Rob Bell states his beliefs...

Thoughts about God and Love wins from Rob Bell

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Trying to find Sabbath...

It seems like forever since my wife, Joanna, and I have been able to find a day off.  We both work at the church, shes is a children's minister and I am a youth minister, and to top it off we are both going to seminary for our masters too.
We have set Fridays as our day of rest from work and school, and for the past year until 2012 we have been...ok at keeping it.  It seems that in 2012 we have gone none stop with little light at the end of the tunnel.  It is not that any of it is bad stuff, but when we find ourselves with a lack of time to rest, refuel, and spend time with God, then that is a problem no matter what you are doing.
I have found it hard in working at a church to find good ways to even take Sabbath as going to church well isn't always, although great and filling in other ways, we are in need of different ways of spending time with God.
In the past couple weeks, I have found Sabbath in music.  I love to listen to music and play the guitar and sing, and I have had a renewed growth and time in music.  Music is one of the best ways I have found that I connect with God.  It helps my soul relax, let go, and just be in the melody.
Today was a little different.  We finally had the whole day off, which was different in itself, but instead of music, I went outside,and I put out the hammock and just laid there. It was one of the first warm days of the year.
I had planned to journal, read, write, all sorts of things while I was out there; but when I got in the hammock...I just laid there.  It was finally a time where I was simply being in God's creation and worshiping God through it; and worship in whatever way always fills me.

Now I am not one who sit still very long, but as I laid there, looking up into the two trees the hammock is attached to...I could not help but rest.  After a few minutes, there came a cold breeze and as I was thinking I might have to go in, the sun came out and shined right at me.  I warmed up immediately and it was as if God was saying, stay still a little longer.  It was a beautiful moment and felt amazing.
I feel refreshed, renewed, and redeemed.  I know that I need to do things like this a lot more, and my hope and pray is that we can be more aggressive about keeping our Sabbath.
What a different world it might be if we all took more time to just be with God in creation.

A prayer for the new year...

Loving God,

Give me compassion for all

Compassion even to those who hurt me

Give me the words to speak truth

Truth to all in the words they need to hear

Give me passion to live for your Kingdom

Passion strong enough that nothing will quinch it

Give me your eyes for the world

So that I might see it as you do

Give me your unending love

So that I might share it with others

Thank you that through your amazing, unending grace

you have already given me this and more

May your Spirit guide me to live it

Amen

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?