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Sitting Outside

I really like working in the community in which I serve. Let me be clear in what I mean. I love to once a week work remotely at a location in the community of Fort Worth. It always brings a feeling of blessing. Today I am sitting outside Central Market in Fort Worth. Each Thursday I come to a remote location from at 4:00 pm to work for awhile outside the church, but also invite students to come by if they want to hang out.

It’s a win win for me because I get to experience the beauty of God’s creation, connect with the community and connect with youth at Arlington Heights UMC.

Today as I sit outside Central Market I am reminded of the fact that Jesus did this a lot.

Rarely did Jesus stay in one place for an extended period of time, but kept connecting with people in all communities of the region he lived in at the time of his ministry. Jesus and the Disciples were constantly moving from place to place with the sole purpose of connecting people to God’s Kingdom. Not only that but Jesus would be teaching to His disciples or hundreds sometimes thousands of people of this important connection.

I don’t know about you, but I spend a lot of time in the office, maybe I’m spending too much time there.

Maybe I need to be going from place to place connecting people like Christ did.

It’s worthy of reflection at least.  We will see where it leads me and where it leads us.

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Cling.

ClingToCross.main

I really struggled when I was much younger and less experienced in my walk with Christ with the idea of being saved. You know that moment when all things became clear and God called you out of the miry clay and you were born again. I had heard over and over again friends tell me in such detail their new birth in Christ. Quite similarly I have also struggled with stories in scripture where God himself spoke audibly to Moses, Peter, Saul, and so on. Why did I struggle?

Because to this day I have not had an emotional transformation or damascus road experience with God. I didn’t have a moment where God called me out of the miry clay. This feeling was traumatic because at the depths of who I was I felt that I had done something wrong and God was not happy with who I was and what I was doing with my life, or more to the point I felt God was not happy with what I wasn’t doing.

I felt God’s love slipping away.

For a teenager this is no small matter, but life altering and life ending I am sure it seemed at the moment.

Fast forward 15-20 years later….

I still have not received a Damascus Road experience and have not heard the voice of God pull me out of the pit. I have struggled with life and all its forms and situations that I have experienced. My faith has been tested daily, and sometimes each seconds that goes by I struggle more and more with this life that I feel compelled to live. That is a disturbing place to be, but God is not the blame for that. We want to blame God is somebody, but in truth it is just one of those things that just “is”.

I love what the Psalmist says in today’s passage. “My souls clings to the Lord my God.” 

When I think of the word cling I can’t help but think about white knuckles, someone that is so desperately hanging on to God in all matters of life and is eagerly anticipating God’s mercy, love, and grace. The truth of the matter is that we are always in a place of somewhere in between “Thank you Lord and Help Me Jesus”, life in all its forms is trying and hard, but and this is a big but, but God is always by our side.

Yes, I haven’t had a moment where God called me out of the miry clay and into the light, I have had tons of moments along the way. This journey as we call it from time to time is just that. It’s a journey and in it there are mountain tops and there are valleys, but we have to have the valleys to be thankful for the mountain top.

Overall this what I think: No what happens, I will cling to you O my God and my Savior.

Amen.

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What are We Becoming?

22 But be doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive themselves. 23 For if any are hearers of the word and not doers, they are like those who look at themselves[a] in a mirror; 24 for they look at themselves and, on going away, immediately forget what they were like. 25 But those who look into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and persevere, being not hearers who forget but doers who act—they will be blessed in their doing.

I love this passage and advice from James, the brother of Jesus. Today I present to you this passage, but also this quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson:

“That which dominates our imaginations and our thoughts will determine our lives, and our character.  Therefore, it behooves us to be careful what we worship, for what we are worshiping we are becoming.”

So what are you becoming? What are we really doing in our lives?

What are we really becoming?

 

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Didn’t Pivot

Jesus calls us to abide in His love. To abide means to accept, but it’s more than that because in that acceptance we live in that love, we extend that love because being in it and of it. The love becomes a part of us.

So if we are not doing this more often then are we abiding in Christ’s love?

Additionally in the video they saw that Sara deserved to have this homerun. Effectively we are Sara and we in life didn’t pivot just right and because of that we are broken. Jesus responds to that brokenness in all of us and gives us a home run of our own. He gives us His love.

The coolest part though is that if you don’t abide in that love and share it Jesus doesn’t take it away. It’s still yours, and there is nothing you can do or cannot do that will cause Jesus not to love you.

 

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Bragging is not healthy

This morning I am reading for my seminary class, “The Bible in Youth Ministry as Spiritual Guide for Adolescents” and I was doing it I was reading the story of Joseph and his brothers. I think we can all acknowledge one thing.

Joseph was kind of a punk.

Joseph the Dreamer has been having very interesting dreams and whenever he has a dream Joseph in all his wisdom and LOADS of humility shares his dreams with his brothers in which this is usually what happens:

Hey brothers! I just had another dream and in the dream I learned that one day I will be your master and you will all serve me.

Kind of a punk.

We all knew this bragging wasn’t going to end well, and in fact it doesn’t. Joseph’ brothers put him in a hole in the ground and at first just want to leave him there, but then they get a better idea. Hey! let’s sell Joseph into slavery. Let this dreamer be someone else’s problem. That is just what they did.

I think we all can relate to all the people in this story. We have all been that annoying 6th grader that lives to push every button that every has to get a rise out of them, and we all have been annoyed by said 6th graders. I think the story of Joseph teaches us a great lesson in humility.

Is it bad that Joseph has dreams and that God has chosen me, absolutely not! It’s amazing that God is using Joseph in the way He is. Let us remember that we are all human and there is nothing that we could ever do to earn God’s love and grace and there is nothing we didn’t do to earn it either. We are all in the same boat and yet God loves each of us just as we are. We must remember always to see the world and our neighbor as God sees them and additionally not raise ourselves above our neighbors but love them as Christ loves each of us.

The only being that ever existed that had great evidence to raise himself above everyone else, Jesus Christ humbled himself and died on the cross. So what does it say that Christ could have raised himself and yet chose humility?

Additionally what does say about ourselves that we do the opposite at times?

Let us always seek to model the example of Christ.

Amen.