One of the conclusions we arrived at through our series on suffering was that suffering (if nothing else) certainly clarifies things in our lives.

I believe crisis, pressure and stress have the same effect.  For example, for the last four weeks, I have been working three jobs (two jobs starting six weeks ago).  I wrap up one of those jobs later this afternoon, but the two-job thing looks to be my “new normal”.

I have recognized that some things have changed in my life in the last six weeks.  The value of sleep has gone WAY UP!  :-)  Working out has become a non-negotiable – I need the energy and I have to take care of myself.  Time with Dani (my wife, for the uninformed) is now at a premium with our often conflicting work-schedules (she works 7-5 M-F and I often work a 5-10 or 5-11 at Starbucks).  So, she sees me in the AM when I am groggy and I see her late at night when she is groggy.

Time spent with friends over morning coffee and lunch has become more difficult as there are simply less and less empty spots on my calendar.  I have begun journaling, reading Scripture, and praying with more frequency and intensity because (frankly) I am more desperate for God’s presence and work in my life in the midst of this chaotic time.

Looking through the lens of my own life, I am seeing crisis clarify my values and intentions.  One of my friends consistently reminds me “actions prove intentions.  Don’t tell me what you intended to do; show me what you did do and I can see your actual intentions.”

As we move closer and closer to Good Friday and Easter, I am reflecting on the fact that Jesus had very clear intentions, He knew who he was, and He was living with purpose.  When the crisis, stress, and suffering came in his life, Jesus’ true character came out.  ”Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”  His true intentions came out.  ”Father, if this cup can pass from me, let it.  Yet, let your will, not mine, be done.”  His true values came out.  ”For the Son of Man came to seek and save the lost.”

While many of us would argue afterwards (“I’m sorry I said or did that; I didn’t mean to.  I don’t know what came over me.  I was really stressed and just lost it.”), I would say who we really are ALWAYS comes out in the moments of stress, crisis, and suffering.  If we have realized we don’t like who we are in those moments, maybe this Holy Week is a good time to begin submitting ourselves anew to God’s presence and work in our lives.  Ask and apply yourself to His transformative work in your life.  He was a man of true intention, character and value.  He can make you that kind of person as well.

I was excited with the experience that took place last night at Crash.  The opportunity to engage the story of Palm Sunday from the perspective of 4 different persons/people who played a role in the narrative.   I believe that the stories of Scripture are similar to works of art – there is always another layer or facet that is unexplored or unfathomed, ready for our engagement.

I intentionally disciplined myself to brief in sharing.  My tendency is to overstate and overexplain things, and…well…I like to talk.  So, the challenge of being brief and focused was a great experience for me.

I have said it before here and I will say it again – less is more. This principle guides many people as they plan out their calendars.  It guides organizations and churches as they focus their mission.  It guides musicians, screenwriters and painters as they seek to use the fewest notes, words, or colors to realize the story, melody or image that has emerged from their imagination.

And I think it should guide communicators as they share truths, principles, values, and ideas with their audiences.  Although we try to focus on one thing each week (the Big Idea), we often find ourselves overwhelmed with so many lesser things that the Big Idea isn’t that “BIG” after all.  The one word I took away from last night was humility. I realized that the disciples, the donkey’s owner, the crowd, the Pharisees and the curious onlookers were all people not too different than you and me (one person who participated in the service last night told me that he found at least one part of each person that he could identify with). And while they all failed (at one point or another) to “get” what Jesus was doing or who He truly was, God offered them the same grace He offers you and me when we “don’t get it”.

I think one of the principle markers of spiritual maturity is humility.  I find it completely baffling how someone can claim to “know” so much of the Scriptures, have so many years credited in following Jesus, and yet be overflowing with arrogance and pride. The spiritual giants in my life have been incredibly humble and gracious people, whose years and decades of following Jesus taught them how much they didn’t know, didn’t live, and hadn’t achieved. This realization produces gratitude, humility, and generosity in their hearts as they realized how much favor and grace they received from God each and every day.

These simple lessons are reminding me today – less is more.

I try to read a diverse amount of material.  And these links reflect the kinds of things that I have been reading. There is a lot of stuff here, so filter out what applies to you and what does not. Just doing my best to share what I read with others to ensure that I am actually doing something beyond just reading and then mentally dumping what I encounter. I learn best by sharing and teaching others – this process drills down the one take-away that I am actually going to apply and live from what I encounter. Enjoy!

-This piece on GM’s role in the death of Saturn was very intriguing.

-This article on leading creative people was challenging for me in working with our team at Crash.

-I read Chip and Dan Heath’s book Made to Stick a couple of years ago and it was one of the top 5 most important books I have read about communicating well. Their follow-up book Switch recently released. The subtitle of the book is “How to Change Things When Change is Hard”, sounds pretty timely and relevant for this season. Will be reading it this summer. Michael Hyatt reviews it here.

-I read a transcript of this video recently and was challenged as I think about how to leverage my few hours when I am not working multiple jobs to accomplish the ideas I keep generating. Hope it challenges you to get off the net and put down the remote and do something.

-I am a type-A, driven, intrisically-motivated person, so this article on goal-setting and what the author gleaned from his study of Google was inspiring.

A friend of mine who attends Crash told me yesterday that we should hand out prizes to those who suffered through our series on suffering for all six weeks.  Funny idea, but it indicates how challenging the conversation really was.  I realize now with more clarity why we so often skirt this issue and question…because it is so personal, difficult, emotional, and scary.  It was a great conversation, but we have decided that it is time for a new focus.

We would love to have you and all you would like to invite to join you for our Passion Week schedule. 3 experiences in 8 days that we feel will connect us to the story of Jesus’ last days, death, burial, and resurrection.  3 interactive experiences that will be set apart in their uniqueness and intentionality.  3 times when we will gather to sing, to reflect, to pray, to hear teaching, to celebrate, to dream.

Sunday, March 28th – Palm Sunday Crash – This interactive service will connect us to the people and story of Palm Sunday.  6pm in the Chapel.

Friday, April 2nd – Good Friday Meditation Service - This annual service centers around Scripture reading and silent reflection as we connect with the dark truth of Jesus’ death on the cross.  The Good Friday Service takes place at 6pm in the Worship Center; please arrive early.

Sunday, April 4th – Easter Crash – This service will include songs about the Resurrected Jesus, a talk about the Resurrection Story and our participation in the hope it offers the world, and a time with connect your friends and family with other members of the Crash community. We will meet at 6pm in the Chapel.

We are also excited to share this Sunday at Crash about our post-Easter series and believe the unique nature of this new series will help us grow closer as a community and encourage the sense of vision we have for each of our lives being a part of God’s resurrection story.

-Maxie Burch

After three weeks, I finally got tired of my Chrome window being full of tabs with good things that I wanted to read again and share.  So, I decided to share them with you on Fridays over the next three weeks.

-This video cracks me up.

-Looking for a great gift idea?  This is it!

-Scott Belsky is putting out some great material about how creating ideas is sexy and exciting, but the truly beautiful thing is executing and making ideas reality. This piece sums his work up well.
Also, these videos sum it up well too.

-Miles McPherson and The Rock Church are making a huge impact in San Diego by serving the city. This video shares what that has looked like.

I pity the Christians and especially pastors who only read or study or preach out of the New Testament.  The Old Testament is OVERFLOWING with powerful stories of men and women like you and me whom encountered or witnessed the movement of God personally.  I have blogged and spoken extensively about Joshua (if you missed it, check out the Crash series The Joshua Generation).

There is one particular story in the life of Jonathan that fits this category.  Jonathan was the son of King Saul, the first king of the people of Israel.  I was first exposed to this story through the writing of Mark Batterson, who seems to find so much meaning and application in the Old Testament. (See his book In a Pit with a Lion on a Snowy Day for a great example of this).    1 Samuel 14 tells the story of this powerful experience Jonathan had.  I believe there are some key principles for us here.  You can read the story here, then come back for a couple of comments from me.

Jonathan utters a phrase that was super powerful for me. In verse 6, he says, “Perhaps the LORD will act in our behalf. Nothing can hinder the LORD from saving, whether by many or by few.” I find this idea to be incredibly powerful for several reasons.

First, it shows that Jonathan actually believed God was involved in his life and world. There are so many followers of Christ today (including myself) who often fall into what Craig Groeschel calls a “Christian Athiest” (someone who confesses faith in God, but then lives as if He does not exist and is not involved in their life).

Second, Jonathan did not allow his faith to generate passivity in his mind. He did not sit back and go “God is gonna take care of this, all we have to do is pray and watch.”  While there are several instances in the Scriptures where men and women were overwhelmed and God showed up to fight for them in supernatural ways, it is incredible how often the natural result of “being a Christian” today is passivity rather than courageous living.

Third, Jonathan simply acted with courage, without making a big deal of his risky act. In verse 1, the passage reads, “But he did not tell his father.”  Jonathan was not doing this for recognition, to impress his buddies or win his father’s approval.  He was acting because he believed it was his responsibility to act with faith and obey his Heavenly Father.  I am convicted of how often I bring attention to the actions I should simply take because they are the right thing to do.

I love the courage I find in the stories of the men and women in the Old Testament.  I pray that I may live with Jonathan’s kind of courage and faith in God’s role in the lives of His children.

Mark Batterson, a pastor and blogger that I follow, has a great summary of St. Patrick’s life here.

I was profoundly impacted by the life and influence of St. Patrick and his followers during the spring of 2008. I was taking Basic Evangelism, a required course for my seminary degree program.  A class I entered with great cynicism because the approach many in my denomination take to evangelism often resembles the attitudes latent in jihad and the tactics used in drive-by shootings. (Okay, so maybe I am exaggerating…but we definitely have shot ourselves in the feet on this one plenty of times).

My professor, Allan Karr, a brilliant man with a background in church planting and a doctorate in sociology, shattered every one of my cynical pre-conceptions.  The foundational text for our class was this small little book (always be wary of small books).  The small little book was entitled The Celtic Way of Evangelism.

This small book walked us through the way in which Patrick had taken the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the people of Ireland in a way that actually moved through their fears, reservations and barriers to Christians.  The book also described these unorthodox methods and the harsh reaction Patrick received from his superiors in the Church who felt like he was conforming too greatly to the Irish culture and leaving the faith behind.

The most profound concept in the book was the idea that Patrick’s communities were welcome and open to anyone, regardless of whether they believed in Jesus Christ.  People were invited in to share life with and observe the practices of the community of faith.  The faith community was convinced that offering belonging would open the door for a person to begin to become a part of those practices when they saw their value, meaning, power.  They believed that a person would begin practicing what it meant to follow Jesus before they even fully understood what faith in Christ meant. The final result would be the shift from unbelief to belief in the life of the guest.  The guest would then become a member of the faith community.

This process of “BELONG-BECOME-BELIEVE” was and continues to be the anti-thesis or opposite approach that most Christian communities take.  We demand that people believe like us and act like us (another way for saying “become”), before they can belong with us. Yet, the culture of Ireland in the Fourth and Fifth centuries resembles our own in remarkable ways, and this approach to engaging the world offers a powerful alternative to modern evangelism.

I will be forever marked by the courage, creativity, imagination, and faith of Patrick. His willingness to be excommunicated from his own church to see the nation of Ireland come to Christ is a powerful legacy and a reminder of the cost we must be willing to pay to share the message of hope latent in the Resurrection Story with others.

I am celebrating the powerful life of St. Patrick today, and if you are looking for a good book to read, I strongly recommend this one.

Gratitude produces generosity.

I became convinced of this reality last November as I reflected on what the season of Thanksgiving does to people.  I believe Thanksgiving remains one of the least commercialized holidays in our culture and I think it is one of the few moments where we recognize the blessings we have in our lives and step outside of our selfishness and turn our focus to others, if only for a few weeks or months.

God works that way too.  He uses circumstances and unforeseen events to shape us and mold us, resulting in attitude and perspective shifts that change how we look at our lives and the world. Those shifts enable us to direct our eyes of ourselves and onto others.

I started working a second job a month ago, and a seasonal third job nearly two weeks ago.  The last month has been a reshuffling of so many things. Dani and I have shifted our date night from Wednesday to either Monday or Tuesday (depending on my Starbucks schedule).  I have stopped staying up late.  When I come home from Starbucks, I am off to bed because I am beat.  Hitting the gym has become a higher priority because I need the energy and health.  I am saying “No” to more and more evening options because I have limited time with Dani.  The time I get with friends for pre-work coffee or an unexpected lunch have become much more valuable.

As my free time has depleted, and as I have had to pull the reins in on my calendar, my gratitude for little things (like finding a time to catch-up with one of my best friends from college who is in town for a few days) SKYROCKETED!  Where I had taken my regular Friday breakfast with Dani at Copper Star Coffee for granted, that time has grown EXPONENTIALLY in importance, because sometimes it’s the first hour we have been awake with each other in three days.

This new-found gratitude is producing generosity in our hearts. We have more sympathy for our friends who manage jobs, other commitments, and large families.  The increased revenue these jobs are creating are creating more financial discipline because we see the end of credit-card debt coming on the horizon.  We are getting the chance to respond to the needs of friends and love on them, as we walk with them through times of crisis and suffering.

I don’t know where this post finds you, but I pray that you would begin to allow God to open your eyes to the little gifts He sends your way each day.  While I am all about working hard, busting your butt to pursue your dreams, and providing for yourself and your family, I have been reminded (in the midst of going between three jobs) that so much of our lives are meant to be received as gifts from God. When we recognize that God is the giver of good things to His children, I think He hold our lives in our hands loosely and begin to open our eyes to those around us.  We begin to open our eyes to opportunities to be generous, to serve, to love, to bless those we come in contact with…for the sole purpose that we have been blessed to be a blessing.

God’s promise to Abraham in Genesis 12 are our marching orders as well.

“I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing.I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.”

Last night, Maxie shared about love and suffering, as a part of  a 2-part mini-series within our larger series, What a Waste.

His big idea – “In the midst of suffering, the decision to love or not love changes us forever” - is another step in our effort to ground this conversation about suffering in the context of relationships.  I found the caveat (“there is no guarantee that others will choose to love you”) to speak to the experience of so many of us.  We can choose to love, but there are no promises that someone else will make the complementary choice.  They may choose to go in a different direction.

Maybe more than anything else, I believe we are introducing a very different perspective here, when it comes to how we approach Scripture.  Tonight, Maxie shared, “In fact, I would suggest that the themes of suffering and love are continually interconnected, intertwined, and inseparable in every biblical story.” Suffering seems to be a theme that moves throughout the Scriptures.  No major character in the Scriptures appears to avoid suffering.

If you missed the talk, I strongly encourage you to check the podcast this week.  Max’s discussion of two different movie plot-lines was a powerful moment.  That part is worth the listen all by itself!