Endless...

Recently I had a friend who told of their pastor saying how they had to live up to God’s standard or not be a Christian at all… I was crushed. To me that’s like me telling my son who is ten to give me straight A’s and get algebra passed and have his drivers license by next summer or he could stop calling himself by my last name. He is a child and he will learn, but he will learn quickly if I offer him more love than criticism. Call me crazy : ) This love thing… there’s a lot to it we don’t really have a grasp on.

I was listening to a song by Brandon Heath and one of the lines in the song says “I write about love and such, probably cause I want it so much”. I write a ton about love all the time probably for the same reason. Maybe I am deranged or off center here, but I’ve come to know God well enough to know he doesn’t make mistakes. God doesn’t call his people to walk in places in their lives where they have no purpose of being. I think for me God wants me to understand HIS heart about love. He wants us to know he loves us. He gives and wants our love in return. I talk about love myself for the same reason Brandon Heath talks about it…maybe it’s because I want it so much? But wanting love all your life, you learn the qualities of love. I know I know…duh… love is patient, love is kind etc, but I mean the purest quality of love. Love ALWAYS gives itself away. Love never sets itself up to be served. It always always always gives itself away.

I’ve learned God’s love for the church is not at all unlike the love a man has for a woman. It’s not a book of formulas, it’s not steps we can read in a book, It’s a mystery. It’s relational and for us to walk it out with God we must seek to walk it out like a new couple formulating their love in a relationship. You know what I mean right? Maybe its some woman who is eager to love someone and simply give her life to someone completely or a man who has nothing but a big heart full of life to give away and formulate a family and is ready to get on with it. They can’t just unload their emotions on the first date. I can just see some guy with chocolates and a ring and the waiter helping to make arrangements while they wait for his date and when the waiter says “so what does your future wife look like, can you imagine the look on his face when the guy says “oh I haven’t really met her yet” ?

God is a perfect gentleman. He is waiting for us to come to this relationship with him. He is ever so patient and when we are there, he tells us he loves us. He woos us with his kindness. He comes into our presence with a smile and gifts and peace and he isn’t rushed. He waits and sits and lets us enjoy that place as long as we desire. He is so slick at it, he allows us to make the moves and when get to the place where we are ready to fall in love with him and never want to leave his presence, he does it in such a way that we actually believe it was OUR idea the whole time. We talk to others about our new relationship as if God found us at the right time and we were just so ready to love him etc and he allows us to go on believing like that but if we were honest, we would realize he was there before the dawn of time just waiting for the day when he could rush in and love us.

Not long ago I was at the farm and as I was coming into the house from the truck, I was forced to park quite a ways out in the drive. It was nearly 80 yards or so to the door and It was a bright night and I stopped to admire the stars. Not because I usually do this, but because the stars were SO amazingly bright. You could see the entire galaxy. Billions and billions of stars existing right there and I heard the voice of God say “this… all of this…I made for you” . I was so blown away. I looked around trying to understand what he meant. What I began to understand in that moment was God wanted to dazzle me. To impress me and show off and give me a gift that no one else could be capable of giving. I asked him “God? If I was the only one you had ever created? Would you still have done it?” He laughed and said, “of course….. I love you THAT much”.
He gives in such measures that we could NEVER understand his goodness or his kindness. He stands there wooing us. We don’t understand his love. We are scared to enter in. We can be saved 20 plus years and still not understand his love for us. He gives continuously and we look and say, “it’ll all end” or “why would you choose to love me?” it’s not until we learn to embrace it and enter into his love that we realize…it’ll never end. It will not run dry. We often hold others at arms distance and usually its with good riddance, but God is used to that kind of stand off, and yet he still loves without fail. Without end, we can run to him when we are hurting or when we want to celebrate and he will always be there with outstretched arms waiting for us so he can tell us how much he loves us. I’ve heard God’s love described recently by an author as a scandal. The writer is correct. How many times have I reached out to love and more than one person says, “be careful” “don’t love TOO hard”. People can’t understand God’s love. It IS a scandal. It is too hard for the human mind to comprehend. We aren’t ready for this kind of love. It catches us off guard and it forces us to deal with issues and attitudes so deeply buried within our beings that we can honestly stand and say “that’s not really me”, when in all actuality, Its exactly who we are.

So many of us have been wooed by other people in this life, only to be lied to or hurt, to be let down and disappointed. We are hard wired to disassociate and disengage from the situation and run away. Well that is to say depending on how close we let people in. I have a friend who has tons of friends and this person revels in how great their friends are. I was wondering just how well those hordes of friends actually knew this friend of mine.

You see when we come back to God and we decide to fall in love with him, he will accept partial knowledge of him. Although permits us to keep up our walls, he isn’t about to be satisfied with it. He longs to know us intimately like he knew Adam and Eve in the garden. In Gen.2 Moses tells us of the story of Adam and Eve and tells how well they knew him and how they were naked before him and knew no shame. I think what it meant was they had no shame… shocker huh? There was no guilt, no condemning nothing. They simply knew God loved them, they drew their life from it and it was NOTHING heavy handed. He simply loved them.
When we are on our walk with him and end up in a place where he is talking about his love for us and how he only wants us to be in a place to receive it, it’s pretty okay to accept it and just enjoy him.
Because anything else? Is just heavy handed religion and the spirit of God doesn’t involve itself in it.

Love Love Love Love Love....oh.. and Love...

I know this is a weird question, but have you ever told someone you loved them when they weren't prepared to hear it? Only to have them look at you like you have 3 heads and give you a quick " ummm thank you" or maybe act like they didn't hear you?
I had this happen to me recently. I told this person I loved them and it glanced off of them like a bullet skipping off the confines of a parking lot in a shoot out. I'm awkward in situations like this anyway, you know? like this one time when I was real young, I wanted to kiss a neighbor girl down the road. I went to her door with intentions of kissing her on the cheek and all but she showed up at the door with peanut butter on her face. Not like in the corner of her mouth, but like on her cheek, way up high, like she had been really hungry and was gobbling her pbj like it was her last meal. I just stood and stared at her.. what if she was dying and it WAS her last meal? I couldn't be the last one to kiss a dying girl. I mean I wasn't even that good of a kisser. I had tried practicing with my Farrah Fawcett poster, but it hadn't really worked out that well.

So I told someone I loved them... I felt like an idiot.. I thought about the other things I could have said to keep the relationship in right form but I had to go and reveal my feelings.. you know "show my hand?" and make it all wrong and yucky... I have a friend named Kim who told me several times "Never show your hand". She was referring to my feelings in a relationship and told me it was bad for others to know your intentions. I didn’t' really like her advice. Not because it wasn’t' good advice, but to me when you don't give someone your intentions, it's a lot like allowing them to think you have no feelings for them. That whole stupid "Well if I didn't like you, I wouldn't talk to you" or "you know I care about you... I shouldn't have to tell you" thing people lay on you when they don't have the ability to speak their emotional feelings.

Interestingly I was dwelling on this again today, probably because I felt so bad, but really because there was something else I wanted to know in this incident. I just couldn't stop thinking how I had really messed up and how stupid I sounded because God knows if you keep your emotions pent up, then we never really suffer the embarrassment of it all, and in mid thought I was hit with a huge AHA moment. God spoke right in the midst of the whole thought process and I heard him loud and clear. I don't mean I had a bright idea and gave God the credit.. I mean I heard him speak boldly... "if I have been trying to get people to just receive my love for thousands of years and not having 100% luck at it, what makes you think you can do a lot better?" It hit me like a ton of bricks. God loves people everyday with a purer love than I could ever hope to imagine and people keep him at arms length daily, and if the God who created the heavens and earth is struggling? then what worry should I have?
The other AHA moment I had was when I realized that loving people isn't the wrong place for me to live in. If I intend to love someone, why would I be wrong for pouring out my heart to that person? If you look at Gen 3:7 it talks of Eve and Adam together eating the forbidden fruit and having their eyes opened… they immediately realized…they were naked. It can be interpreted many ways, either mentally naked, socially naked or physically without clothes.. I take it to mean they were without covering. God was their covering, God was the blanket that kept them completely without fear, without stress, without need, and when they separated themselves from that covering? They became fearful and needy and stressed and needing that relationship back. God walked with them in the cool of the day and talked to them as if they were his only friends and they had NO concerns, until they entered into the separation of sin.
Now mind you I am NOT a big sin guy. I don’t mean I never sin, I mean it’s not the axe I grind to call forth repentance and I don’t harp on it. I preach love and the fear of wrecking that relationship with God and the abstinence of sin to keep from doing so.
But here stands a man and woman who through no fault of anyone else have become separated. They don’t have that daily covering and affirmation any longer. Therefore God comes and tries to love them, but because of the rift they have caused? They are no longer able to feel it. So sin entered the world and people began to fill the void of pain with anything but God. God only wanted to be the answer and for them to enjoy the walk in the cool of the garden daily.

If the God of all the heavens can’t pour out the purest form of love and have people receive it without suspicion? Why should we fret if we can’t either?
The key? I think is to love people where they are with no guilt of their frustrations. Don’t carry the burden of those people when you do… simply love them till they know they are loved. Bring nothing condemning against them, only love… and tell someone you love them today ; )

Shiny Things and The Lost Luster of Approval

I happened to be at the bank today and the pastor of a former church where I used to attend was in the next lane. I rolled down my window and as I did, I noticed he and his wife were staring at my work truck. I affectionately call it the Superman truck. It's a 2009 Ford F150 Platinum series pickup. 4 Doors, Saddle leather, in dash dvd/phone syn system. Bose Stereo, electric everything. It's far and above nicer than anything I have ever driven. It belongs to the owner of my company. Kind of a "Thank You" gift for me running the business so he can be with his family. I have enjoyed it and I get lots of looks in it from lots of people, but my former pastor had always expressed his interest in owning an F150 pickup. He is a guy, guys like trucks and my friend likes fishing and guy things so I could see him sizing the truck up as I rolled the window down to speak to him. We shared the cordial greetings etc. and he admitted to me he had been coveting my truck. I know with him it's more tongue and cheek because first of all he is a man I would definitely say walks with God daily. I also know he is kind and wants me to feel good as well, but the very honest truth is when we were talking about the truck, I felt ashamed.

I didn't feel ashamed because I hadn't earned it or because I don't deserve nice things, no I was simply reminded of times in my past as a boy longing for nice vehicles to drive and being willing to pay large payments to reaffirm my standing as a man. To stick it in other people's faces so they would be impressed or interested with me. I felt ashamed like I didn't want attention because of the truck. At the end of the day it's only a mode of transportation for goodness sake, it's not a status symbol or something that should be valued. It should be handled with care as something of an investment you want to make last a long time, but to measure the worth of a man by the stack of green papers he possesses runs rough shod over the work that Jesus came to establish.

I own a minivan and the honest truth in our society is people don't drive them for their luxury or their pleasure of all the looks women in red bikinis give you as you drive by in one. Seriously I own a minivan because I have 4 lives that are constantly moving to go to places for activity and life. If you think about it? Its a transport so memories and life can be created. To honor someone less because of the value we place on their transportation is like criticizing livestock when they ride in a banged up stock trailer headed for a sale.

All of this attention lately has caused me to begin to focus on God's approval and appreciation for us. Adam would walk along in the cool of the day with God daily and his greatest need wasn't clothes or material possessions, it was God's attention and love. We worship things we were not created to draw attention to. Have you ever had a situation where you had something mechanical that was broken and short of having the right part to repair the item, it was worthless to you and you could not use it for its intended purpose? That's exactly how we are created. We were made in HIS image to walk along in the Garden, not hang out at the mall, frustrated because the $50 dollar jeans are not as hip as the the jeans that cost $120 and the girl at the food court had on a pair and we felt insignificant. Again, it's a search for everyday significance from anything to try and provide that peace in our heart that can only be found in God. We languish in life because even the most secure in this life still long for approval from someone. We were created to worship him in the Garden daily. That's why the true depiction of heaven is the non stop worship for forever. It's not more of the same of this emptiness on streets of gold. what a ridiculous notion. Why would we worship ourselves and bring all of the nonsense from down here to a place where perfection is the norm and worship of him is all that consumes us. Imagine how much it would really suck for someone to make it to heaven and then realize they weren't in love with God, and how bored they will be. It's not about us... never has been. Its about his love for us and our response to that love. 66 books of the bible... every last one of them is about that same idea... His love for us and our response to that love...

Most days I fail. I say that meaning I seek everyone Else's opinion and approval. I post things to my facebook, I write in my blog, I post things on the computer etc and if I seriously was honest with myself if I wasn't' getting attention from all of it, I know I would grow weary of it and seek some other form of activity to earn approval. All of us do it (I know you disagree, but it's true). If NFL athletes or professional basketball players played in empty stadiums and no one gave them notoriety for doing something hard or they didn't earn millions of dollars.. they would leave the gear on the field and walk away. When the luster of someone Else's approval wears off and we are left to focus on Gods approval only, it's a lot like breaking a steady diet of bad food. Greasy fried fatty foods with gravy and soda's to drink. Try eating that diet and switching to a diet of grilled chicken, light salads and yogurt. You will feel better, but your appetite has to shrink to feel the effects of hunger because we have been consuming the empty calories of the approval of other people. God's love feels good, but we still want more until we practice a steady diet of it. When we have only allowed his approval and love to captivate us for a while, it's like eating food rich in vitamins and fruits and veggies... we begin to hunger for it alone. The greasy fast food style approval of men eventually turns out stomachs and we long to taste the rich banquet of the Lords love for our lives. Sleek lean spirits are molded from the healthy love that God gives alone and as we cry out for such, God changes our desires to no longer clip coupons from the mailers of life hoping to redeem them with people of value to keep or spirits and ego's from depletion ; )

Life's resolve

I was thinking the other day about Adam and his plight as the first man. Not for any reason in particular, I was hanging out at the farm and realized that I had not spoken to anyone out loud in about 29 hours, and that happened to be the lady at the bank. She was very nice, but I know she talks to people daily and probably wouldn’t remember our conversation hours after we spoke. But if I was the only other person on Earth, I know she would remember and probably hang on every word I said no matter who I was or what I looked like. It got me to thinking about what was it like when Adam would talk? Who did he talk to? He was alone a long time considering He didn’t meet Eve until after he named all the animals according to Moses text in Genesis. I’ve had many bonehead discussions with women many times. You know the ones… saying the worst possible thing and stumbling over my words and then watching her walk away. Adam didn’t strike out in his conversations with Eve. I mean, even if he did say something bonehead, apparently Eve found it an endearing trait and loved him any way. I mean they DID have children and lived a long life together. I have to wonder if they really were attracted to each other or did they just settle because they were the only game in town? So what did they look like? Did he look like Brad Pitt? Was she just a super hottie? Maybe they were very average people, but because she was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen and he had such a vast and interesting job naming all the animals and they totally intrigued the other, they just could not stop looking at each other. Who knows? But the one thing I do know is they were naked before God and they were unashamed. I can’t even begin to imagine such a relationship with God, walking along in the garden, having all of your needs met and yet not ever longing for anything more as the relationship you have with God is all-consuming. I mean I think about my needs more than anything. My prayer life is a lot like this, “God? Fix this… God? I need that… God? Could you make this happen or that happen” I submit to you that most of us think like this because we always trying to fix the things in our lives that would essentially make our lives good. Seriously, if you think about it, we are ALWAYS looking for the answer to our problems during every waking hour. I have thought about this a long time and it’s clear to me that somewhere in my mind there seems to be an imperfection or a virus that keeps telling my brain that when I get my problems fixed then my life will resolve and I’ll experience some euphoric sense of being. Will my life really be better if all my problems are solved? I have all my work finished, I have nothing else to do except come to town and write this out and it’s like there is still something missing. My mind keeps saying “if you had more money… If all your debts were wiped out… if you had a beautiful wife… if you lost a hundred pounds… if you were a published writer… if you were a better father…” and on and on and on it goes. Seriously?? The problem I have concluded that with all this thinking about what could be and what is going to happen, I have turned 41 and have 4 kids and a van payment and rent that is due and part of my life is gone and I have nothing to show for it except the lines on my forehead. I have a few collected assets but I mean the memories and the fun times and photos of a full life I don’t have. I guess that is why people win the lottery and realize it was all meaningless to begin with. Why are we programmed like this? The happiest people I meet realize that life is more than accomplished work and long hours or building equity in our 401K. They are content with what they have and are happy with where they are in the “moment”.
It must have been like this for Adam in the Garden before the fall. He was content at every moment, he loved life and probably was amazed at everything God showed him about the beauty of creation. Everyday something fascinating and new came along and he was just blown away by beauty or the excitement of it all, and God was there, reveling in Adam’s enjoyment of it all.
Sometimes God will stop me in the hustle of life and show me something like a sunset or a waterfall or even a squirrel at play. These are the things God loves. Simple? Maybe so, but God is not interested in the euphoria of the stock market or the insanity of the vastness of the internet. NASA sends a man to the moon and we call it remarkable or unbelievable. God makes a rabbit and says it is “good”. He spoke the sunlight into being and said it was “good”. But for me to stop in my busy life for five minutes and see the beauty of the trees in bloom in the yard at the farm?? God simply whispers “I did this just for you”. I am his bride, his love and he digs it when I stop and shake my head in amazement and tell him I am dazzled or wowed by something great he has done. My sin isn’t his great interest, he is busy wooing me. Calling me daily to enter in to the place where it is just he and I. Sure we could plant churches, and build missions, and donate money and help at orphanages but those are just the busy work that we do everyday. His greatest joy is for us to find him walking in the garden daily, completely unashamed in his presence so he might just love on us. That’s the place where worship happens. Mornings in the mirror when we put on make-up or on our commute to work or when we stop in our business and just remember him and thank him for all he has done for us. That’s where life happens for us. It’s not the things I have collected or built or the money I’ve saved, but it’s the look on the faces of my children as they witness the majesty of the Grand Canyon and give me a hug and say “Thank you daddy for bringing us here”. I turn and tell my Abba, thank you for that moment… and he smiles at me and says “no son…thank you…”

Suffering from unknown needs..,

Pastor Nate quoted something today that for some reason has my attention.. he said these words "We suffer from the emptiness of ceaseless consumption", which I took to mean, In our lives in this country, we have such excess that we sit and consume ourselves into a state of utter boredom and emptiness.
I was randomly reading some gossip trash to kill time on Tuesday because God knows my little brain tends to wander when presented with a spread sheet to complete, and I read an article that I found interesting. Brad Pitt was recently asked what movie he was growing the scary 6 inch goatee he has been sporting for several months now.. his reply? "none, I am currently not shooting any movies.. I guess I am just growing it out of boredom" I was smacked in the forehead with this quote. So many people in our country have no need for anything and when we have it all, it's very easy to become bored with the mundane issues of our lives. Think about it. If money is no object? bills are paid, cars are repaired, shoes are bought, budgets are met. How many single mom's do you hear complaining about these random issues as they struggle daily just to meet needs??? If we have need of Christ and his daily provision in America, we are so independent that we scoff at the idea. Mostly we attend church because well.. it just looks good for us to be attending.
As I was worshipping today, and I was on time, I took my place in the row and was enraptured in the first praise song when I smacked in the face by a smell that was second only to excrement and body odor. A woman in the row in front of me came in late to the service and apparently she had totally bathed herself in the nastiest scariest perfume Avon produces. As I stood and kept getting hit in the face with that smell, I began to think about being in the crowd as Jesus preached. I thought about the crowd that gathered as he gave the beatitudes, he sat down on a large rock atop a hill and a crowd gathered around him. Some versions of the bible refer to the crowd as a "sea of people or a Multitude".
My question is this.. WHY if Jesus preached the good news, did a Sea of people follow him in those days and in reference to percentages only a handful of people now come to hear the message weekly? I guess it was the woman's perfume that gave me the hint. It reminded me of pure horrific smells such as body odor after someone hasn't bathed in about 5 days. I can only imagine that in the crowd that day as Jesus preached, there were many who couldn't afford the luxury of bathing and trying to stay clean. Most of those people who were gathered were hill country people who herded sheep and labored in the sun daily and staying clean was probably not high on their daily list of priorities. It was this group of people to which Jesus appealed most. Why? because they were the kind of people who needed their daily bread to come from heaven. They were the kind of people that were dependent upon the hand of God to feed them daily or they would starve.
Pastor Nate didn't make the quote today to shame anyone. He simply stated a fact. The people gathered at the feet of Jesus for his wisdom were not bored from ceaseless consumption. Not even in the least, most of them were skin and bones and making a daily wage was all consuming.
When the disciples brought bread to Jesus, he made this quote "My food,is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work." John 4:34
Jesus came to "finish his work" If you go back and read what work he meant? I think it was this. God had ALWAYS spent his time choosing faulty people to represent him. People who were not Kings and Priests etc. for the most part, the people he chose were broken screw ups that would tell other broken hearted screw ups about him because he longed to reveal himself to hurt wounded people because he is a Father who loves, not criticizes his people. He looked upon people who were "helpless and harassed, like sheep without a shepherd". Jesus's ministry was to restore broken people and tell a lost and dying world that he loved them and wanted them to have a great life and worship him. He didn't come preaching about sin and how God didn't like them and God was angry and we had to follow some 12 step program and maybe if God saw fit, he MIGHT forgive them and begin to turn his face back to them and hear their prayers. He came to FINISH HIS WORK. Finish the work of revealing to people that they didn't need to fear God because he simply wasn't mad at them. God only wanted to love them where they were.
Most of the people I saw jogging, or working in their yard, or riding their motorcycles as I drove home from church today have no knowledge of their need to know that God loves them. It could be that some overzealous well meaning Christian told them once that their sin separated them from God, or that they should repent of something or maybe they are turned off by the hypocrisy? who knows. The truth is that we should love unconditionally just as we are loved and given our needs.
I will spend my week looking at my needs, focusing on how much I consume in my diet, and radio, and movies, and wasted time, on nothingness that profits me little or none at all. I plan on giving it to God for him to give me wisdom to allow the necessary change in my life that would benefit him alone. Peace ; )

Hollow Chocolate Bunny Ears

When I find a colorful basket with all sorts of chocolate at the front door of my house, I have come to realize it's probably Easter. My dad would knock on the wall and we would think it was the door and we would run like mad to the front door and look outside.. of course we always "just missed him", but we got over it quickly when the promise of "being good, so the Easter Bunny would come see us" was fulfilled. Hollow chocolate bunny ears were the reason for Easter in my book. A dirty cold windy holiday in the 70's in Oklahoma, I didn't really understand it, but candy was king to a 7 year old with a very big imagination about a 3 ft rabbit with a bow tie, a vest and a top hat over one bent ear.

I have "earned" a new perspective about Easter at this point. I still like chocolate bunnies, but they don't carry the weight of that "end-all-be-all" holiday yumminess that I associated with them before..
No, my new perspective comes from years of being a pretty "good" guy and then having my layers removed like a rotten head of lettuce to reveal that I wasn't a "good" kid who didn't get into much trouble, I was allowed to experience the fire that burns away the outer layer and expose my true character. I have one of those characters that they don't write about in books. You know those kind of books, typically they win a Pulitzer prize or Oprah is parading them around for her audience and the Author usually experiences 15 minutes of fame off the heels of the media mogul. Those kinds of books that describe men who fly airplanes. Men who fly airplanes always have a strong jaw, handsome mustache and a silk scarf. Men who stand firm when accused of wrong doing and are never guilty anyway because they don't commit atrocities like eating too much ice cream. Those kind of men have the kind of character to run for Senator from their state and know they don't want to go any higher in office because their political ambitions would eventually tarnish the desire of the people they serve. Godly, wonderful amazing men that are hero's in their home towns and have signs posted on the road telling how this is the home town of such and such, and then everyone in the car looks around and smiles because the man's character is second to none. I did not have that kind of character. No, my character is a blemished, lying teenager who is criticized as a coward because he lies to keep from being punished. Yep.. that was me.
When your character is revealed, it really IS like standing naked in public. You know that dream, right? where your naked in the grocery store?? everyone is going about their business and buying the dozen eggs that somehow were priced under a dollar for a couple of days because Easter is a huge day for the sale of eggs and the store owners know they will sell out anyway, and they are buying their daily ration of things they need to make their meals, and there you are, standing in bread isle where the Whizzo butter top bread is on sale for $1.19, and you are naked as the day you were born. It's that same feeling man. No one else really pays attention, but those who do, sneer and cluck their judgements at you in sort of a back alley, gutter trash "you should have been better" sort of way.
I won't go into the murky details of my sin because we aren't here for that..
I was an ordained minister, a man of God, a leader in my church. I was a public office in my community. I stood for value, honesty and integrity. People would drive by my house on 5Th Street to smile at my blond haired children and my beautiful wife who enjoyed a life of motherhood and flowerbeds in the spring. I was the pilot with the silk scarf, and life crashed down around my facade.
It's funny, when life crashes down? You are ALWAYS left all alone and you find yourself crying out to the God you abandoned and spit on because of the false security that was erased when your world collapsed.

When you are alone.. truly alone.. you find yourself at the feet of him. Abba Father. The one TRUE God. Not the false God we all try to please? but God who bends down in the dirt, wipes the caked sweat and tears from our face and smiles. He isn't the God that Religion and the "House of the Frozen Chosen" down the street says we should do our best to please. It was when he met me there, that I finally got it. I finally realized what all the fuss was about. He met me in the midst of my hell and horror, and he allowed me to cry it all out and realize that when the rest of the world abandons you, and trust me, they do, he will be there in that place to say "I love you". He is passionate towards us, his love is like a storm on the horizon in the Spring and when we finally succumb to him, he blows on us with a fury of love that washes over us and we become engulfed and we simply enjoy just being his.

For a little boy who grew up in a performance based home where love was withheld and only bestowed when I had been good and I might achieve something if I ever became as good or as large as the man who I called Daddy, it was a shock to my system to realize that true grace existed. Not the kind of grace they sing about out of hymnals or that are accompanied by an organ and everyone swells with emotion. I'm talking about the grace that found me in my state of disgrace and shame. The Father's love is never never never based on performance, never conditioned by his mood. He isn't too pissed off at the people he works with, to stop and play catch with us. It's always kind, always tender, always genuine and always smiling.

I write this today my friends because it's the season of Easter. A season when Christ life was extinguished and snuffed out because the Father whom we serve decided that if we were to EVER see his true character, it would take a loving Father to allow his OWN son to take our pain and hurt away and to see him for who he is. Not the radical tyrant who sits on a thrown like Zeus and hurls lightning at us when we don't turn on the blinker at a turn. Neither is he the pasty old grandpa who sits like a benign spectator in the bleachers and cheers for us when we show up for our morning quiet time. He is the one who simply loves us when we love life. When I am awash with awe over the majesty of the morning sun, he smiles at my joy, and I am filled at that moment with Awe and Wonder, because he loves me enough to do all over every day, just because I am his.

Happy Easter friends..

I'm a dirty sinner

I can always tell when the Easter season is in full swing.. the weather begins to warm, oddball people hang eggs from their trees and the big church in town takes time out of its existence to tell everyone within mailing distance what slimy low down rotten sinners we are. I mean Thank God too because I would just take a smug arrogant attitude towards life tonight before I went to bed and I would be a sure enough jerk if it wasn't for them mailing out their Easter service invites spelling out my sins and how I can purge myself of Sin and be holy just like them..

The first 7 words have the topic of sin in them. The 12th word is the word "Repent", and I swear if I didn't feel bad enough about life, I could read their literature and be near suicide by the time it was over. They tell you how you fall short, and then they proceed to tell you that God sends Jesus and how our sin NAILED him to the cross. They remind you one more time and how if you attend THEIR service, give your life to Christ and be baptized in THEIR water, all this nasty SIN business will be behind us and we can move on and find other rotten sinners.

The honest truth is? we ARE sinners.. we are lower than the low, but when we realize it, we're probably already Christians or well on our way to becoming one. The lost are not won over by telling them that they have made mistakes, they are won over by the love of God, and his willingness to forgive us to be decided LONG before we ask for it. He is eager to love us. He seeks us out. He does not go on a door to door hunt so that he can grow his churches and increase the Sunday School roster.

God does love his children, but he loves them as lost not the ones that come to be baptized, but ones that have made a million mistakes that he already knows about and how they are going to commit those sins again.

I don't want to appear as arrogant for one posting this, but wouldn't the church win many many more people by spreading out our arms and embracing the world and telling them that He loves them already? God loves those who don't even know they have need for him. Let them decide later if they want him, but invite those who are lost in sin. Let them eat the cookies and drink from the good China. I bet you might win more souls that way??