My Public Service Announcement

February 20, 2015February 21, 2015 / Ragamuffingospelfan / 3 Comments

So this is the time when I usually take a break from all forms of social media (with the exception of WordPress), starting on Ash Wednesday. This year is no different. I almost reneged, but I decided I needed the time away. Also, I almost missed it. I didn’t even realize that it was Ash Wednesday until I saw someone else post about it on– wait for it– social media.

This season of Lent is all about sacrificing things– even good things– for the purpose of honing the senses to better be able to hear and obey the voice of God. Plus, the time away helps reorient my brain from getting too tied up in who is reading my status updates, who likes them, and who comments on them.

I use the extra time to catch up on all those movies I haven’t gotten around to seeing yet, to all those books on my never-ending “to-read” list, and having time to simply be silent and still. Plus, ideally I want to spend more time in my Bible, discerning the heart of God and learning to hear His voice through His pages.

I’m still not very good at it. Most of the time, I read words, my attention wanders, my mind is filled with snatches of a thousand songs and past conversations. For some reason, my ADD kicks into overdrive whenever I try to be intentional about not presenting God with a long list of requests but simply creating space and silence for Him to speak.

I’ve never heard God speak audibly to me. Maybe you have– and that’s great if you really have. Mostly, the way God has spoken to me– at least the ways I’ve perceived Him speaking to me– will be in a seemingly random phrase out of the lyrics of a song or something someone says in a movie. Sometimes, it can be a line out of a sermon. Sometimes, it can be from a conversation with a friend of something posted on Facebook.

Anyway, if you want to pray for me, pray that I can be still long enough to listen and that I can truly hear what God is saying to me and then put it into practice.

I will see you back on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, and all those other lovely forms of social media after Easter Sunday.

Two Words

February 1, 2015February 1, 2015 / Ragamuffingospelfan / 1 Comment

“Blessed be Your name
On the road marked with suffering
Though there’s pain in the offering
Blessed be Your name” (Matt Redman)

Two words: give thanks.

Give thanks even when you don’t feel like it. Give thanks as a defiant cry against desperate circumstances, in spite of the odds and the naysayers and the dark clouds on your horizon.

Give thanks like empty-handed Job, who in the face of his own wife telling him to curse God and die, with painful boils all over his body, made the declaration: The Lord gives and the Lord takes away; blessed be the name of the Lord.

Give thanks when the checks bounce, when the bills are past due, when the rent money is AWOL, when it would be so much easier to throw in the proverbial towel and just give up.

Give thanks when there are no job prospects in sight and when you feel defeated and your life seems to have hit a dead-end. Give thanks even when your dreams and hopes are on life-support.

Give thanks if for no other reason that God is worthy of it. Period. Even if those fig trees are barren and the grapevines have no grapes and the olive trees yield no olives. Give thanks because God is always good and you are always loved.

Just give thanks.

My 2015 Resolutions As of January 1, 2015

January 1, 2015 / Ragamuffingospelfan / Leave a comment

Note: these are still a work in progress, so they are subject to change. Most likely, I will think of something I left out and add it at a later date, hopefully before 2016.

Here are my resolutions for the new year (already in progress):

1) Lose 30 pounds. I figure that’s roughly 2.5 pounds per month. That’s doable, I think.

2) Read through the Bible again this year.

3) Wear my 30 X 30 jeans again (this won’t happen unless I accomplish goal #1)

4) Be working in a full-time permanent job by the end of the year.

5) Be better at giving other people the benefit of the doubt and giving grace both to others and to myself.

6) Do something spontaneous every day of 2015.

7) Do 5 things I’ve never done before (I’ll have to figure out what those are first).

8) Continue to be awesome.

9) Get back into jogging/running/fast walking/treadmilling/some other form of regular exercise.

I think that covers it for now. If I think of anything else, I’ll add it and note that I added it so I will remember that I added it. Comprende?

Lessons from Van Gogh

September 9, 2014September 9, 2014 / Ragamuffingospelfan / Leave a comment

Tonight at Kairos, Michael Boggs did a bit of art history. I have to share what he said because it really does have implications for 21st century American Christianity.

Van Gogh started as a missionary living in a mining community. He totally immersed himself in their world tried to be Jesus to them. The result was that the church who put him there fired him because they felt his behavior wasn’t becoming of their standards.

He painted his famous church painting much later. The painting is beautiful, but also telling in what it leaves out. First, there are no lights coming from within the church. There’s not a path leading to the church. Finally, there are no doors anywhere on this church.

It was as if Van Gogh was communicating how he felt church leaders shut him out and how he couldn’t get back in. He felt like they put up barriers between him and God.

A question my friend posed (and one I’ve been thinking about a lot lately is, ” What would Jesus undo?” He even wrote a book by that title with just that question in mind.

I believe Jesus would undo the walls we put up to keep people out. Not the boundaries we put up to protect ourselves, but walls we use to ostracize those who think and act different than us.

Most of all, I think Jesus would undo the holy huddle mentality that has kept the lost people around it at arm’s length and shut its eyes to the dire need around it.

Jesus would undo the religious hyper-activity that keeps us too busy going to church throughout the week to be able to take Jesus to those around us who really need Him.

Jesus would definitely undo my smug superiority over those who sin differently than I do, reminding me that my sin is just as offensive as theirs. I need Jesus as much as anyone and it took just as much grace to save me as it took for any felon or drug addict.

I plan on buying the book, What Would Jesus Undo by Michael Boggs, and I hope you will, too. Shameless plug.

Patience and Kindness

September 2, 2014September 7, 2014 / Ragamuffingospelfan / Leave a comment

I think I finally figured out what won these dogs over that I’m dog-sitting. It wasn’t my oh-so-charming personality. It wasn’t giving them a little extra food in their bowls. It wasn’t my hypnotic and soothing voice. What was it?

It was patience and kindness.

That’s how God won me over. Probably that’s how God captured your heart, too.

That’s what will win the world, I think. Just plain simple patience and kindness. No one wants to listen to a message of love from someone who’s impatient and rude. No one wants to be yelled at.

It is so true. People don’t care what you know (or even Who you know) until they know you care about them. Not just as souls to be saved but as people who really and truly matter to God. People created in the image of God who have worth and value simply because God made them.

I know I personally need quite a bit of patience and kindness both from God and from other people. That’s why I try to give it out whenever I can.

By the way, this is a milestone. My 1,500th blog post. Yay me.

The Kingdom Of God

September 1, 2014September 7, 2014 / Ragamuffingospelfan / Leave a comment

“If we only had eyes to see and ears to hear and wits to understand, we would know that the Kingdom of God in the sense of holiness, goodness, beauty is as close as breathing and is crying out to be born both with in ourselves and with in the world; we would know that the Kingdom of God is what we all of us hunger for above all other things even when we don’t know its name or realize that it’s what we’re starving to death for. The Kingdom of God is where our best dreams come from and our truest prayers. We glimpse it at those moments when we find ourselves being better than we are and wiser than we know. We catch sight of it when at some moment of crisis a strength seems to come to us that is greater than our own strength. The Kingdom of God is where we belong. It is home, and whether we realize it or not, I think we are all of us homesick for it” (Frederick Buechner).

I think that says it way better than I ever could.

I posted this on Facebook two years ago today and it still has an impact on me. I still long for this Kingdom of God and for all the wrongs of this world to be made right.

I still think heaven will look a lot like Narnia with a little Middle Earth thrown it. Hobbits in heaven? I’d like to think so.

Seasons

July 12, 2014July 13, 2014 / Ragamuffingospelfan / Leave a comment

The writer of Ecclesiastes talked about there being a season for everything in life– a time to be born and a time to die, a time to laugh and a time to mourn, etc.

I’ve found that to be very true. Especially in my social life.

There have been times when I have constantly been around people and there are times when I’ve felt alone. There have been times when I felt very popular and times when it seemed like I was the only one not invited to all the social activities I was seeing plastered all over social media.

I’ve come to terms with that.

I am who I am, regardless of whether that makes me popular or not. I have friends who I still see on a regular basis and some that I don’t see nearly as much as I used to. Again, that’s okay.

It doesn’t matter who else knows me and knows where I am when God does. While it would be nice to occasionally hang out with celebrities (and who hasn’t daydreamed about that?) and have some of them know your name, the best part of all is that the God of the universe not only knows your name but has it engraved on the palms of His hands.

That’s worth celebrating.

So maybe I spend a night or two alone while people I know are off having a grand time at places I wasn’t invited to. I’ll live. Things like that don’t bother me anymore.

It took a very long time for me to get to this point. I don’t claim to have fully arrived or to be 100% mature about all this, but I am so much further along than I was two years ago.

That’s the key– not so much looking at how far you have to go but seeing how far you’ve already come and the progress, no matter how small it seems, that you’ve made. That’s what really matters.

A Puritan Prayer on Contentment

July 11, 2014July 12, 2014 / Ragamuffingospelfan / Leave a comment

I have a book called The Valley of Vision. It’s essentially a collection of really old, i.e. 1600’s Puritan prayers. I chose one of them at random to share with you (and because it’s just so freakin’ awesome).

“Heavenly Father, if I should suffer need, and go unclothed, and be in poverty, make my heart prize Your love, know it, be constrained by it, though I be denied all blessings. It is Your mercy to afflict and try me with wants, for by these trials I see my sins, and desire severance from them. Let me willingly accept misery, sorrows, temptations, if I can thereby feel sin as the greatest evil, and be delivered from it with gratitude to You, acknowledging this as the highest testimony of Your love.

When Your Son, Jesus, came into my soul instead of sin He became more dear to me than sin had formerly been; His kindly rule replaced sin’s tyranny. Teach me to believe that if ever I would have any sin subdued I must not only labour to overcome it, but must invite Christ to abide in the place of it, and He must become to me more than vile lust had been; that His sweetness, power, life may be there. Thus I must seek a grace from Him contrary to sin, but must not claim it apart from Himself.

When I am afraid of evils to come, comfort me by showing me that in myself I am a dying, condemned wretch, but in Christ I am reconciled and live; that in myself I find insufficiency and no rest, but in Christ there is satisfaction and peace; that in myself I am feeble and unable to do good, but in Christ I have ability to do all things. Though now I have His graces in part, I shall shortly have them perfectly in that state where You will show Yourself fully reconciled, and alone sufficient, efficient, loving me completely, with sin abolished. O Lord, hasten that day.”

Those Puritans sure knew how to pray.

New Beginnings

July 6, 2014 / Ragamuffingospelfan / Leave a comment

It happens in two weeks. Three at the most.

What am I talking about?

It’s a new satellite campus of Brentwood Baptist Church, called The Church at Avenue South.

Two weeks from now (hopefully), the church meets at its new location on Franklin Pike in the old Acuff-Rose building. It’s gonna be awesome.

I’ve been a part of this new congregation for a few months, not as long as some, but long enough to sense that something great is about to happen.

I’ve always wanted to be a part of the ground-floor movement of a church plant. Now I get to. I believe the neighborhood around this new church location will be different and better because we’ve been there. Or better yet, because Jesus will have been there.

I imagine it feels like when Paul went to a new city and started a church there. I realize that Nashville is the buckle of the Bible belt, but there are plenty of unchurched people living in this city. In fact, the vast majority of people don’t attend church at all.

Our job isn’t to fill seats with seats. Our job is to love these people around us, whether they respond favorably to our gospel or not. Our job is to love them the same way God once loved us– and still does– unconditionally.

I’m still not sure what my part will be in all this, but I feel very fortunate and blessed to even be a miniscule part of what is obviously a work of God. I know one day I’ll look back and say, “I was there when it all started.”

I still remember what I learned from Experiencing God, a Henry Blackaby Bible study. He said the key is to find out where God is already at work and join Him there. That’s what I’m doing.

Pray for this new church. Pray for the leadership for protection from moral failings and for wisdom and discernment. Pray that people will be irresistibly compelled to come through the doors at 2510 Franklin Pike to see what it’s all about. Pray that we as members will live in such a way that people ask about the difference in our lives.

More to come later.

Another Blog About Nothing

July 2, 2014July 3, 2014 / Ragamuffingospelfan / Leave a comment

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I swear I had a great idea for a blog this morning. I probably had another two or three decent topics lined up. Right now, at 10:23 pm, I can’t remember a single one of them. One day I will write these strokes of genius down on paper or make a note on my phone.

So you get another one of my stream-of-consciousness ramblings. Which is make even more fun by the fact that my brain is tired, as is the rest of me.

I can’t believe it’s almost the 4th of July weekend already. That means the year is over halfway over. That means we’re past the summer solstice and the days are getting shorter again. Before you know it, school will start back up again.

The seasons are reminders of God’s faithfulness. Just as summer follows spring and autumn follows summer, so the promises of God always come to pass. That will always be true.

I hope that is as comforting to you as it is to me these days. It’s good to have a few constants in this crazy world of change and unrest. It’s good to know that as unpredictable as life can be that God will always keep His word.

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