missions

Stopping the Parade

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Some moments are so precious and rare that they stop you in your tracks. Some are so beautiful that they become engrained in your mind the same way an image is burned on to a strip of film.

Today, as I wached the Christmas parade in downtown Franklin, I noticed a man standing with his arms around a little boy who had Down’s syndrome. I watched how loving the man was toward the boy and assumed he was the boy’s father.

At one point, an older man stopped the parade, got out of his car, walked over to the boy, and handed him a stuffed toy dog. I think that image will be forever in my memory.

At one time, we were all in a parade like that. Slowly marching through history, trying anything and everything to fill the deep aching inside. None of the flashing lights or sounds could fil the void or fix the brokenness inside.

Then God stopped the parade. He entered human history in a hidden corner of the world in a lowly barn to a peasant couple in backwoods Bethlehem. God became one of us to find us and rescue us from our sins and ourselves.

That man, Jesus, lived a life we could never hope to live and satisfied the requirements of God that we never could. He climbed up a hill and died a criminal’s death that should have been yours and mine and rose from the grave, leaving all our sin and brokenness and fear of death behind in the grave.

Where were you when God stopped your parade? Where were you when Jesus entered into your history and became something more than a historical figure or religious icon? Where were you when Jesus saved you?

I know at the end there will be a different kind of parade. We will all be in it, along with every saint who ever lived and followed Jesus. It will be a triumphant parade with songs of victory and shouts of joy. Jesus will be the grand marshall and this parade will never end.

I hope during this frantic Christmas season, Jesus will stop your parade and speak peace over you in the few moments of stillness. I pray He will remind you that it’s His birthday we’re celebrating and what He wants more than anything is your heart surrendered and you being a vessel that He can love and reach and heal people through.

Advent Thoughts

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I love Advent. Even though I grew up in a Baptist tradition that didn’t include Advent, I am so glad I have found the joy and anticipation that Advent brings. Christmas isn’t a day on a calendar or even a season; it’s an event that changed absolutely everything.

I love the fact that God Almighty became a fetus inside the womb of Mary. I love that He was born to Mr. and Mrs. Nobody in a barn trough and grew up in Nowhere and chose other nobodies and nowheres to be His disciples and first missionaries. I, too, once was a nobody and an outsider who didn’t fit in. In some ways, I still am.

I love the fact that Jesus walked in my shoes and felt all my feelings and saw the same kinds of troubles and pain that I see. I love the fact that He walked my road perfectly and offered up to God for me the kind of obedience I could never even dream of, much less carry out.

I love the fact that God still has a heart for the orphan and the widow, the homeless and the outcast, the broken and the ignored, and all those who don’t fit in anywhere. I love the fact that God has His affections set on me and an loved me with an unquenchable love that I can’t lose or destroy or run off.

I love the fact that while people are human and will eventually fail me and I will fail them, my Jesus never will. While everyone I know, including me, is fickle and changeable as the wind, Jesus is the same in all my yesterdays, todays, and tomorrows, and forevers.

I love the idea that we are celebrating this Christmas season the impossible becoming possible, the unthinkable becoming reality, and all lost causes finding hope again. I love to think that God did this to show that yes, Love would go that far.

I love most of all that today after I forgot again the reason for this Season, You reminded me. You always do. I’m always running away and You’re always waiting for me with open arms. I’m always breaking promises and being weak and denying You, but You are always ready and more than willing to forgive and to finish this great work You’ve started in me.

These and so many other reasons are why I love Advent.

Going Deeper

/ Ragamuffingospelfan / 1 Comment

I’m not one to call myself a prophet or to claim I receive prophetic words from God. I think He speaks to me, like He did today, but I’m not the one to judge whether what He said to me was prophecy. The word was “Go deeper.”

That’s what I believe the Spirit of God is telling the people of God: “Go deeper.”

You can stay in the shallow end of your faith and stay comfortable and have one foot in the kingdom of God and one foot in the flashy, multimedia world. You can stay where the water is only ankle-deep and where what you say doesn’t have to match up with how you live.

But You will always live defeated. You will always be a victim and never a victor. Your worship will always be dead, your prayers cold, your Bible just words on a page. You will always be ruled by fear and doubt. You will always give in to temptation and never see deep healing in the deepest , darkest places of your heart.

Going deeper means that maybe you have to sacrifice the hip and trendy crowd for the homeless and the broken crowd. You may stop hanging out with the oh-so-cool artsy crowd and go to the outcasts and the hurting and the shamed.

Going deeper means trading in a feel-good sentimental kind of love for a selfless sacrificial kind of love. It means that you give without any expectations of ever getting back. It means you are willing to lay down your life in a million tiny deaths each day.

Going deeper means that you say YES to Jesus, no matter what. You go where He says go, you give what He says give, you love who He say to love, and you do what He calls you to do.

I will be the first to admit that I have been a casual fan of Christ far more than I have been a follower. But that’s what going deeper means– to stop being a sideline fan who roots for the Home Team and be a follower who gets your hands and feet dirty and messy, but find out that those are the very hands and feet of Jesus touching, reaching, and healing a broken world through you.

This isn’t my normal positive, encouraging blog. This is my blog that says that if you want to know more of this love that is deeper than your sin, wider than your understanding, and higher than your imagination, you have to surrender.

As always, I’m just a nobody trying to tell everybody about Somebody who can save anybody. I’m just one beggar telling other beggars where to find the Bread of Life. I’m a ragamuffin who has joy because my Abba Father calls me His beloved.

The Way of Downward Mobility

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Tonight I was touched by these words from Henri Nouwen. I will let them speak to you the way they spoke to me, unedited and in his own words, not mine:

“Prayer means letting God’s creative love touch the most hidden places of our being and letting Jesus’ way of the cross, his way of downward mobility, truly become our way.  And prayer means listening with attentive, undivided hearts, to the inner movements of the Spirit of Jesus, even when that Spirit leads us to places we would rather not go. . . .

I say this with great compassion: we are living in an upwardly mobile society, a society in which making it to the top is expected in some degree of all of us. And aren’t we tempted to use even the Word of God to help us in this upward mobility? But that is not the way of God, the Father, Son, and Spirit. God’s way is not the way of upward mobility but of downward mobility. You know, as well as I do, that the question we will finally hear is not going to be: “How much did you earn during your lifetime?” or “How many friends did you make?” or “How much progress did you make in your career?” No, the question for us will be: “What did you do for the least of mine? What did you do for the lonely in your cities, the prisoners in your country, the refugees within and below your borders, and the hungry all over the world? Have you seen the humiliated Christ in the faces of the poor?”

God has chosen to be revealed in a crucified humanity. That is a very hard realization to come to, yet all authentic prayer will eventually lead us to it. I hope you are able to feel with me our hesitation to let God truly love us in God’s way and to respond fully with our whole being.”

More Thoughts on Fighting From Victory (And not For It)

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chariots of fire

I normally don’t do follow-up blogs to ones I have posted. Kinda like the line about not repeating this ever again or something like that. Did I mention my brain is a little fuzzy this evening?

Someone posted a comment on my blog that got my attention. I failed to mention or say correctly that we should pray for strength. Absolutely. We should pray that God will strengthen us with power through His Holy Spirit.

It seems to me that sometimes we should claim the power that is already in us. The Bible states that the power that raised Christ from the dead is in us. It is in us because the risen Christ is in us.

The power that my sin couldn’t overcome. The power that death could not conquer. The power that the grave couldn’t hold down. That kind of power.

Maybe I’m wrong, but I don’t pray to be strong, but rather that God would be strong through me. I want to be a vessel that God pours through, that God loves through, that God comes through.

Sometimes I know how I want to say something in my head and for whatever reason, it doesn’t quite come out in print. On a side note, I have become quite familiar with the taste of shoe leather for as many times as I have put my foot in my mouth and said really dumb things. That really makes me feel like a heel.

Pray for strength. Yes. Claim the power of the risen Christ in you. Yes. The point is that you don’t have to live defeated and downtrodden. You can live in victory because the Victor lives in you.

That’s what I am praying and claiming for myself and for all of you tonight. May God’s peace rule your hearts tonight, friends!

Thoughts on Fighting From Victory (And not For It)

/ Ragamuffingospelfan / 4 Comments

chariots of fire

Today, God reminded me of something I knew but had forgotten. Lately, I’ve been praying for peace and stronger faith and for strength to overcome temptation and negative thinking.

I think what God was reminding me was that I already have these things in Christ. In Christ, I have everything I need for life and godliness, as it says in 1 Timothy. So maybe instead of praying for peace, I will claim the peace that passes all understanding.

Instead of praying for stronger faith, I will claim the promise that when I am weak, Christ is strong and that His strength works best in my weakness.

Instead of praying for the power to overcome temptation to anxiety and negative thinking, I will claim the verse that I can take every thought captive and take it to Jesus and leave it there. I’m not saying that I can claim a Bentley in faith and I will receive it. I am saying that God says to those who lack wisdom, to ask.

God says to keep asking, keep seeking, keep knocking, and keep wrestling with God until He blesses you. The victory is won. The enemy is a defeated foe. Never forget that. Death no longer has the final word and the grave is only a temporary resting place. Jesus holds the keys to death and the grave and hell.

Live out of the victory that’s already yours and fight from it and not for it. Believe in faith the promises of God not only for yourself, but for those around you.

Pray strong for someone when that person can’t pray for themselves.

Above all, if we are the winning side, we should be the most joyous, grateful people on the planet. Our thankful hearts will be what gets the attention of the world around us who is still looking for meaning and hope.

They are waiting to see someone whose testimony is not just talked out, but walked out, too.

A Broken Record

/ Ragamuffingospelfan / 4 Comments

Sometimes, I feel like a broken record. Not the kind like when Hank Aaron broke Babe Ruth’s home run record. I’m talking about old-school vinyl records that when scratched would play the same line over and over again.

I’m like that. I’m a broken record. I’m broken. We all are.

As long as I live, I will never stop telling anyone who will listen or read about how God can find anyone at anyplace at anytime, no matter how far gone, and rescue them.

I will never stop being thankful for the grace that saved me and saves you and that never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever fails.

I will never cease to be amazed at the Love that overcame every obstacle, every stronghold, every enemy, even me, to get to me and to win my heart. A Love that won’t let go or give out or give in or give up.

I will never change the message that I have been trusted with– that Jesus died to save sinners, of which I am one of the worst– even if it costs me friends, comfort, security, jobs, health, or even my life.

I hope I sound like a broken record. I hope I sound like I’m stuck on the same line in the song that God is singing to His creation. That no matter what you’ve gone through, no matter what you’ve done or what’s been done to you, Jesus can find you and rescue you and heal you and make you beautiful again.

In those moments when you feel alone, when you feel those friends have abandoned you, when you feel that no one can possibly understand or know what you’re going through, Jesus knows.

He knows you better than you know yourself. And He loves you just the same. If you are the one person who gets that deep down in your soul and to the very core of your being, then all the 99,999 times I have repeated this chorus will have been worth it.

Thank you for faithfully reading these blogs. It means a lot that you care what I have to say. More than that, it means that hopefully, God will use these words to remind you of who you are and Whose you are and just how good He is.

 

God, I’m Sorry

/ Ragamuffingospelfan / 1 Comment

God, I’m sorry that I took even a single moment of the time I had today for granted. I’m sorry I forgot that every moment of this life is sacred, for You inhabit all of it.

You’re in every frame of every scene in my life, speaking to me through the Word, through your people, through circumstances, and loudest of all, through the Silence that echos the calm before the storm.

I’m sorry I failed to give you as much room to work in the lives of my friends as You took to work in mine. I’m sorry I doubted them and mistrusted their motives instead of looking for and believing the best about them and giving them the benefit of the doubt, as You taught and showed me how to do.

I’m sorry that I listened to my fears instead of to You, and they lied to me. I’m sorry that I believed what they said: that eventually all the people in my life will find out what I’m really like underneath my plastic smile and decide that I am simply not worth the effort and they will walk away. I name that lie and give it to You for good.

I’m sorry I was living my life at the I-level, living in the me-story and focused on all things Greg. I forgot that what You have for me is so much bigger than me and what my little world can hold. Your plans are God-sized and the God-story You are telling me is so much better than mine (thanks to Karla Worley for the imagery).

I’m sorry that tomorrow, I will need to be reminded of this all over again. I will forget You and how constantly You have taken care of me.

Thank You that You are slow to anger, steady in love, and ever patient with me, never wearying in reminding me of who I am and Whose I am. Of how much stronger Your voice is than all the other voices that speak to me and that Your voice is saying good things about me and calling me Beloved.

Thank You that You won’t give up, give in, let go, let me down, or turn on me. Thank You that you will absolutely finish what You started in me and then it will all have been so much more than worth it.

Thank You. Amen.

More Thoughts on Not Being a Fan

/ Ragamuffingospelfan / 1 Comment

“You can’t call Jesus Lord without declaring yourself his slave” (Kyle Idleman).

I really think I, like most of the people I know, have really missed it when it comes to faith and Jesus. I know I for one have probably been more of a fan of Jesus than a follower for most of my life.

Followers don’t have Jesus as their number one priority. They have Jesus as their ONLY priority. Nothing else matters except following after Jesus and taking His story to the world. Nothing.

Followers are willing to leave everything behind and to follow after Jesus, no matter what it costs, no matter what they have to give up, no matter how many times other people call them “crazy” and “fanatical” (even church people).

I like to think of a follower of Jesus as someone who is set on fire by the love of Christ. They are totally consumed by it. Eventually, there is nothing left of me and all anyone who looks at me will see is Jesus. That’s what I want.

A follower is willing to risk reputation and prestige and career and life itself to take this Love to the people who need it most. A follower is not captive to what others think or say, but only ultimately listens to one Voice. The Voice of Truth.

I know that what the world longs to see is people actually living out the faith they claim to believe. Nothing frustrates them more than someone whos lifestyle doesn’t match their professed faith. I am frustrated when my own actions don’t bear out what I claim to believe.

My prayer for you is that you would be so captivated and captured by the love of Christ that you will be set ablaze for His glory and not consider your life too high a price to pay to follow and know and love this Jesus who gave everything to win your heart.

 

Communion

/ Ragamuffingospelfan / 2 Comments

I took communion today as a part of the worship service. It really hit home and reminded me of how great the price Jesus paid for me. If I had a communion prayer to express my thoughts, it would go something like this:

When I was lost and couldn’t find You and couldn’t even find myself, You came down and found me.

When I was dead to you and the things in life that really matter, You made me alive to the wonder and beauty of the world You made and mostly, alive to You and alive in You.

When I was a stranger and an outcast looking in from the outside, You took me in and made me one of Your own and called Me Your child.

When I was a captive to my sin and fears, You opened the doors to my prison and set me free forever.

When I was exhausted and couldn’t find rest from all the anxious thoughts running around in my head, You simply said, “Come to me and I will give you rest.” You took those anxious thoughts from me and gave me sweet sleep.

When I was in darkness, You were the light that helped me find my way.

When I was Your enemy, You loved me anyway and paid much too high a price because You thought I was worth dying for.

When I felt alone, You were with me in the night, holding me in Your arms and rejoicing over me with singing.

When I couldn’t speak, You were my Voice. When I couldn’t pray, You were my Prayer. When I couldn’t sing, You were my Song.

When I was weak, You were my Strength. When I had nothing in me to give, You were my Sacrifice.

As I take your bread, I remember Your body broken so that I might be whole and healed. As I take your wine, I remember Your blood spilled out completely for me that my broken pieces might be put back together again.

With this communion, I say again, “Thank you for my life. It’s Yours for whatever, whenever, and however You want to use it. Pour it out for others. May it be broken and blessed to feed the multitudes. Make me a blessing and an answer to prayer and Jesus to someone today.

Amen.