PRECIOUS BUT LIMITED?

“There is no limit to my guidance, no limit to my voice. The God who led EACH DAY in a cloud, and each night by fire, is here to lead you as much as you have a will to be led.”

That seems right, doesn’t it? But there’s a little bit of backstory to this revelation.

After Christmas, my friend Chris was telling me about how God was stepping in to cause some drastic things to turn around a church’s government which had been a mess for years. I pondered aloud to Chris how often we notice how LONG it takes for God to insert His sovereignty in these situations.
I wondered if people don’t wait for a “voice from the sky” when God wants us just to see a situation and use our brains to fix them. God gives wisdom and experience, not just hearing hearts, right? I wondered aloud if God doesn’t withhold His voice in a matter because it may be our turn to diligently search out what to do. And maybe God stepping in and scrambling things is really a last resort, while we’ve been doing nothing but “waiting.” Perhaps WE should see our problems and be industrious enough to fix them.

I’d spent a couple of weeks pondering that idea when a report came out on the internet that Chuck Smith, the founder and current leader of the Calvary Chapel movement, had been diagnosed with lung cancer. People diagnose he’s got a year to live. The movement had discussed for the last ten years, at least, who should succeed Chuck. But nothing has been done. I don’t want to judge, but it seems to me that now the hand is forced.

Anyway, I speculated about my theory and then began to ask God, wanting a revelation on whether He ever “withholds His voice” when we should use diligence.

The answer last week was: “yes, and no.”

“Yes”, we SHOULD be more diligent. To seek His voice. And “NO”, He doesn’t normally “withhold the voice.” His direction was DAILY with Israel and our Father WANTS to interact more instead of less.

But HERE’S the lesson. Sometimes situations DO go on too long before God steps in to fix a matter, NOT because we’re to rely on reason but because we don’t aggressively SEEK His guidance. His direction is available and punctual. But we get lazy. His voice is not in short supply.

Seek, see the need, GET HIS GUIDANCE, and do.

Sort of a Terrible Parable

I once knew a guy. He wore a cape. Most of my other friends liked him, even though the cape kind of put some people off. But we knew each other from the organization where he had some high and respectable position.

I would have wanted to be better friends with our caped friend, and I think the guys did, too. One of us even asked him what was up with the cape thing, because that’s the kind of question real friends can ask each other.

That’s when things got a little rocky. He told them that the cape was a sign of the organization’s calling on his life and then the conversation got less friendly and more stilted after that.

We fell out of touch because we started going to meetings somewhere else. I guess he still holds some kind of high and respectable position and still never takes that thing off.

But if you ask me, the guy was just weird and the cape was just something to blame it on.

Worship DNA

People ask me, as a worship leader, “what kind of worship do you guys do? Do you do the stuff from the U.K., or Australia? Tomlin? Are you tracking with the stuff from Redding, or are you doing the Roots Worship thing?” I’ve never given this answer to them, but here is my answer. This is what we do. Sometimes I light a fire in the fireplace and play a bit on the guitar. And sometimes, by myself, sometimes with Lori, I will pull out an old song from the ’60s called “Never, My Love.” I’ll sing the first verse and chorus to Jesus and I won’t have been able to get through it without us all weeping. Beyond all that, yeah, Prophetic worship is good, IHOP, Bethel, whatever.

Correction

I have a very dear friend named Tony who has been going to an Episcopal church. I mentioned in an email yesterday that I have other friends going to an Anglican church. Then I explained that the Anglican is the “British” version of Episcopalian.
Well, Tony is the kind of person who doesn’t commit to something without some measure of thought, and he wrote back a “well, actually…” paragraph explaining just how the American Episcopalians were connected to Scottish roots (which they wanted) rather than English roots (which they wanted no part of). His answer was scholarly. But I told him my “two-bit” review of the Anglicans was still true, as I considered it good enough for church step conversation. In another place in time, I would have needed Tony’s treatise. But in the email, during a busy workday, I like mine. Everything I need, nothin’ I don’t.
This leads me to something I’ve wrestled with a bit since last Sunday morning. Lori and I have been in a church plant down the road. It’s amazing how the leadership are on the same page with things God has been showing me in the “wilderness” the past few years. Like we have been in the same wilderness. When, and if, I argue about things I think I disagree on, I end up thinking we really do agree, but only looking at things from different perspectives.
It’s amazing that we see things so alike. Then, on Sunday, one of the pastors, teaching on the importance of loving the body of Christ, blurted out how that old phrase “I have to love them but I don’t have to LIKE them” is B.S. Actually, to be fair, he didn’t say it was bullsh*t, but reading his facial expression, I think he might have if it was “Foursquare.”
It sounded good enough in context that I may have even said an “Amen!” if I were “Foursquare.” But later I started thinking how much I still like that phrase. In fact, I cling to it as if it were scripture and now Jeremy is trying to take it away.
And that made me want to challenge him on it.
Until this morning.
This morning I awoke with a bit of a revelation. It featured a very dear friend in my life. This friend is a model of holiness, but not necessarily very “religious.” This person is easy to misunderstand as he finds a lot of church meetings boring. And isn’t afraid to say it. And he doesn’t show up for church all the time because of something else God put in his life on Sunday mornings. I respect my friend, but he doesn’t line up with much religious military muster, and although my friend doesn’t care, I care, and I don’t want people to miss out on knowing the jewel of Christ that he is.
So the thought crossed my mind that somebody who is not content to exercise the right to use that phrase “I don’t have to like them” is going to be the same person who will NOT cop out and will actually find a way to understand and love my friend.
Yeah, I could confront, and give my case for how some people present themselves as “unlikable.” I could argue against the weight of relationship being put on the “lover” rather than the “loved.” And how Jesus himself had “favorites”, but the question God presented to me was, “do you really want to convince him of all of that?” Or do I want the Jeremys of the church around my friend?
And here is where my stories come together. I would have given the long, thinking, biblically “correct” view, responding to Jeremy’s “two-bit” approach to loving each other. Both are true. This morning, I need his right now, and so does my friend. It’s everything I need, nothin’ I don’t.

Mankind’s Biggest Problem

I was recently telling someone how I text my daughter in NYC. I tell her I’ll get back to her at 10 am. It’s not really 10 am for me. For me, it’s 7 am. But I go outside my zone to speak into her reality.
This is what God OUR father does. He reaches through our language barriers, our spacial barriers. He talks in ways that He knows we will understand, like when He wrote, “from the rising of the sun…”
Some people don’t see Him as a father. They think when they catch the Bible saying “from the rising of the sun…” they got us trapped, because the earth actually revolves around the stationary sun.
But they forgot to see Him as “father.”
And isn’t that mankind’s biggest problem?

Mystical, but not so Mystical

This morning I was spending time praying by the fireplace, focusing on how I may have shortchanged my son in teaching a certain spiritual aspect of his faith, and now it is affecting him.
My inclination was to ask God to meet him there in Seattle where he now lives. I would pray and God would still teach him this lesson. Maybe God would send him another “father” or two.
And then, I was surprised by my emotion. I didn’t WANT another “father” to teach him. I wanted to be his father! I’ll pray, and I’ll send letters. I was… jealous.
Sometimes people don’t understand the “emotions” of God the Father. I use quotes because we feel so far removed, and don’t feel comfortable comparing God with what we know of ourselves. But when we come to terms that we were made in GOD’S image, not His in ours, it makes our understanding more palatable.
Sometimes God isn’t so hard to understand, not so mystical and not so far away. I will never comprehend Him completely, at least not on this side of life, but that doesn’t mean I understand none of Him.

The Unexpected Coming

People have sermonized regarding what activates an outpouring of spiritual power to the Bride of Christ.
Some say we should get our “holiness” in order. I suppose you can sermonize that,  since the disciples were obedient to stay in Jerusalem between Christ’s last directive and Pentecost, so you can call the obedience “holiness.”
But if you read Acts 2, nothing in the text regards either their obedience or holiness.   What it does say is that they were “together, in one place.”
I personally don’t think it was about what the 120 did to be “ready for” or “bring on” the Holy Spirit. Because if you dig a little deeper and read about when Jesus sent out the twelve with power, it wasn’t because they “attained” some spiritual level to activate that power.   In fact, to be honest, they returned from great power encounters arguing and acting immature.
Surely, holiness doesn’t hurt,  and we need to be good vessels.  But if there is any attribute, according to Acts 2, it should be “unity”… they were together, or as KJ reads, “in one accord.”

Is “unity” the secret ingredient to the next “Outpouring of Power”?  I could make a better Biblical case for “unity” than either “holiness” or “maturity.”

Still, while we need to be ready, I don’t see anything we can “do” or “be” to activate the power of God.

The Ways of the Kingdom

I have heard an interesting conundrum that wonders: “it seems that the most prophetic people, who speak words into so many hearts, appear to be the ones who are most directionless when it comes to knowing how to forge ahead on their own paths.”
Now there is an illustration of both heaven and hell which I am fascinated by.  Hell is pictured as a giant dinner attended by persons whose arms have no elbow joints. They are only able to look at the feast before them, as they cannot manage to bring the food from plate to their own mouths, starving as they can only covet the food before them.   Heaven is occupied by those with the same arm, who attend a lavish feast, but are used to taking the food and feeding the people around them,  in the process enjoying every delight themselves.
I think that in God’s Kingdom, even the least of those who are inclined prophetically can give “bread” to each other;  it was meant for those who are gifted to be just as nourished as the rest.

Accountable

He were going to “right” an issue. A small issue, compared to the whole big scheme of things, but it was an issue nonetheless, and one that didn’t necessarily need to be “righted.”
And he was “acting out.”  And he was “on a roll.”
Everybody else understood why the issue was the way it was and softly tried to interject, but the person was in charge of the issue, and gettin’ it done.
I thought to myself — no, I thought to myself and God — “why does he act like that”?
Now, there are times when I pray and seek God’s voice and don’t seem to hear an answer for years. And there are also times when I muse to myself, “before God” and I’m surprised by a responding Voice.   And the Voice, answered clearly this time, immediately:   “…because he’s not ‘accountable’.”
Kind of stopped me in my tracks.  I knew the meaning.
So I have been in a relationship at VCC for over thirteen years, set up to be “accountable”, but the accountability wasn’t completely functional, because the relationship was distant.

But now God has given me, and is delivering me into church relationship which won’t be long-distance, and the thought struck me that I am going to be able to recognize, accept, initiate accountability.
This is huge, requires some risk, and besides that, I am very grateful. I’ve been living with extravagant, but limited Christianity, and now this is good.

Quote from Lindsey

If I had a dollar for every time someone told me, “You need to get out more,” I’d have enough money to go out more.