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.