Be the light

How many times have you gone to church and heard that we need to spread the light.  Growing up we even funded an organization called Speed the Light.  They gave out awards at our youth conventions for the groups that gave the most to speed the light.  Our church never won because our youth group was much smaller than some of the others in the competition.  I always thought they should judge on a dollar per attendee basis.  We might have stood a chance then.

Now growing up, I go to church and I hear in prayer meetings people asking God for revival.  We ask him to send his light to shine in the darkness.  People are sincere in their cries.  Some even pray with strong emotions.  I have heard all the emotions in these prayer meetings.  People cry, people yell, I have even heard people begin to demand that God do something.  I find this response funniest of all.

Have you ever read something hundreds of times and then all of a sudden it smacks you right in the face.  You see something that you swear wasn’t there before.  You look back and realize that you had read this over and over and somehow missed the most amazing fact in the line.  This happened to me once while reading Isaiah 58, its a great chapter on what God sees as a true fast.  Something new hit me one day when I got to verse 8.

“Then your light will break forth like the dawn, and your healing will quickly appear….” Isaiah 58:8 NIV

Wait a minute!  So we have been praying for God to send light in the darkness and its right here in Isaiah 58 how to get that to happen.  There is this passage where God says if you do this and that…….your light will break forth like the dawn!  He left us instructions on how to get the light to shine…..loose chains of injustice, untie the cords that bind, set the oppressed free, etc, etc….

Then it occurred to me that God was telling us that we should do these things.  We have been praying for Him to do it and God was saying that we should do it.  Its right there read the rest of Isaiah 58 and see for yourself.  ”if you do away with oppression” Then one of my personal favorites do away with….the pointing finger and malicious talk.  There is a whole list of if you do this and if you do that…..God says our light will shine.

Is it dark out?  I think so, maybe its because of us.  Maybe we are supposed to be the ones to flip the switch.  Maybe….and I know this might be extreme to some of us, but maybe we are supposed to do more than just pray for God to change things.  Maybe we are supposed to you know do something about the injustice.  Maybe we are supposed to feed the hungry.  Maybe we are supposed to free slaves.  I don’t know, maybe I’m crazy but thats what I read!

Blue Like Jazz

Hello, if you haven’t read Blue Like Jazz yet I recommend you do it pretty quick. The movie is coming out on April 13th. I am attending a screening tomorrow night and will have a review tomorrow for everyone interested. For now here is a link to the trailer. Watch it, share it, post it on Facebook and Twitter and whatever else you use! I really hope this movie is a success!

Celebrating Halloween All Year Long

So its almost Halloween and by now the annual debate is heating up.  The debate of course being, as a Christian, do I let my kids celebrate Halloween or not.  Growing up in the church I have heard the debates go back and forth.  I for one was allowed to dress up and go trick or treating, but I always felt guilty about it in Sunday school when I realized some of the other kids couldn’t go.

I have heard absurd off the wall arguments about how dressing up at Halloween is inviting the devil himself to possess your soul.  I have heard several more reasoned arguments against dressing up and playing make believe for a few hours as well.  Some of them I would even say were compelling.  But that is not what I wanted to write about today.

I wanted to write about something much more troubling to me.  For all of the talk about not dressing up for Halloween, we Christians sure like to throw on a mask whenever we walk through the doors of the church.  You would think the doors of the church held some mystical power that banished all evil from the life of a believer the moment they walked in the door.  Its as if we are transported to heaven where all troubles are gone and every tear has been wiped away.

Christians come into the church every week hurting.  Ask any of them how they are doing and your answer will probably be, “I’m alright.”  Sure you get variances like fine, good and ok.  Every once in a while, you will encounter someone who is super spiritual and they will go even further and say how  blessed they are.

Why do we have such a hard time being honest.  Before you think I am beating up on everybody for their lack of sincerity, let me say I am guilty of this as much if not more than anyone else.  I have gone to church arguing with my wife and kids in the car and gotten out of the car, slipped on the mask and told everyone I was fine.

I have gone into church depressed, angry, bitter, and at times barely clinging to my faith and the mask comes on.  There were times I was even “blessed.”  It seems ironic to me that so many Christians strongly oppose any form of dressing up on Halloween but they have no issues putting on the mask themselves.  In fact, its almost like we celebrate Halloween all year long.

I recently got done teaching a series in my youth group called, “I’m NOT Alright.”  I want to make sure that I am building a place where its alright to be not alright.  A place where we can get real with each other and deal with our hurts.  Galatians 6:2 teaches us to bear each other’s burdens.  We can only do this if we are willing to share our burdens.  The verse continues to tell us that if we do this, we will fulfill the law of Christ!

Did you get that, “Fulfill the law of Christ.”  That is what it says.  Go check it out, I will wait……….. SEE! If you want to do this, you have to be willing to open yourself up a bit.  Confess that you have weakness, confess that you have sinned….and still do, and be willing to accept other people even though they are as messed up as you and I are.

So this Halloween lets take off our masks and get real.  I am not alright and I am not ashamed to say it, because we all struggle .  I have bad days, I argue with my wife, sometimes I yell at my kids.  I get angry….and hold on to it even.  I have been bitter and have resented others.  I have struggled with jealousy, coveting, and even *gasp* lust.

Part of the inspiration of this post came from Sanctus Real’s song I’m Not Alright.  Check it out here  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5oY2oYKHFY

Please drop me a line and tell me what you think……unless you want to try and convince me about the whole devil possessing my soul for dressing up as Dick Tracy when I was in the 6th grade.  You can keep those thoughts to yourself.

As For Me

As For Me

So this is my first audio update to my blog.  There are more coming.  In this message you kind of miss the big ending.  I had one of the youth leaders from the church I was preaching in come to the stage.  I proceeded to fill her hands with raw eggs and eventually one fell.

You kind of get the gist of what happens from there.  The eggs pretty much all end up broken on the floor of the stage.  Well hope you like it.

 

Are You Working For The Devil?

I have an employer.  They have a job that needs done, I do it.  My employer has customers that expect certain activities to occur, activities that my employer is responsible to provide.  When I perform the work that my employer is responsible to provide, I am working for them.  I get a check for it and I show up Monday through Friday to get the job done. 

My employer fixes computer problems, that is what our customers want from us.  So that is how I spend my days, going from place to place fixing computers.  They call me a field technician.  Its a good description of what I do, I go into the field and fix computers.

In Revelation 12:10 the devil is given a title based on an action that he performs.  The Bible calls him the accuser of the brothers.  I think its implied that he accuses the sisters too for all you ladies reading this.  He must be really good at it because he has a lot of practice.  It says he does this day and night.

Lately I have noticed he seems to have taken out a classified ad for help.  It seems that a lot of people I have run into lately have taken up working for him.  They have picked up the slack, to make sure that all the brothers and sisters get accused.  It seems they are trying to keep him from falling behind on his accusation quota by lending their tongue to the cause.

Unfortunately what I have found is that even brothers and sisters have fallen into the trap of working for the devil.  In fact I have on occasion found myself working for him, doing the job that he does.  I want to quit!  I am not even giving my two weeks notice, I am just done!  Walking out.  I am sure I will be tempted to help him out on occasion but with God’s help I will resist that temptation.

I urge you as well, quit!  Don’t give him notice just quit.  Walk out right now and refuse to help him.  Refuse to be an accuser of your brothers and sisters.  I find it interesting that 1 Peter 4 tells us that love covers a multitude of sins.

I want to start working for love.  Instead of accusing my brothers and sisters I want to do the work of love.  I urge you to join me.  Begin covering eachothers failures.  Begin to love through the ugliness that is in all of our hearts!

Instead of working for the devil, I want to work for the God who is LOVE.

Grasshopper

"We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes....." Numbers 13:33

     Have you ever felt small?  I don’t mean like short, I mean like really small.  Have you ever looked at an obstacle that seemed so overwhelming that you actually felt small.  I am a big guy and I rarely have the occasion to feel small, in fact when some people stand next to me they get that “small” feeling. 

     One thing that always makes me feel small is when I walk in the waves of the ocean.  I realize how insignificant my strength is.  I realize that at any moment water could take me out.  Seriously, the stuff we flush our toilets with could knock me over and do with me whatever it pleased.   When I stand next to the ocean, feeling the strength of the waves as they crash on the shore I feel smaller.  I feel much less strong, far less in control of my world.

     I imagine that is how the Israelites must have felt staring at giants that were in the land God was sending them to.  I imagine that was the feeling behind the statement, “we seemed like grasshoppers.”  As they stood in the land that was to be their home and found it inhabited by giants, they felt very small, very insignificant, very out of control.

     How many times have you heard someone say get your eyes of your problem and put your eyes on God.  I imagine you have heard that plenty, in fact there are things in life that we hear so often that we forget how true they are.  I have a feeling this is one of them.

     So what if they were facing giants?  Weren’t these the same people who saw Egypt crushed under the hand of God?  Weren’t these the same people who were freed from slavery by God’s power?  Weren’t these the people who were pinned between the Red Sea and the Egyptian army?  Weren’t these the people who walked through the Red Sea on dry land and saw their enemies defeated without raising a sword against them?

     But there were giants!  Big ones!  Giant sized giants that made them feel like grasshoppers.  One version says we BECAME like grasshoppers.  Like one minute they were these rough and rugged explorers on a mission to seek out new life and new civilization…..wait that was Star Trek!  But they were explorers, they were men who had been selected as the best in their families to spy out the promised land.

     But they BECAME like grasshoppers in their own eyes.  They looked at their problem…..GIANTS……and compared it to themselves……..grasshoppers…….In Exodus 8 God used gnats and flies to bring a nation to its knees.  Gnats and flies.  Even the magicians of Egypt acknowledged that it was a work of God.  Those who were most powerful were forced into submission by a few bugs.

     The problem with the Israelites is the problem that many of us still have today.  We have forgotten what God can do with a few bugs!

So Easy A Caveman Could Do It

I love the caveman commercials.  They crack me up.  I hated the sitcom though.  That was a good idea that went terribly wrong.  I mean how many minutes can you do offended caveman jokes in a row and it still be funny?  The commercials are still funny cause they hit you in 30 or 60 second increments over massive periods of time, but for a half hour……forget about it.

I know what your thinking now, “Jeff, your blogs usually contain some sort of spiritual truth what is going on with all the talk about cavemen?”  I was actually just getting to that.

The other day I was watching one of the caveman commercials.  The tag line came on, “so easy a caveman could do it.” Cue the offended caveman rant and cut.  Then I thought about God and how easy it would be for Him to just do everything He allows us to participate in.  In fact, its so easy a donkey could do it.

“Then the Lord opened the donkey’s mouth, and she said to Baalam” – Numbers 22:28

Some people think its a high position to speak for the Lord.  God proved very early on in the narrative that it is so easy a donkey could do it.  This story always helps me to stay humble.  When I start to think about all the good things I do, I remember that it was God who actually did all the work.  I just did what He said to do.

When pride starts to rear its head, this story reminds me that God doesn’t need me.  In the beginning, before creation, God’s words alone were enough to create our universe.  He simply spoke things into existence.  He didn’t need help then, He still doesn’t today.  I am so glad that He chooses to allow His children to participate in the story of redemption.