Thoughts of a Servant

My motorcycle batter is slowly dying as I only do short trips to and from work without any chance to charge it fully– and the other night I was just finishing up a salsa lesson, went out to my bike, and tried to start it.  Sure enough, it was in need of a running start.

My good friend Israel was there in an instant offering help, and I am grateful that he is the kind of friend that would do that.  But I had a little history check in my personality that surprised me.  For as long as I can remember, I loved figuring out things on my own– I like the challenge, and to see if I have what it takes to complete a task–  I still, to this day, have a hard time distinguishing what would be easier: asking for help, or doing it on my own.

This instance, with Israel, I knew I could do it myself– But it would have been easier with a buddy pushing the bike.  Sometimes, I have this process in my head that I want to execute, and most of the time it doesn’t require more than one person.

I know, it seems so simple– big deal right?  But it is some insight into my personality.  I still think I can do it.  And for that I apologize Israel if it came out wrong.  It is one of my flaws as a man.

It becomes more and more apparent in other situations of life, and is one of the reasons it took me so long to release everything to God.  Finances, insecurities, fears, etc.  And it is something that I will definitely have to deal with.

But here is the thing—

I was talking with my roommate, Russell, about defining knowledge.  I think it is really interesting– I believe that we have the capacity and the knowledge of everything.  The fact is, we need something or someone or some situation to define it.  We have the capacity to learn nuclear physics, but we need someone to define and sculpt that knowledge into something we can process.  We have the knowledge of friendships, marriage, etc.  But we need to sculpt that knowledge into a constructive form (when it can also be sculpted into a destructive manner).

This weekend Mike Erre, one of the lead pastors at my church Rock Harbor, announced that after plenty of time praying and listening that he was going to have to do another mission.  And he did an excellent job at defining the situation.  He and his wife had approached it with great care and analyzed the opportunities carefully, and as a result, felt God calling them to do something extraordinary.

I got to thinking, this is actually a breakthrough in my mind.  I have talked to people, and they always go to see Mike teach, they prefer him over anyone else…  This goes the same for any of the major pastors: Greg Laurie, John Piper, Rick Warren, etc.  But it hit me pretty hard: this is a wakeup call for the church itself (not only Mike and his family).  What happens when you take the name, the pastor, the leader, out of the church?  What do you have?  Will the church be in scrambles to fill the shoes? Will it be able to sustain itself within the mission and collaborative elders?  What will come of the transition (bitterness or growth?).

I have applied it to several churches, and it seems apparent that a true church can sustain itself without the presence of the named leader.  With Mike leaving it has only sparked interest into what God is doing as it means someone else will get to experience Mike’s teachings, and it is also allowing someone to step up and become a leader in Rock Harbor who wouldn’t otherwise have the opportunity.

Change is amazing, sometimes it is more difficult than fun.  But in the end, you can look back and see that it was quite a progressive step into what you would consider an unexpected future.

I want to say that I have learned a lot from Mike, but I am at the point in my faith where I need to get the word for myself.  It is time for Mike to begin his outreach (wherever that may be), while I (collectively as a church) branch out in mine / ours.  Growth is inevitable in change.  And I would venture to say that change is the only constant variable in life.

What kind of love.

I was just enjoying a really good song by Kutless, and I got to thinking about the persecution I had been hearing about.  A video release from India not too long ago showed several Christians begin beaten to death so that they would renounce their faith…  There are also things similar to Marzieh and Maryam happening around the globe.

I can sit here and raise my hands openly, because I have not had to endure anything even close to those stories.  But would I be able to endure that kind of torture?  Would I be able to say that Jesus is my savior even after unspeakable things had been done to me?  I’d say yes, and my heart says yes, but it will still be a fear that I wouldn’t hold to that word.  Maybe the fear is a sign that I wouldn’t break.  Fear is often something that strengthens us, so perhaps the fear will prepare us for that day when we will, too, be tested.

A bank is a place that will lend you money if you can prove that you don’t need it.

God made man before woman to give him time to think of an answer for her first question.

“When I die, I want to go peacefully like my Grandfather did, in his sleep — not screaming, like the passengers in his car”

Cheese… milk’s leap toward immortality.

In Numbers the Israelites were complaining that they always eat the same thing day in and day out.  They didn’t recognize that they had food, water, safety at all times– they only recognized the monotony of their eating patterns.  I just wanted to share something rather funny– God answered their prayers with new meat, quail.  Quail, I take it, wasn’t the best thing to eat, but they definitely had a change of appetite.

In short, God sent almost 1 trillion inidividual quail (about the size of San Antonio) for their consuming complaints:

Be careful for what you ask for?  I think so.

Oh man.  I have been kind of down lately.  It seems like everyone has been getting distracted and bailing out.  Okay, it doesn’t seem like it– that’s the way it is.  In regards to my last post, Where is the Enemy, I have something to add:

• One person had to “work” last minute
• One person scheduled a morning ride and cant reschedule?
• One person decided to go with their parents whom they have been not talking for a while (I am okay with this one,  its obviously God working )
• One person decided to flee to the bay area and get wasted
• One person decided not go to just because
• One decided to fly to Atlanta because they didn’t want to be in OC
• 3 people had a death in their family (Wow)

Okay, you get the point– all of these people were open to hearing about God.  And here I am, going to the service by myself.  I do know people there, so I won’t be alone– but thats not the point.  I know these people can do it.  I know they can feel Him… Some of them are scared, some don’t care, some have been scarred from past experiences and maybe a lifetime of unchristianlike christians.  And clearly the “Evil One” has been exploiting that weakness disabling them to come to, IMO, one of the biggest events in human history, and one of the most valuable events in our lives, ever.  Yes, bigger and better than getting that car you wanted

I just pray that it will still work out for God’s glory.  He can change schedules as well as hearts– its not that they come to “easter service” its that they come to Easter, the story, and what it means to me/us/God.

Fill me with strength to carry on   Its hits like this where you can feel the spiritual warfare. Get behind me Devil.

I remember having a discussion with someone about something as simple as being late to a dinner party.  I said that it was probably the enemy trying to keep me from getting there– and they just looked at me with the most far-fetched look hahahah.  It caused me to consider my response, and to this day I have no regrets for saying that it was the enemy– because it was.

If you look at what it did to me mentally, then you will notice that it was him trying to tell me that its not worth it to go to dinner– not worth it to strengthin my relationships with others– not worth it to try and show God’s love.  I came so close to calling it quits and going home because everything on the road was delaying me.  That was clearly the work of the enemy because in that relationship, that girl was able to see that I really wanted to be there, and that I care for her.  She now realizes what makes me motivated and that I live for someone bigger and has started to ask questions.

I read this killer chapter in Wild at Heart which talks about this type of intervention.  The whole book is amazing, but here is where this concept ties in (on page 152):

… What I experienced in the midst of traffic that day happens all the time in marriages, in ministries, in any relationship.  We are being lied to all the time. Yet we never stop to say, “Wait a minute . . . who else is speaking here?  Where are those ideas coming from? Where are those feelings coming from?” If you read the saints from every age before the Modern Era– that pride-filled age of reason, science, and technology we all were thoroughly educateed in– you’ll find that they take the devil very seriously indeed.  As Paul says, “We are not unaware of his schemes” (2 Cor. 2:11). But we, the enlightened, have much more commonsense apprach to things.  We look for a psychological or physical or even political explanation for every trouble we meet.

Who caused the Chaldeans to steal Job’s herds and kill his servants? Satan, clearly (Job 1:12, 17). Yet do we even give him a passing thought when we hear of terrorism today?  Who kept that poor woman bent over for eighteen years, the one Jesus healed on the Sabbath? Satan, clearly (Luke 13:16).  But do we consider him when we are having a headache that keeps us from praying or reading Scripture?  Who moved Ananias and Sapphira to lie to the apostles? Satan again (Acts 5:3).  But do we really see his hand behind a fallout or schism in ministry? Who was behind that brutal assault on your own strength, those wounds you’ve taken?  As William Gurnal said, “It is the image of God reflected in you that so enrages hell; it is this at which the demons hurl their mightiest weapons.”

There is a whole lot more going on behind the scenes of our lives than most of us have been led to believe. …

How scary is that?  Then the book goes on to explain the Supernatural intervention in the sweet little baby scene of Jesus’ birth. There is a section starting on page 153 about “Behind the Scenes” spiritual warfare.  Check this out:

Excerpt from Wild at Heart:

Most of you probably have a Nativity scene that you take out over the holidays and place on a mantel or coffee table.  Most of these scenes share a regular cast of characters: shepherds, wise men, maybe a few barnyard animals, Joseph, Mary, and, of course, the baby Jesus.  Yes, ours has an angel or two and I imagine yours does as well.  But that’s about as far as the supernatural gets.  What is the overall mood of the scene? Don’t they all have a sort of warm, pastoral atmosphere to them, a quiet, intimate feel like the one you get when you sing Silent Night of Away in a Manger?  And while that’s all very true, its also very deceiving because its not a full picture of what’s really going on.  For that, you have to turn to Revelation 12:

The Woman and the Dragon

¹A great and wondrous sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head. ²She was pregnant and cried out in pain as she was about to give birth. ³Then another sign appeared in heaven: an enormous red dragon with seven heads and ten horns and seven crowns on his heads. ⁴His tail swept a third of the stars out of the sky and flung them to the earth. The dragon stood in front of the woman who was about to give birth, so that he might devour her child the moment it was born. ⁵She gave birth to a son, a male child, who will rule all the nations with an iron scepter. And her child was snatched up to God and to his throne. ⁶The woman fled into the desert to a place prepared for her by God, where she might be taken care of for 1,260 days.

⁷And there was war in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought back. ⁸But he was not strong enough, and they lost their place in heaven. ⁹The great dragon was hurled down—that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray. He was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him.

As Philip Yancy says, I have never seen this version of the story on a Christmas card.  Yet it is the truer story, the rest of the picture of what was going on that fateful night.  Yancey calls the birth of Christ the Great Invasion, “a daring raid by the ruler of the forces of good into the universe’s seat of evil.”  Spiritually speaking, this is no silent night.  It is D-Day.  ”It is almost beyond my comprehension too, and  yet I accept that this notion is the key to understanding Christmas and is, in fact, the touchstone of my faith.  As as a Christian, I believe that we live in parallel worlds. One world consists of hills and lakes and barns and politicians and shepherds watching their flocks by night.  The other consists of angels and sinister forces” and the whole spiritual realm.  The child is born, the woman escapes and the story continues like this:

¹⁷Then the dragon was enraged at the woman and went off to make war against the rest of her offspring—those who obey God’s commandments and hold to the testimony of Jesus.

Behind the world and the flesh is an even more deadly enemy …one we rarely speak of and are even much less ready to resist.  Yet this is where we live now– on the front lines of a fierce spiritual war that is to blame for most of the casualties you see around you and most of the assault against you.  It’s time we prepared ourselves for it.

I just wanted to make something very clear in from my last post about Relationships, Porn, and Men.  I did not mean that the woman makes the man a man– strictly meant that they complete, assist, and empower his already existing manliness.  As Augustine put it, “Let my soul praise you for all these beauties, but let it not attach itself to them by the trap of love.”

A man does not go to a woman to gain strength, he goes to a woman to offer it.

I don’t think it could be put any better.  Women, you are beautiful, and we admire that– but you are not about to trap me in them eyes of yours to where thats all I can see! NEVER! (as I remember each and every time that happens)

Another thing on this porn issue.  Just a question to ask, if you think its something you want to persue and you will feel fulfilled by it once you have had a drink of it… Why do you keep going back for more?  As this book puts it, you are drinking from the wrong well my friend

Happy April 1 Yo.  I think there are jokes or something today.. Prep yourselves.

Man, my friend Emily convicted me again.  :D

We had a short facebook-status discussion about transformation.  She put it as though I should be thankful that God is giving me “transformation attention” rather than me just being dull.  I love that!  Transformation attention.  Love it.

Yes, crazy title. Cause men are crazy.

I can definately see where women get their perception of us.  I hate the perception, but its true.  Even men of God struggle with the addiction and temptations of  lust, masculinity, and women.  I have been praying that God will bring the right girl into my life– (some people say I am too young to be thinking like this, but hear me out).  But sometimes I wonder why it hasn’t happened, and if he has a bigger plan (which I am excited about).  And while I know that I would embrace that person, it is more important to me that it is in God’s will.  I am at the point where its okay if I don’t have that girl, but only if God tells me.

I recently started liking this girl (I can see something amazing in her).  She carries this level of faith and a missional lifestyle that I admire greatly as it mirrors me.  And I now, for the first time, realize the importance of equally yoked.  I always thought of it from the man’s point of view where I could be a firm foundation in God for a family, and that I could live as a man of compassion.  But I never realized how much weight and spiritual / physical turmoil the man will encounter, and that is where the woman comes in.  Without even doing anything, a woman makes a man feel like a man.  That instills courage, persistence, work ethics, alpha protector, etc.  And on top of that, they talk (moreso ) / listen!  Of course, the woman’s role is essential to the relationship.  They are in fact, more important than the man being a man.  But thats for another post, another day.

Wild at Heart explains a man in persuite of Eve, a woman that has beauty that is only a glimpse of God’s glory that is still even to great for the eye.  Men also need to find their masculinity within themselves in order to harness the defined structure that God has given.  They must be able to feel like a man, in order to be a man.  This is an extraordinary book, and I highly recommend it for anyone.

One thing I had heard, and it was reinforced by the book, was the fact that pornography is a easy way for men to get the gratification of viewing / pursuing ’Eve’ without the repercussions of reject, denial, and fear.  This is the very reason that it is so easy to fall into this addiction.  It is having an affair with someone without ever having to deal with the STDs / risk of being caught.  It is also available whenever you want, with whatever category you want.

While I sit back and look at men my age embracing this lifestyle, I can only see pain and suffering occur.  But I can also sympathize, I have struggled with this in the past, embraced it for a good amount of time, and to this day struggle with it.  It will be a lifelong struggle as it will only get harder– but the one thing I love about God is that no matter how many times I fall, I have those around me and God himself right there beside me.

Now, I will say that as I become a more firm believer in my faith, I get more and more crushed every time I sin.  This goes for anything, If I yell at someone out the window (for being on the phone, eating a sandwich, doing their makeup, playing dominoes, drinking coffee and driving at the same time), if I cruise the internet at places I shouldn’t be, if I think bad things about someone– God hears everything I think / see / do– I know he does– and he is right there beside me….. weeping.  With that imagery with me at all times, my heart can do nothing but weep.  The conviction is heavy on my heart and I feel the compassion when I say that I am sorry.  But he is mighty to save, and these problems are minor to what he has in store for you.

You and I are precious to him.  We have qualities, gifts, etc that he loves.

What kind of love is this?

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