Archive for personal

You may not withhold your help

17 June, 2013 church, justice, personal No comments

I was reading Deuteronomy 22 this morning and was struck by the first few verses:

Helping Hands

You shall not watch your neighbor’s ox or sheep straying away and ignore them; you shall take them back to their owner. If the owner does not reside near you or you do not know who the owner is, you shall bring it to your own house, and it shall remain with you until the owner claims it; then you shall return it. You shall do the same with a neighbor’s donkey; you shall do the same with a neighbor’s garment; and you shall do the same with anything else that your neighbor loses and you find. You may not withhold your help. You shall not see your neighbor’s donkey or ox fallen on the road and ignore it; you shall help to lift it up. (vv.1-4)

Even from those early days, God was making it clear that “Love your neighbor” was

  1. highly practical and tangible;
  2. not optional, but a commandment.

9 Days

24 May, 2013 church, personal No comments

East Side Launch

NINE DAYS TO LAUNCH!!

It’s pretty exciting to see this community take off, as volunteers begin signing up to help out and join teams, as we talk through who we want to be and what we want to do and what we think God is calling us to as a new District Church community. Moreover, I went to a Miner Elementary event recently and, upon meeting both Principal Bunch and one of the heads of the Parent-Teacher Organization, was struck by how excited they are that we’re going to be there.

So, as we count down, I’d ask for your prayers:

  • For Miner Elementary School as they begin winding down for the school year; they have an event coming up on June 8 that will be a community spring fair, and it will be the first time they’re doing it. We’ll be helping out as well. Please pray for all of the logistics to come together and for people to show up and fellowship together.
  • For the East Side community as we begin weekly gatherings, that we might know unity and we might show hospitality to any that might come into our midst.
  • For me, as it’s been a busy month of preparation and I’m pretty tired. This holiday weekend I’ll be traveling to celebrating the wedding of some dear friends, which I’m looking forward to; but travel is never particularly restful for me, so I’m looking forward to some vacation time in mid-June. Pray for strength to do what needs to be done, for wisdom as I continue to lead, and for rest.

Thanks, friends. More good news coming soon!

P.S. Added more pics to our East Side album on Facebook.

RIP Dallas Willard

8 May, 2013 links, other people's words, personal No comments

Gordon Cosby. Brennan Manning. Dallas Willard.

These three have passed on–”fallen asleep,” as Jesus might say–in the last couple months, and I am forever grateful for the paths they carved, the tracks they left for me to follow.

Dallas WillardDallas Willard passed away this morning at 77 years old. I don’t feel particularly adequate to articulate all the thoughts and feelings that are going on as I reflect on his life and passing. (John Ortberg wrote a great piece in memoriam here.) But overwhelming gratitude is definitely one of them.

With books like The Spirit of the Disciplines–on which I’ll be basing a discipleship class that I’m leading this month–Dallas not only changed the way I looked at life and my walk with Jesus, he helped to change the way I did life and my walk with Jesus.

I never got to meet him personally but I look forward to, one day.

—

Photo: Dieter Zander

Never be rash with your mouth (and your tweets)

6 May, 2013 personal No comments

20130506-145310.jpgEcclesiastes 5:2 says,

Never be rash with your mouth, nor let your heart be quick to utter a word before God, for God is in heaven, and you upon earth; therefore let your words be few.

Be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to become angry.

And watch what you tweet.*

—

* Also applicable to other types of social media.

 

Thanks, Brennan

14 April, 2013 links, other people's words, personal No comments

Brennan Manning

(1934-2013)

Brennan Manning passed away early on Friday, April 12; he was 79 years old.

I am beyond thankful for the life and writings of Brennan Manning. I know he was a flawed and sinful man; everybody did–he never tried to hide it. He was always very transparent with the depth of his failings and, more importantly, the depth of God’s love and grace.

TheRagamuffinGospelIt was through one of Brennan’s books that grace truly broke through into my life while I was in college. I’d grown up in a Christian home, going to Sunday school every week, and learning what I had to do to get into heaven (which essentially boiled down to “being good”). But I found myself, more often than not, confessing the words of Paul in Romans 7:19, “I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do.”

Somehow, I stumbled across The Ragamuffin Gospel, and here’s what happened (as I wrote — and preached last summer):

Years ago, I read The Ragamuffin Gospel … and it changed my life. After years of guilt and shame at not being able to live up to the standard I thought I was ‘supposed to’ live up to, falling short in failing to always treat people kindly, in losing my temper (I was an angry teenager, too!), in struggling with issues of lust and pornography, in taking for granted the many blessings I had been given rather than accepting them with gratitude and using them to bless others, and in a hundred different other ways—for the first time, through the words of this book, I began to truly understand grace—amazing grace, the grace of Jesus Christ.

I realized—not just in my head but in the very core of my being—that I didn’t have to work to earn God’s favor any more. I realized that God wasn’t keeping track of the number of times I’d failed and fallen. I realized that God loves me, accepts me, and welcomes me, as I am. I realized what it means when Paul writes, in Romans 5:8, “God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us.”

Philip Yancey wrote in the foreword to Brennan’s memoir, All is Grace:

Like Christian, the everyman character in The Pilgrim’s Progress, [Brennan] progressed not by always making right decisions but by responding appropriately to wrong ones.

Thank you, Brennan, for walking the road you did, and for inviting so many others into the wideness of God’s mercy.

Rest in peace.

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