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More of My Mind Blown at Kairos

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Tonight, Uncle Mike (or Mike Glenn, as he is known to those outside of Kairos) spoke on the passage in Matthew where Pilate offers up a choice to the people.

“Whom do you want me to release today? Jesus or Barabbas?”

He does this hoping the crowd will want to release Jesus, but to his dismay, they ask for Barabbas instead.

“Don’t you know what kind of man this is? Are you sure you want this man over your Messiah?”

I’m sure Pilate thought but never spoke these words. Instead, he washed his hands of the whole business. Literally.

I wonder if you could have been close enough, would you have heard Jesus saying, “Release Barabbas”?

The truth of the matter is that Jesus chose Barabbas. Jesus chose to go to His death so that Barabbas could go free.

I would not have picked Barabbas. He was not a nice guy in the most extreme sense. But Jesus did.

Don’t forget that Jesus also chose you and me. He chose to die for you and me so that we could go free.

You might say that you’re not as bad as a Barabbas, but the Bible says you have sinned. I have sinned. We have all fallen short of who God made us to be. We had the choice and chose the other side over God.

But when God had a choice, He chose us. Jesus chose us over His own life.

My mind is once again officially blown.

Love Will Remain

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I read this about a week ago and kept it in my archives to share with you at some point. So here it is, without any added commentary from me:

“Hope and faith will both come to an end when we die. But love will remain. Love is eternal. Love comes from God and returns to God.  When we die, we will lose everything that life gave us except love. The love with which we lived our lives is the life of God within us. It is the divine, indestructible core of our being. This love not only will remain but will also bear fruit from generation to generation.

When we approach our deaths let us say to those we leave behind, ‘Don’t let your heart be troubled. The love of God that dwells in my heart will come to you and offer you consolation and comfort'” (Henri Nouwen).

 

 

That Mr. Irrelevant Again

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I watched some of the NFL draft today. It’s interesting to see who gets picked where and when and by whom. Plus, you get the joy of seeing the experts’ predictions blown up. You see people who stay up late at night worrying about these kinds of things prognosticating on how these players will either be a great pick or a bust.

As always, the very last pick, around number 256, of the very last round of the draft is called Mr. Irrelevant. Usually, players who don’t get picked up until that point don’t make the final roster of the NFL team that picked them.

I love the fact that no one is Mr. (or Mrs.) Irrelevant to God. God loves each person as if he or she were the only person in the whole world to love. And yet He loves every single person that way. I can’t fathom that, yet I’m nowhere close to being infinite. I can’t even love the very few (in comparison) people in my life with anything close to complete and unconditional love.

At times, other people may make you feel irrelevant. It may or may not be intentional, but the hurt is the same either way. You may feel that what you do and who you are don’t matter to anyone and that maybe the world would be better off without you in it. The feelings may not be true, but that doesn’t stop them from feeling real.

Try this. Read John 3:16. Where it says “the world,” insert your name. For me, it would go something like this, “For God so loved Greg, that He gave His one and only Son, that if Greg believes in Him, He shall not perish.”

Remember that Jesus thought you were to die for. You matter to Him immensely. That’s something to remember on those nights when you feel alone and unwanted.

 

A Legacy of Love That Includes YOU

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“ Do you see what this means—all these pioneers who blazed the way, all these veterans cheering us on? It means we’d better get on with it. Strip down, start running—and never quit! No extra spiritual fat, no parasitic sins. Keep your eyes on Jesus, who both began and finished this race we’re in. Study how he did it. Because he never lost sight of where he was headed—that exhilarating finish in and with God—he could put up with anything along the way: Cross, shame, whatever. And now he’s there, in the place of honor, right alongside God. When you find yourselves flagging in your faith, go over that story again, item by item, that long litany of hostility he plowed through. That will shoot adrenaline into your souls!” (Hebrews 12:1-3)

I attend The Church at Avenue South. Somewhere in the neighborhood of two years ago, some members of Brentwood Baptist Church had a dream about reaching out to the residents of the Melrose and Berry Hill area for Jesus and set out to make that dream a reality. They were told that it was impossible to find a place in the area for a church to meet. God proved them wrong.

45 years ago, Brentwood Baptist Church was the dream in the minds of some people from Woodmont Baptist Church. People told them that to plant a church in Brentwood was a pipe dream– there would never be enough people to warrant a church in the area. God again proved them wrong.

In 1941, someone had the vision to start Woodmont Baptist Church itself. 74 years later, who knows how many people have been affected by that one simple act of obedience? Who knows how far the ripples will reach from that one stone’s throw?

You are part of a legacy of love. Even if you don’t know it, you have a crowd cheering you on and rooting for you. Whether that’s your physical family or your spiritual family or even those who have gone on and are watching from heaven, you have people who are on your side. Even Jesus Himself roots for you and intercedes for you.

It’s easy on the dark days to feel alone, that you don’t matter, that nothing you do makes any difference. It’s easy to think that nothing will ever change for the better, that this is as good as it will ever get.

Don’t let that be the final word. Let what Jesus has declared be the final word. What did He declare? That He would finish what He started in you, that He had plans for you not for barm but for hope and a future for you, that eye has not seen nor ear heard what God has prepared for those who love Him (and those He loves).

Let this Monday be the day that you run your race faithfully, knowing you have a legacy both behind and ahead of you, cheering you on and being inspired by you to run their own race.

 

Three Reminders for Those of Us Who Need it Tonight

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When I was a senior at Union University, my roommates and I used to go dumpster diving. At least I remember the one time. I came away with a worn out baseball glove and a television. I kid you not. I got a television from the dumpster.

When I ceremoniously placed it in my dorm room and plugged it in, lo and behold it worked. It even had a button on it that would turn the images on the screen green. I still don’t know what the purpose of that was.

That rescued television served me well all the rest of my senior year of college. In fact, it worked all the way up until the day I brought it home. Then it became a very heavy and super bulky paper weight.

I sometimes wonder how God puts people and places and things into our lives for a season. Sure, some friends are for life, but those are rare and precious. Most of the people in my life have come for a week, a month, maybe a year or two. I’ve learned not so much to be sorrowful when they’re gone but to celebrate the lessons they taught me.

I was reminded of three things tonight. 1) Jesus is for me, 2) Jesus is with me, and 3) Jesus is in me.

My pastor tonight said that Jesus was the best evidence that God isn’t pursuing you and me because he’s angry, but because He’s desperate for us to save us from our sins and ourselves. I agree with that. Jesus Himself said He came not to condemn the world, but that it might be saved through Him.

I know Jesus is with me. He promised He’d never leave me, abandon me, or forsake me. That’s a promise I’ve found to be true, whether I could feel it or not.

I know Jesus is in me. Sometimes, I find myself saying and doing things that I know could never come from me. At least based on what I’ve said and done the other 98% of the time. I know that’s not me speaking and acting, but Jesus in me.

So remember tonight that Jesus is for you, with you, and in you.

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Still Waiting

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I suppose that of all the disciplines, learning to wait is the hardest. At least that has been my experience.

At some point, I got the notion that waiting meant trusting God and binge-watching Breaking Bad on Netflix. But that’s not waiting. Nor is it sitting with folded hands in your lap and your eyes fixated on the gliding hands of the clock.

Waiting in the biblical sense is more than waiting. It’s more than sitting in one spot fixed expectantly toward the arrival of what you’re waiting for. It’s allowing God to form and mold you into the person who will be ready to receive that future gift.

It involves the discipline of persevering in hope, of training your mind to weed out any distractions to that one dream God has placed in your heart. Waiting means that you take the next of those 10,000 steps toward spiritual maturity and remain obedient in the details.

Yeah, I don’t really know how to wait well. Even after all these years and all the practice I’ve had. But maybe waiting well means simply not giving up. Maybe it’s feeling that you can’t hope any more and finding you can last through the next 24 hours.

Waiting is simple yet hard.

When You Can’t Think of Any Good Blog Ideas . . . .

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Since I am fresh out of original material, I thought I’d pick the brain of one C. S. Lewis and see if he has anything worthwhile to say. I found this in an email and thought it worthy enough to share with you. Plus, it uses words like solecism, which I’m going to have to look up now because I have no idea what it means. Here goes:

“If the world exists not chiefly that we may love God but that God may love us, yet that very fact, on a deeper level, is so for our sakes. If He who in Himself can lack nothing chooses to need us, it is because we need to be needed. Before and behind all the relations of God to man, as we now learn them from Christianity, yawns the abyss of a Divine act of pure giving—the election of man, from nonentity, to be the beloved of God, and therefore (in some sense) the needed and desired of God, who but for that act needs and desires nothing, since He eternally has, and is, all goodness. And that act is for our sakes. It is good for us to know love; and best for us to know the love of the best object, God. But to know it as a love in which we were primarily the wooers and God the wooed, in which we sought and He was found, in which His conformity to our needs, not ours to His, came first, would be to know it in a form false to the very nature of things. For we are only creatures: our role must always be that of patient to agent, female to male, mirror to light, echo to voice. Our highest activity must be response, not initiative. To experience the love of God in a true, and not an illusory form, is therefore to experience it as our surrender to His demand, our conformity to His desire: to experience it in the opposite way is, as it were, a solecism against the grammar of being.”

I looked up solecism. According to my handy-dandy Merriam-Webster dictionary, it means “an ungrammatical combination of words in a sentence.” In other words, to experience the love of God in an illusory form is basically to go against the very fabric of our existence. Or something like that.

The fact that God created us and redeemed us and loves us for no other reason than He chooses to do so blows my mind. God didn’t– and still doesn’t– need me but He still wants me. He still wants you, even when it seems nobody else does.

That’s a good thought to take with you as you drift into dreamland tonight.

 

Untitled Blog #1,623

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“Be sure that the ins and outs of your individuality are no mystery to Him; and one day they will no longer be a mystery to you” (C. S. Lewis)

One of the reasons I write this little daily blog is to tell you that it’s okay to be you. You don’t have to conform to anybody else’s expectations of who you should be because no one else has to live your life or walk in your shoes but you.

I sincerely hope that you will do what you like, not what society or fashion trends say. Especially not what the current hipster movement says. If you want to grow a beard, then grow one (unless you’re female, which might make it a bit awkward). If you don’t, then be clean-shaven. Or scruffy. It’s really up to you.

Never be ashamed of who God made you to be. You are the one God dreamed up in His infinite mind long before anyone existed. You are the one God fashioned out of the dirt with His very own hands and with the very breath from His mouth giving you life and spirit. You are the one Jesus, the very incarnation of God in human form, died for. And He would have gone through all the torture and death if it had been only you that needed saving.

So go ahead. Wear black socks with those sandals if that’s what makes you happy. Wear those Christmas-y t-shirts in July. You can even wear plaids with stripes if you fancy, but I will disavow any knowledge of you if you do.

Just you be you, because what the world needs more than anything is to see you loving who you are and who you’re becoming. Nothing delights God more than a man comfortable in his masculinity and a woman who is in love with her femininity.

That’s all. You can go back to your pink fuzzy bunny slippers now.

 

I’m Feeling a Bit Sheepish

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Sheep are stupid. I know, I know. You look at a lamb and think, “Isn’t that the cutest and cuddliest thing ever?” But really sheep are helpless and defenseless without a shepherd. Yet Jesus calls His believers sheep, not to be insulting but to remind us of who we are.

Most of us (especially in this time) look at children and see innocence. We at times tend to idolize and adore children almost to the point of worship. But have you ever seen a sick child refuse to take the medicine that might make him well? Maybe you’ve been that child at some point. Or maybe you’ve seen a child engage in behavior that will lead to injury because he won’t listen to the parent that tells him not to do that.

Jesus calls attention to little children. True, He wants us to have the unwavering faith of a child, but He also wants us to see that we’re completely dependent on a loving Father who sometimes makes choices we don’t like but end up being way better for us in the end than what we would have chosen.

The point is that we’re all fallen creatures who live with the consequences of Adam and Eve’s bad choices (hey, they both messed up and are equally to blame). We’ve ALL sinned and ALL fallen short of the glory of God.

I think Jesus wants us to remember who we are. We’re frail, fallible human beings who need a Savior, even after we’re saved. We will never not need Jesus.

There’s a great book that I read a long time ago that really delves into Psalm 23 from a shepherd’s point of view. It’s by Philip Kellor and is called A Shepherd Looks at the 23rd Psalm. I highly recommend it.

So remember that you’re not perfect. You’re not the be-all, end-all. But also remember that you do bear the image of God, even in the midst of all your flaws and failures.

The Kingdom Of God

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“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.