more fruitful life is still NOT even close!!! It’s more, more, more … a simple, pure, love for Jesus. We find ourselves laughing off what we find is impossible and in turn we just limit what God can do in our lives. He dreams such high, open, wild, and free dreams for us. Can we handle it?

UNTIDY TENSIONS.

I met a man over the weekend who I believe came to the end of himself from a traumatic experience he recently faced. He is no longer comfortable with some of those unknowns and now wonders about God being God. Although it is uncomfortable, sometimes we have to be ok with the “I don’t knows” in life. Crappy things happen and God is still God. Why did Dan die? To say anything beyond “I don’t know” becomes trite and insensitive. We don’t always have to have a quick or neat and tidy answer for everything. Let God be God!! We have to somehow find comfort in the tension of the “I don’t knowâ€? and TRUST that God’s understanding of things is impossible for us to understand as limited human beings. So this man, Spencer, couldn’t continue to follow God without rewriting God’s truth so that he could package his pain into a neat and tidy package. It was tragic and made me tremble about my own desire for “balance” and not tension. Following Jesus is all about tension. Truth is uncomfortable. The gospel collides with culture.

TOUCHING A REAL GOD THROUGH REAL COMMUNITY.

I also believe we were created to live in community. If Jesus is the exact representation of God and came to do all that he saw the Father doing, then what He longs for is our time and a relationship with us. He built his entire public ministry on relationship with twelve men and even more specifically three. He is inviting us into a partnership, moving people towards the Father. And when He left He promised to send someone else, the Holy Spirit—again, stressing relationship and fellowship. Even in the garden he said it wasn’t good for man to be alone. It was just Adam and God (what could be better than that) but he created Eve. I think God wants us to experience Him THROUGH the relationships we have with people. For example, my relationship with my husband is supposed to be the greatest human expression of the relationship God wants to have with me. God tells us that. Makes more sense now. Why does God hate divorce? Maybe because it breaks apart the love relationship that he longs to have with us through his people. He is jealous for us. Kinda cool. He wants us as a pure bride for one husband … us and Him. To know God is to know Jesus—know his thoughts, what he sounds like, feels like, how he interacts with his people. He said if you’ve seen Me you’ve see the Father. That was offensive to religious people because it implied a relentless pursuit to know God personally, not through religious programs or rituals. That seemed unholy or irreverent to this powerful, terrifying God that they came to understand. But, Jesus said, NO, He is a friend, a Father, someone who longs to just get our attention. So, why has church become so offensive? Maybe because we have gotten it all wrong. What is church? It’s supposed to be people not structure. The early church lived in community with each other. They ate together, sang together, helped each other out financially, took care of each other’s kids, helped the poor, and (bottom line) they loved people. They lived inclusive lives not exclusive. They were real with each other. I am all for real. I am SO NOT perfect and I never want to be put on a pedestal.

HONESTY AND ADULTRY.

Ok, more husband stuff. I have been facing my brokenness lately and thinking about who I honestly really am. One of those honest admissions is about sometimes entertaining adulterous thoughts (you know, the general, hit you out of the blue, weird thoughts). Shocking?! Perhaps. But, instead of pushing them down and ignoring where they might be coming from, I have wrestled through them with God knowing He accepts me and wants to wrestle through them with me. I’m learning to think all the way through a feeling, not just be carried away by it. I think about what my life would be like with someone else. I think about how my life would look and feel different. This is a scary process, but I believe it is necessary. We are selfish people and I can see why people get divorced. In fact, I am amazed that anyone stays married. We are all vulnerable and can so easily fall. It’s quite common to end up very far away from even our best intentions. We are weak broken people. We live a tension of who we are and who we could be. But, again it’s the journey through our brokenness that I am after. I have talked to Dean about it and he has been transparent with me about having the same kind of thoughts. Sounds weird, but we are human and we need to be honest with each other and speak to each other so that truth is revealed. To keep these thoughts to myself allows me to live in the lies that the enemy whispers in my ears. It’s odd but going through all of this has made me appreciate Dean even more. I come and just have to be with him. Our love is deep, sex is awesome, his touch is healing, our conversations are irreplaceable. I feel God when we are together!
Relationship!

MEDIA TOUCHES SOMETHING REAL.

As humans we long for honesty. That’s why movies, music, and art are so powerful because many times they express that longing or desire in a very primal, real, and powerful way. These creative things speak to us at the very center of who we are. And God speaks through creativity. He speaks everywhere. Everything is connected. For me, I realize I need to journal my thoughts so that I can piece together all that God is speaking to me. If we are created in his image than we all live in this tension to get to the bottom of truth. We want to know the truth. We must know the truth. We long to connect to people like the gang on Friends, or Seinfeld. We’re dying to find out who’s getting cut from Survivor or Big Brother. We connect to people to feel alive. Maybe TV shows are so powerful because they find parallels in our lives. All of us long for truth and honesty and many of us settle for it in lesser things like religion, money, fame or status (to name a few). But, soon, we grow dissatisfied with those things too because they aren’t ultimate truth. Music has been speaking to me personally lately. I recently got a CD player for my car and I have been buying all kinds of CDs. I am in what I am calling “a Creed phase” at the moment. I went out and bought all of their albums…(kinda too little too late since they just broke up over the summer.) But, anyway, with all that I have been processing the lyrics were really speaking to where I was at. I did some research on the band (because I am addicted to the internet) and discovered many sites where young kids were pouring out in honest ways why this band meant so much to them. Many Kids (and I mean many) said they reconsidered suicide and found hope in Scott Stapp’s lyrics. Wow the power of music! This guy is just working out his spiritual journey through his music and people are being affected. Reminds me of Jason.

YOU CAN’T FAKE REAL.

Here is a real problem facing the “church” today. We have spent way too much time trying to get stuff done without getting dirty. We don’t engage people where they are at and help them in their brokenness. We don’t invite them to journey with us to explore and experience God. I came to this conclusion: as christians we have either directly or subliminally been taught that if we don’t have everything in our life looking perfect then somehow that reflects bad on God. But our life ISN’T PERFECT. So we fake it. He doesn’t need us to defend Him. He is doing just fine on His own. As leaders, Dean and I wrestle to be honest. We are afraid that if we show our sin then we will be rejected. But, I swear to you here and now, I will continue to strive to be more and more real and honest everyday. I have surround myself around real people who wear their hearts on their sleeves and who challenge me and I challenge them to be honest. I see a lot of teens who’ve grown up in conventional church walking away from God. It is truly a pattern and a problem that can’t be ignored any longer. I imagine that most of what these kids see are parents doing religious or moral things out of duty or obligation. They are consumed with unimportant things and the kids say, “no thanks.” They see hypocrisy! And kids are probably the best bullshit detectors around. They say to themselves at some point, “I can do all that you parents are doing … and without having to deal with the baggage of all that God stuff.” We need to empower kids with our passions. Speak enthusiasm into their lives. When you shed blood for your core values then people will know you believe. You can’t just join a church. You have to be excited about the adventure, and invite them to come along on the journey. Jesus said the Kingdom is upon you. How is it that we can bury something so big in our programs? There is an intense longing for something real.

TENSION.

God affects humanity by changing people. God is always about new things. The church is supposed to always be moving. It’s a revolution that never ends. We are called to move with the Spirit of God, not get comfy. Tension! I don’t think we are meant to find “world peace” this side of eternity. It sounds beautiful and I know that we all long for it because that is a part of what heaven is. No amount of positive thinking will bring about world peace. That is not for here. I would prefer to say we need personal peace and that everyone in the world should have it. It’s not negativity that I am proclaiming or that somehow we shouldn’t have hope!!! It is more about the state that we find ourselves in as human beings. Wars will always be fought because we don’t want to give up control. This reminds me … I saw this great movie Monday night called Hero. It is the most beautiful moving expression of art in film that I have seen to date. It is the story of one emperor’s vision to unite a nation. Yet, to do so, he must war violently, powerfully and kill many people. His vision results in the birth of China which means “Our Land.” God spoke to me through that movie. His voice is limitless.