Opening your heart through prayer...

Pain is a funny thing sometimes.  It can do just as much harm in the long run as in the short run.  In fact, it is the pain that adds up over time that seems to threaten to close my heart to love. It is through all the small little jabs that seem to add up over time.  I think about this comment that someone made and that comment someone else made (it’s mostly the bad ones I remember), and it all becomes an open wound.  A wound which I just end up protecting myself from so much that I end up closing my heart more and more to loving.

It comes down to my struggle to forgive, I think, and not taking time to work through it all.  For me, it is easier to just build a list of enemies to avoid than to truly see through their words to the pain they are expressing as well. It seems that everyone most of the time is living out of their pain that they have experienced as opposed to their love and life. 

I guess it is because it seems we have been trained to focus on it.  When we got grades in school, the ones we focused on were the bad ones, not the ones we excelled in.  It is this societal mold that we each try to fit in with no one ever doing it well, so we live out of this pain.

It is when I embrace my uniqueness, that I often time find I am able to live out of the life, and even start to see others life offerings as well.

This is very true in regards to my call as a youth pastor.  If I focus on the mold the church people think I should fit in, then I find myself leading to pain.  But, if I continue to focus, in my call, to the Imago Dei, I can truly begin to lead others.  Not only because I can see how God sees me more clearly, but also I can begin to see them more like God does too. 

I find that this is what prayer does.  Prayer, time and conversation with God, is the way I am freed from the mold that society has placed on me, and reminds me of my true mold, the Imago Dei. The mold I am called this the image of God.  This mold brings life and unconditional, redeeming love, but society’s mold brings pain.  May my prayers, our prayers guide us to life!

Hanging out with God...

If you have done anything where you have served people who are the forgotten or for lack of a better way to phrase it less fortunate, then I hope that this helps explain the strange thing that always seems to happen: We go to serve, but in the end, we are the ones who feel like we were served.  

 

I am sure that some of this has to do with the warmed heart we get when we do what we know we are called to do as Christians, to go and serve the poor and forgotten, but I would like to argue that something else is going on, something much more important….

The other day I had the great pleasure of volunteering at Capernaum in Nashville.  Capernaum is a branch of the organization Young Life, and this branch is specifically created to server those who have special needs.  I cannot tell you how excited I was to go, and had been trying to for a while, but it had finally worked out!  Not only that, one of the teens in the youth group I work with who is called to work with those who have special needs was able to come too!

We arrive and there is a huge feast!  We are each motioned by two different people to come and join them.  The conversation is light, fun, and both I and they were excited to learn about the other.  After eating we went into the worship area where we sang worship songs together, completely free from inhibitions and judgment, so freeing.  We were dancing, laughing, running around, and swaying.  If I could compare it to anything it was like was were all kids who didn’t know better but loved being in the presence of God and danced because of it.

Several more things happened like a game, message, and more songs.  After leaving that night, both Blair, the teen from my group, and I were on a high and so excited to share our experiences!

We had gone to serve, but we came away as if we were the ones being served.  It felt as if we had just gotten to hang out with God, which brought me to reflect more on this, and eventually find this passage:

“Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world.  For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in,  I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’

“Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you?  When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’

“The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’ – Matthew 25:34-40

I think that the reason we feel served when we serve others is because by doing so we are hanging out with God.  We are serving God, and by being with God we are served even more so. The beauty of all this is that above all love is shared, and this love redeems everything involved the server and the one served because God is there with us in that love.  This LOVE REDEEMS...this is God.

Choose Unity....

It seems like there are so many things that break communities apart: lies, divorce, breakups, backstabbing, picking sides, jealousy, bad communication, and the list goes on and on....and on....and...well you get the picture.

You see the thing is that so often, we all choose to live out one of these things that divides and breaks communities.  I know for me, I often jump to choosing one of these things because it makes me feel better about myself.  I think that in some way by making the other person lesser, I have just made myself better. By beating down someone, I am the better person....right?

I think it is pretty obvious that this is not how it should work...but then how?

For me, I believe that we are all created to live within community with everyone, not just the ones we like, but everyone.  Through this we learn a lot about ourselves, other people, life, love, God and so much more.  It is through us working through the struggles that we learn, that we grow, that we learn to love.

For too long communities have been full of people choosing to divide and making the whole community suffer...I say CHOOSE UNITY!  If we are ever to look like the Body of Christ and live out God's Kingdom here on earth we must all CHOOSE UNITY!  We must be willing to choose love over success, love over fame, love over self, love over personal glory.  We must CHOOSE UNITY!!  To do this, we must choose love, an unselfish love which was shown perfectly in Christ!


"The way God designed our bodies is a model for understanding our lives together as a church: every part dependent on every other part, the parts we mention and the parts we don't, the parts we see and the parts we don't. If one part hurts, every other part is involved in the hurt, and in the healing. If one part flourishes, every other part enters into the exuberance.  You are Christ's body—that's who you are! You must never forget this." -1 Corinthians 12:25-27 Message

So today, this week, for the rest of your life....CHOOSE UNITY, choose to love first.  Choose to deal with the hard stuff and grow through it, not despite it.  Through CHOOSING UNITY, I believe the church will start to heal, and when the church starts to heal, the world will start to be healed by the church...and then we will see what it really looks like to see LOVE REDEEM!!!

This will be far from easy, and it will take time, effort, pain, and tears, but it is worth it!  So today I CHOOSE UNITY!!!! WHAT DO YOU CHOOSE?

We set them up to fail...

I have been back in ministry and school together for the past year and for the most part it is great to be learning theory while being in the practical.  I would say this is the only way to go through seminary or grad school even.

Through our school, we have a retreat format which means we have intense weekends one a month as opposed to weekly classes.  This weekend was one of those weekends, and usually I learn a lot of books stuff and also have a lot of fun in fellowship with many other youth pastors.  This weekend there was something else.  Something worth writing down.

Part of this semester we were broken up into groups and required to write together 6 youth group lesson plans and actual put on one of them for the group.  Friday night was one of the groups turn to share one of their lessons.  Through several different interactive small group activities and a wrap up time, we learned about how often we set people up as perfect, and when they don't live up to that perfection we look down on them or discard them altogether.  It is what we do with Pastors, Teachers, Coaches, people in leadership who are still just people in the end.

One of my peers in the group, Teddy, kept saying throughout the lesson the phrase "We set them up to fail, We set them up to fail,We set them up to fail"  I agreed with him, but did not realize how much more it would apply later this weekend.

So after two days of 10 hours of class each day, and a morning of 2 more hours, we finished our intensive weekend with a special conference with an author of a book we had read (details left out because they are not the point) this semester.  From reading a lot in school, you gain appreciation for authors in their books, but it is rare to hear one talk about the book you read to really hear it from them.  Needless to say, he had written a book, and that in itself is impressive, and it was pretty good a times too so even better.

So I was pretty excited, as I always am to meet and hear from the author.  I expected him to be something special that was a great and better example of what I wanted to be, not perfect but close.

As soon as we started, I realized I had a very wrong impression.  He was arrogant, brash,only allowed himself to speak for the most part, and at one point told me that he assumed that I just didn't care what he had to say because I was on my computer.

I was not happy, and really just stopped listening (even though some of it could be useful).  I had set him up as perfect and he had failed me.  "We set them up to fail, We set them up to fail, We set them up to fail."

We do this all the time in our lives, we build people up and then when they fail us in someway we write them off.  I think the better approach is to remember that we are all human and all fall short, ALL, EVERYONE, PERIOD.

The only one we can look to as perfect is God through Christ, for the rest of us, we need to come at all relationships with love.

"We set them up to fail, We set them up to fail, We set them up to fail."  Why don't we LOVE FIRST ALWAYS, knowing that we can always learn something from everyone and if we look for that as opposed to looking for perfection, maybe we can start Redeeming.

I have learned from this speaker, looking at it this way, that often I write off teen ability to lead or have the drive to do more.  I pray, I will be more open to learning differently from the teens I work with every week.

"We set them up to fail, We set them up to fail, We set them up to fail."  Why don't we LOVE FIRST ALWAYS, knowing that we can always learn something from everyone and if we look for that as opposed to looking for perfection, maybe we can start Redeeming.

Simple Redemption...

One of the simplest
forms of redemption
is picking up
a piece of trash
that wasn't yours.

More about Redemption...

I think that we as Christians are called to be people of redemption. 

Redeem can be defined as to free from what harms, but for me if prefer to set right.  The big idea is God created, and somewhere every early on, humankind messed it up somewhere.  The rest of the story is God working to redeem, set right, the world again. And Jesus, God with us, through his life, teachings, sacrifice, and resurrection, opened the way for us all to be a part of this redemption story!

Redemption can be a very scary idea, because it sounds like it has to be this BIG thing, which is can be, but I believe that God calls us to make choices of Redemption that will all lead to God's Redemption of the world.

So today, what choices can you make to live out of this redemption story God has called us to as Christians?
What ideas do you have?

Where did this blog come from...

For several years now, I have had a bumper sticker on my car that has a black background in simple white letters that reads: "Love Wins."  It was what I felt summed up my belief in faith, God, life, relationships, etc.

As I am in youth ministry and now also in seminary, I have been spending a lot of time reflecting on all of my beliefs, and within it...my understanding of it all has changed a bit.

I have known for some time that from scripture, life, God, OK well everything, that it all came down to one thing: LOVE.  Let me specify that this is not a romantic love, but rather a deep relationship, unselfish, sacrificial type of love. (See Jesus in scripture) 

With this understanding, I realize that within this world today just saying "LOVE" leaves a lot up to the imagination and so by adding another word it helps to guide the mind as to where to go.  This is where "Love Wins." came in.  I felt it help to specify the LOVE idea.


Love Wins is the idea that God is Love and in the end, Gods Wins, not only that but also that it wins in everything we do.


Now, as I have continued on my journey, I feel that LOVE still is the truth for it all, but "Wins." was lacking in helping to define the LOVE.  The problem with "Wins" is that it implies a loser and also a competition; neither of which fit the kind of love I am talking about. 

So, I needed to find another guiding word to point to the kind of LOVE I am referring to.  This is when I came upon the idea of "LOVE REDEEMS."  Still referring to the same LOVE, but having a better guiding word.  "REDEEMS" says it sets things right again, it builds up it doesn't tear down.  "REDEEMS" it what God is all about, and what Jesus did. 

I believe that this represents my understand on the Christian Faith, and the God whom we worship.  Join with me in stories of redemption, faith, love, and so much more....