This morning I find myself humbled by God's goodness. There are a lot of things about me that aren't sharp. My memory for one. I read a book, and unless I am grabbed by the collar by a story or idea, I don't remember the content. I forget names, important dates in history.... My brain is not filled with great quotes that I can spit up for a needed moment.
But what I do have is a God brazened vision and passion that is unshakable. In everything that I do and every conversation I find myself in, what He is growing in me comes out. What is it? That we as followers of Jesus would BE his life-restoring presence in this world of brokenness. We are not mere messengers, we are God incarnated in this world. There are a lot of implications of such a reality and they aren't all easy. That's why humility is stirred.
"God, I can't be that person!" That's me. I can be a real jerk more often than I want to admit. I like for things to be my way. I am wrestling with the critical side of who I am. But, I am also learning that the critiques of "the church" that well up in me are God-given. Like my friend Reggie McNeal, I think I exist to persecute Christian leaders.
God is changing church culture. What presently is, is not good. She is very blindly self-absorbed in her motivations. That is why I bleed the same passion no matter where you cut or what the conversation entails - being God's life-restoring presence.
I accept those stirrings, humbly.
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Saturday, January 3, 2009
All I Know
I was awakened early this morning with a verse from the Horatio Spafford hymn, "It Is Well with My Soul," rolling in my mind. It was the following:
"My sin, oh, the bliss of this glorious thought!
My sin, not in part but the whole,
Is nailed to the cross, and I bear it no more,
Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul!"
As I prepare to invest next week writing at Mepkin Abbey, a local monastery, I find it interesting that my waking thought was here. Martin Luther, though not the writer of this hymn, was a monk who wrestled so intensely with the blight of sin upon his soul. Then the light of God's grace illumined his darkness and set him free! He will be on my mind much over these days.
Interestingly, my last thoughts before bed last night were upon God's emotional gyrations displayed throughout the Old Testament; Hosea 11:6-9, for example. God the merciful-lover who wanted to destroy, but was compelled otherwise.
Somehow it all merges for me where the apostle Paul found himself speaking to the Corinthians: "For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified" (I Corinthians 2:2). Paul did not want to obscure the power of God with human wisdom. What Christ had accomplished was enough.
This morning, with bliss!, that's all I know.
"My sin, oh, the bliss of this glorious thought!
My sin, not in part but the whole,
Is nailed to the cross, and I bear it no more,
Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul!"
As I prepare to invest next week writing at Mepkin Abbey, a local monastery, I find it interesting that my waking thought was here. Martin Luther, though not the writer of this hymn, was a monk who wrestled so intensely with the blight of sin upon his soul. Then the light of God's grace illumined his darkness and set him free! He will be on my mind much over these days.
Interestingly, my last thoughts before bed last night were upon God's emotional gyrations displayed throughout the Old Testament; Hosea 11:6-9, for example. God the merciful-lover who wanted to destroy, but was compelled otherwise.
Somehow it all merges for me where the apostle Paul found himself speaking to the Corinthians: "For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified" (I Corinthians 2:2). Paul did not want to obscure the power of God with human wisdom. What Christ had accomplished was enough.
This morning, with bliss!, that's all I know.
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