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The Only Way to Love is to Lay Down

February 14, 2012 in FAMILY, God, Life with 2 Comments

Here is a little Valentine inspiration from Ann Voskamp… Happy Valentines!

Marital love is a demanding and dying thing compared to the stuff of movies and mirages.

The love of imagination — it’s a different beast entirely than love made in the image of a Saviour with nails in His hands.

There are no standing lovers: the only way to love is to lay down.

Lay down plans. Lay down agendas. Lay down self.

Love is always the laying down.

This is how to make love out of a marriage: Love lays down it’s own wants to lift up the will of another.

Love let’s go of it’s plans — to hold on to a person.

Falling in love again isn’t so much about communicating better, but about connecting deeper.

Poor communication doesn’t disconnect souls — it’s the disconnected souls who poorly communicate. When we’re well attached, we communicate well and when we aren’t fully communicating it’s because we don’t feel connected.

No matter our age, it never stops, this need to feel securely attached, and messy marriages can be because of attachment disorders. That’s what good relationships are: safe havens in the world, this base that makes us brave to venture out into the world — and safe to come home.

That’s what He made love to be: for love to bear all things. “Bears,” it’s stego in the Greek — “a thatch roof.”

Love bears all things — love literally becomes a thatch roof.

That’s what real love always is: I become a roof for you, a wing for you, a shelter in your storm.

Come to me. Count on me to hold you.

5 Ways to Fight through to Love:

1. You don’t need honed communication skills —

As much as the will to connect hearts.

2. Get to the tender wounded question behind every fight:

“Can I depend on you? Do my feelings matter to you? How do you care about me? Hold me?”

3. In the anxiety that’s masking as anger, don’t up the ante

Don’t up the ante with name-calling, labels or threats of the D word (divorce).

Critical language can register in the brain as the same area as physical pain — which leaves your spouse dealing with their own pain, instead of caring for you in yours.

4. Be your spouse’s ER:

Emotionally Respond. Listen to the cries of fear behind the fighting. Hear anger as a cry for attachment, this call for connection. Have the courage in the midst of the heat to tenderly reach out and touch the bruised places. Reassure that you’ll always be there, that you care, that you’re in this together.

5. Hold each other close and long…

Love bears all things. Be a roof, a wing, a shelter in the storm.

“It is not your love that sustains the marriage —

but from now on, the marriage that sustains your love.”

~ Deitrich Bonhoeffer

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Reframing The Gospel

February 14, 2012 in Bible, church, God, MISSIONAL with 0 Comments

Unfortunately, many of today’s Christians have come to believe in a gospel that is only concerned with praying a prayer, getting individuals to heaven. And then they go out and pitch this limited gospel message to others in ways that devalue the holistic nature of the message itself.

Scot Mcknight says ” the soterian gospel resolves one problem — our broken relationship with God. The soterian gospel focuses on one event — the cross as the place where Christ takes our place, shoulders our sins, removes our guilt, and forgives our sin. The soterian gospel pleads for one major response — trust in that Christ for that problem.” (See King Jesus Gospel)

The Story gospel is otherwise urges us to see the gospel in Story terms. The gospel is that the Story of Israel comes to its definitive completeness in the Story of Jesus. In this video you will be introduced to the holistic nature of the gospel and challenged to return to the Bible to get a better picture of the story and how it should shape your whole life. I love this!

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Three Circles: Wisdom From Francis

February 10, 2012 in Bible, church, God, Leadership with 0 Comments

Francis A. Schaeffer was born 100 years ago today (Jan. 30, 1912). He died in 1984. In 1974 he wrote this in his book No Little People:

As I see it, the Christian life must be comprised of three concentric circles, each of which must be kept in its proper place.

In the outer circle must be the correct theological position, true biblical orthodoxy and the purity of the visible church. This is first, but if that is all there is, it is just one more seedbed for spiritual pride.

In the second circle must be good intellectual training and comprehension of our own generation. But having only this leads to intellectualism and again provides a seedbed for pride.

In the inner circle must be the humble heart — the love of God, the devotional attitude toward God. There must be the daily practice of the reality of the God whom we know is there.

These three circles must be properly established, emphasized and related to each other. At the center must be kept a living relationship to the God we know exists. When each of these three circles is established in its proper place, there will be tongues of fire and the power of the Holy Spirit. Then, at the end of my life, when I look back over my work since I have been a Christian, I will see that I have not wasted my life.

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Getting Through The Challenges of Mission and Community

February 9, 2012 in church, God, Leadership, Life, MISSIONAL with 0 Comments

In planting a church that longs to see its people live on mission, if I am honest, it is super challenging. The cost that people have to count is so much higher than attending a designed program at church. I understand why Jesus constantly is reminded those following him of the cost involved in such a decision. Jonathan thanks for the honesty and the encouragement… as Eugene Peterson says “it is a long journey in the same direction.”

Article by Jonathan Dodson

The popularity of missional community is rising among evangelicals, and yet, the American church is nowhere near a missional tipping point. I’ve faced missional highs and missional lows. Along the way, I’ve considered a number of things that are absolutely necessary for us to endure the transition to missional church. How should we respond to the challenges of missional community? Here are three things to keep in mind as you lead in God’s mission (and thanks for doing so).

1. Building Missional Community Requires Stretched Grace. We need more than a drop of grace to get us going on God’s mission. We need an ocean of grace to swim in to continue on God’s mission together. Do you remember when you knew nothing about “missional church”? That’s where many people are. Do you recall how long it took you to process, assimilate, and live out the principles of missional community? This probably took a couple of years, and if you’re a leader, you are in it “full time”. When leading others in missional community, remember the slowness in your own story and extend others the same grace and patience King Jesus extended you. After all, the kingdom of God is slow, and thank God for that! We need more than a drop of grace to get us going on God’s mission. We need grace stretched across the length of our lives and depth of our missional failures and successes. Jesus secured this grace, so revel in it and splash it on others.

Leader Tip: Try to avoid making mission a new benchmark of religious performance. Instead, motivate people with grace. Grace preached and grace embodied. Embody the grace of Christ, who has put up with our missional fumblings for centuries, as you lead others on mission. When it comes to mission, it’s not perfection overnight but progress over a lifetime.

2. Community is What You Make of It. In order to make progress with your community, remind them that community is what you make it. Community isn’t an idea; its real people, awkward, struggling, weird, different, funny, slow, arrogant, sheepish, humble, curious, skeptical, excitable. You get the idea. Jesus didn’t die to make cliques; he died and rose to form diverse communities. Diverse and different is hard. It requires love, effort, and patience. Community doesn’t just magically appear in a church. In fact, churches don’t have community at all; they are community. The question is, “What will you make of the community?” I’m falling in love with real community, which is really messy, with people who are so different from me and yet so alike in Jesus. There’s nothing like pursuing difficult people, being loved by different people, serving alongside a diverse people. What a display of grace (nothing else could hold us together).

Leader Tip: In a highly consumeristic, individual-centered society, it will take at least a generation to get back to the biblical notion of community. And even then, we will need more than community to sustain community. Let’s all agree to shatter our ideal of community and enter the real community of people God has placed in our lives. Let’s lift Christ higher than the community. Jesus is head not the body. He’s lord of the church. He’s the hope of the community, not the community itself. Community needs a center deeper than connection and a purpose greater than comfort. It needs the Lord of Community, Jesus Christ, to knit unlikely people together as a display of our common need for grace. Insist on this.

3. Labor for the Lord of Mission not the Fruit of Mission. With all the missional hype, our faith can easily slip from trusting in the Lord of the Harvest to trusting in the fruit of our labors. I’ve had several deep relationships with non-Christians dissolve over the past year and a half. This came after spending a lot of time with them over meals, out for philosophy discussions, in our home for counseling, and with our family doing fun stuff. They were loved and heard the gospel in ways that were profoundly relevant to their own fears, struggles, and hopes…and they walked away. They walked away from Jesus and created distance from us. That’s hard. If I’m putting faith in the fruit of my missional labors (at least at what I can see), then I’m discouraged. But if I’m putting faith in the Lord of the Harvest, I can be confident that he has been lifted up and that he is in charge of all salvation. He has endured much more to witness friends walk away from his costly sacrifice. He’s not only a model of missional endurance; he’s the hope for missional endurance.

Leader Tip: Put your faith in the Lord of Mission not the fruit of mission. It can be easy to congratuate ourselves when mission is high and berate ourselves when mission is low. That’s a sign that we’ve misplaced our faith. We put it in ourselves or our “fruitfulness.” Come back to the gospel every single day and ask the Spirit to put Jesus highest among your affections and greatest among your hopes. Keep repenting and putting your faith in Jesus and he will take care of the mission.

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Building a Family

February 7, 2012 in FAMILY, God, Life with 0 Comments

If we build companies but lose the company of family and if we build visions but lose sight of relationship, have we only built these hollow canyons of pain?

Family is this altar you lie down on and build joy. – Ann Voskamp

A couple of years ago I found myself outside on a very cold December night flooding an outdoor rink. I grew up on a farm, where I could come home after school and head down to the pond after school for a game of shinny. I recall on those cold winter days my dad cleaning off the ice so we could play hockey.

I have a son who loves hockey and a family who loves to skate… somehow they convinced me that this rink was good idea, so there I was late into the night spraying water on snow in the backyard thinking is this worth it? I worked late into the night, and many other nights on that rink. Eventually, we finished flooding… After the first skate Kellan comes into the house, rosy cheeks and all and says “Thanks, Dad.” He just did it. I didn’t ask him to thank me… it just came right from his heart.

There are moments in life that that you wish you could preserve forever, that you wish you could somehow bottle them and return to them whenever you want to.

For all us Dads and Moms creating memories for our kids, Geoff Dresser nails it. The cold nights. The wet boots. The frozen fingers. The ‘thank you’s’.

All that life in their cheeks, all that effort, all that love, it flames with a heat of it’s own.

I sit in the window and I watch how they skate… laughing, playing, enjoying the beauty of the moment… thinking it is all worth it.

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Life Rhythm – Listen

January 30, 2012 in Bible, God, MISSIONAL with 0 Comments

This week at The Journey we tackled the life rhythm listen.

We are called and sent to BE the Church on mission for God’s glory ALL the time whenever we gather, wherever we go and in whatever we do – every part of life is supposed to be dedicated to the ministry and mission of the gospel.

To walk in line with the gospel means that the truth of the gospel gets worked out in the stuff of everyday life – through everyday activities. Although it may seem strange to a world that is perishing, it should not seem strange or abnormal for us to live our lives with gospel intentionality on gospel mission because of our gospel identity.

LISTEN

We submit to God through consistent backward and forward listening

Jesus listened to God in prayer to know his Father’s will. We listen to God because through the Gospel we are now aware of our ongoing need for Him. We listen ‘backward’ by regularly interacting with God’s Word–the Story and the Son. We also listen ‘forward’ to hear what God is saying to us today. We believe He declares to all people what He is like through His creation and specifically speaks to those who belong to Him through His Spirit.

Everyone is listening to someone or something as the primary voice or voices that they submit their lives to – an expert or teacher that they follow. These might include a school of thought, a leader or charismatic personality, demons, or lies from the past. Until the Creator is THE Expert and THE Teacher to whom they compare all other voices, they are prone to deceit and lies and worship of self or others.

So here is the question… Do you create the margin in your day to silence the other voices and listen to God?

I’d conclude that people in our churches are hungry to be with Jesus. (at least I would hope they are)

What I WONDER is if we can actually sustain this practice–this commitment to carve out time and space to be with Jesus on a regular basis—in the midst of our present cultural milieu. So much of what we do is to fill our day with busyness, even our churches have bought into this cultural reality.

Every time (ok maybe not every time but a lot of the time) I get together with church leaders they talk about all God wants to do… It’s almost like we can’t believe that God can actually do something unless we’re talking about God doing something. Do we have such great faith in the power of words and information that we can’t trust God to speak in our silence? and then walk in obedience to what we hear! I invite you to embrace finding silence in our world of noise and hype.

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How You Live Matters

January 30, 2012 in Bible, church, God, Life, MISSIONAL with 0 Comments

At The Journey we are continuing our series on life rhythms. As we receive the gospel and allow Jesus to reign in our lives we can’t go on doing the same things. We know who God is by what God does! How we live matters. Too often the extent of our new life is about “going to church” or telling those around us what we are against but it is all to rare to find someone who has genuinely been transformed by the gospel and they live a different life.

Imagine showing up at work on Monday being asked about your weekend and you respond…”I went to church on Sunday”, then silence and you both go on with your day. Your response does not demand further dialogue because you are not living different, you simply attended something.(same response occurs if you say you went to a restaurant) BUT what if you respond “we spent the weekend moving”,- “oh wow did you move into a bigger place?” – “No we moved into a smaller space”, – “really, how come? Are things tight financially?” – “No we desire to live a more generous life so freeing up money going into our mortgage will help us give more to people in need”… – “I have never heard any one doing that before what caused you to make that decision?”… now that is a conversation based on you living out of a new story that allows you to give a gospel answer because they asked! Are you getting the point.

We want to tell others about Jesus outside of allowing our very lives to tell the gospel story. People know who your god is by what you do!

The pastor I was serving under in Vancouver is a great example of this. As Kari and I were living missional in our neighbourhood we came across a single mom in need. She had 4 kids, a problem with alcohol, and very little money. As a group we began to love them, serve them, and care for the kids. To make a long story short things became more difficult and the kids were about to be split up through the foster care system. This is when the gospel of love and sacrifice moved Greg and Debbie to take the 4 kids. Yep crazy… nothing like doubling the family overnight. What would happen if you told people that on a monday morning at work? God is inviting us into a new way of living modeled by Jesus and empowered by the Spirit. We live a different story showing people the trailer to the coming Kingdom of God.

Too often can live in the pendulum swing between being and doing, and miss the point completely. Biblically these two are very integrated. I would like to call it Being In Action… It is a matter of order, being precedes doing but always results in action. It would be crazy to think loving my wife would not result in new behaviours. Love results in a new way of living.

Too often we study God (attributes) apart from what God does. We have divorced the churches nature from her mission. No longer are we the echo, the trailor to the coming Kingdom of God, we don’t show the world a different story they could live their life from.

If you are interested in a new way of living start with the sermon on the mount in Matthew 5. Jesus calls his disciples to follow and then shows them in chapter 5 – 7 how to live. He concludes with this verse:

²⁴ “Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. ²⁵ The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. ²⁶ But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. ²⁷ The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.”

May people be introduced to Jesus because of the way you live!

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A New Liturgy

January 23, 2012 in Bible, God with 0 Comments

Aaron Niequist, singer, songwriter, pastor and worship leader at Willow Creek Community Church, has created a fresh new sound in the expression of worship through music and song.

His current project, A NEW LITURGY, is one of the most unique, innovative and forward thinking MUSIC PROJECTS I’ve heard in a while. A totally different approach to how we engage in spiritual singing and worship through song, poetry, Scripture reading, and overall liturgy.

A New Liturgy combines the disciplines of prayer, reading, liturgy, singing, reflection and praise, and makes it convenient to engage in all of these different spiritual disciplines through a Storyline that Aaron creates around certain topics and areas of focus. Such as Grace, Blessing, Love, Mercy, etc.

This is also a help for new believers as he walks you through the prayers and readings…

There are currently 3 different Liturgy projects available in the Series.

Liturgy No 1 is “God Is Love.” Here’s the way Aaron describes it:

“The idea that God loves EVERY ONE of his kids equally – no matter their history, nationality, beliefs, sins, strengths, etc – is profoundly moving to me. For nothing can separate us for the love of God…. And not only do I want to see myself as one of those deeply loved kids, I want to see every single other person I ever meet as my brother or sister, engulfed in God’s bottomless, paternal, and maternal LOVE.”

I’m a big fan of this project. Check it out. Go download it. Highly recommended.

As a follow up to Story-Formed go on and listen to Blessed to Be a Blessing. Be encouraged as you sit in this new liturgy.

A New Liturgy – the story from aaron niequist on Vimeo.

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Day 3 – Prayer and Fasting

January 18, 2012 in church, God with 1 Comment

Our community at The Journey has committed to a week of prayer and fasting. I personally find day 3 the most challenging so here is a reminder from Adam Mabry the pastor at Aletheia Boston on why we fast.

Why Fast?

There are a few reasons why Christians should and do fast.

1. Jesus commands us to Fast – In Matthew 6, Jesus says, “When you fast…,” and then goes on to give instruction how to fast. His instructions assume that his disciples will, in fact, be fasting. Otherwise, there would be no need for him to give any instructions on the matter. Additionally, Jesus modeled this discipline. Before he went into public ministry, he fasted. Often he would come away from the crowds to pray alone.

2. Fasting Kills our Love of Lesser Joys – So often in our lives, we run around so preoccupied with the lesser joys of money, people, job, school, etc., that we forget our dependance on and joy in God. Fasting helps us to remember that, “man doesn’t live by bread alone, but on every words that comes from the mouth of God.” In forsaking food, we forsake that on which we depend for life, to remember the one on whom we ultimately depend on for life. Often during a fast, our idolatry is exposed, giving room for repentance and growth in holiness.

3. Fasting fans into ?ame our Passion for God – God does not want us to be half-hearted in our devotion to him. We are not honoured when people are half-committed and ?aky to us, and neither is God. Fasting causes us to see freshly our dependance on God and thus stirs our affections for him. It causes us to
see him as our daily bread, and sweeter to us than honey. (Psalm 19). This makes true worship rise from our hearts to God.

4. Fasting causes us to be Generous – Isaiah 58 shows us that one of God’s intentions behind fasting is that we might take the food and resources we’re not using during that time and give them to the poor and oppressed. By abstaining from food and the “extras” in life, we’re able to be more generous. Consider the words of Scripture:“if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness, and your night will become like the noonday. The LORD will guide you always; he will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land and will strengthen your frame.” (Isaiah 58: 10-11)5.

5. Fasting Strengthens Prayer – Scripture gives us examples of fasting strengthening our prayers, thus the common pairing of Christians fasting and praying. When we fast, our minds and hearts become focused, and our prayers are often more ?lled with fervor and life. That’s not to say that our emotional commitment to pray somehow makes God listen better, but it does allow us to pray better, and more in line with God’s will. (See Matthew 17:21; Mark 9:17-29; Acts 10:30; 1 Corinthians 7:5).

Fasting vs. A Hunger Strike

A hunger strike is when someone refuses to eat to get someone else to bend to their will, capitulate, or do something for them. Prisoners go on hunger strikes. Oppressed people go on hunger strikes. Christians do not, I repeat, do not go on hunger strikes.When we fast, we are not doing it to get God to notice us, hear our prayers better, love us more, or move him to do what we really want him to do. Christians are not prisoners, oppressed people, or manipulators of their God. We fast to align our hearts with God’s. We fast to suppress the noise of the natural man to hear the still small voice of God. We fast to kill sin that we might live to God. We fast to fall in love with Jesus more, aligning our hearts to his. We fast as a form of freedom in God, not as a form of oppression under God.

May our hunger for food awaken us to the real hunger of our hearts.

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Day 2 – Done with Doing

January 17, 2012 in Bible, church, FAMILY, God, Leadership with 0 Comments

It is day 2 of The Journey’s week of prayer and fasting and today as I sit and wait and be with Jesus I am reminded of my journey last year. One that involved a shift… (Thanks to Andrea Argue, Larry Brune, Terry Wiseman and our Together Group)

For the past several years, ups and downs defined my spiritual life. Moments in the journey were some of the most intimate encounters with Jesus that I’ve known. Real (nearly tangible) experiences, that can’t be explained by anything but the power of the Holy Spirit, took place…. moments, when I showed love to a neighbor, prayed for an enemy, served the poor… these were times when Jesus was right there with me.

Then there were the times when I got stuck trying to live like Jesus. In the Christian world we call these “good works” or “ethics.” I made my aim “doing” rather than “being.” By “doing” I believed that my “being” would be consumed by an experience of the life of God. Unfortunately, the God encounters often fade when all my time is spent “doing”, reading about or theorizing about such “doing.”

For me, it was time to stop doing. It became a time to simply rest in what Christ has done. Done “doing” because the Holy Spirit invites us to stop and to “be.”

It’s easy to follow the Sermon on the Mount and other ethical teachings of Jesus and to miss the Christ who taught such things. Dallas Willard puts it this way:

Jesus never expected us simply to turn the other cheek, go the second mile, bless those who persecute us, give unto them that ask, and so forth. These responses, generally and rightly understood to be characteristic of Christlikeness, were put forth by him as illustrative of what might be expected of a new kind of person – one who intelligently and steadfastly seeks, above all else, to live within the rule of God and be possessed by the kind of righteousness that God himself has, as Matthew 6:33 portrays. Instead, Jesus did invite people to follow him into that sort of life from which behaviour such as loving one’s enemies will seem like the only sensible and happy thing to do. For a person living that life, the hard thing to do would be to hate the enemy, to turn the supplicant away, or to curse the curser… True Christlikeness, true companionship with Christ, comes at the point where it is hard not to respond as he would.[1]

So, last year was a year I announced “I am done with living like a Christian”. I traded that in for living in a deeper relationship with Christ. I want to know Jesus. I want to hear Jesus. I want to be empowered by Jesus. Not simply in theory as I do the good things that he calls us to do, but as the natural outflow of intimacy with God. The former way “gets the job done.” The latter way changes the world.

For me, this meant a new-found intentionality of placing myself in a position to hear from the Spirit. Spiritual practices like – solitude, Sabbath, lectio divina, silence, confession, prayer, and practicing the presence of God – these neglected areas of my life had led to a Christianity defined by “doing” rather than “being.”

My prayer for us this year is that our intimate relationships with Christ would make it impossible to not respond with the ethics marked out by the Kingdom of God. Not out of effort to do good things, but out of our efforts to know Jesus Christ through an awareness of the presence of God’s Spirit. When this becomes normative, we won’t be able to help it… we will just start doing stuff… looking more and more like Jesus.

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