floor 51

I met a guy today who was in Tokyo when the earthquake hit Japan.  Though he was not at the epicenter, we have all seen the footage of Tokyo shaking under the magnitude of the 9.1 catastrophe that hit Northern Japan.

My new friend lives on the 51st floor of a high-rise in Tokyo.  He was with his wife and children when the building began to sway.  He said that minor tremors are a common occurrence in Tokyo, so they gave it very little attention.  Then the building continued to rock back and forth more dramatically.  It rocked so hard that dishes were coming out of cabinets.  Furniture was moving around the rooms.  He said that they began to feel terror as they started to believe that, even though the skyscraper had been built for tremors, they were about to collapse.  The building seemed to rock for an eternity.  The children were screaming as all power went out.

Then the rocking stopped.   As they were huddled in the darkness, my friend realized that being 51 floors in the sky would be a long walk down.  So they stayed there for two days before leaving for the States.

During that time, they looked at what was important about their lives.  There is nothing like believing that you are going to die to put things in perspective.  Their faith in Jesus Christ gave them incredible strength during their ordeal.  In a way, as they came close to death they felt closer to Jesus.

They were right.  The Bible says:

“Do not be afraid. I am the First and the Last.  I am the Living One; I was dead, and behold I am alive for ever and ever! And I hold the keys of death and Hades.”  Revelations 1:17-18

When we are faced with extreme situations, what do those conditions surface in our souls?  If we are honest, it is probably a mixed bag.  But God meets us in the midst of tragedy.   Jesus suffered for us on the cross and as a result,  His resurrection is the signpost that He has opened the door from death to life.  Those who recognize this can face death with courage (which is not the absence of fear), for Jesus Christ ultimately holds the keys that control death.

This may be controversial in the light of the pain that we see on the news, but we must have the courage to face pain with the hope that God offers us in Jesus Christ.  To know Jesus is to know the One who has conquered death and takes away its ultimate sting.

I was greatly inspired by my new friend’s story.  We will all face death on this earth, but we have the opportunity to grow closer to Jesus as we grow closer to our final hour.

prayers for Japan

We need to pray for Japan.

No, seriously, we need to pray.

Now.

We want to start praying as a people.  A friend of mine, Jon Tyson, suggested that if every Christian took Wednesdays from 12-1 to pray, we could start a prayer movement across New York City and maybe the nation.

One hour.

And you wouldn’t have to do it alone.  Get other believers from other churches to join you.

One day a week with others.

Let’s transcend denominations and other ties.  Let’s do it as the Body of Christ.

Won’t you join us from where ever you are?

We need to pray.

Now.

the “we” in the gospel

Our community has been going through the Story of God in our Grace Groups.  The Story of God was developed by missions organizations to help missionaries convey the Scripture to illiterate cultures.  Gathering a group together, they tell the stories of the Bible and the community discusses what the story means for them.  It is a dynamic way to communicate the Scripture to people who are not used to literary thinking.

What they were surprised to discover is how well that this form of communicating the Bible is working in post-literate America.  Americans are reading less and Biblical illiteracy is the highest that it has ever been in America.  We are finding that the Story is an important tool in helping people find their story in the Story of God.  (For more info, go to http://www.somacommunities.org/learners/story-of-god)

But this has also unearthed another issue:  because the Story is experienced as a community, some people are caught off guard with working things out as a group.  We are so used to a “God and me” mentality that allowing others into the process can be unsettling.

It is interesting to note that the Bible was predominately written to communities.  Only a handful of the books in the Bible were addressed to individuals.

So the point is that the Scripture paints much more of a “we” identity than a “me” identity.  God so loved the “world” that He gave His Son.  It’s more of a community identity than an individual one.  That doesn’t hinder the role of individual expression, but it basically says that the reality check of our spirituality is more in community than by ourselves.  1 John 4:20 goes as far as to state that if we say we love God but hate our brother we’re a liar and the truth is not in us!

This cuts against our “me and God” mentalities and challenges us to go to a “we and God” reality.  Though it seems like heresy to our radically individualistic culture, this becomes the very means of grace that the Holy Spirit uses to cause us to grow into Christ Himself.  (Ephesians 4:11-16)

God’s story takes our lives and places us into families.  We just need to get past the uncomfortableness of our self made walls to step into a God ordained community.  May God guide all of us in our journey toward Him.

the heart of the reader

(This is an excerpt from a book that I am writing.  I’ll have a title for it soon, but it’s based on how to read the Bible.)

Many writers take great pains to describe the disciplines of reading the Bible.  It’s relatively easy to find a schedule to read the Bible in a year or devotionals to help us understand what the Scripture tells us.   All of these things are wonderful tools, but there is something that needs to be said that may be shocking to the reader:

The goal in reading the Bible is not to read the Bible.  It is to get to know and interact with the God of the Bible.

In other words, the Scripture was given to us as a vehicle to know God.  It is not the end in itself.  This is important because we can know a lot of Scripture and not know Jesus!  The apostle John brings this to our attention in vivid detail as Jesus is addressing religious leaders of His day:

You diligently study the Scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal life. These are the Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life.  (John 5:39-40)

This is very uncomfortable!  The story throughout Scripture is that God has always been after relationship with His children.  He wants to give us hearts that burn with a passion for Him and His word.  How do we know that?  From the Scripture itself!  Notice these verses:

Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.  (Deuteronomy 6:5)

I will give them an undivided heart and put a new spirit in them; I will remove from them their heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh.

(Ezekiel 11:19)

 

But the seed on good soil stands for those with a noble and good heart, who hear the word, retain it, and by persevering produce a crop.  (Luke 8:15)

So the condition of our heart is very important, because our heart is the filter that we read the Scripture by.  If our heart is cold and hard toward God, we can read the Scripture all day and not get much from it.  If our heart has a desire to know God, then the Scripture comes alive to us.

How about us?  What does the Bible reveal about our heart today?

making the most of each day

I’m off to the races today!  Lots of appointments, some important documents that need to get out, fund raising, looking at new sites, and a men’s meeting at my place tonight.  If I look at all of the stuff I can be overwhelmed!

But here’s something far more important.  I can see that God is in the mix.  If we are looking at just the demands of our schedule we can get depressed or we become paralyzed with the options in front of us.

But here’s the secret to approaching a hectic schedule: Hebrews 12:1-3

Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.  Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.   Consider him who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.

What a thought – to fix our gaze on Jesus throughout the day.  How do we do this?  By reminding ourselves that our steps are ordered by the Lord, by speaking the gospel to our own ears that God’s mercies are new every morning.  By taking the anxieties that plague us and say “If God be for us, who can be against us?”  Just a little shift in perspective can make the difference between feeling like we are being bounced around like a pinball or walking in a security that can only come from God.

I want to remind myself that I am not facing this day alone!  As Dietrich Bonhoeffer said:

“To deny oneself is to be aware only of Christ and no more of self, to see only Him who goes before and no more the road which is too hard for us.”

telling the story

Over the summer we’ve been telling the story of God at Grace.  It’s been awesome.  We’ve been exposing people to the Bible in a story format in order to find their story in it.

This is such a big difference from how we usually approach our story.

Last weekend the NY Times Magazine cover article was called My Life in Therapy.  The author was recounting her 40 years in therapy to help her cope with who she is.  It was one of the most narcissistic articles that I’ve ever read.  The self absorption was so profound that I struggled to read her journey.  She was trying to find her story in therapy with frustrating results. (both to her AND the reader)  It is worth the read simply to understand what happens when we become so obsessed with ourselves.

Jesus gave us a diametrically opposite view of finding yourself.  Matthew 10:39 states, Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.

The paradox of Christianity is when you stop looking for yourself and begin to look for God you will find your life.  Since God created us, doesn’t this make sense?  The One who knows us best is the One who made us.  To think that the deep exploration of our souls will bring us to awareness is a mythology of psychology that is economically convenient for the therapist.

I’m not against psychology.  We really need it!  It is a powerful discipline to help us face the affects of a broken world.  Psychology can give us tools for coping, but it cannot give us the power of renewal.  That is in the hands of God.

Telling the story of God helps us find our story.  As we understand who God is and what He has done, we are strangely warmed in our hearts.  Why?  The seeds of creation call us forward into destiny.  As we understand that God raised Jesus from the dead, it gives us hope that as we lose our lives, we too, can experience resurrection life – and that is the life that we were created to live.  Not of our own awareness, but of the awareness of a God who loved us so much that he took the pain of a broken world upon Himself on the cross in order to give us life today.  This allows us to acknowledge our brokenness without losing hope that God is greater than our pain.

So learn the story of God.  Tell it to others.  You might be amazed how much you learn about yourself.  As you are willing to let it saturate your soul, you also may be amazed by how it can lift you up from your phobias into healing and strength.  The gospel IS the power of God unto salvation.  We just need to keep telling the story…

valentine’s day wishes

I realize that Valentines Day is a very difficult time for a lot of people. The awkwardness of dating, the pain of past relationships, the angst of mis-communications – all of these things are a part of the drama that Valentine’s Day represents. On top of that, 50% of marriages statistically end in divorce.  Valentine’s Day has become a painful memorial of relational failure.

But we can change that.

We can redefine what Valentines Day is about.

We can begin by establishing a new view toward relationships.  We can bring honor back into the picture.  Remember honor?  In days past, when a couple didn’t know what to do they could always fall back on manners.  What do we have to fall back upon now?  It’s almost like we don’t know what to do unless we are leveraging sexual chemistry toward goals of self satisfaction.  When asked if he was a waiting until marriage to have sex, football star Tim Tebow startled a press room into silence with his allegiance to virginity.  It seems that we have little vocabulary for virtue in our public persona.  We have become prejudiced toward self control and therefore ignorant of it’s benefits.

I’m not advocating a return to Victorian manners, but maybe we need to revisit some of the time honored ways that men and women interacted over the centuries.  There needs to be a modern hybrid of restraints that can guide our relationships.  We were made by God to be attracted to the opposite sex, so boundaries are a celebration of health, not of dysfunction.  They become a safety net that we can live with.

I’ll be celebrating my 25th wedding anniversary with my bride this year.  We love each other now more than ever and I am still reaping the benefits of the integrity of our early years.   My relational security stands in stark contrast with a generation that carry the scars of the narcissistic revolution.  I grieve over the malformed souls of young adults who needed their mom and dad to honor each other.  I am sorrowful with the demotion of sex to simply a physical act with self gratification at the center. We have substituted the language of intimacy between two unique individuals to proper technique and we wonder why we experience loneliness in the aftermath.

I believe that if we begin to honor each other we give the breathing room for individuality to blossom again.  We can destroy the performance anxiety that we experience because we have ejected performance for uniqueness.  We can make Valentine’s Day a day of honoring those we have attraction to by exploring not how far we can go, but how far we can rise.  It may be an awkward process, but the process itself can create a road map for full and vibrant relationships in the future.

There is a world that is groaning to see some sanity rise out of the wasteland of our current relational landscape.  May you be one of the pioneers to bring healing to this world.  That is my Valentine Day wish.

prayer and fasting

There is something about the new year that provokes me to take time to pray and fast before God.  To slow down with God in order to speed up with life has been a part of Christian practices since the church began.  Look at this passage in the book of Acts:

While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, “Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.”  So after they had fasted and prayed, they placed their hands on them and sent them off.   (Acts 13:2-3)

The pattern of prayer and fasting that results in clear direction is throughout Scripture.  I think that our spiritual forefathers have gotten something on us.  We are constantly looking to economic news or the latest headline to see where our country is going, but do we spend enough time looking at the headlines that are written in our souls?  It’s not that God is silent; He has already promised never to leave us as orphans.  It’s that we are not available to God enough to perceive what He is saying to us.  It is much easier to become enamored by the sense of urgency that we get with outside events than to realize the importance of internal events.  We have substituted the ease of information for the effort of waiting upon God for revelation.

When faced with an important life decision, do we look to the Lord or do we look to the next conference?  When faced with obstacles in our life, do we take time to stop and seek God, or do we become a flurry of activity?  There is much profit in activity, but if we get busy before we get quiet we miss something major.

I pray that 2010 will be a year of seeking after the Lord in prayer and fasting.  When was the last time that you fasted?  If you want to start, you can download a document on fasting at www.gracenyc.org.  You don’t have to do a 40 day fast.  You could just skip a lunch and pray.  Then try 2 meals and read the Scripture instead.  Seek after God.  Take the time to slow down.  Then listen.  There are many “Set apart for me…” moments that are yet to be discovered.

wedding wishes

I was privileged to do a wedding in San Diego over the holidays.  It was a fun (and exhausting) time as the ceremony was put together in a mountain retreat center.  The temperature was in the 60′s and the environment was peaceful.  Excitement filled the air as the two families and their friends came together to celebrate the new life this couple was stepping into.

The ceremony was brimming with wonderful idiosyncrasies.  It was truly an expression of community.   One particular aspect of this event caught my attention that I think is worth mentioning.  One parent from each side of the wedding party took a moment in the ceremony to give a short message from the Scripture.  That in itself is not unusual.  What was unusual was the contrast between the two.

The first parent eloquently spoke of their child.  With 6 degrees from higher institutions, this petite woman had the elegance that comes from years of learning.  Her love for her daughter and her hope for this marriage washed over the listeners.

The second parent spoke with passion and fire.  Raised as a hard rock miner, this bear of a man spoke with the plain yet clear voice of that which comes from years of learning in a different way.  The school of experience has as much credibility as institutions.  The strength of his life proclaimed to us the joy of a father proud of his son.

The thing that struck me the most was how different these two were, yet they both were children of the gospel.  One highly educated, the other self taught.  One elegant and insightful, the other powerful and clear.  Yet the power of the Holy Spirit flowed through each of them as they poured their love for their children out in words that impacted the small group that assembled that day.   Each life carried it’s own pain and each life carried it’s own authority.

This is one of the reasons that I marvel at the teachings of Christ.  The gospel has the height to make sense to someone from the halls of academia, but it has the depth to reach people from the harshest backgrounds.  The apostle Paul puts it this way:

There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.  (Gal. 3:28)

This gospel was created for hearts that are ready to hear the words of God, it is not activated by intellect or willpower.  Humility becomes the great equalizer for the things of God, and therefore humility also opens up opportunities to ANYONE who calls upon the name of Jesus Christ.  My prayer is that I never lose sight of the reality that my walk with God is propelled and hindered by the condition of my heart.   I pray that you never lose sight of that as well.

words

I was at a conference recently where a well known speaker was making the point that we are becoming less word oriented and more image oriented.  He said that we are coming out of the “Gutenberg age”  and into the ” Google age”.

I respectfully disagree.

I believe that we are inescapably word based.  No matter how many images we see we will always need words to figure out what that image means.  Think about when you saw something that you thought was very cool.  What was the first thing that you did?  You probably told your friends!  It has been well said that for every image we see we will need a thousand words to describe that image.

I’m not refuting that we are in an age of digital images, but I often wonder if this is more our excitement about new technology than a major shift.  Imagery has always been a part of the human experience, but as we are bombarded with more imagery our humanity will kick in.   We’re finding out that we’re not that good at multi-tasking.  The press is still puzzled about the success of talk radio. (I’m not endorsing the content of talk radio, just that the power of the spoken word is alive and well.)   The talk has just begun about shutting down the email at times, putting the iPhone on airport mode, and coming back to sacred space -  times where we are silent and left to the words that flow inside of us.

The Scripture tells us that, In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. (John 1:1)  God has identified Himself as the Word.  He made us for words so that we can know Him.  The farther that we get from words, the less we know the One who made us.  If anyone has ears to hear, let him hear.