The Harder Lesson

I thought I would share a communication that I had with a member.

He writes:

Eric, To whom is it harder to get THE LESSON across? Someone just hearing of God's love or someone that has turned their backs on their first love and Savior? I hesitated about sending you this note until today. My brother-in-law and sister will be with us on Sunday, the Lord willing. He was my roommate at Freed-Hardeman Jr. College and has been my best friend since the 7th grade. Somewhere along the line, he has given up on the Lord. Probably the most intelligent person I've known my whole life but simply doesn't believe anymore. We remain best friends but do not discuss God. I pray for you and your family constantly. Your work and words mean so much to us. We come home, feeling refreshed and ready to tackle another week from our drive to Columbia on Sunday mornings. Keep on keeping on. God bless.

I wrote:

God bless you for your words of encouragement. I praise God that you are fed and filled by your sacrificial drive to and from. You will never know what that means to me. But to answer your question I tend to believe it works on a case by case basis. There are those who have never known Christ that have had so many wounds that they can’t believe anyone especially God would love them while others who never knew Christ fall head over heels immediately upon the meeting. Now with those who have turned from Christ I tend to believe they turn not from God but their misconceptions about God. I think all of us have a tendency to create for ourselves a idea of God pieced together by fragments of scripture, pop cultural fallacy, ideas that come from our own experiences, etc. And that idea of God sometimes is vastly different than the God in the Bible ( It’s hard to even realize the fact that God is so much bigger than what we find in the Bible. He has only revealed that which humanity can understand of Him. But He is infinitely bigger than what our minds can conceive of. We can’t grasp that because we have a hard time understanding the little bit He has given us.) So it is quite natural to come up with grave misconceptions and when the mistaken God doesn’t function like the real God we tend to turn away. So some people begin seeing God for who He is vs. who they thought He was and fall head over heels immediately while others refuse to believe God could be anything other than what they can conceive of with their petty consciousness and get stuck. But what we do is pray harder than we have ever before and allow God to use us all to love your friend into deeper relationship and deeper truth. If it’s God’s will I look forward to meeting them and I pray God has His way with him this weekend.

Your Brother,
Eric

Point of Grace

My worst day as a Christian is better than the best day of the one who has yet to find Christ.

Talking About Him As If He Is Not In The Room

Has that ever happen to you? Your in a room with a bunch of people and they start talking about you but do not acknowledge that you are actually right there. You're listening; with the ability to chime in and maybe give greater depth to the conversation; because it's your life and experience that they are talking about. I hate those moments.

And I find that I do that all of the time to God. Because as I'm working on developing a sermon I'm researching about God, and pondering about God, and writing about God but at no point regularly do I acknowledge His presence in the room. Last week was different though. Armed with this new profound awareness of His presence I began to write my sermon as if a dialogue between me and my God in the room. The process became so much more intimate.

Then I started thinking, "Wow, what if I lived my life with God in the room!" Aware of His presence as I talk to my kids as I love my wife as I plan our future as I serve His church. Now a formerly distant impersonal God is surrounding me with His wisdom and insight and grace listening and giving greater depth to the conversation. Why? Because even with my family and my future it's His life and His experience that I'm dealing with.

Motivation to preach from Ecclesiates

Absurdity is the anguish of realizing that underneath the apparently logical pattern of a more or less “well organized” and rational life, there lies an abyss of irrationality, confusion, pointlessness, and indeed of apparent chaos. This is what immediately impresses itself upon the man who has renounced diversion. It cannot be otherwise; for in renouncing diversion, he renounces the seemingly harmless pleasure of building a tight, self-contained illusion about himself and his little world. He accepts the difficulty of facing the million things in his life which are incomprehensible instead of simply ignoring them. Incidentally it is only when the apparent absurdity of life is faced in all truth that faith really becomes possible. Otherwise, faith tends to be a kind of diversion, a spiritual amusement, in which one gathers up accepted, conventional formulas and arranges them in the approved mental patters, without bothering to investigate their meaning, or ask if they have any practical consequences in one’s life. --Thomas Merton

Yikes!

We have a habitual tendency to reduce the irreducible. Because we cannot rest in our identity as paint strokes in a larger canvas; threads in a much larger tapestry; because we have a hard time seeing that we are not the biggest thing around, we tend to reduce things to suit our twisted and self-centered perspective. We think love too small; the earth too local; God as petty. We need to create for ourselves the myth that we are indeed the right people to determine what is ultimately the right thing for our lives. So we spend an inordinate amount of time reducing thing in our mind to bit size chunks that suit us. Case in point: the resurrection of Christ. If it is reduced to a nice story that may or may not happen we can look at it romantically. If we look at it as a historic event relegated to the past then we can look at it authoritatively. But if we see it as it truly is as something larger than the universe itself; something wild and untamed; something primal; something that simultaneously merges the earthly with the divine in the most miraculous of ways then we would have to change almost everything about ourselves. We would have to celebrate that resurrection daily by living a resurrected life. Yikes!

I Guess I Better Read the Manual

We just purchased a really effective tool for the church. It's called PhoneTree. Anytime I need to make an announcement to the whole church I get on the computer, record one message, and the computer calls all the church members and leaves that message on their answering machines. It can do a lot of things (text message, send emails, take my message and translate it into different languages). But it is more than likely I will not be able to do the majority of those things because I REFUSE TO READ THE MANUAL!!!! It ain't gonna happen. I'm a guy, I'm too busy, I'm just not feelin' it. I got it to call everyone to let them know to sign up for the potluck last Sunday and that's good enough for me. I think that's the way we are with our kingdom hearts. At the point of belief and baptism we receive a kingdom heart. While under the waters of baptism God performs spiritual surgery and gives us a kingdom heart. A heart that desires to do God's will; that desires to love sacrificially; that desires to change the world for the better! And that heart can do so much. But we refuse to read the manual! If we could only see the Bible as the manual for the kingdom heart. To see how it works; what it can do; how it can be expanded; what environment the kingdom heart must exist in to function well. I think we (and I include myself in this) live far below the potential of our kingdom hearts. We manage our day, we sin a little less than we did upon the start of our walk with Christ, we make it to church regularly, we pray sometimes, we read our Bibles periodically. And that's good enough? When the kingdom heart can exact change in our family and our world? Man, I guess I better read the manual.

They Might Not Notice!

It's true! I didn't mention race or ethnicity for about 2 years of my preaching ministry for fear that the predominantly white congregation that I minister to might notice that I was black! And the thinking was literally this: If I don't mention it they might not notice. As if that would work. And as crazy as that sounds we do it all the time with the sin in our lives. If I don't say anything they might not notice. As if people, if they took the time to look, could not see the signs and markings of sin in a persons life. I mean I'm not a sin monitoring machine and I certainly don't go around looking intently in order to spot the signs of sin in people's lives. But it isn't all that hard to spot. Inconsistency in speech and action, distance and distraction, an inability to be authentic; its all there if you look for it. But you don't have to even do that because we all fall short and that "all" stacks the deck in favor of everyone having some sort of sin in their lives. So it can't be hidden. And instead of confronting the sin head on we, "just won't speak of it". But scripture counter intuitively says speak of it, say it, confess it, own it. For only then can you eradicate it. Confession is a launching pad for redemption and forgiveness. I've become more authentic in front of people now that I speak of race and heritage and culture. And I think the same can be said of sins, shortcomings, and struggles. Get real with it. Find someone, not a bunch of people, but someone who is a safe place and let that stuff go! If the story stays inside of you it controls you but once released you control it. You have contained it in language. God has something to work with when you are authentic and available. Confession places you on the Potter's wheel.

Being, Becoming, and Heavy Stuff I'm Trying to Figure Out

One of the truths of spiritual formation is this: We all have a desire to be as well as to become. Keith Anderson in a lecture on the topic shared that we want self definition and self transcendence. And we move from this place of being to the place of becoming. We have a longing to be transformed. This is why the motif of pilgrimage or journey is seen throughout the Bible and in books that attempt to embody our faith. We have a deep longing to define our identity and to determine our destiny. As Christians it is important to own our identity as the beloved of God. We have to embrace the fact that we are the children of God. We have to take hold of the fact that we are followers of Christ. This is the essential step that must proceeds action. We can't determine how to act, how to proceed toward becoming until we truly embrace our being. If we don't, we end up doing seemingly good things and sometimes end up with wrong results; because the action did not proceed from the right place of being. But once we own the being God determined for us; that identity becomes the launching pad for action. And conversely the more we act from that God determined place the act itself solidifies our identity as the beloved follower of Christ. The being determines the action and the action further defines the being.

You Prepare a Table Before Me in the Presence of My Enemies

I can't tell you how struck I was by the thought that I saw it all wrong. I now see the 5th verse of the 23rd Psalm totally different! You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. The thought that this verse is not so much about me gaining the upper hand on my enemies by God blessing me before them. As a disciple of Christ I can't imagine as I sit at Jesus' feet he would actually say, "I will bless you in front of all of your foes so you can feel good and they can feel bad." No!!!! Now keep in mind God does favor those who have committed their lives to Him. He will use our divine favor to convict others of sin and convince them of His grace. But more and more I don't believe that is the point of the verse in the 23rd Psalm. After dealing with years and years of conflict resolution and forgiveness and reconciliation work with church members and husbands and wives I see this verse totally different. Could it be this verse is about God getting all of us together in table fellowship. Where as in ancient times the host offers peace and renewed relationship with those at his table. God does the same for us. Shepherding us; leading us to His table. Where we are forgiven and find our way back into right relationship with Him. Where we then have an opportunity to offer peace to our enemies at that same table. We forgive them because God has forgiven us. My prayer: Peace please give way to peace.

The Roots of Faith Grow Deep in Dark Valleys

I shared this thought yesterday in service. And while I hate it, it is certainly true. The roots of faith do grow deep in dark valleys. After church Kathy told me that the reason they grow deep in the valley is because that's where all of the "fertilizer" is. She was so right. Unfortunately it seems as if we need our hands forced to have faith in God. And the fertilizer of life pushes us to grow. For when it pills up we come to grips that it is too much for us to deal with alone. Which provides us an opportunity to turn to God.