God is...Strong.

Ever have days when it doesn't seem like you'll make it through? When there are people fighting against you from every side? It's like the whole world has decided that you were going to be the target for a day, a year, a lifetime. And just maybe that time is right now.

Yes, all of us have felt that way at some time, some of us more than others. It's been nearly 10 years now since that day when I was just sure that the world was coming down on me. It was my last semester of seminary and my wife had not been well all year, her mom had been going through treatments for cancer, I was going before the Board of Ordained Ministry for my final interview for ordination, and my good friend David was very sick from pancreatic cancer. That's when the wheels came off.

While completing my Senior project, David passed away, on the day of his funeral I had my ordination interview. A few weeks later my wife had an outpatient procedure that ended in her on a respirator in ICU for 3 days wondering if she was going to recover. A week after she left the hospital (a miracle in itself), her mother passed away. The next week was my Senior Project oral defense and finals. (and I don't want to fail to mention that it was now Advent and I was pastoring a small, but growing church.)

When I look back on that time when I was at the end of my rope I still have some anxiety, my heart races and the blood pressure goes up. Yet it was a time of amazing growth for me. I wondered how I'd survive. And God showed me not only how to survive, but how to live and grow in adversity. I learned in that time what I hadn't had to learn before that, but what so many of the writers of the Psalms understood so well,

For you’ve been a safe place for me,
a good place to hide.
Strong God, I’m watching you do it,
I can always count on you—
God, my dependable love. (Psalm 59:16-17, The Message)

Paul told the Ephesian Church, "God is strong, and he wants you to be strong." (Ephesians 6:10, The Message) But the strength that God wants us to have is not something we come up with on our own, it is a strength that God gifts us with. God is strong, but god gives us that strength. We have to put in our best efforts and God makes up the rest. If you've ever lifted weights in a gym (or even a heavy object), tried to make one more rep but couldn't and a spotter came in and helped you complete the lift, you've got the idea. It's help just beyond what we can do. It's right at our limit, but always there.

God is...always there with strength to help.

I grew through that time 10 years ago. Not to become so strong I didn't need God, but more often to reach my limits and depend on God for the rest; to work close to the edge where God is ready to step in. God wants me to be strong, with His strength, and wants you to be strong, too.

God is ... strong.

Depend on it.

Peace ><>
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A Picture of God

"While he lived on earth, anticipating death, Jesus cried out in pain and wept in sorrow as he offered up priestly prayers to God. Because he honored God, God answered him. Though he was God's Son, he learned trusting-obedience by what he suffered, just as we do. Then, having arrived at the full stature of his maturity and having been announced by God as high priest in the order of Melchizedek, he became the source of eternal salvation to all who believingly obey him."(Hebrews 5:7-10, The Message)

I've always wondered about God, who God really was, what God was really like. I'm still on that journey of discovery. Some days I feel like Indiana Jones on an exciting adventure (except with out the whip and gun and I haven't been chased by bad guys with swords!). But just like Indy, sometimes when I think I have a handle on the answer, I lose it, or at least discover that this is only a small piece of a much larger puzzle. And some of the clues just don't seem to make sense.

The Gospel written in Hebrews reveals a picture of God that sometimes seems to be filled with puzzle pieces that don't go to the same puzzle. It's supposed to be a picture of the Messiah, but what we see goes from above angels to below them, from a throne in heaven to a servant on earth, as a high priest like the mysterious and kingly Melchizedek that Abraham me generations before to one who suffers and dies, even as God's Son. It's like two very different pictures, but it's not.

You know what a mosaic looks like. It's a picture made up of different materials or colors or pictures that when put all together make up something different. The picture above is a mosaic tile floor each tile is about a quarter inch square. There are hundred's of colors, each hand picked to make the picture complete.

There is a new technology that I love. It's called photomosaic. Instead of simple colored tiles, each block in the mosaic is a different picture. Put all the pictures together and it makes something different, a new picture. It's like a quilt or stained glass. It's like a forest made up of different kinds and sizes of trees and plants. It's like the earth, made up of all the different types of landscape, creature, plant, etc.

It's like trying to see God, when all we can see are the pieces. It's why people once thought the earth was flat, they had limited vision. We know what the earth looks like because of our ability to go into space and look back. Even then our view is only partial. There are still places on this earth that have never been visited, or are unreachable.

God is many things: mysterious, loving, creative, harsh, present yet invisible, caring yet untouchable, human yet divine. It's a journey to discover God, one that never has an end while here on earth, because at every turn we see another picture that goes in the great mosaic of who God is. And maybe that's the apt description for God anyway.

God is.

And that's enough for me.

Peace ><>
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God's Expectations

"I don't know how to pray." I've heard so many people say it. I've even said it myself. Connecting with God seems to come so simply to others, but to some of us it is just beyond our reach. It's as if we don't know the right posture, the right words, the right timing, the right attitude, so our time with God suffers. Maybe it's true, we don't know how to pray!

Have we been taught wrongly? Possibly, but more than likely we have made the wrong assumptions (maybe our teachers had as well.). So we try to form our communication with God into someone elses framework, using someone elses words and wonder why we don't get answers or satisfaction. God-communication isn't some exact science with God expecting us to use proper english (or 17th Century King James English). It's way simpler than that.

"Here's what I want you to do: find a quiet, secluded place so you won't be tempted to role-play before God. Just be there as simply and honestly as you can manage. The focus will shift from you to God and you will begin to sense his grace." (Matthew 6:6, The Message)

Toward the end of his sermon on the mount, Jesus began teaching about God's expectations of those trying to grow closer. He gave us a prayer format (the Lord's Prayer) and some simple guidelines: be secret (so that you don't make a big show of your disciplines. They aren't for others to see, they are only for you to grow closer to God.) and be honest (or real).

Even the Lord's Prayer we've misunderstood. It is not a prayer to be prayed, but a model we are to mimic. It's a template into which we put our own words, our own thoughts, our own heart. What God wants, expects, of us is simple, open our soul, not so that God can see the real us because God already knows, but open our soul to show our vulnerability, our need, our desire to understand our selves and God.

Lent is a time of self-examination, confession, penitence, repentance, which means we begin to look at ourselves for who we really are and then give that persons heart and soul over to God. That's being real. That is communicating with God on the level God desires. When we meet these expectations we'll more comletely "sense God's grace."

This Lent, be real with God, be more honest than ever, reveal your heart and open your soul and God will fill it with the most precious gift you can imagine, Himself.

Peace ><>
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A Set-Apart Lent

Holy.

It's what God is.

It's what God wants from us.

Holy is different from the norm, set apart for God-focused purpose. A Chalice for the Eucharist is never used for any other meal, the baptismal font isn't used to hold potato salad at a methodist pot-luck. They are common objects set aside for God-focused purpose, to be holy.

Any created thing can be made holy. In Leviticus it says that when a holy person touches any common thing, it becomes holy, too. Anything can have a God-focused purpose: a cup, a room, a building, a piece of property, a piece of clothing, a day, a period of time, a person, a life.

Lent is the 40 days counted back from Easter (not including Sundays). It is a time to focus on God more completely than in our every day life. It is a time to give up habits that keep us from living a God-focused life or at least give up something so that we can gain back control of ourselves. Lent is to be different from the rest of the year. It is to be holy; we are to be holy.

Today is Ash Wednesday. We are called to recognize our guilt, our humanity and seek God's mercy. We are called on to begin this 40 day journey at the beginning, to start fresh; to claim for ourselves that , "you're the one I've violated...I've been out of step with you for a long time." (Psalm 51:4a & 5a, The Message)

We are to seek God.

We are to seek God's gift.

"Generous in love - God give grace!" (Psalm 51:1, The Message)

Vow today to begin this journey of a set-apart Lent in order to develop a set-apart life; one that is focused on God, pleasing to God, becoming more like God.

Keep a Set-Apart Lent!

Peace ><>
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Toy Friends

Woody and Buzz were not friends when they first met. They were enemies each fighting for the honor of being Andy's best friend. Everything they did was working toward that goal. They didn't trust each other nor did they like each other. In the end, they discovered that they needed each other as much as they needed Andy and these two toys from the Disney/Pixar film Toy Story, became the best of friends.


"Don't talk out of both sides of your mouth, avoid careless banter, white lies, and gossip." (Proverbs 4:24, The Message)


Being a friend, a real friend, is about being trustworthy; its about being true and honorable. If I'm one way with one set of "friends" and act another way with another set of "friends" then I am friends with neither. I'm trying hard to teach this to my children. It's common to get caught up in the gossip game, playing the relationship trading game. It's junior high behavior that for some people continues into adulthood. This doesn't benefit anyone, especially you. When you trade friends, talk trash, take sides, you'll find yourself alone.


Friends are important. They are persons who can be trusted, who can keep your secrets, who know the real you and love you anyway. Friends are the ones who stand with you when no one else will, they are the ones who don't leave you alone when you want to be left alone. Friends are the ones who say things to you that hurt, because they are the truth. Having real friends is important. Being a real friend even more so.


One of the things I've discovered is that those who have these kinds of friends are these kinds of friends. If you can name at least one real friend then that means someone will be naming you as one of theirs. That's important. Having these kinds of friends means that we have to be one, too.

If you've ever experienced this kind of friendship then you know what I'm talking about. You can't wait to share your life with them, your joys, your sorrows and they with you. It is in this sharing that we grow in our relationship but it doesn't come easy. It takes time to develop the trust that is necessary to share openly. If we want to develop friends, we have to develop as a friend.


It's the kind of friend Jesus is to us. It's the kind of friend we are supposed to be.

I have many of these kinds of friends, but it wasn't always that way. I haven't always been trusted or trustworthy. I've learned. I've grown. I've found what real friendship is and means in my relationship with my wife and with my Lord, Jesus. And I've become a friend. I'm blessed these days because of that.

Want to find a friend...be one.

"You've got a friend in me."

Peace ><>
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The Right Friends

I've always heard it was important to keep the right friends. I heard it from my parents, I've told it to my children. Keeping the right friends keeps us not just in good company, but keeps us out of trouble.

I didn't always listen to my parents.

Now I was never in deep trouble, but the potential was there. I hung out with some questionable friends at times. You see, I thought that making friends with everyone was important. I still do. But I wasn't always careful who I allowed to influence me. In fact, I didn't hang out with my church friends at all (even though we remained good friends). I learned some important lessons from this time in my life that I didn't really understand until much later. Choosing the right friends is critical.

None of us are Jesus. And while it's true that he didn't always hang out with the right friends, he was never influenced by them. He was the one doing the influencing. Jesus never compromised his character. Few of us have that kind of strength, to repel the influence of those with different standards. Although we must be working at making friends with everyone, we must choose carefully which friends we hang out with. It makes all the difference in our life of faith.

King David understood this, learned it very early in his life. He found it a great honor to serve the king, Saul. It didn't take long, though, to discover that Saul was not his friend. Saul was out to do terrible things to David, like spread false stories, tell rumors, destroy his reputation and if possible eradicate him. So, David found the right friends (in Saul's son, Jonathan and others) who were faithful not only to David, but also to God. And David trusted God, too.

"I thank you always that you went into action. And I'll stay right here, your good name my hope, in company with your faithful friends." (Psalm 52:9, The Message)

I hung out with some of my best friends this past Friday, at a Christian concert, and had the most incredible time. What an incredible life God has given me and part of it comes from finding the right friends.

I thank you, God, for bringing these faithful people into my life, to influence me with their hope, their questions, their love. They are a gift. And so are you!

Peace ><>
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