Religion and Spirituality

Isaiah 58 - Tell my people of their sins.... And they will be incredulous

They act so pious - they SEEM delighted to learn about me - ACT like a righteous nation - pretending they want to be near me.

We have fasted...why aren't you impressed.  We've been hard on ourselves and you don't even notice. 

You fast and do all the religious stuff but then go about your every day life doing all kinds of things that are wrong.  This is what religion does: Do all the right religious things trying to get God to notice and come through for us.  Then go on about our day and disregard God in how we treat people, how we spend money etc.  

God warns them and us not to imagine we can do all our spiritual practices separate from our every day lives.  Don't imagine that it's all well and good to go to church, small group, fast, pray etc.  Get up from doing these activities and just go do what we want now that we've done all our religious things.

And don't turn dealing with the poor and oppressed as another religious duty.  People do this now and miss the whole point Isaiah is making. They go out and do their justice and compassion ministry and think "O good, I've done my duty.  Now I can do what I want" with little or no thought to living a God honoring, God glorifying kind of life.

Bad things happen to good people...

It's the age old inescapable question that haunts every strata of society: Why do bad things happen to good people?

Keller has a lot on this in Reason for God.  Others have written brilliantly.  One of the best responses to this question came from a conference book: The Supremacy of Christ in a Postmodern World.  Not sure who said it but the speaker/writer countered back with something like this: I'll answer that if you can answer for me why the God of the Universe didn't kill everyone in our city today for the sin of our actions and our hearts just today. Forget about last week or our cumulative record of sin and idolatry against God.  

Interesting thoughts...

However, came across the writings of Isaiah this morning and he wonders why good godly people die before their time - and no one can figure out why.  His answer: "No one seems to understand that God is protecting them from the evil to come. For those who follow godly paths will rest in peace when they die."

Maybe it's part of God's sovereign providential care for his people to kill some of us early so that we avoid future catastrophe - and maybe because God knows that it would be better for a particular individual to die now, while a shred of godliness remains, than to drift away completely. 

Hmmm!!

Something is Stirring...

Something is stirring

Reading the book of Luke over and over again, preparing to go through it for our Sunday gatherings starting at the end of 2008. I’m reading it out loud as I walk. Stuff jumps out.

Sometimes it makes sense.

Sometimes it doesn’t.

Sometimes Jesus lays back.

Sometimes he picks a fight.

When you read it out loud, you can’t escape or gloss over it just to get through it. You get surprised all the time. It forces you to climb inside the story.

Like Luke 5.15-16 Jesus is gaining popularity - word is out about this amazing prophet talking about a kingdom. Then Jesus does what we don’t expect him to do and Luke points it out vividly for us: “But Jesus often withdrew to the wilderness for prayer.”

And I’m thinking it may be time to withdraw – for me personally and for our church. Not away in isolation but in greater connection and relationship to God to seek him and to discover more fully his kingdom.

Also reading This Beautiful Mess by McKinley. Confirming some of the thoughts and direction I’ve been pondering.

Stay tuned

America repent? First things first!

See many YouTube videos, MySpace pages, blogs about the evil in our country and how as a country we need to come back to God. We point to the recent court decision in California on homosexual marriage, the numbers of abortions, the porn industry etc....

But it's so easy for the people of God to call out to the nation to repent, to stand up and point fingers of God's judgment agains sin. And of course if we stand out there calling the nation to repent, then we don't need to look in the mirror and hear the call of God on our lives to repent.

And I'm becoming more convinced that before America comes back to God, America's churches need to come back to God. Not on behalf of America and her sin, but to take a good hard look at ourselves and repent over and over again for our complacency, for our addiction, for our immorality, for our divorces, for our greed and materialism.

I wonder if Jesus is calling out to his church like he did in Laodicea. He's standing outside adnd wants to come back in. It's his church and He wants it back. And this is not just about the liberal and dead churches. So many of us evangelicals with all of our programs, and staff and middle class culture and values... So easy as the conservative slice of the Christian pie to point fingers and call all the liberals and legalists to repent. And miss the fact like the Laodicean church, we think we're rich strong well fed when maybe we're miserable poor blind and naked.

He wants us all to turn to him in repentance. It's interesting that Jesus and John's first messages to their generation when they broke on the scene was, "Repent, the kingdom of God is at hand!" Maybe it's time to start again

Salsa Dancing

I’m a recovering Baptist. We didn’t dance at all growing up so my feet and my brain are disconnected. They stopped communicating a long time ago!

I’m a terrible dancer.

No matter. I love my wife Denise and she loves to dance, so last Friday night we signed up for salsa dancing lessons.

It all started well. Simple steps: Quick Quick Slow Pause and do it again. Then we had to turn and move our hands and keep in sync with our dance partner.

Somewhere around the 40 minute mark, I hit overload. I was overwhelmed with everything we had learned and we weren’t even to anything cool yet. “I’m never going to get this.” I just gave up and privately swore I would never do this again.

So I sat out for a bit and somewhere in the flashing lights and salsa music blaring out of a speaker, God revealed something so vividly to me.

For the first time in a long time – maybe ever- I knew exactly what it must feel like to be someone beginning to learn the first steps of following Jesus. Overwhelmed, frustrated, wondering if they will EVER get it, if they’ll ever be good enough. And some just figure that there has to be a better way to spend Sunday mornings.

I vowed to always remember what this feels like. And I wanted to pull a few people aside and apologize for how I and others may have overwhelmed them in the early stages of their spiritual journey with Jesus.

It’s so easy once you know the steps that you assume this should be easy for everyone. But we forget we live in a world full of sinners. And in a weird way, their lives and their heart have stopped communicating a long time ago.

So I get up to try again and I have a whole new respect for the courage so many people show who come to church for the first time or who come back after being gone for a while.

American Idol, NBA playoffs and Self (made) righteousness

Watching American Idol finals...NBA playoffs...all the political primaries... and then this verse Luke 16.15 "What this world honors is detestable in the sight of God." And i was feeling so justified in condemning the values of the world we live in. Felt very good to do that - very satisfied and smug...

Until I read the first part of the verse: "You like to appear righteous in public, but God knows your hearts." And then i didn't feel so smug. I felt a healthy sense of shame for my self righteous attitude and for the sin of self-made righteousness that can be so prevalant in my life and in our culture. People doing all kinds of good things to make themselves righteous, especially when compared to others less righteous. I'm tempted to list out people like this, names so many would recognize, except that then I fall right into that self righteous attitude and the action of making myself righteous before God by what I do.

And in the midst of all this, I came across a great song by a guy named Keith Green - a pioneer in Christian music in the 70s and 80s. He used his gifts to speak prophetically to believers in Jesus. The song is Grace By Which I Stand. The song preaches the message that nothing lasts except the grace of God by which we stand in Jesus.

And once again, I'm brought back to the cross and the amazing truth of God's unfathomable grace. And that I don't have a chance with God except for the grace he extends to me in Jesus. His grace covers everything. His grace saves me from myself - and my self (made) righteousness- unless I hold onto it. Then God's grace is diminished and without any effect in my life.

And that's why Jesus says that what the world values is detestable in the sight of God. Because when i value my self-made righteousness, I disrespect and diminish the grace of God in Jesus. I want to live with Biblical passion and focus in my life: "As for me, may I never boast about anything except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. Because of that cross, my interest in this world has been crucified and the world's interest in me has also died."

NO TV

So what do you do when the satellite goes offline and you don't have TV??!!??

No World Series tonight - No Office, Survivor, Dancing With The Stars (my wife Denise loves the show) - no football at all this week.

Gives you more time to think...

The fires have devastated so many lives and disrupted life as we know it. We were in between the worst of the fires. All we got was a little smoke and some nervous afternoons looking out at the hills wondering if the wind would shift.

How do you pray at a time like this? "What do your pray?" is maybe the bigger question. I prayed for rain - for the wind to stop. I prayed that people would pay attention and not exhibit stupidity and false bravado. and then tonight while i was walking the dogs i silently wondered to God how he might be honored and glorified in the midst of all the chaos and destruction. And I prayed in particular for the people who follow Jesus (Christians) who are and will be involved in helping people. For the firefighters that God would keep them safe, that the ones who have to make difficult decisions about deployment of men and women and equipment. I prayed for the Christian insurance agents, for the Red Cross workers and all the volunteers who are serving. I thought about and prayed for the people in our local, state and federal government who have to make difficult decisions about how and where the limited money will be allocated.

And then i thought of the families who lost homes in these fires. Of course i pray for quick action and for their comfort and safety. But my biggest prayers have been that they would respond in such a God honoring way - that the people of these cities would maybe see a compelling difference in how people who say they follow Jesus (the one who lived and died and rose again, who we say reigns as King and Lord over the universe) actually respond to tragedy and loss like this.

And then i pray that the winds stay down, that the rain will fall and that the rebuilding will begin quickly.

And my satellite TV still isn't on yet. It will probably come on just about the time i've weaned myself off of it - just in time to get addicted again!!