Godgrown

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  Mark 9:27 am on February 1, 2012 Permalink | Reply  

  The Strands in Your Web 

  We’ve all been there.

  Look back over your life and remember the last time you fully experienced passion - something that caught your heart by surprise, gave you purpose – a sense of mission and higher calling.  Put that feeling of conviction and excitement in your mind?  Okay – good, read on…

  Now, if you can, think back to the moment when that passion was first doubted.  When did you go from pure certitude to…maybe an unmet expectation, or conflicting evidence of how you understood how things should work?  When, after receiving that divine sense of calling, did you run up against someone of importance in your life who disagreed with you or even sought to stop you in your tracks?  Maybe it was a parent subtly but condescendingly pushing you away from your intended college major and into something they wanted for you.  Maybe it was a boss dismissing your dreams for the future of your business as misguided.

  How did you respond to that first bite of doubt?  That sting of original uneasiness with your own beliefs?

  Hebrews 11:24 –

   By faith Moses, when he was grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, 25choosing rather to be mistreated with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin. 26He considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking to the reward. 27†By faith he left Egypt, not being afraid of the anger of the king, for he endured as seeing him who is invisible. 

  What happens to a person who has seen “him who is invisible?”  For Moses, it was after 40 years of shame and isolation, away from his Israelite family, exiled from Egypt — an exiled prince! — he had every right to be in the royal family, but he has a passion - he had a reason to buck the trend…

  …and it cost him all the status quo due him in life, but that made all the difference.

  He was not focused on the anger of the king, on the doubt of his Egyptian subordinates, or his Israelite brothers, sisters, cousins… He was fixed on the passion, the original passion that found him in the wilderness – he had such a sense of his own calling, of his own intimacy with that calling, that nothing and no one would stir his fear or doubt.

  We all go through life with a web of convictions – some stronger than others.  As we learn more about the world and how it works, certain strands in the web are broken, new ones are formed (i.e. as a child, we learn that we cannot fly when we jump off the stairs in a cape).  This process continues all throughout life, and its an important part of building a cohesive sense of TRUTH in the world.

  But what strands CAN’T be broken?  Are they all susceptible to pressures from the outside – from the wind and debris that inevitably blows through our fragile webs?  I feel that I want to be stronger than that – on certain things – I am learning what those things are – and resolving myself to those certain strands help me allow less important strands to be let go of – opening my heart and mind further to the truth of things.

  Its all about becoming passionate about the right strands in your web – choose wisely, and you’ll have passion your whole life long.

  

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    Anonymous 1:32 pm on February 21, 2012 Permalink

    very cool, marcos. i like the idea of strengthening some strands in order to let go of the weaker ones. don’t spiders even clean their webs and deconstruct them when they’ve served their purpose and remain only tatters? i’ve often thought of passion as a shallow and fleeting feeling similar to romance (not just the love kind, but the life kind as well). the further i get from my adolescence of youth rallies and church camps, the less i’ve felt this sort of passion in my faith, but i think the kind you’re talking about, almost a quieter kind, has replaced the former. 

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  Mark 9:44 am on February 13, 2011 Permalink | Reply  

  Perfectly Designed 

  

  “Our system is perfectly designed for the results we are receiving.”

  This was the repeated phrase at a lunch I recently attended where author Alan Hirsch was presenting.  The room was full of Chicago-area church leaders, and the room quickly fell silent as Hirsch began critiquing the current state of affairs in the Western Church.  While he had some apt critique, he wasn’t all sour – he was just as ready to point to fresh perspectives and examples of the church engaging and subverting the culture in America.

  He made it clear that only the American Church, unlike the church in Europe or Australia, stood a real chance at re-interpreting the Gospel for the West in a way that could thrive in the post-Christendom era in which we now live.

  But his strongest words were the line  he dropped half a dozen times throughout his talk: “Our system is perfectly designed for the results we are receiving.”

  Think on that for a moment – how much weight can you bench press?  Only as much as your body’s system allows - and the way things are in your body are perfectly arranged for you to lift exactly what you’re capable of lifting.  Want to up your max weight?  Change your system! Try adding more protein to your diet, and less sugar.  Head to the gym 2 extra times a week.  Read about lifting techniques.  If you want to change the results, change the system.  Its amazing how we constrain our imaginations when it comes to the systems in our lives.

  “Oh, that’s the way things have always been, and always will be…”  Give me a break.  You’re talking “equilibrium,” and to biologists, equilibrium is another way of saying, “you’re stone dead.”  Change = life!

  The Church in the West today is spending 3 times as much on facilities as it was 10 years ago. 3 TIMES AS MUCH AS A DECADE AGO!  And numbers are in decline.  Leaders are getting harder to come by, as congregations are expecting more and more from their church leaders.  Sure, there are more and more mega-churches dotting the American landscape, but for every mega-church that breaks 1000 attendees, how many congregations had to shut their doors?

  It has been said of the American Church, “The front of the parade is becoming more and more impressive, and no one is noticing that the line is getting shorter and shorter.”

  The question is – can the church…your church…change its system? It is interesting how quickly we have come to expect the inevitability of the mega-church as the ONLY form of ecclesiological success.  Like the industrialized food system in America, the mega-church has only emerged in the last generation or so; and yet we see it as the only box God can work in.  I for one simply refuse to go along with that.  What ways can we keep the Gospel close to our chest, and yet experiment wildly with the form?  Let’s change the system – let’s take ourselves a little less seriously, and let imagination become our modus operandi!

  Don’t do it out of fear that “God’s Church is depending on you,”  Do it because prophetic imagination is central to the story of God.  Do it because the Gospel is ALWAYS changing its clothes – the “word” is always “becoming flesh” and “moving into the neighborhood.” (John 1:14)

  We’re perfectly designed to get the results we’re seeing across America today.  If we want more of the same – keep doing the same thing you’ve always done.  Otherwise, get out there and break the mold!

  
   
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  Mark 3:06 pm on January 12, 2011 Permalink | Reply  

  As Easy as the Arrow’s Job in Archery 

  In the work that really matters, in the work of restoring people to wholeness, in developing communities of reconciliation, in pointing people back to their Creator, the work can get pretty dismal.  It can seem as if your life is useless – that nothing meaningful is happening.  I can resonate with such a life – somewhere deep down you know that all this running about is worth something, but you have no idea how much of it is worth a pile of hay, and how much of it is gold.

  This doubt is common to the workers of God in the world.  There is a deep resonance that something you’re doing matters, but in the moment as a servant of God, you can feel pretty useless.

  Isaiah is again writing under the pseudonym of the nation of Israel.  While Isaiah hopes we will see into the heart of a listless, disillusioned nation in exile; take a moment and consider Isaiah’s lot in life – as a forgotten, dismissed prophet of the LORD…and then consider you own life as a worker in God’s mission:

  1 Listen to me, all you in distant lands!

  Pay attention, you who are far away!

  The Lord called me before my birth;

  from within the womb he called me by name.

  The speaker (the Servant of God) knows that he has been called.  He’s not on this mission alone, he has been sent – and he wants the world to know about it.  When he is at his lowest moment, when his heart has been captured by the Enemy and taken off into exile, he is still confident that he has been called to be a servant of God, and a light to all nations.  This is a call that happened even before his birth – so this is not a call he himself has earned with good behavior, and its something that can never be taken away from him because of external circumstances.  The LORD himself has pre-ordained the servant’s mission – and it will be carried out!

  2 He made my words of judgment as sharp as a sword.

  He has hidden me in the shadow of his hand.

  I am like a sharp arrow in his quiver.

  3 He said to me, “You are my servant, Israel,

  and you will bring me glory.”

  These images are so powerful and convicting to me! My words often feel so blunt and fall on deaf ears; and I can only imagine Isaiah’s prophetic muteness must have driven him to despair.  But Isaiah, speaking through his character, “the servant,” reassures himself, and the rest of us, that our words are sharp – because God is the one who made them that way.  We are hidden in the hollow of God’s hand.  Where could we be more safe that in the very palm of God?

  And while we are safe in his hand, we are also nearby when God needs to put us to use – we are like an arrow waiting patiently in the hands of God.  Ahh, to be an arrow – to know exactly what you are for, and to simply wait for the appropriate time, and then – “fffflot!” – you are sprung to life, in a flash of light, your archer pulls you out of his quiver and delicately places you in his bow – and fires you off on a mission.  You simply let yourself be used by God – and he does the rest.

  We will bring him glory.  Amazing.

  And yet, it often doesn’t feel like we’re flying through the air – on a mission with God.  It feels as if we’ve somehow fallen out of the quiver and we’re just laying limp on the ground:

  4 I replied, “But my work seems so useless!

  I have spent my strength for nothing and to no purpose.

  Yet I leave it all in the Lord’s hand;

  I will trust God for my reward.”

  Yet, if this is God’s war – if he is waging it against the forces of Evil and darkness, then maybe he knows what he’s doing.  Maybe there will be a time when I can look back and see the purpose behind my work.  If I can leave it all in God’s hand, and trust God for my reward/satisfaction… then maybe I won’t go running around quite as much looking for approval for others, or significant mission on my own.  I’ll be content to be the arrow of God – sent soaring through the air, chasing after my cause- my reason for living.

  God had given a purpose to Isaiah, just as he gave one to me, and to you.  Isaiah got to see a part of why God made him the way he did, but we today, 2700 years later, can see Isaiah from another perspective – and wow, how God used that man!  If only you could see why God made you the way he did.  You would find trusting him for your rewards in life to be as easy and effortless as an arrow flying through the air.