I'm Tired

I have been a person who cares a lot about the political realm for a long time.  I have been an ultra fiscal and social conservative since I was 12 or 13.  There was a long period when I seriously considered a future in politics.  Now all I can say is, I’m tired.  I’m tired of the fights.  I’m tired of the irresponsibility, the unwillingness to listen, the pure naked pursuit of power that I see splashed across the political scene every single day.  The ads are driving me up the wall.  Last night I saw so many political ads in one 30 minute time span they all started to blur together!

What I want, and I believe what the American people want, is an honest discussion of values.  An interplay of ideas.  A place where honest men can stand up and say, “this is what I believe and this is why”.  No mud slinging.  No digging up the ancient past for things that never really happened and even if they did, no longer matter.  No name calling.  Simple straight forward choices.  Do I agree with guy A or guy B?  That’s all I am looking for! 

There is a line from the movie “The American President” that I would really love to hear come out of these candidates’ mouths.  The guy got up and said “I was so busy trying to keep my job that I forgot to do my job”.  Doesn’t that feel good? 

Frankly my intelligence has been insulted this election season.  These campaigns honestly believe the American people care more about the rhetoric and the flying accusations than they do about the issues.  I am so sorry to say that it is the McCain campaign that has been the worst, with the help of talk radio.  I used to be a HUGE talk radio fan.  Anymore I can barely stand 15 minutes of it, because intelligent discussion of issues and ideas has disappeared from that medium. 

 

I’m tired.  I’m fed up.  I don’t know what to do about it.

I need to pray!

 

 

Thinking Deeper

Being thoughtful is becoming more and more a priority in my world.  I refuse to say anything, do anything, and feel anything without serious thought introspection and prayer.  The quick pat answers of earlier days are no longer satisfying to me.  I want to know WHY.  I want to understand the deep reasons behind everything.  I do not believe that God hides these from us.  I know his depths are unsearchable but I hear that and take it as an invitation to explore.  God has deep eternal reasons for everything he does.  I want to know those reasons, or at least have a view toward what they are. 

I have been thinking a lot about the massivity of God.  He is infinate.  The Bible is fairly clear on that.  Solomon said in Chronicles that the “Heavens of the Heavens cannot contain you”.  Jesus describes Himself as the “first and the last.” Paul says that he “holds all things together by the power of His word.”  The universe is our only scale for measuring God and science tells us that not only is it impossibly massive but it is getting BIGGER all the time and its expansion is accelerating all the time.  I am in awe.  We just don’t understand how big God is.  We need to be thinking about Him; taking the box off of Him.  We must believe that He is so much more capable and so much wiser than we can comprehend. His purposes are so far beyond our puny human minds.  The things He told us in His word are as infinate as He is.  When John says something like, “God is love”.  He is saying something inexpressably infinate, overwhelmingly significant, and immeasurably powerful.  Do we get that?  Do we FEEL it?  I want to.

I challenge you to delve deep into these thoughts.  Let them challenge your ideas of God and His existance.  We cannot possibly understand the fullness of the mystery that is our beautiful God.  Enjoy it! 

THINK DEEPER!

Love y’all

Joshy

 

 

The End of the World

THE END OF THE WORLD IS COMING! ……

BUT NOT BECAUSE OF THE U.S. PRESIDENTIAL RACE!

Forgive the “shouting” but I feel like shouting it!  I have heard so many Christians lately work themselves up into lather over the fact that Barak Obama is ahead in the polls.  They predict horrible things if he is elected and are doing all they can to mobilize the “religious right” into action to stop his candidacy from being successful.  I sickens me.

First off let me say that I am not an Obama supporter.  I cannot be.  Even if I agreed with everything else that he says (and I don’t), his stance on the issue of abortion and the “right” of women to murder their own children automatically switches my vote to a no.

What sickens me is the climate of FEAR that is being created by CHRISTIAN LEADERS!!!  The REALITY of this situation is that God has this election in His hand and HE will govern its outcome.  We as Christians must do what we can to shape it, meaning vote and if so lead campaign for the people that we would support for president, but we cannot, and should not be filled with fear about what is going to happen!

Let me be methodical in my presentation so I can say everything I think needs to be said:

1. Barak Obama is NOT the Devil incarnate and he is NOT the enemy of God loving God fearing people across the globe.  He is just a man.  He is a man with some bad ideas and nowhere near enough experience to serve as the president of this country, but just a man!  It is our job to pray for this man and love him.  We keep our eyes open.  We speak up when we see things wrong.  We don’t let him get away with things he shouldn’t but we cannot hate him!  We cannot demonize him. I say with a heavy heart that Barak Obama will most likely be the next president of our country.  He will most likely be the most powerful man in the world in just a matter of months.  We need him to have an open ear to us and calling him an “Arab” or a “Muslim” (I don’t know when either of those words became terms of slander by the way) or the “Antichrist” (I am pointing 4 fingers at myself here) is not the way to foster a good relationship between the possible future president and the Christian community. 
2. The kind of hatred that is being stirred up against him in the church is unhealthy and, to be quite frank, sinful.    We cannot allow fear and anger to take hold in our hearts!  We are Christians!  When did we get the right to hate ANYONE?  We are to be motivated by love at all times.  Not fear.  Not hatred.  Love.  Let’s try and remember that!  Also whether you live in his state of Illinois or not this man is a United States senator and therefore we are charged by the Word of God to pray for him as for all our leaders.  That is only multiplied if he becomes president.
3. I have a deep and abiding hatred for the stigma of the Religious Right.  We have been made a caricature and robbed of any real cultural relevancy exactly because of this kind of frothing at the mouth behavior that I have witnessed regarding Senator Obama!  When are we going to wake up and realize that we need to be having dialogue and conversation with the secular left so as to bring them to CHRIST!  They are NOT the enemy either!  It is our responsibility and our JOY to love them and bring them close.  We cannot afford to take the radical stances we’ve taken and alienate men and women that desperately need the Gospel.  WHEN will we learn to be all things to all people by all means that we might win SOME! 

My friends let’s trust the Lord, vote our consciences, stand against evil where we see it, but never ever forget that we are called to a higher purpose, and that is God’s purpose in the earth!  Nothing, not Barak Obama, not the terrorists, not Satan himself or even OPRAH can stand in the way God’s invincible purpose.  He is on the throne!

 

Love you all

Joshy

 

 

I love history

I spend a lot of time thinking about why I think the way that I do.  It is fascinating to me that my pattern of thought did not originate with me.  It has changed the older I’ve gotten, and it has changed the more I’ve listened to other voices and other patterns of thinking.  My whole life I have been learning how to think!  If I had read other things, watched other movies, listened to other music, had different parents, gone to a different school, I would, in some ways, be a very different person.  The raw material of me would be the same but the shape that was formed from that material would be essentially different.  It is an intriguing concept to say the least.  I also know that in a few weeks, months, years, I may not think, or feel as I do now!  In the past couple of years I have come across systems of thought that have radically altered the very way my mind works namely Calvinism, and the Prayer Movement. 

I heard a man say once something along the lines of, “Listen to one voice and you will be a clone, listen to two or three voices and you will be confused, listen to many voices and you will find a voice that is your own.”  I believe that.  I am always searching for new voices; not because I want to become like them, but because I want to know where I stand and where I do not. 

This whole spin of thought and this blog post come from listening to a historical perspective on the idea of life.  What is the “spark of life”?  What is the difference between something that is alive and something that is dead.  These historians were not trying to find out the answer to the question they were merely talking a long look at the history of ideas about the question.  I was amazed at the things people believed and often because of their Christian faith.  When their ideas about these things were disproved people were angry and upset or in despair and many abandoned their faith!  How foolish it seems to me to abandon your faith just because it’s been proved that frogs do not spontaneously generate out of the mud! 

As always I tried to point this kind of thinking at myself.  What ideas / theories / theological imperatives do I have about, life, God, or existence that if they were disproved would shake my faith and threaten my relationship with God?  I call the actions of my predecessors foolish but are they not just like me?

Honestly as I ponder this more I realize that all of the things they believed that caused them to be on shaky ground were extra-biblical.  They were not from the Bible.  They were superstitions or conjecture but not there in the scriptures themselves.  We must get back to the Bible and ground ourselves in scripture!  It protects us from so much error!  Oh God THANK YOU for the gift of your Word! 

So I said all that to say that I love history.  It reveals the blind spots of our current age and protects us from the errors of the past, but only if we know it!

Jesus loves new bikes...and little lasers...because he loves little boys.

I woke up this Saturday with no plans at all except to pal around with the kids (those are my favorite Saturdays).  I told my wife, “let’s do something fun today, that doesn’t cost money!”  She reminded me that the Zoo was closing in only a couple of weeks and we should take advantage of our season passes before the season was over.  So our plans were made.  We got ready as quickly as a newborn and a Saturday morning will allow and we were ready by 11:30 or so.  As Rachel was herding the boys into the minivan I went across the street to get the mail.  I found waiting for me there a nice, and completely unexpected, check!  Praise the Lord!  I asked the Lord quickly if there was something specific we were to do with this money and I got no immediate answer but Rachel quietly reminded me that the boys were in desperate need of new bikes.  The budget has been tight lately, REALLY TIGHT, I’m sure you ALL are feeling that right now, and there has been NO room for bike money.  Thinking this may be the only time that we would be able to afford new bikes for the boys for a long time we decided that is what we would do.  After a great time at the Zoo we went to Wally World and looked at the bikes.  The price of bikes, it seems, has followed the trend and gone up just like the price of everything else.  We were just barely going to be able to afford it and we wouldn’t be able to get the ones they wanted.  I was disappointed.  I was grateful for the opportunity to get them bikes at all, but it broke my heart to see them wanting on thing and getting another.  So we decided to check at some other stores.  As we were leaving Aidan reminded us that we had promised him a few days earlier he could have a laser pointer he had seen at the checkout counter.  Needless to say we were stretching just to buy the bikes, lasers were really out of the question!  We told him he would have to wait ‘til another time for the laser.  He accepted this pretty good naturedly because of the promise of the bike.  In the parking lot on the way to the car Aidan was behind me jabbering away as always when I heard him say, “oh look daddy I found a piece of money”.  I turned around expecting to find him holding a penny or a nickel and saw him unfolding a 20 dollar bill!  I looked around to see if anyone was close that might have dropped the money but there was no one.  Wow thanks again Jesus!  So we went to a couple other stores to see what there was and we found the bike Aidan wanted for 20% off!  Hallelujah again!  So to make an already long story a little shorter.  Not only were we able to get new bikes for the boys but we got them the ones they wanted AND yes we got them the little laser pointers as well, all without spending a dime out of our weekly budget.  As we left the store we prayed together as a family just thanking Jesus for being so wonderful to us that day.   Rachel and I were in tears hearing our children rejoice in the overflowing generosity of our amazing provider.  As we prayed I said, “Thank you Jesus for loving us and for loving new bikes”, and Aidan chimed in from the back seat…”and little lasers!”  Yes Lord, and little lasers too. 

Thank you Jesus for giving us the opportunity to teach our children how much you love us and provide for us even in the hard times.

Amen

 

 

Sin is Loss

What a statement!  I heard John Piper say this in a sermon this week and it stunned me.  If we really believed this how much easier it would be to say no to sin!  The really great thing about this is that IT IS TRUE!!!

The more I study the realities of Sin and Righteousness the more I believe with ALL my heart that the HEIGHT of righteousness is a life lived form a place of total and complete delight in God and in God alone.  My definition of Holiness is endless exclusive delight in God.  My definition of Sin then is delighting in anything but God!  That is a pretty radical statement I know.  We all delight in many good things that are not directly God.  My contention there is that we delight in God THROUGH the things He gives, in a way that increases our delight in Him and thereby glorifies Him.  I love my family because Jesus gave them to me and I love Jesus more because of the delight I find in my family.  That is delight that draws me closer to Jesus and Glorifies Jesus all at the same time.  However when we choose something else IN THE PLACE of God we are sinning.  When we choose the fruit of the knowledge of Good and evil over fellowship with God we sin.  When we choose the broken cisterns that cannot hold water over the ever-flowing fountain we are sinning and in both cases we are loosing that which is of INFINATE worth to gain something fleeting and worthless.

Everything that we choose in the place of God STEALS from us, but when we choose God He gives TO US endlessly.

When we see sin and righteousness in this way sin looks really foolish!  Sin IS loss.

The problem of course is that Satan is REALLY good at making Sin look like gain.  They ate the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil because they thought they could be like God.  We choose sin because we want pleasure, security, power whatever it is and for a time we may actually get what we are after, but eventually we will lose.  Pleasure goes away, security falls apart, and power fails every single time.

 

Oh GOD Make this real in my heart – Sin IS Loss.  Only YOU are gain!!!