Are you comfortable?

Change.

Does that word evoke a response from you? Do you like the response? Or did you cringe?

I have found that there are few things that get a response from people like discussing or proposing change. I think this is because it is in our human nature to try to get comfortable. A friend of mine so liked getting comfortable, and avoiding change, that he adopted a mantra for his way of life: "Get in a rut early."

While this may be human nature, I don't think it is the nature of God at all. And that may be one of the biggest things humanity holds against Him.

I've heard it said time and time again that God finds us where we are. That is, He doesn't require us to change and get our lives straightened out and to get all our junk cleaned up BEFORE He loves us and accepts us. No, He takes us as we are. Praise God for that!

The trouble comes in when we start to understand that He doesn't want to leave us where He found us. Se what Paul says:

So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! (2 Cor 5:16 - 17 NIV)

Perry Noble is the pastor of NewSpring Church in Anderson, SC. He has a good blog and recently posted "15 signs that you (or your church) lacks vision." Just looking at the first 4 items in Perry's list speak to the importance of change:

#15 - No one is ever challenged to radically rearrange their lives to be a part of what God is doing.

#14 - God hasn’t asked you to give something up.

#13 - Everyone in your church is perfect. (If you are truly reaching lost people then you will discover that ministry is messy.)

#12 - Nothing in regards to how you lead has changed in the past year.

You can easily take this list and move away from the church and apply it to our lives in general. What has changed in your life as a result of inviting God in? Have you given up anything or added something to your life?

I know that for me personally, this is a key part of my daily struggle. In my almost 38 years, I have found my self in rut after rut. Almost all of my own making. In my career developing software, I have often chased the goal of getting it 'just right' so that I don't have to change anything any more. In raising my kids I often get agitated because they won't do what I told them, how I told them.

For all my high ideals, I just want to get to a point of comfort where I don't have to expend much energy, physically or mentally, to enjoy my life. There are plenty of things in the world that make that hard to do. And the Lord also upsets these plans.

The Gospels are not passive in what they tell us. They are a call to action. Just like the disciples, we are called to "drop our nets" and follow. We are called to change things in our lives. Not in order to get comfortable in the world. Not in order to be accepted by a group of people. Not in order to "go along to get along."

We are called to change things in our lives because God is changing all of creation. Paul tells us about the beginning of this change:

All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men's sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. (2 Cor 5:18 - 19 NIV)

And John tells us where it is ultimately headed in Revelations:

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away (Revelations 21:1 NIV)

He who was seated on the throne said, "I am making everything new!" (Revelations 21:5 NIV)

So now what do you think of change? I'm still scared of it at times and I still find it hard to accept or affect sometimes. And I'm praying for strength and wisdom to follow through with the changes that God is asking of me.

If you feel so inclined, please pray too.

Catching Up...

Wow. I hadn't realized how long it had been since I last posted. Don't read anything into that regarding the post about the incredible experience at the Third Day concert. It was awesome and moving.

A lot of things have changed in the last 3 weeks.

I voluntarily changed jobs at the end of February. That might not sound like much. There are people changing jobs right now.

I know I'm not unique. I'm special, of course (just ask my Mom), but I'm not unique. The organization I was with was a company that I was apart of building from the ground up. I wasn't an owner, but I was the first paid employee of the company. There were 5 of us eight years ago. We didn't have a product yet and we didn't have paying customers. We had an idea, experience, brains, and sheer force of will.

I won't say that I was the driving force behind the companies success over the course of the past 8 years, but I was in there busting my tail and doing what it took. I was in the thick of things and really making a name for myself. The company had about 5 customers in the first 6 months and will have over 200,000 customers at the end of this year. This organization went from 5 associates to over 400, and is still growing.

I got to be pretty proud of myself based on the success of the company, the accolades it drew, the success path it was on, and knowing that I was there on the ground floor. What a great guy I was!

Then, my position began to slip. I was less influential. I wasn't involved in as many "important" things anymore. I felt like the old football hero who is too old to play anymore and everyone always smiles wistfully remembering bygone days. After some time spent obsessing about this, I came across something that Charles Swindoll wrote in his character study of Moses in Great Days with the Great Lives:

What are those resistant layers in our hearts, and how does He break through to that hidden part? First, He finds pride. And He uses the sandpaper of obscurity to remove it ever so gradually.

Then He finds us gripped by fear---dread of our past, anxiety over our present, and terror over what may lie ahead---and He uses the passing of time to remove that fear. We learn that things aren't out of hand at all; they're in His hand.

He next encounters the barrier of resentment---the tyranny of bitterness. He breaks down that layer with solitude. In the silence of His presence, we gain a fresh perspective, gradually release our cherished rights, and let go of the expectations that held us hostage.

Finally, He gets down to the basic habits of living, he penetrates our inner person, and there He brings discomfort and hardship to buff away that last layer of resistance. Why? So that He might renovate us at the very core of our being.

It was then that I realized that, even though the situation wasn't in my control, it was definitely in control. It was in God's control all along. I recognized that feeling of the "sandpaper of obscurity" and welcomed the "passing of time."

I'm working at a new place, still in Charleston thankfully. It has great potential. Not potential to be the next huge business success like Google, etc. But potential to help me see what God has planned for me and to get past the barriers within me and let Him loose in all parts of my life.

I once believed that I was defined by my job, my position, my company, and my success. I'm learning more and more that:

But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect. No, I worked harder than all of them—yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me. (1 Cor 15:10, NIV)

So I pray for the will of God to be revealed to me. I pray for his strength and wisdom to show me the right paths. And I pray that, in all I do, that God is glorified.

Things are looking up...

Love Song

By now you might have guessed that I'm a Third Day fan. On Thursday night, they opened their 2008 tour with a concert here at the North Charleston Performing Arts Center. I don't know how many people it holds, but it was full. (Update: here's what the band had to say about the Charleston show.)

Revive, a band from Australia that really deserves some US airplay, Decemberadio, and Sanctus Real all performed before the boys from Third Day came out and played. And it was a great show from all four bands. Aside from being a great rock concert, it was an amazing night of praise and worship for our Lord.

As an encore, Mac Powell and Mark Lee (of Third Day) came out, sat down on a couple of stools, and performed "Love Song" acoustic. If you have never heard this song, you should immediately go to where ever you get your music and find it.

As Mac sang the first two verses, I felt the Holy Spirit moving throughout the theater. The first verse goes like this:

I've heard it said that a man would climb a mountain
Just to be with the one he loves
How many times has he broken that promise
It has never been done.
I've never climbed the highest mountain
But I walked the hill of calvary

Just to be with you, I'd do anything
There's no price I would not pay
Just to be with you, I'd give anything
I would give my life away.

And when Mac hit the bridge, it was like Jesus was talking directly to my heart and telling me the most beautiful story about His love for me:

I know that you don't understand
the fullness of My love
How I died upon the cross for your sins
And I know that you don't realize
how much that I gave you
But I promise, I would do it all again.

Just to be with you, I've done everything
There's no price I did not pay
Just to be with you, I gave everything
Yes, I gave my life away.

It's been a while since I have been that close and that personal with Jesus. I hadn't realized how much until Thursday night.

I know that Mac and the fellas would say that they are simply the vessels for God to work with and wouldn't take any credit. And I want to thank them for allowing themselves to be used by the Lord like that. They have been given very special talents and are a blessing to us all.

God Bless you, Third Day. We'll keep you and the other bands in our prayers as you travel and perform across the country.

Is it Faith?

I was part of a lunch time Bible study on Wednesday at work. We were spending time in Mark 4:35 - 41, Jesus calms the storm. Every time I have a conversation around this passage, it seems something new is revealed to me. Today the conversation, in the end, came around to faith. This is an area, for my left-brained, logic-centered, engineering mind, has often befuddled me.

What I mean is that it is easy and hard, at the same time, to understand faith. In the room at the Bible study, 7 people had 7 different views on what it is, what it means, and how it works.

My take has been, for a while now, that you can't really have faith if it has never been tested. What I mean is that, if you haven't ever really been to the bottom where you can't do something your self and you have to rely on God, then how can you have put your faith in God.

I realized that I've got it all backwards.

What I had in my head was saying that true faith came after you trusted God and you saw Him come through. Basically, I was saying that when you are forced to trust God (because you really have no choice otherwise) and He PROVES that He will handle things, then you will have faith.

Well, if faith is "being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see" (Hebrews 11:1 NIV) then me saying that God has to prove something first is just all backwards. It would seem, instead, that true faith is the belief even without the test.

I'm not real sure where I got the initial concept of testing faith to make it real. But it had become dogma for me. I could talk about it, repeat it, even use the sound bite "Is it really faith if you've never tested it", without ever thinking about what I was really saying.

In effect, I had done what many people do today. I had tried to reduce something to a simple label or sound bite that was short and easy. Then I went on to replace the actual concept with the label. That is, for simplicity's sake, I paid more attention to this 'label' than I did to the thing that was labeled.

It turns out my theories and labels about faith are not important unless they keep me from God. C. S. Lewis says, by way of example, in Mere Christianity,

All sensible people know that if you are tired and hungry a meal will do you good. But the modern theory of nourishment - all about the vitamins and proteins - is a different thing. People ate their dinners and felt better long before the theory of vitamins was ever heard of: and if the theory of vitamins is some day abandoned they will go on eating their dinners just the same.

And that is the truth about my theories and labeling of faith. People have had faith in God, been saved, talked with Him, and had personal relationships with Christ without ever thinking about how faith works. They just know that it works.

This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. (Romans 3:22 - 24 NIV)

UPDATE: Professor David Opderbeck has a much more put together and well thought out discussion of this topic over at his site, Through a Glass Darkly. Please read his excellent writings.

Do you really want justice?

I was driving home from work the other day when the I heard a short clip from a fellow named Skip Heitzig. Unbeknownest to me, Skip is the Senior Pastor at Calvary of Albuquerque and has a daily radio show called The Connection. All I knew about Skip was that he sometimes was in short segments between songs on the local contemporary Christian music radio station I often listen to. I think these segments are called "Hot Spots."

Well the one that got my attention this day started out with Skip talking about the two relatives of Mercy:

Mercy has two relatives and you will find them in the Bible interacting with one another. Its first relative is Grace. The second relative is Justice.

Skip defines Justice as "getting what you deserve", Mercy as "not getting what you deserve", and Grace as "getting what you don't deserve." That's the kind of definition that I can get a hold of. It makes me think a lot about the concept of fairness.

He points out, "Mercy and Grace have nothing to do with fairness." And that turns out to be a good thing. Over the course of many years as an adult, I grew to dislike fairness. I once thought that if everything in life would be fair, then that would be a perfect world. Well, I grew older and, though some would probably disagree, I grew wiser. I realized that in this world corrupted by sin, that fairness only existed in two forms: Satan's devouring evil and God's judgement.

Satan, as Peter tells us, is after us all equally:

Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Resist him, standing firm in the faith, because you know that your brothers throughout the world are undergoing the same kind of sufferings. (1 Peter 5:8 - 9, NIV)

And we think of God as being fair in His judgements. But do we really want Him to be? I mean, if Justice is getting what you deserve, I definitely don't want it. As David says in Psalm 143:2

Do not bring your servant into judgment, for no one living is righteous before you. (NIV)

Now we see where the relatives come in to interact with one another. In Psalm 143:1, David pleads with God

O LORD, hear my prayer, listen to my cry for mercy; in your faithfulness and righteousness come to my relief. (NIV)

There is Mercy right next to cousin Justice. And David is specifically asking to NOT get what he knows he deserves. He asks for Mercy instead of Justice for himself. I have prayed that same basic prayer my whole life...

Now, if those were the only family members (Mercy and Justice) what would we have? Well, some folks would get devoured by the wolf (Justice) and some would not (Mercy). That seems like a pretty bleak existence. Always looking over your shoulder to see if it's your time and always trying to figure out what you can do to warrant some Mercy. I assume it would drive people nuts.

But God didn't leave it at that, did He? No, He introduced the other cousin, Grace. Grace is God's way of giving us what we DO NOT deserve. It's more than Mercy or escape from Justice. As Jesus says in John 10:10:

I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly. (King James Version)

If anyone doesn't deserve that, it is mankind.

Rob Bell, like him or not, gives an illustration of Grace in his book Velvet Elvis:

I was having breakfast with my dad and my younger son. As we were finishing our meal, I noticed that the waitress brought our check, then took it away, and then brought it back again. She placed it on the table, smiled, and said: "Somebody in the restaurant paid for your meal. You're all set." And then she walked away...

That is our invitation... To trust that grace pays the bill.

I trust that Jesus has paid the bill and it is my duty to live that way. To live for Him whose Grace AND Mercy AND Justice are perfect. And to give Him the only thing that I can even offer in return: my life as a living sacrifice to His Glory.