Leaning Forward

This past Saturday was TREMENDOUS! I had many of my family, friends, and co-workers over for food and fellowship. There was a little something for everybody. We boiled over 150 lbs of crawfish, 8 dozen crabs, grilled 10 lbs of hamburgers, 30 hot dogs, and topped it off with homemade ice cream. We had so much food that we didn’t even get to the shrimp. The weather was perfect, the food was great, and the atmosphere was one of genuine community. To be honest with you that’s what I was aiming for … an environment where community could be developed and cultivated. Don’t get me wrong, I love “mud bugs” as much as  anyone, but I wanted to capture an environment where people could connect, flourish, and move towards wholeness.

If I’m to lean forward in life, if I want to move in the direction of the person I want to become, then I have to posture my life in such a way that I’m constantly learning and growing. That means that I surround myself with people that are more experienced than me, people that have traveled further than me, and people that will not tell me what I want to hear. The Apostle Paul said, “Do not be so deceived and misled! Evil companionships (communion, associations) corrupt and deprave good manners and morals and character.” 1 Co 15:33(AMP) I wonder if some of the people/environments we’re associated with are conducive to growth or do they corrupt good character? 

There is a story in Luke 2, where Mary and Joseph have lost Jesus for three days, and upon returning to Jerusalem they find Him in the Temple listening and conversing with the teachers. Then it says that they, Mary/Joseph,  were upset with Him. Jesus, responds to His parents by saying, “didn’t you know that I had to be about my Father’s business?” In other words, Jesus said, you know who I am, and as such you knew where to find me. The temple is the first place you should have looked.

Jesus is teaching us that we go where our heart longs to be. Where we are informs us and others as to who we are. So where is it that you long to be? Who do you long to be with? Do your answers move you closer to God or further away?

You can see all the pictures from the crawfish boil on my Facebook page.

I’m so excited I can hardly stand it. I have been glowing all week long! On Monday of last week, I received the keys to our 28 bed men’s home here in Baton Rouge. we’re calling it My Father’s House. It’s in a GREAT location,  surrounded by numerous employment opportunities, and for the most part it’s in pretty good shape. This facility will give men returning from prison, those desiring a healthier and safer environment to live in, and those that are just homeless to get back on their feet and live the life they were intended to live. We have been praying for almost three years for this very thing – and now its here! Taking on a project of this magnitude is not easy and to be honest with you there are a lot of unanswered questions. Where will the labor and money originate from so that the house can be filled to capacity?  Who will monitor it? Will they be paid, if so where will the funds come from? What if it doesn’t fill up, how will the bills get paid? I could just go on and on. So many questions and very few answers.

My favorite story in the Scriptures is found in 1 Samuel 14. Jonathan and his armor bearer pick a fight with the Philistines and their 30,000 chariots, 6,000 horsemen, and people as numerous as the seashore. Not exactly the best odds! My favorite verse in this story is verse 6, Jonathan says, “come let us cross over and perhaps the Lord will bless us.” Did you catch that? PERHAPS the Lord will bless us. This is not one of those Scriptures that will make it on a T-shirt or a magnet you can put on a refrigerator. In layman’s terms this is what he says, “let’s go pick a fight; God may or may not show up.”  Jonathan realizes that the future of the entire nation of Israel is at stake and their leader (Saul) is asleep under a pomegranate tree and his men are hiding in caves. Jonathan realizes that something has to be done. He doesn’t have all the answers, he’s not sure what the outcome will be, and his strategy leaves a lot to be desired, but if he doesn’t do something an entire nation will be lost. Long story short, Jonathan and his armor attack, God sends and earthquake and Israel is delivered. 

So many times we’re looking for a sign. We want God to do something miraculous to confirm or deny what it is we’re suppose to do. God doesn’t always work like that. Most of the time the information we desire from God comes only after we’ve shown initiation. We know the Scripture, “without faith it’s impossible to please God”; yet, in the next breath we ask God for a sign. Where is the faith in that?

… perhaps the Lord will bless us.

Chances are God has placed something on your heart, that He’s called you to do, but you’ve been waiting for Him to take His finger and write the answer in the sky. Can I tell you, you are going to be waiting for a long time, and a lot of people are going to suffer. Too many times we’re like Saul, we’re just waiting for a sign, and really we should be like Jonathan, we have to do something. Erwin McManus, in his book Chasing Daylight, writes, “Do what you know you should do and you will know what to do. God clarifies in the midst of obedience not beforehand.”

There are still a lot of things that we don’t know about our men’s home. I do know that Louisiana has the recidivism rate of any state in the Union. I know that men are being released from prison with no where to go, every night people are sleeping under bridges, and they have no hope for the future which doesn’t boast well for our communities. When it come’s to My Father’s House, we’re going to try some things and they’re not going to work, we’re going to make mistakes, but we had to do something! The church for too long has been much like Saul, asleep under a pomegranate tree. Stop looking for signs and just go unless you get a no! God will give you the information you desire once there is initiation.  

 My sister and her three kids were with me last week for Spring Break. We had a blast. Someone asked me, “What did we do?” I guess the more appropriate question is what didn’t we do? We went to the park (huge mud hole), fished, had movie night EVERY night, went swimming, visited the zoo, had a BBQ, played baseball, football. We did it all.  All three are different in their own respect. If you were to ask them what activity they enjoyed the most, Connor, the middle child, would tell you he liked the park, Rachel, the youngest, she loves animals, and would tell you she liked the zoo. Emily, the oldest, well she’s would tell you that she enjoyed something that didn’t even make “my list”. Emily is a reader.  I have never met anyone that loves to read as much as she does. She likes it when you read to her, but she especially likes to be the one doing the reading. One night she offered to read a story out of the Bible to me. She picked up my Bible, opened it up, and arbitrarily (you know how that works right) began reading the story of the persistent widow in Luke 18.

She struggled pronouncing some of the words but God didn’t. He spoke very clearly to me through my 7 year old niece. When she read the words, “Then He (Jesus) spoke a parable to them, that men always ought to pray and not lose heart“, I received an instantaneous spiritual zap. In my mind, I hit the pause button. She just read something that I needed to be reminded of … all of life, even a life in God doesn’t come easy, and I must be persistent in our prayers. Jesus didn’t say just to pray always, He also said not to lose heart. When we stop believing, we stop praying, and when we stop praying, we lose heart. 

If that wasn’t enough, the parable ends with “when the Son of Man comes, will He really find faith on the earth?“ I asked myself, under my breath of course, when God looks down from Heaven at me, will He find faith in me?” The answer of course lies in whether or not I’ve lost heart. If I’m not willing to press on despite what life throws at me, the answer is no! I can give excuse after excuse but I cannot be filled with hopelessness and faith simultaneously.

  Jim Valvano, the former North Carolina State basketball coach, was diagnosed with bone cancer in 1993. Shortly before his death, he spoke at the inaugural ESPY Awards, presented by ESPN. While accepting an award, he announced the creation of the “V Foundation“, an organization dedicated to finding a cure for cancer. He announced that the foundation’s motto would be “Don’t give up. Don’t ever give up. What an attitude in the face of life threatening adversity.

Giving up is too easy, and it means sitting by unresponsive or retreating. God is always calling us to lean forward. That’s why God never calls us to give up. He wants us to take Him at His Word, to believe that He is who He said He is and that He will do what He said He will do.  It’s easy to believe when everything is going well; it’s much more difficult when the answers to life’s toughest questions seem aloof. Whether or not God is looking is not the question, the question is what will He find in us? If we don’t give up; He will find faith on the earth. If God is looking for something, I want Him to find it in me!

When I go and speak to the inmates at the various prisons, their needs are so numerous that I hardly ever talk about the same topic, but I clearly have one goal in  in mind … I want them to ALL to “experience the life that comes in God”. At HPC, we use the phrase “living the life that God intended” quite often. The last couple of weeks I’ve been thinking about those two phrases and asking myself, what does a life in God look like? I want to say up front that most of my life, I have not experienced that “sweet spot” in God. Just within the last 4-5 years have I begun to live out my life with purpose and passion. What this life looks like to me is in no way THE cookie cutter model for everyone. It is in fact filtered through my eyes and my life experiences.  These are my thoughts and I wanted to share them with you. 

I guess it would be easier to define what a life in God does not look like. I don’t think its what I see every time I turn on the television and hear this “prosperity” gospel. Do I believe God wants us to prosper, you better believe it, but I believe He wants us to prosper more so spiritually in our relationship with Him. I don’t believe that Christ came to earth and died a brutal death just so that you and I could go to heaven, but at the same time it’s never been about wealth. I don’t believe that a life in God comes without pain, disappointment, and heartache. God is not sadistic by any means, but life is not always ho hum. Besides, most of the pain and suffering we go through here on earth is because of sin and the choices we make. Even those who love and serve God, still experience difficulty. Yet, God is bigger and better than my worst day. 

All my life I was taught that if I was in the center of God’s will that I could find safety and protection. When I read the Scriptures, I don’t see that at all. I see Joseph falsely accused and incarcerated. I see John the Baptist being beheaded. I see Stephen being stoned. I see Paul being beaten and shipwrecked. I see Jesus hanging from a cross. These events don’t speak of safety and protection to me. They do however, speak of love, a sacrificial love for the God that first love them. I don’t think that a life in God is filled with a bunch of rules, denominations, and mandates. When I first came to Christ, I was told that there were certain things that I had to do and there were things that I couldn’t do. I now know that’s called legalism. If that’s what Christianity is about then it’s really no different from Islam or any other world religion. That’s what Islam teaches, that you have to do certain things and abstain from certain things in order to gain God’s approval. Islam, at it’s core it’s legalistic and fatalistic. That’s not what I see Jesus teaching. Instead, I see Him consistently teaching us to love the Lord your God with everything within you and loving your neighbor as yourself. Yes, the Scriptures speak of obedience, but that obedience is initiated out love for the One that created us and sent His son to rescue us from our sins. The Scriptures speak of holiness but why does holiness have to be defined by the things that we separate ourselves from? Can’t we  define holiness by the things we attach ourselves to? I mean, when a person connects heart to heart with God, you don’t have to tell them what they can and cannot do. There will be a real change, change from the inside out.

When I think about a life that comes in God, I think about the place in the apostle Paul’s life when he said, that he was torn between departing this world and being with Christ or remaining here to continue the work of the ministry. At that very moment, Paul defined what it meant to live the life that comes in God. What does a life in God look like … very simply it’s defined as one who loves to live and lives to love. It means being connected to the heart of God and out of that flows our love for humanity. You will know when you have connected with the heart of God, when He has captured yours.

This morning I spent a couple of hours with the doctor. This was no ordinary visit to the doctor ‘s office though. I spent a couple of hours with Jason Laird, aka  Dr. Tweez. Jason is a very good friend of mine and the youth pastor at Healing Place Church. I have always had the utmost respect for Jason. When I think about him, the first word that comes to mind is legit! He’s the real deal … loves God and loves people and walks it out. Jason has a powerful testimony that I wanted the men inside parish prison hear.  Jason, on more than one occasion, has been incarcerated at parish prison. It’s was really neat for him to come back, completely transformed, and stand before those men and tell them God loves them, has a plan and a future for their life. He told them not to put their significance is “stuff”; rather their identity is in Christ.

Tweez brought Steve Ware along with him. Steve was a voluntary chaplain at Angola State Penitentiary for 10 months. He really encouraged the men that God was circling their boat, if they could only stop fighting the wind and waves long enough to see Him. All they had to do was call out to Him.

I love Tuesday’s mornings anyway, but today was really special for me. As we left that cell block this morning, I could see the encouragement and hope in the eyes of the men. I really believe that many of them are going to make it!! That’s a win for EVERYONE!