-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!

As Maxie shared tonight, here are the two quotes from his talk.  Check the blog tomorrow for a review of the talk’s content and share the parts that were most impactful for you.  For our team at Crash, context is king in understanding meaning and perspective.  So, make sure and check out the podcast for the quotes in context.

“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket- safe, dark, motionless, airless–it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.”

-C.S. Lewis (1898-1963)

“Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn’t it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses, you build up a whole suit of armor, so that nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life…You give them a piece of you. They didn’t ask for it. They did something dumb one day, like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn’t your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so simple a phrase like ‘maybe we should be just friends’ turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It’s a soul-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. I hate love.”

-Neil Gaiman, Author and Screen Writer (1960- )

“Certain questions are put to human beings, not so much that they should answer them, but that they should spend their lives wrestling with them.”

-Leo Tolstoy

I feel this away about questions like the one Maxie posed in his talk at Crash on a Sunday a few weeks ago.

What did you think it would mean to follow Jesus?

My friend told me not to long ago that the image above and my repeated mention of it was about to hit “cliche” territory.  Oops, guess I mention it too much!  But for me, the options morph from “fear or hope” to “cynicism or hope” at times.  While talking with a friend this morning, he said, “I can either be hopeful or just give up.  I realize how easy it is to be cynical and it would completely justified.”  I replied, “cynicism is easier.”  We went on to talk about a potentially huge project and I found that hope made me feel alive, while cynicism was like slow painful death.

I recognized that I take less responsibility when I am cynical and that is 100% safer than having hope.  And when I come to terms with this fact, I am reminded why, even though it scares me, I want to believe, I want to hope.

In a recent blog post, Michael Hyatt, the CEO of Thomas Nelson (the leading Christian publishing company in America and one of the top 10 publishers overall), shared his recent reflections on a public confession from a famous individual.  He talked about the kind of backlash he got for his hopeful Twitter update shortly after the confession hit the airwaves.  Hyatt shared about the five responsibilities he has as a follower of Jesus, when responding to that confession.   One of these struck me with great force.

3. Believe in the possibility of change. Cynicism is easy. It costs me nothing. Belief, on the other hand, requires risk. He may be lying. He may fall again. He might betray us all. But if people really cannot change, then what hope is there for any of us? One of my core beliefs is that “with God all things are possible” (Matthew 19:26). No one is beyond the reach of God’s redemption.

As I read his words that day, I entered experience that was jarring.  I was presented with some new possibilities regarding a group I am a part of (that frankly I wanted to get on board with) and I heard promises and commitments made regarding change from those who give leadership.  My knee-jerk reaction was, “yeah right, you are full of crap.”  Cynicism was my natural bent.  I had to fight to believe, to hope.    As I went back and re-read that post again later in the day, I realized that cynicism was easier, it did cost me nothing.  Yet, the high sacrifice, the risky route, the direction for which I would pay a price was belief that change was possible.

I will be writing in this vein from now until Easter.  I know that I can often be a cynical and critical voice here and in other places.  And my desire is to curtail this.  As you continue to read my posts here over the next month, I pray that you will encouraged and uplifted by the hopeful content.

I haven’t blogged in a long time, because, frankly, I’ve had nothing of value to say. Presupposing I have something of value for someone, here I am.

My wife and I gave up visual entertainment for Lent–no movies, television, YouTube, Hulu, Netflix–all of it gone. There were a few pre-agreed exceptions, but, basically, nothing. For a movie and tv junkie such as myself, this has been eye-opening.

We’ve been reading more to fill the space, and I’m feeling like the left side of my brain is saying, “You know, I missed you so much. I’m so glad we’ve been able to take these long walks together.”

Now, of course, I’m reading some fiction to get my “entertainment fix”, but I’ve also been reading some of my old books from college, which caused me to ask…why didn’t I read these books in college? And why don’t I read books like these now? I really contemplated these questions…

One reason I failed to read as much as I believe I should’ve in my college years was because I was really busy working full-time for a notable ministry (in addition to full-time college).

But I found the core reason for not reading more intellectually stimulating books goes back to good ole’ Dad.

My father is by far the most intelligent and knowledgeable man I’ve ever known. He was always reading and acquiring new information to share–whether you cared to hear it or not. He is also the most lost person I’ve ever known. He’s so lost, none of my family knows where he is. Seriously.

Long story short, I realized I shunned the world of knowledge and information because I thought it was a waste. Knowledge was a cement block tied to my father’s foot, keeping him submerged in a sea of his own pride. Keeping him away from reality, away from the love of his family. I didn’t want to be like that. So I focused on the content of the heart–spiritual and emotional subject matter, found in the arts and entertainment.

Ironically, I see my father was not necessarily the most lost person I knew. Apparently, I’ve been drowning in my own sea, except my cement block was entertainment.

The bottom line to my rambling is that God has created everything to be enjoyed. Indeed, “To the pure, all things are pure.” But if any created thing captures your heart more than your God, you’re drowning too. For my father, it was the power of knowledge and information. For me, it’s the spiritual and emotional highs of entertainment.

I’m not saying I’ve cut the rope attaching my leg to my cement block. But I see it for what it is. And I want to be free to come up for air.

-Matt

Last night, I had the privilege of speaking from a passage that I have never heard spoken from before in a church setting. For some reason, I made it through two academic programs related to Biblical Studies (one on a bachelors level and one on a masters level), without even really knowing this passage existed.  However, once I read Ezekiel 16, as a part of B90X, I knew it would be something I shared with others.  Also, hearing my friend Shane Copeland share about how he preached from this passage as his first public sermon at the church that he called home for well over a decade, I began looking for a time and place to share from it.  That moment came last night, and with the help of four good friends, I got to convey the power of the 63 verses of Ezekiel 16 with the Crash community.

In preparing for and sharing this message, I was reminded of what Donald Miller shared in his book tour talk connected to his recent release, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years.  Miller reflects on the way that stories are dealt with by pastors (like myself), who tend to over-explain and beat the life out of Biblical narratives or Jesus’ parables, instead of allowing these passages to communicate on their own.

As the four readers finished sharing from Eugene Peterson’s rendering of Ezekiel 16, I returned to my stool to teach and paused.  I felt the weight of the passage hanging in the air. This was a new feeling for me and I doubt that I was alone in feeling the strength of this passage’s words to all of us.  I then shared with those in the room that I think it is important that we “let the Scripture speak for itself.” I was convicted and encouraged in the same moment.

I went on to share about how often we seek relief from suffering in all the wrong places, just like the people of Jerusalem in Ezekiel 16.  How the darkness of this passage only makes the chapter’s final words on bright hope of the New Covenant that much stronger.  How communion is a powerful moment of celebration and a reminder of God’s sufficiency in the face of our humanity and inability to do what it took to reconcile us to God amidst the problem of sin and suffering.

I encourage you to check out the podcast here or on iTunes (search: Crash at North Phoenix) later this week to experience these things in context and to experience it for yourself (if you missed the service).

I am praying for the days ahead that are leading us to Easter and then on towards the summer.  I pray that we would allow the Scriptures to speak for themselves, as we continue to read the Scriptures together as a church and as we gather each week to worship God through singing and explore the Scriptures’ meaning for our everyday lives. I pray that, amidst the seasons of blessings and suffering that we find ourselves in, we would find the presence of Holy Spirit in our lives to be a sustaining and guiding force of light and hope.