spirituality

Just Love

/ Ragamuffingospelfan / 3 Comments

just-love

A friend of mine told me about how God had recently impressed upon her heart lately the words, “JUST LOVE!” I think that’s God’s word to me, too.

What is the power that conquered death in all its forms and made the fear of death something that the believer no longer has over him or her? Just love.

What is the force that will still be around when all the dictators and kings and presidents have gone to their graves and kingdoms and empires have fallen? Just love.

What will be the power that outlasts hate, overcomes fear, overwhelms ignorance, and will be the last one standing? Just love.

What can’t be stopped by any army or weapon or group that has ever been and ever will be? What has survived centuries of attempts to snuff it out only to grow stronger with time? Just love.

What is God’s ultimate force He has used to end the dominion of sin and overthrow darkness and usher in a new Kingdom with new values where anyone is welcome, nobody is perfect and nothing is impossible? Just love.

What are we as believers called to do to see this Kingdom of God come and see multitudes coming to faith in the Messiah and King, Jesus? Just love.

What will overcome every obstacle and barrier and what will draw people to the God we serve and make them want to know Him? Just love.

What can mend your broken heart, refresh your weary spirit, renew your mind, and heal your sin-scarred body? Just love.

Just love and only love is what will win. God is love and His love for us is so powerful that nothing, not death or the grave or anything else, can keep Him from getting to us and taking us back. Nothing can separate us from Him. Nothing will cause His love for us to stop. Nothing will diminish His love for us in the slightest.

God’s love in us and through us WILL change the world. That one thing I believe with all that is in me!

Amen and amen!

I Love the Way God Works

/ Ragamuffingospelfan / 1 Comment

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I am goofy. I admit that. I don’t think normally and I don’t act normally when I’m nervous (or even when I’m not nervous, for that matter). I am wearing a t-shirt right now that has a clown on it and says, “Normal people scare me.”

While I say all that in jest (mostly), I have to confess that I love the way God works in my life. I love the way He meets me where I am, loves me just as I am, and takes what I have in my hands, no matter how small and paltry and uses it in ways that astound me. I am always amazed at what God can do in and through me when I am surrendered and available. When I am prayed up, confessed up, spiritually armored up. Even when I’m not sometimes.

I love God’s grace because I need it. I love God’s forgiveness because I would be screwed without it. I love His spirit within me, because I know deep down that I couldn’t love anything at all without Him in me. And the more I know of God, the more I love Him. The more I learn about Him, the more I sense my need for Him. All I can do is open up my hands and receive. Even my so-called giving and ministry is simply what spills out of my open hands when I am receiving.

My goal in writing this blog is for you to love God and the way He works as much or more than I do. I want you to know how He sees you and that He is not mad or disappointed in you, but how He cheers for you and is for you and is always with you. How He can take the smallest beginning of surrender and transform your life into something amazing and miraculous. A life that will reflect the glory of God and that will make it impossible for anyone to remain neutral about the God in you. Hopefully, they will be drawn to a God who can make a broken mess into a beautiful masterpiece. Even if not, they won’t be able to see your life changed and remain the same themselves.

I love that God chooses people like me to work in and with. I love that God never gives up on those He chooses. I love that God’s in love with me (and He’s also crazy about you, too). I love that God can take this blog and send it places I would never have dreamed possible and have people read it that I never would have imagined would. I love that God can take anyone at any place at any time and do anything He wants with them.

God amazes me and blows my mind every single day. And I love that about Him!

Amen and amen!

How much do I love Jesus?

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The topic at tonight’s Kairos Roots was fasting and how we are commanded to fast from food, media, etc. Basically anything that creeps in and starts taking priority over God in our lives. We fast for God’s direction and guidance, when we are mourning, when we are embarking on a new venture, and when we want to hear from God more clearly.

I remember something I read from John Piper that says in essence that fasting says, “This much, O God, I desire You.” More than the food I’m not eating. More than the facebook that I am not logging into. More than the TV or radio I am leaving turned off.

But how much do I really love Jesus if all these things take priority over him? I will confess that I have days that I have very good intentions to read my Bible. . . . . after this episode of Friends. After I’m done checking everything out on Facebook. After I post this blog. The funny thing is that I never actually get around to reading my Bible. Sadly, some days I forget I even intended to read it.

That says that Jesus is not my first love. All these other things rank ahead of Him in my life.

Maybe fasting is a way of saying: I love you Jesus more than these things I am giving up. I am making an effort to love You, because love is ultimately not a feeling, but an act of the will. Through Your grace, I am demonstrating love put into practice and praying that this will increase my love for You.

I do know this. Jesus is worthy of my fasting and so much more. He is worthy of everything I have to give and a million times more. When I see things right, I am so very grateful that what really counts is not how much I love Jesus, but how much He loves me and how that Love is changing me to be like Jesus.

Amen and amen.

Learning to wait

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I am learning to wait well. And notice I didn’t say I am learning well. I am slowly and haltingly learning how to wait expectantly and confidently. To wait well is to make yourself ready for what your waiting for while you’re waiting for it. That’s what I mean.

I am learning to be still. I am learning to quiet my mind and take those anxious thoughts captive. I am learning that most of the mistakes I am so worried about aren’t nearly as big as I had played them up to be in my mind. Most of the people I had convinced myself were so very pissed at me weren’t even mad at me at all or even close to offended. That facebook friend is still my facebook friend, despite all my imaginary scenarios of doom and gloom and defriending.

I am learning to rest. I don’t mean taking naps, but I mean to take deep breaths and focus on Jesus, who promised that if I only come to Him, He will give me rest. I want rest like in Psalm 131:2: “I’ve kept my feet on the ground, I’ve cultivated a quiet heart. Like a baby content in its mother’s arms, my soul is a baby content.” If I call the Prince of Peace Lord, you’d think I’d be better at letting His peace rule my heart. But I’m learning.

I’m learning to keep hoping when hope seems so very past tense. Like the movie Miracle on 34th Street says, “Faith is believing when common sense tells you not to.” I’m learning to believe even when every single voice in my head is telling me to do anything– post something, fix something, pray something– but believe.

I am learning that every set back is a step up, every failure moves me forward, and every disaster has the hidden designs of the plan of God hidden underneath. Being willing to look and sound foolish is the best way to grow up and to grow in faith. In that case, I should be a mensa-like expert and growing up and growing in faith!

Let God take you through the School of Learning to Wait Well and Be Still and Rest. You will find once your ceaseless activities and programs stop, God can really start using you.

That’s what I’m learning.

Amen and amen.

A prayer for my future wife

/ Ragamuffingospelfan / 19 Comments

Here I am, thinking about you again and wondering if you’re thinking about me. I have come to the point where I am finally starting to give up striving and trying to make my own plans and my own timing work. I am starting to learn to rest my mind and my heart in God’s plan and His timing. As the name of the book I just got in the mail says, I Gave God Time. That’s all He needs to pull off the biggest miracles– time.

So I pray that your heart is at rest. That you are comfortable where you are and not striving like I have been most of my life. I pray your heart is captured and captivated by Jesus and that you are so enamored and enraptured by His love for you that He becomes everything to you and every other thing in your life falls back into its proper place.

I pray that you are fully coming alive to all that God made you to be. That you know where your beauty comes from and that you treasure your femininity as a gift from God. I pray that your loveliness comes from a Christ-filled countenance and a heart full of compassion and kindness.

I pray that your heart is being set free to love. That all your fears and insecurites are driven away in the face of the Prince of peace, and that peace will rule your heart and mind. I pray you look at every heartache and heartbreak as a means of molding you into the woman who will completely dazzle me.

Waiting is hard, but the longer the wait, the more we will treasure finding each other. I can’t wait to be your husband and do all I can to be a part of  unveiling your true beauty for the world to see. I am waiting for that day, letting God transform me into the man you deserve.

Until then, take courage, dear heart. The night seems long but dawn is just around the corner. Hold on.

A Christmas letter to my future wife

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I’m still waiting for you. And did I mention the whole “not good at waiting” part? More accurately, how badly I suck at waiting? I’m getting better, but I am still very impatient 95% of the time. But I know that this waiting will not have been in vain when I meet you.

I keep thinking of our firsts– first kiss (obviously), first snow to hold hands and walk together through, first night in front of a roaring fireplace, first time we’re both snuggled under the same blanket. . . . so many firsts that are yet to come. The best part will be that we didn’t give up and settle, but held out and found out that miracles do still come true.

I am leaning to stop looking for you with my eyes, and look for you with my heart. I will look for you not through my own eyes, but more and more through God’s eyes. I want to fall in love with your compassionate heart and your tender spirit. Your beauty will be Jesus inside you shining through for the world to see. Or at least for those who have eyes to see.

Remember no matter what anyone tells you you are, you are a daughter of the King. You are royalty– a princess. Don’t let anyone ever treat you as less. You were worth every drop of Jesus’ blood not because of anything in you, but because Jesus set His heart on you and declared you worthy.

I think I am slowly but surely becoming the man who will capture your heart and be worthy of your love. I have bad days when I strive and fail and I have days full of grace when I am finally weak enough to let Jesus do it all. That’s all I can do.

I am thanking Jesus for you in advance and thanking you in advance for being faithful to Jesus and never giving up on me. I’ll be thinking of you a lot this Christmas.

An ordinary guy’s thoughts on pretty vs. beautiful

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I am pretty much going  way outside my areas of expertise on this one. I am not a fashion person. I have spent a long time watching and observing, and have come up with my own theories. Here’s one.

There’s a big difference to me between pretty and beautiful.

Pretty is common. I see a lot of pretty girls. Beauty is much rarer and harder to define, but you know it when you see it.

Pretty is what you put on, but beauty is what comes out of you. It’s not what you wear, but who you are. Pretty is cosmetics and beauty is character.

Pretty is something you see with your eyes, but beauty is something you find when you look with your heart. You have to have your eyes open to notice. To really be aware not just of how she looks, but how she acts and how she treats others.

Pretty fades. Gravity wins and time takes its toll. Beauty grows over time as the character inside blossoms and grows toward maturity and Christlikeness.

I decided again tonight that I want beauty, even if it means waiting longer and looking with a different set of eyes. To me, kindness and compassion in a woman are beautiful. Loving the unloveable and giving to those who can’t give back and socializing with those who are not like you is beautiful.

It means I have to be a man of character if I want a woman of character. That I continue to train my eyes to see women as princesses and not objects, as society tells us they are.

There you have it. I am no expert, but I know what I feel. I hope I’m not the only one who feels this way, but I am ok with it if I am.

Prophetic words on the Church from Martin Luther King, Jr.

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Wow. This is increcibly prophetic for the Church in America in 2010. This is from Martin Luther King, Jr. in his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.”

“In deep disappointment I have wept over the laxity of the church. But be assured that my tears have been tears of love. There can be no deep disappointment where there is not deep love. Yes, I love the church. How could I do otherwise? l am in the rather unique position of being the son, the grandson and the great-grandson of preachers. Yes, I see the church as the body of Christ. But, oh! How we have blemished and scarred that body through social neglect and through fear of being nonconformists.

There was a time when the church was very powerful in the time when the early Christians rejoiced at being deemed worthy to suffer for what they believed. In those days the church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society. Whenever the early Christians entered a town, the people in power became disturbed and immediately sought to convict the Christians for being “disturbers of the peace” and “outside agitators”. But the Christians pressed on, in the conviction that they were “a colony of heaven,” called to obey God rather than man. Small in number, they were big in commitment. They were too God intoxicated to be “astronomically intimidated.” By their effort and example they brought an end to such ancient evils as infanticide and gladiatorial contests.

Things are different now. So often the contemporary church is a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. So often it is an archdefender of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church’s silent and often even vocal sanction of things as they are.

But the judgment of God is upon the church as never before. If today’s church does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authenticity, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century. Every day I meet young people whose disappointment with the church has turned into outright disgust.”

Bedtime thoughts

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Jesus said, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments” (Matthew 22:37-40).

That’s it. Love God and love others.

But for you to love God, you have to know the reality that God already loves you. For you to love others as yourself, you have to love yourself. Ultimately, you can’t do it. Well, I will only speak for myself here and say that I can’t love God or anybody else, even me, on my own strength. I need Jesus in me, pouring out His agape love, or else I am empty and cold and love-less.

Sometimes, God calls you to love yourself as you love your neighbor. Sometimes, it’s easier to love someone else than to love that person you hang around with every minute of every day. That person who looks back at you in the mirror with accusing eyes that speak of all the impure thoughts, mixed motives, and selfish ambition.

That’s when you and I have to believe what God says about who we are over what we see and think and feel. As a friend of mine told me once, “What you think and feel will lie to you.” But God never will.

God is true. God is love. And God loves you.

And you have all the power of Christ that overcame the grave in you. You have His perfect righteousness that covers your own wretched self-righteous rags of filth.

So be free to love. Love God, love others and love you.

As always, I believe. Help my unbelief.

My bucket list

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First of all, I’d like to know who came up with the expression “kick the bucket” and who first associated it with dying. I’m not losing any sleep over it, but it would be nice to know just in case I’m ever on Jeopardy or a caller on a morning radio show with a chance to win a fabulous prize. I’m just sayin’.

But for real, I do have a bucket list of sorts. It’s not written down, but I have one item on my bucket list. Only one. My one bucket list wish is to hear Jesus say to me at the end of my road, “Well done, good and faithful servant.” That’s all. To please Jesus is not only on my bucket list, it is my bucket list. That being said, I pretty much suck at it. Most of the time, I try to please just about anyone and everyone else before I even attempt to please Jesus.

Still, that’s what I want. More than anything else. Sure, I’d like to see Scotland or meet Bono. And for the record, I would try skydiving, but I have a burning desire to NOT DIE! Plus, I’m not really keen on heights, which is pretty much a prerequisite for jumping out of a plane at 1 gazillion feet in the air.

I want to make Jesus proud of  me. I want to be His hands and feet and serve Him every chance I get, whether He be the person at the cash register at Publix or the homeless man on the corner looking for spare change. I want my whole life to be one big THANK YOU note to Him.

I think I’ll get there. In fact, I know I will, because Jesus told me that He would never leave me or forsake me. He said He would finish the good work He started in me. When He sees a heart that yearns to please Him, He honors that.

So I probably have the shortest bucket list on the planet. Just hopefully not the shortest bucket.