24 hours

On Wednesday morning of last week… around 9:45am… I received a phone call from my pastor. He told me that he was being courted for a job opportunity for a part-time position as a Bible teacher as a local private school…and that he thought it would be the perfect job for me to pursue. Mind you…I already had a job and was making due with my, albeit crazy at times,  chuggin-right-along employment set-up. When something is possibly available…and possibly part-time (at best)… Well…you can see why I didn’t think too highly of this new opportunity. Nevertheless, it sounded like it could be promising, and there’s nothing wrong with applying…so…Hit the gas until the Holy Spirit hits the brakes.

I dare you

A few nights ago I was sitting outside just enjoying God. They sky was gorgeous… the clouds felt arranged. The moonlight was impressive and cozy. The sky was colored a deep, warm blue… Like laundry water. And it just so happend that beneath this inspiring sky I had a brave thought… I wanted God to intentionally intervene in my dreams. I wanted Him to specifically hold hostage my dreamwork, in the hopes of shedding some light and revelation on what our church staff could really take to heart in order to really feel refreshed at ouor labor in ministry. Part of me did this because I Love the people on my church staff and really wanted to bring a word of knowledge to them that would instill a sense of joy back into all our lives.

I also asked for this intervention because I Love experiencing  God in this way! When God meets me in such clear, strong and undeniable ways, it inspires such Bravery in me…After all, I have God’s word on the matter…and that does not fail. In those times I feel inclined to run through, if need be, all the world’s ridicule and recommendation against my following of God.

And so, God answered my petition. He invaded my dreams with a simple but strong vision…One that vividly made its way through me long after I pressed myself away from the pillow for the morning.

Everyone on our churchplant team has been going so hard, and so gung-ho on nearly everything we do, especially our Church, www.Remnantloves.me. He told me to let everyone (myself included) know the following…

saints, scholars and my heart

Every few days, Ireland embeds itself deep down in my daydreams.

Every few weeks, Ireland tosses around my senses, making me outrght in Love with a land I’ve yet to set foot on.

And every few months or so, Ireland arrests me with it’s sheer sense of Hope and Lore, something God wove deep into my heart for reasons still to be seen. Whatever the case, or whatever the wave of emotion, Ireland is wonderful, closer than any of us deserve, and calling out from treasured yarns of old.

Ode to Eire 

Domestic(ated) Disturbance

I often feel spiritual heartburn. I suppose this is much like the tension that wells up inside every man that harbors the Love of the Almighty God inside of him. It’s a tension that calls out from God’s own heart, reeling at the site of gifts wasted, and destinies left dormant. It feels like a constant back and forth between celestial citizenship and straddling the fallen world we call home. It has a matter-of-fact hostility to it…one that winds these these two unlikely bed-fellows tight, instigating what feels like all the commotion needed for a Civil War. 

Such wonderful disturbance sparred within my heart again recently, and I found God’s good anger teaching me to hate that which He hates. This lesson in righteous anger however did happen to go through me…which inevitably meant not all was going to go as planned (grin). I not only enticed a situation that has thrown people in jail for far less, but my heart also received a healthy doseage of God’s uncompromising fire…and minus the handcuffs, thankfully, I learned how to burn a bit more like He does.    

It all began as I was…

Crazy Love

If you haven’t read this book yet, trust me, it is worth the few days it would take you. It’s not long, since I know that somewhere in the midst of the negotiating lives we live, that is an instinctive question running through many a mind. It’s a quick read (170 pages).

 Chan has such a knack for making the Gospel so simple and attainable, but not any simpler than it needs to be. What you will feel in this book is your Love called out for what it truly is, or what you may find, for what it is not. You either Love Him (Christ) or you don’t, and many of us say we do. Christianity is more renowned for hypocrisy than for Christ’s life,death and resurrection. Somehow Christians flimsy, fingerpointing lives have drowned out the reason their story even exists…to share Christ’s story. This book, if taken to heart, shoves you right off of the comfortable fencepost that much of Christianity resides on or behind…comfort and compromise.

Some of the simplest phrases in here are the most sobering…

Stomping

This past Wedneday I attended a most God-thrilling conference up at Bethel Church in Redding, Ca. The conference was entitled Pastoring Kids in Revival. I had read and heard from others how God shows up at this church! God has given a special anointing to Bethel and his leaders there in that they impart healing miracles left and right, curing cancers and ailments just like much of Jesus’ ministry. They even have healing rooms that people travel to from all over, even internationally, to come and be healed by God in. 

What I did not anticipate so incredibly was the level of humilityand trust so many people up there have in their hearts for God. Those leading the children’s ministry get this half-nauseous, half-anger look every time someone talks about pastoring children in anything remotely resembling the tones of day-care! 

Bethel kids are treated with a very serious Love. Not the cute little, albeit unconditional Love we are used to seeing little kids get doted on with…but a serious Joy. They endear the children as though they were little Stargates, constantly and simply able to tap into God’s presence, power and playfulness. They view them as glimpses into God, which, given how complicated we make tapping into God’s presence in our lives and hearing from Him…they view them as little teachers.

I can’t begin to say how thankful I was to attend this conference and how equipped they sent us all on our way to do His bidding in our own appointed worlds.  One of those many things I took away from this conference circled around gathering others. Luke 10:2 tells us that,

The harvest is plentiful but the laborers are few.

Holy Swagger and Sweet 16

I feel remissed for having been absent again from my blog for over a month. I read other people´s blogs, and, often knowing a bit of the chaos and responsibility they are negotiating on their end, still find myself wishing they could find the time to at least sneak something, anything up for me to read.

So, since I know I myself have felt righteously and selfishly frustrated at not being able to read something more current than last month  on people´s blogs, I apologize for becoming what I hoped to avoid.

That said, God be praised in His working through Remnant Church! Yes, our little church plant out here did launch, as I mentioned in my last blog entry. Our first service saw over 100 people in attendance, 20+ kids, and, God Almighty…16 salvations! Praise God for 16 new vantages of Life from God´s window…Flung open high and wide!

I´ve heard so many stories

Remnant

I almost can´t believe it´s been over a month since I last blogged. Even in my recent, busy past of playing hopscotch across the country and negotiating pressing on with my Master´s degree in usually the opposite end of everywhere else I was needed…I still always managed to find time to spill on to paper.

Staying off the radar and being consumed like this reminds me of when I was back in High School. My closest friends would attest that there was this portion of my Senior year where I basically vanished. I didn´t abandon them and be that guy, but I did vanish from all those extra times I normally spent with all the people God had placed in my life.

As you can guess, the reason for the vanish was a girl. I found myself smitten with a cowgirl. This was something new and refreshing to me. She was genuinely fun to spend time with. And best of all, she was an escape from everything that was already convincingly uninspiring and fake about High School.

Much like the girl worth vanishing for, I have been found by a new Love…

Road-trip

It began by sneaking out  beneath an early morning  in backwater Kentucky. We were chased out of town by  their skies´ notorious peaches and blues that still managed to tatter a Winter-touched above… Kentucky´s up was only equalled by its below…a chilly land, ridden with a slue of surprisingly bright grays and browns. The Bible-belt´s bluegrass boy waved us on our way´til we vanished as far from them as they did from us…out of sight. 

Next came the politically charged sprawl of Illinois´landscape. Everywhere you could see, smokey swirls, both tidy and unruly, stretched their long necks into the sky, at the behest of the busy fires from within toasty homes. Broken, unfinished and survivingrang through the stories that hung in the air. A hodgepodge collection of half-finished, and half-destroyed brick buildings line the major streets of the town, testifying to a city that has planned to live for quite sometime now, but struggled little more than survive… The tale for so many. Grandiose Beautiful props its prowess up from within the crowd of weather-stained brick, as sporadically the cities broken sense of family is accentuated further as healthy church spires peer down at all the gang tagged, lost and hurt people´s pastimes below.    

As soon as you would start to really listen to Illinois´ story, St. Louis jumps out from behind

Fingerbitten and Joyful

I have been accused of being an over-thinker at times, but also praised for thinking through things so thoroughly. So, somewhere in the midst of all that I sometimes get caught up in the seriousness of life, which is both good and bad.

It´s Good because there simply are certain things, very important things, that demand our sincerity and our serious side…but it´s BAD because this world is fallen, and quite simply runs much to the beat of anything but God, making tragedy like clockwork…there is always gonna be something to cringe about, become serious for and not fight it with often times the most serious thing of all: laughter. I think a great place for someone to find themself is warring wonderfully in a way that you have a serious Joy about you. 

A great way to gain prespective on where you´re possibly at with your serious playful balance is the following question…I think a great question to ask someone is… who is Jesus? The way they answer will often tell you a lot about where they´re at, where they´ve been and more importantly, exactly what they think about the most intimate and important thing to them.

I for instance do not always picture Jesus braving the night and wading through the early mornings in Holy laughter with our God. Perfect example…I focus so much on how monumentous Jesus´task was. Good thing it His task was not appointed to me. He did not accomplish His feat because He engaged in Holy misdirection, or Divine distraction…He instead met in head on with a Spirit of Joy and a faithfulness to that Joy that I think would show our Jesus to have been snickering and grinning much more than we sometimes think Him to be…at least more than I do anyway.

And so, I submit to you a video that is exactly what this world needs more of…something to remind us  not to not take ourselves or our lives more serious than we often do.