Godgrown

Updates from April, 2011 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts

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  Mark 7:22 am on April 12, 2011 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Catholic Worker, Dorothy Day, Lent ( 3 )   

  Whose Side I’m Fighting For 

  It is hard to say or to know what exactly matters in my line of work.  The lines get so blurry.  I wish sometimes I could lay my head on the pillow at the end of the day and have a sense of knowing for sure that the Kingdom made its way, even just one more inch, into the city of Chicago through something I did, something I participated in.  But it doesn’t work like that.

  More often than not, it is messy dance of back and forth.  It is ambiguous victories mixed with incomplete failures.  I don’t know half the time whose side I’m fighting for – and often it feels like my efforts are doing more harm for the Kingdom than good.

  Why all this self-doubt?  We’re getting toward the end of Lent, and I realize each year that no matter how much purging and confession and buffeting I do to hone myself closer to the Living God, there is simply no way to transcend the fact that I’m a person who will also be mixed with the spiritual warfare going on all around us. At times I pick up the flag of the enemy and run in the opposite direction, hell bent on destroying everything I desperately want to see accomplished in God’s work here in Chicago.

  Dorothy Day, founder of the Catholic Worker Movement once said:

  “What we do is very little.  But it is like the little boy with a few loaves and fishes.  Christ took that little and increased it.  He will do the rest.  What we do is so little that we may seem to be constantly failing.  But so did he fail.  He met with apparent failure on the Cross.  But unless the seeds fall into the earth and die, there is no harvest.”

  Being a missionary isn’t a neat and tidy job, but then again, Jesus had a fine time living in ambiguity and failure.  That brings me peace.

  

  Mark W, and Travis Akins are discussing. Toggle Comments

   
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    Travis Akins 1:45 pm on April 12, 2011 Permalink

    Mark-thanks for sharing honestly and openly. HUGE encouragement. I have the same worries/struggles in my ministry. Thanks for the re-focus.

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    Mark W 4:36 pm on April 12, 2011 Permalink

    It always helps to remember that all our “castles” we build in life are SANDcastles – and every so often its sort of refreshing to kick a few over!

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  Mark 10:04 am on March 10, 2011 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Neil Cole ( 8 )   

  You Go First 

  Leadership in the most basic sense is going first. Many of us want our leadership to look and feel glamorous – cresting a “leadership” hill to see the beautiful horizon before you and your adoring crowds applauding your valiant efforts.

  But leadership usually means you have to “go first” into less desirable places.

  For instance, if you want to be a leader in a community centered on Jesus, you have to die to yourself “first.” You have to take the first step to humility; apologize first, without prompting from others.  Even if your part in the problem was only 1% – apologize for it; and be sincere.

  You can’t lead others where you are not willing to go yourself.

  That’s why Jesus didn’t take the exit ramp on the road to Golgotha.  He led us right to the end of the journey – our own death.  His is pure leadership – being willing to “go first.”

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  …But that’s not the final chapter – after the journey toward death is complete; we see Jesus striking out again.  In the book of Hebrews, movement and leadership are central pictures – Jesus is nicknamed “the Trailblazer” (Hebrews 2:10) – and in chapter 13; after cresting Mount Zion (Chapter 12) he sneaks off – refusing the pomp and circumstance, and is out leading – outside the camp, outside the place of glory, to make us holy.

  13 So let us go out to him, outside the camp, and bear the disgrace he bore. 14 For this world is not our permanent home; we are looking forward to a home yet to come.

  
   
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  Mark 12:29 pm on January 27, 2011 Permalink | Reply  

  Disowned by Your Dad, Owned by Your Father 

  I don’t know the relationship you have with your father, but if you are like many across this great big world, it may have its rocky points.  Maybe you were even traumatically abused, or disowned by your dad.  There’s little that can do more damage to a young boy or girl than to have a broken, immature dad in the household… but possibly worse is not having one in the house at all…

  63:16 Surely you are still our Father!

  Even if Abraham and Jacob would disown us,

  Lord, you would still be our Father.

  You are our Redeemer from ages past.

  Much of what you see in God, for better or worse, you originally got from your dad.  Even Jesus Christ, the very image of God, called the LORD his “Father” – Abba his word for “Papa.”  This kind of intimacy was scandalous in Jesus’ day – but as one who’s earthly dad was suspiciously absent, Jesus understood that God was to be his father now.

  Were was Jesus’ dad, Joseph?  After such a display of faith at Jesus’ conception and birth, he is never mentioned as Jesus enters adulthood.  Was he killed in a masonry accident?  Could he have abandoned the family?  Whatever the case, he was not there when Jesus was at his most crucial moments (his baptism, his temptations in the desert, his crucifixion…the list goes on and on.)

  A young man wants a mentor, a father to show him the way – to point out the path he should go in this life.  But truth be told, we have a lot of men in this world, and in the church who’d rather wallow in isolation, immaturity or passivity; and refuse the gift of fatherhood they’ve been given by God.

  Jesus only did what he saw his Father doing, and even with the absence of his earthly dad, he moved beyond the earthly example of fatherhood and pursued intimacy, and mentoring from his heavenly Father.

  Papa God wants this for each of his children – for you and me.  In an age where fatherhood has lost the vitality and the adventure and the abiding love it must have to create healthy, maturing people – God is ready to offer you that kind of relationship.

  Being disowned by your earthly father is not the end. Let it be what propels you into the arms of Papa God who is ready to train you as his son or daughter.

  What does being ‘fathered by God’ look like?

  You will be given his characteristics!

  First off, you may have to learn God’s capability to forgive - starting with your earthly father. He is still fighting through things himself, and will need your forgiveness.  But after that, only God knows where he’ll take you.  One thing is for sure – you will be given increasing maturity and capacity that only God has to handle the inevitable wounds of life, and the attacks of the Evil One.  You will charge out with God on mission – you will be given a new name, a new identity – sons and daughters of the King!

  All this – through God’s grace.  Thank you, Father.

  

  Mark W, and Sean Durbin are discussing. Toggle Comments

   
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    Sean Durbin 7:19 pm on January 27, 2011 Permalink

    Mark, there is so much good stuff from the LORD in this writing. One of the ways I can tell if someone is bringing up a principle that is of God is when the Spirit brings a scripture to my mind. This is the scripture He brought to me while and after reading your blog:Galatians 4″And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” 7So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God.” LOVE IT. ad maiorem Dei gloriam

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    Mark W 3:42 pm on January 28, 2011 Permalink

    We have been adopted into God’s household! This means we live under a new kind of leadership – and we are given a new name (see the previous post “You are Whose You are”.) I want there to be an awakening across our nation – those that call themselves children of God – to begin to understand what that changes about how they actually live!