the first step after failing

Tiersa and I saw a woman at the game last Friday night with a t-shirt that we really liked.  The front asked, How shall I repay the Lord?  The back answered, I will celebrate my deliverance. 

I love that!

In Romans 8:27, the Apostle Paul quotes from the Prophet Isaiah writing, I will make this covenant with those who are mine when I take away their sins.

God does more than forgive our sins, He takes them away.  He removes and remembers them no more.  We simply reach for His hand to take them to Him.

Not only does He forgive the ones we’ve made, but the ones were making, and the ones we will make.  And it is during these moments of failure that our relationship with God is most clear.

The first step after failing God must be taken in His direction.

Strength and Honor.

Glory to God!

Jason

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Hope you have a great weekend!  Mason started working at Academy this afternoon (he had a flex day at school).  I’m proud of you Mason!  Tiersa will get home about 4 from school.  Mason gets off at 5.  ND made the play-offs last week so we’re all headed to the game later tonight.  Looking forward to a relaxing weekend.

light surrounded by darkness

You are the light of the world. - Matthew 5:14

Light in a world of darkness.  Right?  That is what we are.

We are light surrounded by darkness….

And yet how often do we dabble with darkness?  How often do we toy with evil?  How very often do we experiment with wickedness?

“How so?” Jesus asks.  “How is that possible?”  “Those things are characteristic of Satan, not of God.”  “How is it possible for the light of the world to participate in any way with darkness?”  It is a physical and spiritual impossibility.

“… a people belonging to God that we may declare the praises of Him who called us out of darkness and into His wonderful light” (1 Peter 2:9).

We are to be and to live wholly (and holy) different.

We have been bought, cleansed, forgiven through His life given for us.  His death given in order that we might have life. 

We’ve been given a new nature.  One that is holy and sanctified.  One that is light in a world characterized by darkness. 

Jesus calls us to live up to what He has granted us as we come to Him and follow Him – as we discard an old way of life for a new one – as we cross over from death to life – as we come out of the darkness and into His light.

Strength and Honor.

Glory to God!

Jason

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Pray for those affected by the tragedy at Ft. Bragg.  My friend and former Greek professor, Les Maloney, is an army chaplain there and is currently on active duty.  He’s been ministering day and night since the shooting.  Pray for God to heal and bless all of those involved.

fifteen minutes

Donald Miller, in his book Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality describes being outside of the Bagdad Theater in Portland one night, when he saw a man playing the saxophone.  For fifteen minutes Miller stood there while the man, so engaged in his playing, never opened his eyes. 

Miller admits prior to that moment “I never liked jazz music, because jazz music doesn’t resolve.”  But after witnessing the man’s love for his craft, Miller concludes: “After that I liked jazz music.  Sometimes you have to watch someone love something before you can love it yourself.  It is as if they’re showing you the way.”

Does God resolve for us?  When others look to us, do they see by our lives that we are so engrossed, so enamored by God?  Do they see how in love we are with Him by the lives we live?  Are they simply captivated by the relationship we share with our God?  Equally as important, are we?

Strength and Honor.

Glory to God!

Jason

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Donald Miller’s Blue Like Jazz is a good book, and a quick read.  I’m currently reading it – again.  I recently read a more recent work by Miller, Searching for God Knows What.  It is a must read!  If you haven’t read it, go out and get it right now! 

Off to dinner with Tiersa and the kids – Papasita’s maybe?  Then to the football game.  Nothing like 2A football.  They’ve only lost two games this season – one by 1 point and another by 2 points after 5 overtimes! but, in order to make the playoffs they not only have to win tonight’s game, another district team has to win their game too.  We’ll see….  We have 5th Quarter tonight at church after the game.  Everybody will either be in a great mood, or not so much….

why is it…?

Why is it that we never see a NT author give us a systematic approach to faith?

Why is it that Jesus never gives us a structured hierarchy of theology?

Why does the Apostle Paul never write a letter that just lines it out for us precisely what our churches should look like?  Exactly how we respond to the Gospel?  Oh sure we find a few instructions here and a few guidelines there, but why doesn’t he ever write the church at Rome or Ephesus or Corinth and say “these are the ’steps to salvation’ – hear the Gospel, believe in Jesus as the Christ, repent of sinfulness turning toward God, clothe yourselves in Christ in baptism, live a faithful life.”  Maybe we’re missing the point.  Sure we develop our thinking by bringing these concepts together, but I mean it would have taken Paul a paragraph or two, maybe just ten minutes of his time, and he could have just lined it all out for all of humanity for all of time.  But that wasn’t the approach.  And I think this reality is significant.

Perhaps these are crucial facets of faith, but have you ever seen anywhere where Paul pens the words “steps to salvation”?  No (although we hear this terminology all the time).

Why is that?

Why didn’t Almighty God through the NT writers set everything up for us like dominoes ready to be knocked down?

The reason I think is this….

Although we are called to respond by faith and study Scripture and seek to understand through the Word precisely who God desires for us to be and how he wants us to engage Him, to approach faith in a systematic manner negates what God is after: relationship with us.

What’s the goal of Baptism?  Salvation?  We’re selling ourselves (and God) short if all we’re after is salvation.  The goal of Baptism is relationship with God.

What’s the goal of Communion?  To follow Scripture (certainly), but more than that, to engage in powerful relationship with God and the universal church?

How shallow is our faith (How shallow are we?) if all we want from God is salvation?  When He desires so much more from us and for us. 

Our goal in everything we are about should be, must be, relationship with God.

The Gospel by very definition unveils and calls for transcendant relationship with God.

Too often we approach faith like it’s some chess game we’re trying to win, or a science fair project we’re trying to get an A on, or a rental car agreement that we’re trying to make sure we fill in all the boxes correctly on.

I believe it is only when we begin to approach faith as relational rather than systematic that the eyes of our hearts truly begin to open to the wonder and majesty of covenantal relationship with God. 

Strength and Honor.

Glory to God!

Jason

crazy, life

Crazy.  Things have been just too crazy lately.  Simply busy.  My Hebrew class has been super time-consuming.  The class I have on the book of Acts has been constant (I’ve got a 20 page project due next Friday).  Ministry has been great.  I got into ministry to impact the lives of others, not to solely preach and teach, but specifically to minister in peoples’ lives.  And so ministry has been great –  but again, time-consuming.  So between family, ministry, and grad school (and in that order) – needless to say, I haven’t blogged in two weeks (obviously). 

To catch up a bit… we had our annual family retreat for Graceton last weekend.  All went extremely well.  We centered spiritually upon our own individual families and upon the context of the church, our priorities, and our dedication to who God has called us to be. 

Last week Kacey’s 7th grade volleyball team at NDMS won the district championship, winning the final two games back to back.  Kacey scored 12 points between the two games!  Mason and Kacey have gotten started on basketball this week as well.  Mason has been wiped out.  He gave blood right after a two hour practice yesterday, which was probably not the best idea .  He’s at a dual-credit college class tonight with Hayley.  He has a Speech class on Thursday nights and a History class during the week on campus at NDHS.  At this pace he’ll do away with his freshman year at Abilene! 

Jacob and Bowen are doing fine.  I had lunch with Jacob today and I’ll go have lunch with Bowen on Monday.

Tiersa is great!  She loves me more than I could ever deserve.  But… get this… when I was on campus at LCU last May I called one night and couldn’t get in touch with her.  So I recorded myself singing “You Are My Sunshine” on my phone, then sent it to her.  Sweet right?  Well how sweet is it when your lovely wife lets all of her friends hear you sing “You Are My Sunshine” when she’s at the church retreat???  Yea.  And of course I had no idea.  Until… I walk into an after-church fellowship deal two days later and everyone starts to sing “You Are My Sunshine” to me!!!  Just  take away my man-card why don’t you?  Ha.

I’m headed to Dallas tomorrow for lunch with the Four Horsemen.  These guys build me up and challenge me daily. 

I hope to get back to blogging more consistently on Monday (yes, I said that two weeks ago but………………….).

Strength and Honor.

Glory to God.

Jason

one

“My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me” (John 17:20-21).

Strength and Honor.

Glory to God!

Jason

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Sorry, blogging has had to take a back seat this week to essays, mid-terms, and ministry.  It should be smooth sailing (for a little while anyway) beginning next Monday.

Tiersa and the kiddos are great.  We have a three day weekend starting as soon as school lets out today….

mlk jr. and the cross

“Those who would be my disciples must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.”

– Luke 9:23, TNIV

Quotes from speeches of Dr. Martin Lither King, Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement in regard to the carrying of the cross of Christ:

“This is the cross that we must bear for the freedom of our people.” – October 16, 1960, Reidsville State Prison, Tattnall Co., Georgia

“The cross we bear precedes the crown we wear.  To be a Christian one must take up his cross, with all of its difficulties and agonizing and tension-packed content and carry it until that very cross leaves its marks upon us and redeems us to that more excellent way which comes only through suffering.” – January 17, 1963, National Conference on Religion and Race, Chicago, Illinois

“When I took up the cross, I recognized its meaning….  The cross is something that you bear, and ultimately that you die on.” – May 22, 1967, Penn Community Center, Frogmore, South Carolina

Strength and Honor.

Glory to God!

Jason

powerful grace

 

If my heart remains unsoftened and unfertilized by grace, the good seed may germinate for a season, but it must ultimately wither, for it cannot flourish on a rocky, unbroken, unsanctified heart. 

- CH Spurgeon, Morning and Evening

 

Costly grace is the treasure hidden in the field.  Costly grace is the Gospel which must be sought again and again, the gift which must be asked for, the door at which a man must knock.  Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ.

- Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship

 

Indeed it is not learning that makes a person holy and just, but a virtuous life that makes one pleasing to God.  I would rather feel contrition than to know how to define it.  For what would it profit us to know the whole Bible by heart and the principles of all the philosophers if we live without grace and the love of God?  Vanity of vanities and all is vanity, except to love God and serve Him alone.

- Thomas A Kempis, The Imitation of Christ

 

Strength and Honor.

Glory to God!

Jason

subversive spirituality

Dissident Discipleship, Part 7: Subversive Spirituality

Finally, Subversive Spirituality is what Augsburger defines as “dissident discipleship” (hence the title of the book). 

The practice of Dissident Discipleship is the complete answering of the radical call of Christ. 

Dissident Discipleship encounters Christ in all aspects of the believer’s life. 

It is the complete and total transformation that only the Gospel brings about. 

Jesus Christ living and incarnate in the life of those who hail Him as Lord. 

It is every facet, every corner of our being committed and submitted to the Lordship of Christ.

It is His purposes becoming our purposes here in this life. 

It is finally coming to the point that we as Christians finally declare, “Ah….  This is what life is all about.”

I pray for our Father’s continued blessing upon you in this journey.

Strength and Honor.

Glory to God!

Jason

authentic witness

Dissident Discipleship, Part 6: Authentic Witness

Authentic Witness “is the practice of genuine presence with, sensitivity to, modeling for, and then sharing with others about one’s deepest beliefs, values, and hopes” (p.171). 

Augsburger defines Authentic Witness as “faithful presence.” 

Authenticity is crucial in the life of the Christian and directly impacts not only the believer’s life, but those with whom the disciple ministers. 

The Christian faith is revealed in the way we conduct ourselves, especially within intimate, personal relationships with others. 

The Lordship of Christ and our fidelity and commitment to the cause of Christ will be revealed in our actions, priorities, and choices. 

Authentic Witness calls for the genuine discipleship (and discipline) of self in order to bring about the discipleship of others. 

As we encounter life, the committed disciple continually testifies and bears witness to Christ in every facet of his/her living. 

Strength and Honor.

Glory to God!

Jason