What goes into your mouth is important, but Jesus says that what comes out of your mouth is even more important.  In fact, the words you speak, not your diet, are what make you healthy.  Just look:

“What goes into a man’s mouth does not make him ‘unclean,’ but what comes out of his mouth, that is what makes him ‘unclean.’” — (Mt. 15:11)

What is the FIRST thing OUT of your mouth each morning?  Can you even remember?

Think about it for just a minute.  Each and every night you close your mouth, and you live in silence for many hours.  In all the rush and noise of this world, you make it a daily habit to spend close to a 1/3 of each day in utter darkness and silence.  Kinda beautiful, eh?

But what breaks that “fasting” from words?  How do you greet the new day?  Is it with blessing or cursing?

Why not start this new year with a resolution to have a “Breakfast of Words” – give yourself a simple phrase or sentence to greet each new day.

I had noticed that my days were starting off on the wrong foot – and I came to believe it was the mindset in which I was approaching my days – if the first things that roll through my mind or off my tongue are, “Shoot – I’ve forgot to call that guy yesterday,” or “I feel groggy and awful,” imagine how the rest of my days went!  I had enough - I was sick and tired of feeling sick and tired.

Since then, I’ve been doing a little “holy experiment” trying it out, and I’ve lived to tell the tale.  And I’ve got to say – its GREAT!

Each morning, I’ll say this as my eggs are cooking:

“Glory to the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit – as it was in the beginning, is now, and will be forever, AMEN.”

I don’t know about you but if you say that, even if you begin without “feeling like it” – by the end, you just might have a slight smile on your face.  You remember that no matter how you might feel, or what might be going on in your life, a regular diet of these words (or something like them) will change your day.  And if you can change your day, you can change your week, month, year…even your life.

Its the simple things like this that make the biggest difference.  New Years Resolutions don’t have to be BIG – they just have to be consistent.  

Take a daily “Breakfast of Words” – start your day’s dialogue in a place of joy, centering, and purpose.  And see what happens!

Things fall apart…

This is quite possibly the best title of any book ever written.  Now, the rest of Chinua Achebe’s novel on social inequality and yams is just so-so in my opinion, but the title has always caught my attention – anytime a glass shatters falling from my cupboard, or it a flock of birds finds my freshly washed car, or I watch a faith community that began so healthy begin to pick each other apart.  Things fall apart.

Each time it is painful to watch and it somehow reminds me of the entire Universe.  Everything about this present creation is falling apart.  The Universe is spinning farther and farther apart, our own sun is a star that is using up a limited amount of fuel and will (if the Lord tarries) burn out.  Our own bodies are failing on us the moment we begin using them, free-radicals and other nemeses plotting against us.

So how does one fight the tide of such savage dispersion?  With every atom is warring against every other one for survival, how can we seek a future Kingdom of God that remains?

 So there is a Sabbath rest still waiting for the people of God. 10 For all who have entered into God’s rest have rested from their labors, just as God did after creating the world. 11 So let us do our best to enter that rest. But if we disobey God, as the people of Israel did, we will fall.

- Heb 4:9-11

Rest does not come naturally in a world where there is a war going on.  To keep things from falling apart in your life, your health, your faith community, and more… it takes intentionality.

Nothing comes together outside of intentionality.

We were created by God originally as gardeners, and this vocation provides an interesting view into the idea of intentionality.  I’ve been tending a 15×15 garden space in our urban neighborhood.  Its engendered in me a fabulous sense that “things fall apart.”  Weeds grow, plants droop and need trellises, tools scrape and sculpt the crumbling earth, pests large and small want a piece of my intentionality because they have not invested as I have into growing food.

Some people build the sand castles, others knock them over.  The writer of Ecclesiastes knew this well (Eccl 3:3) “There is a time to break down, and a time to build up.”  As I’ve stated, the destructive forces of the Universe are always breaking you down, and your job as one of God’s gardeners is to always intentionally be building up.  

Put yourself in an environment that spurs you on toward a more spiritually-formed life.  If you want to pray, create a space for that prayer to happen, or it never will.  If you want to be a peacemaker, put yourself in situations where you have to practice peace.  This won’t often “just happen.”  And when it does, unless you’ve intentionally prepared, you’ll fail the test – simply because you were not intentional!

Its not hard, but the hardest part is getting started.

In God’s Kingdom, Things Come Together.

***

Take a look at the back of almost any Bible and you’ll see a map of the Middle East and the Mediterranean Sea.  You’ll see four squiggly lines drawn in different colors and a little key at the bottom indicating that these lines are the apostle Paul’s missionary journeys.

As a kid, it always reminded me of those scenes out of Indiana Jones movies, where there would be a soft fade from a smirking Harrison Ford onto a parchment map, with a red line moving slowly over a map, indicating a plane’s path from Germany to Austria or some other beautiful locale.  It helped convey the story’s progression and the vastness of the tale.

But merely showing each movie’s mapped journeys would no doubt strip the Indiana Jones tales of their richness – the time between journeys, the relationships built in each movie, the enemies defeated…and of course, the explosions!

As nice as it is to have a map of Paul’s journeys spanning 30 years smashed on top of each other, we need to carefully consider the lives and happenings of Paul throughout Acts and the New Testament Epistles to see what those journeys mean – and it might just reveal how God develops a leader in the harvest that finishes well.  (As a side note, I highly recommend the 1981 TV movie Peter and Paul.)

First Journey

Paul’s first missionary journey (Acts 13:1-14:28) from 47-48 CE took place in Southeast Asia and was the start of the churches in the Galatian region.  See Paul during this time as a learner, and not a teacher.  A team covered 1500 miles as traveling evangelists leaving clusters of undeveloped disciples behind who were desperate for leadership.

The team felt that it was necessary that they revisit these churches several times to provide leadership, nevertheless, the churches suffered from immaturity and vulnerability, a weak understanding of the Truth, and was influenced at the hands of very strong and legalistic leaders.  Even though the team saw fruitfulness, it did not see its churches multiply.  The sickness of these churches and personality differences in the team seemingly caused frustration and division.

Lessons:

• The First Journey leader often tries to do it all himself, which leaves behind weak churches who are open to other “do-it-yourself” leaders who want to dominate others.
• The apprentice leader on his first journey beings to flex his own leadership muscles and become a leader in his own right, stepping away from his mentor.
• First Journey leaders are often in a hurry to move on.
• The First Journey leaders is where the leader gains the know-how to pass on to others – you cannot skip the first journey.

Second Journey

God begins the team’s second journey through the disagreement over John-Mark’s readiness for another mission trip.  It can be read about from Acts 15:36-18:22.  As it turns out, this spurs Paul to multiply his mission team and cover more ground.  This time, Paul’s team is much bigger, dropping a member off in each city rather than leaving churches alone.  This worked out well at first — Paul, Silas, Timothy and Luke…which became… Paul, Silas and Timothy…which became…Paul.  Stuck again – alone and frustrated.  One night in a dream, Jesus gives Paul the answer to his perpetual loneliness and frustrations with the finiteness of his mission teams.

In Acts 18:9-10 Jesus teaches Paul a valuable lesson in multiplication growth.  Stay in Corinth and develop a team from the harvest!

Lessons:

• A Second Journey leader realizes that his plans are not God’s plans.  Learning to listen to God makes him more flexible and prepared for producing spiritual fruit.
• Don’t be surprised if the Second Journey emerging leader steps out from under their mentor and starts doing things on his own – a seasoned, godly mentor will allow this “rebellion” and pray for the emerging leader’s success.  Over time, they will be restored and their relationship will be even stronger than it was before.
• The lesson of the Second Journey is learned through aimless confusion, emptiness, pain, conflict, loneliness, and fear.
• You can’t skip the Second Journey either.

Third Journey

Paul’s third missionary journey (Acts 18:23-21:16) is very different from his first two.  He is learning the role of an organic, catalytic missionary. This time no team is mentioned, and he doesn’t travel from Corinth for over 3 years!  This time, he didn’t even start any churches – instead he recruited indigenous followers of Christ to start the churches, which kept them from being overly dependent on him. In 3 years, all of ASIA IS REACHED with the Gospel! (Acts 19:10,26)  All this, and Paul does not even leave the school of Tyranus.  How??

1. Paul established a regional base for church planter development in a global city (Acts 19:8, Acts 20:18)
2. Mentoring one-on-one became central to his strategy, by life example, and by formal teaching.
3. Missions, evangelism, and discipleship became less ethereal and more “on-the-job” training. (Acts 20:21)
4. Now the Holy Spirit was allowed to pick the teams and to call people to mission.
5. Paul empowered leaders to connect directly with God, so that he was no longer necessary (Acts 20:32)

Lessons:

• Third Journey leaders attract more quality leaders.  God gives his best to Third Journey leaders because they now give everything to the emerging leaders.
• Third Journey leaders have an ever-expanding influence as others take their message further than they could ever go themselves.
• Though they may do less work, Third Journey leaders are now more focused and the work they do is more fruitful and reproductive.

Fourth Journey

This is where things go really wacky.  The Paul’s fourth missionary journey is as a prisoner from Jerusalem to Rome. (Acts 21:17-28:31)  Its hard to think of this as a missionary journey, until you realize it was his intention from day one to make it to Rome, and that doing it this way all his expenses were paid by the Roman Government!  As he was under house arrest for 2 years or longer, he spoke with church leaders and helped encourage the largest church network of the First Century.  According to Paul, this was his most effective missionary journey (Phil 1:12-14)…yet he never left his apartment!

Using his influence as leverage to speak to new levels of human authority, he got the Gospel even into Nero’s household!  He used set-backs like imprisonment and a shipwreck in Malta to start new churches!  He even used his confinement to pump out FOUR letters that would carry his message throughout the world, and history.

Another less obvious blessing of the Fourth Journey leader is that they’ve been sidelined, yet their influence continues to grow. Like a former basketball player who became the coach – Paul’s being ‘locked up’ compelled others to take up his work.

Lessons:

• Most Christian leaders never make it to the Fourth Journey – they usually die or plateau on a previous journey.
• Daily provisions and preparing for the future is no longer a major concern. (Phil 4:10-19)
• Their influence now grows also in the eyes of secular world leaders, and they humbly find expansive, possibly international influence.
• Fourth Journey leaders write more than ever before – multiplying their message, wisdom, experiences, and maturity into countless lives.
• …And he’s not done yet.

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Stay tuned for the next part of the Greenhouse Story 2 Coverage!