Last Blast *Kaboom*

(photo credit: Ernest Lam)

Thank you, Long Beach Navs, for an amazing past two years as a student, friend, and brother involved in all your guys' lives! Thinking about the past two years makes me so excited for next year it's ridiculous! It's gonna be legen...wait for it....(and I hope you're not allergic because the next word is...)

DARY! :)

Victory

There's nothing quite like standing shoulder to shoulder with other men of God, engaging in battle with powers and authorities in Christ's name and on others' behalf, and emerging from battle victorious. I am blessed to have amazing men to stand together and call my brethren with and an awesome God to serve!

"For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places...With all prayer and petition pray at all times in the Spirit, and with this in view, be on the alert with all perseverance and petition for all the saints..."

-Ephesians 6:12, 18

"but thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ."

-1 Corinthians 12:57

Heading towards the EDGE

I've known since June 6, 2009 that God was calling me to do EDGE with the Navigators, inviting me to pursue Him out of the comfortable and into the unknown and trust him with everything. There's been a HUGE freedom in that knowledge and being able to rest securely in the knowledge that the path before me is laid out. In a lot of ways, that's been one of the major themes of these past two years: God knows where I'm going, so it's ok if I don't as long as I know HIM. He is worthy of my trust and has known before I was even conceived what I would be doing with my life.

However, knowing that I'm supposed to pursue doing EDGE does not equate to knowing everything about next year. There are still a million things that I just don't know the answer to, not even counting the ten million things that aren't even on my radar yet! Among those things that I didn't know was what campus I'd be serving at.

Another major theme for this season of my life has been waiting and hoping in God. Here, just as in other areas, God asked me to be content with not knowing. From a comment that my interviewer made I figured I'd find out where I'd be placed somewhere between mid-March to mid-April. March came and left. April came as well, and was well on its way to leaving and being replaced by May. Still no word.

Finally, during the last week of April that uncertainty changed: for about two weeks now I've known what campus I'll be serving at next year. I've told those of you who asked me directly about it what I know, but I haven't gone around shouting it to you whether you want to know or not :).

I feel that it's been long enough for me to process a bit about the decision to share it.

Next year I'll be on staff with the Navigators here at CSULB! I'm not ignorant of the fact that there are definitely pros and cons to being at ANY school, Long Beach included, but I can't help be anything but excited :). The best part is that it definitely fits into something I distinctly felt God tell me almost four years ago (which will either be in the next blog post or something that I share at Navnite on Tuesday...not sure which yet).

I'm excited for what God has planned for both me and those around me next year. As this season of my life comes to a close, the growth and fruitfulness that I see as I look back makes me just that much more excited about where He's taking me. My prayer for next year echoes Daniel's prayer just after God revealed the interpretation of the king's dream to him:

"Daniel said, 'Let the name of God be blessed forever and ever,

F

or wisdom and power belong to him.

It is he that changes the times and the epochs;

He removes and establishes kings;

He gives wisdom to wise men,

And knowledge to men of understanding.

It is he who reveals the profound and hidden things;

He knows what is in the darkness,

And the light dwells with Him.

To You, O thou God of my fathers, I give thanks and praise,

For You have given me wisdom and power;

Even You have made known unto us the king's matter.' "

~Daniel 2:20-23

Attributing It to the Wrong Source

Tonight at church Johnny Hughes, who was teaching, said something that I'd never considered before. The series that they're in right now at ROCKHARBOR is called "God is..." and the point is to re-examine what our conceptions about God are. The first week the message was "God is With Us," the second it was "God is Good."

This week it was "God is Angry." Wait, wha???

It was good to hear a message that so strongly emphasized God's wrath and its intrinsic ties to His love in the midst of our culture that so emphasizes a God of love, a buddy-buddy Jesus and a Father we treat more like "Pops" than "Dad." Now these things still reflect truth-God IS love, Jesus IS our friend, and we have an intimate relationship with the Father. However, it's all too easy to forget about God's wrath.

What struck me the most was Johnny's thoughts on God's attributes. He was in the middle of defining what God's wrath is NOT to better illustrate what it actually is. Some of his points included God's wrath is not like human wrath, not trivial or petty, not inconsistent, and not easily provoked. Each had excellent corresponding points, but the one that stuck out to me was one dealing with God's nature.

God's wrath is NOT an attribute of God, but rather a response. God's wrath is a behavior of his and not a part of his nature. It's in his nature to be wrathful, but not wrath itself. It's the difference between God being loving and God being LOVE. If God is just loving, He can choose to not love-it's a behavior. But if God is LOVE, well He can't choose to do anything but be that love, can He?

I know it might seem like a small difference, but it makes a WORLD of difference! God's wrath comes from the fact that He is Love and loves us so much that He cannot bear to see us defiled, unholy, and corrupted. His desire to destroy evil and save people, (i.e. his wrath) is the response of his love and our sinfulness.

God's wrath proceeds from His love. Thank God for his wrath-without God's wrath burning against sin and evil, where is our guarantee that He'll free us from bondage to them? God's wrath now is a marker or signpost pointing to a future that is free of pain and death thanks to the fusion of Obedience and Sacrifice, Justice and Mercy, and Love and Wrath on the Cross. For that reason, I am so very thankful for God's wrath.

A Personal, Ecclesiastic, Postmodern Psalm

I was going through an old journal today from my second year here at CSULB, and among the daily-update sorts of entries I stumbled upon a rather interesting poem that I wrote. I thought I'd share it :)

A few notes on the poem. First of all, I wrote it in December 2007, but revised it a tad today. I changed the break between lines three and four and substituted "But" for "For" in line 17...it changes the meaning of the line significantly I think.

Also, I'm 99% certain that I was reading a LOT of T.S. Eliot when I wrote this-the poem almost reeks of his influence haha. I feel that it's a response in the same manner as Jon Foreman's response to T.S. Eliot in "Meant to Live," which is why I included a line from the song. So without further ado:

A Cautious Optimism

We were meant to live for so much more

Have we lost ourselves?

Where to turn?

Where to look

When nothing new sits 'neath the sun?

Where to run? Where to head?

There is no way around or through

That has not been explored, rejected.

The past is fled,

The present bleak.

The future holds no certain promise.

Amid the ruins

Beneath the towers

Lofty, dreary

We spin in circles, round and round.

Will I hear the whimper when it all ends, bang-less?

The end is near. The end is near.

But now, I choose instead of death

Life. instead of fear

Hope.

Lord I give You my life, I give You my all

There is a tension that runs through the narrative of the entire Bible from Genesis to Revelation: Obedience versus Sacrifice. It's the theme of first and second chances (and third, and fourth, and so on). Read any book in the Bible and the conflict between these two ideas jumps right out at you. It's inescapable.

Out of the two options, God has a preference for which one we give to him. When rebuking Saul's choice to disobey God and not wipe out the Amalekites but spare some of their herds and offer some as burnt offerings, Samuel asks this question: "Why then did you not obey the voice of the LORD?" (1 Samuel 15:18, NASB). Saul is confused. What did he do wrong? It's not as if he was keeping the flocks for himself-he spared the flocks for a burnt offering, after all! "I did obey the voice of the LORD" (v 19, emphasis mine) he responds. He destroyed the Amalekites to the man and the things that they kept were to be sacrifices to God. Where is the error in that? Samuel's response leaves little doubt as to what Saul's mistake was:

"Has the LORD as much delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as in obeying the voice of the LORD? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed than the fat of rams" (v 22).

Obedience is better than sacrifice. Disobedience, even for the sake of sacrifice, is not acceptable. One of the other numerous passages that deal with the tension between these two ideas is found in Jeremiah 7:22-23:

"For I did not speak to your fathers, or command them in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, concerning burnt offerings and sacrifices. But this is what I commanded them, saying, 'Obey my voice, and i will be your God, and you will be my people; and you will walk in all the way which I command you, that it may be well with you.'"

Obedience predates sacrifice. The first recorded command in the Bible comes in Genesis 2:16-17, where God commands Adam not to eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. The first recorded sacrifice is found in the next chapter, Genesis 3:21- "The LORD God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife, and clothed them." God killed animals and made clothes from the skin for Adam and Eve. Because of Adam's sin, it is impossible for us to fully and completely obey, thus the necessity of sacrifice.

Sacrifice covers the shame that comes from disobedience. In the case of Adam and Eve, the first sacrifice literally covered their shame, their nakedness. In the same way, all future sacrifices served as a temporary covering for shame and sin.

Obedience and sacrifice were finally reconciled on the Cross. Just as Abraham's obedience involved the sacrifice of his son Isaac, Jesus' sacrifice was the ultimate obedience to the Father. Before his sacrifice, we had no hope of measuring up to the Law and obtaining salvation through obedience. Now, however, "[We] have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer [us] who live, but Christ lives in [us]; and the life which [we] live in the flesh [we] live by faith in the Son of god, who loved [us] and gave himself up for [us]" (Galatians 2:20).

We can still fall into the trap of trying to cover our shame and sin ourselves, via sacrifice. The good old Gospel of Works is never far away from our thoughts and attempts to please God. That's why Paul doesn't stop with verse 20 in Galatians 2, but continues: "I do not nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness comes through the Law, then Christ died needlessly" (v 21). By reverting to a works-based attempt to save ourselves via our own efforts and sacrifice, we invalidate Christ's sacrifice.

"Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship" (Romans 12:1). God wants our hearts and our obedience, and through the Cross He's enabled us to give it to him. What's holding you back?

Not Quite A Chiasmus, But Close

Today at the Men of The Beach Barbeque, Mike Hildebrand shared some of his insight and experience with the topic of finances. While I enjoyed everything he had to say on both the specifics of the difference between a 401k and a Roth IRA and more general Biblical principles for handling money, something he said about his attitude and experience fundraising for his upcoming position as head of staff with the Navigators at UCSB really grabbed me.

Mike was quickly explaining why he was rather dressed-up compared to the rest of us: he'd had a funding appointment that morning. Mike lives in Arizona at the moment so he's knocking a veritable flock of birds out of the air with this trip out to California. Like I said, this was just a tangent and not at all a main focus of his talk, a small eddie in the flow of the conversation up to this point. But Mike's comments about the reason he's so dedicated to fundraising just might have been the most impactful thing for me personally as I'm preparing to do EDGE.

Referring to the amount of money he raises, Mike said, "God isn't keeping track of what I get, but He IS keeping track of what they give." Hearing those words, my mind immediately went back to the story of the Rich Man and Lazarus in Luke 16:19-31, a story that God's been teaching me a lot through recently. Both Lazarus and the Rich Man die, but Lazarus goes to heaven and the Rich Man goes to hell. The biggest lesson I'm learning to understand from this parable right now is something the pastor at Rock Harbor said several weeks ago when they covered this story.

It's true that the poor need the rich. The poor need everything the rich have-money, food, shelter, clothing, access to medical care, etc. It's all too easy to shove this truth to the corner of our minds and just not bother thinking about it, but it doesn't make it any less true. However, it's not the poor that are the only ones that need other people.

The rich need the poor just as much as the poor need the rich. In 1 Timothy 6:9 Paul writes, "People who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge men into ruin and destruction." He goes on to call money a root of all kinds of sin and says later in verse 17:

"Command those who are rich in this present world not to be arrogant nor to put their hope in wealth, which is so uncertain, but to put their hope in god, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. Command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share. In this way they will lay up treasure for themselves as a firm foundation for the coming age, so that they may take hold of the life that is truly life."

I want to take hold of the life that is truly life AND to help others achieve that. God, in areas where I'm rich, help me to give away freely and generously. In areas that you've given me a responsibility to invite others into a relationship where they can do what you've commanded and give generously like fundraising for next year and EDGE, give me courage and humility to walk forward in Your confidence and grace.