Sweep out the dust

Floors attract dust. There's no getting around it.  It happens.  Each floor is different, and the mess that accumulates varies from room to room, depending on the type of floor and the foot traffic blazing trails atop it.  Some floors sparkle--until the dog prances in from peeing in the rain--and other floors make fantastic skating rinks for sock-clad kids and kids at heart.  In some places, the floor is covered in a ruffled carpet, slightly tinged with the stain of decaying skin cells and maybe the red Kool-Aid Rorshach that mom tried so hard to scrub out.

Whatever the floor, they need to be cleaned at some point or another. It's inevitable. It doesn't matter where you live, you will have to sweep the floor at least once before you die.  If you're unfortunate enough to have to sweep carpet for lack of a vacuum, you might wish you would die, but nevertheless, it is possible to sweep dirt out of carpet.

But I digress.

Floors get pretty grody and the upkeep never ends.  Sweeping is just one of those chores that never quits.  It's not a hard job but it is continuous.

It's kind of like salvation.

Now, from my limited understanding of Biblical Greek after two semesters of it, I can tell you the word translated as "work out" is χατεργάζεσθε which if I am understanding it correctly, is second-person plural (present continuous) imperative. That means it's a command to y'all (directed at the Phillipians, and by extension us) to continue to work out where in our lives we need more Jesus. Simply put, salvation is a process that we have to keep working on.

But like with sweeping, we are useless on our own. Without a broom, all we're good for is kicking the dirt around (while simultaneously contributing to the mess with the scuff flaking off our feet).

Salvation is the same way, because we're powerless to accomplish it on our own--God is the one who sweeps the dust out of us.

That's just dandy, isn't it? If we sweep our floors, we can work out our salvation? It's as easy as that?

While it is an easy task, it's never a simple one, not if done properly.

Think about everything you have to sweep around and under if you don't want the floor to look like a disheveled wreck.  I'm not talking about moving the couch or disassembling the entire room to scour every corner, but Lord knows your garage or living room probably needs it.  I'm just talking about the mundane sweeping we should do regularly.

It can be difficult to reach into those tight corners or squeeze the bristles under the toekick to coax out the crusty Cheerio the family pooch neglected to find.  Likewise, it's not always easy to let God have access to every filthy crevice or grimy mound inside ourselves.  We might know these areas need cleaning, but we're hesitant to go to that much trouble.

Let's say you go to the trouble of fishing the dirt out into the open. Have you ever tried to sweep it into a pile before introducing it to the dustpan, only to have a rogue power cord get in the way? One of the most annoying things I find is having to lift power cords and wires to sweep a pile of dirt under and away from them.  Sometimes, we let God work on us, but maybe we let circumstances get in the way, or perhaps it's our own pride or emotions.

But really, sweeping isn't so bad.  It's easy enough a kid can do it, and frankly, it's more like dancing than dust-collecting.  The reward is so worth it, the rejuvenated life a swept floor can bring to a room.  If nothing else, a swept floor just feels more liveable, friendlier even.

If we think of working out our salvation the same way, the joy it will bring far outperforms the mere act of sweeping.  All we have to do is let God work on us, and worship him for what he's doing as he does it, and keep it up.  It's pretty simple, really.

That's kind of where I'm at right now in my life.  I'm about a year out from getting my Masters of Divinity and after that, I'm looking forward to going to France as a church planter; I already have a job offer to do just that, and I can see God orchestrated everything.  In the meantime, I'm working to prepare myself for the adventure ahead of me, trying to clean out all the spots of my life I've tracked dirt into over the years.  Bad habits, insecurities, and communication problems just always seem to sneak in but I'm not worried about any of it. I like sweeping, but sweeping me isn't my job, so I'm just going to step back so God can get those hard-to-reach parts of me.

I spy with my little eye

I spy with my little eye something holy.

Don't see it?

Look again.

I'm not talking about your favorite sock, the one your pinkie toe pokes out of.  I'm talking about the creator of your pinkie toe.

Yeah, God reminds me a lot of those I Spy books.  He's there with us wherever we go, whether we're sinning or singing praises to him.  We just have to look for him. He's there, even if hidden in plain sight.

I feel like a lot of people compare God to Waldo from those Where's Waldo books, but I'd like to assert that comparison is incorrect.  God doesn't go with you all over the world so he can randomly wander off into the crowd.  God is interested in you, and he's going to stick with you at your side.  In some cases, he'll stick with you like a bodyguard, protecting you from danger but most of the time he is more like the friend you've known since childhood sitting next to you on the roller coaster.

If God is with us, why doesn't he just show himself?  Basically, he doesn't want to overwhelm us.  What I mean is, he's just that awesome--but that's another blog post.

Think about your own life for a second.

Since I can't describe your life in detail, let me use mine as an example.  I was born on July 20, 1989 in a flat tourist town in Virginia.  It's hard to say how being born an eighties-baby helped me find God in my life, although looking back, I can say it gave me the ability to relate to people a few years younger and older than me in all the ministries I lead now.  As for the location I live in, God definitely put me here for a purpose.  For starters, if I lived in another part of the state, the endless hills would wreak havoc on my ability to get around; I use gloves to get around in my wheelchair, and climbing up hills before coasting down them shreds wheelchair gloves like you wouldn't believe.  Also, because I'm in a tourist town, I've been able to maintain my fluency in French pretty easily because every summer tons of Canadians and Europeans flock to my area on vacation.  It is worth saying, French is one of my passions and I plan on being a church planter in France one day.  God must have orchestrated that.

Back on topic, God placed you where you are for a specific reason.  You were born at the time and place you were because God has a purpose for you.  Everything that has happened in your life has been for one simple purpose, to draw you closer to God; you are unique and you are beautiful because of your uniqueness.  You are the sum total of the choices you've made, and God placed you right where he wanted you so you could choose to seek him, even though he's right there with you.

Don't believe me? Try listing twenty things you're thankful for, and then try to figure out where they came from and why they happened that way.  What about all the times you just barely made it through some situation that seemed insurmountable? Wasn't it God who got you through it?  Think about it for a while, you'll be surprised.

One of the ways I often help people in their faith is to find where God is at in their lives.  I help my mom see him in her failing marriage, and I help my girlfriend recognize God's presence in her life.  I can only show people where God is in their life because I spend my life studying my own, thanking God every time I see him bless me or answer a prayer or even teach me something new and insightful.

I spy with my little eye something that cannot be explained by natural phenomena.

I Hate Morals

I'm going on a mission trip tomorrow, and I think the excitement is getting to me. I just woke up from a nap, and found my phone in hand, open to my note-taking aapplication. I've texted in my sleep before and once upon a time, I've written crazy stuff in my sleep, but I've never used my phone to write stuff in my sleep before. Here's what I wrote during my morning nap a few minutes ago.

I hate morals.
Morals to me sound like more rules.
I want freedom.
I want to be me.
Christ set me free.
Now I live to be me,
The made-in-his-image me.
To God be the glory.
Let him have the scary stuff,
Like finding my way, and putting food on my plate.
I'll be okay.
If my life fits your moral standard
Then it doesn't mean moralism makes it right.
It means you are precious in his sight.
Set aside your petty morality,
Your false spirituality
And embrace servility
The ultimate in humility.
Discard your futility,
Your perfection is not an ability.

I'll probably think about it some more and add to it soon, and once I wake up, I'll find some verses that fit each line of the poem.

Male and Female He Created Them

Just recently, I've heard a lot of talk about what it means to be a biblical man or woman. I'm not sure that I'm seeing a lack of understanding on the topic or if God wants me to clarify my thoughts on the matter. Either way, I woke up this morning an hour earlier than I wanted to and had a fully-written blog entry running through my head.

So what does it mean to be a biblical man or woman, ie a man or woman after God's own heart? It's a little different for men and women, but not as different as people often think.

My basis for such a statement? There is neither male nor female, slave nor free, Jew nor Greek because we are all one in Jesus.

As a body of believers, we all work together in unison for the same ultimate goal, the glorification of Jesus as Lord and the encouraging of one another in the hope we have. Because each of us represent just one part of the body, we all have different purposes in life.

It is true men and women think differently from each other. Men tend to be very structured, organized, and compartmentalized when it comes to their thoughts and emotions. Women tend to be all over the place, making them better at multitasking and building relationships. These gender-specific features coincide with the biblical roles men and women play.

Beautiful women are a blessing to behold. A woman's beauty should not come from her make up or how she did her hair, but from a gentle, quiet spirit.

As for that whole "submit" thing Christian men throw around, it's the same verb used to describe our relationship to God. I lent my concordance to someone so I cannot find the other references to show you this, but I have done the research in the past and know it to be true. So, "wives, submit yourselves to your husbands" as the bible tells us in Ephesians and 1 Peter among other places, it shouldn't be hard for a God-fearing woman to do if her husband is submitting himself to the Lord. In that case, both husband and wife will be of like mind anyways, so there really shouldn't be any actual submitting needed. If anything, the act of a wife submitting to her husband is her humbling herself so Jesus is glorified by both of them.

That's not to say that a woman needs to be complacent when her husband is leading the family in a direction far from where God is.

While we're on the topic of the woman's role in husband-wife relations, let me point out the incredible worth women have. Lots of Christians think women are supposed to be in the kitchen all the time, just popping out babies for their hubby. I call bull dung.

In the time Genesis was written, women were treated like dirt. Back then, their worth was nothing more than the potential for an economic agreement with another family. They really didn't have much of a place in society. Yet, when Jacob's wife Rachel wanted to name their second son Ben-Oni, meaning "son of my trouble" because she was about to die from giving birth, Jacob stepped in and said the child was to be named Benjamin, meaning "son of my right hand." Let me put things in perspective.

In this culture, the right hand was the hand with which you did your work. Your left hand was considered filthy, unclean, and vulgar because back then, they didn't have Charmin Ultra Soft. This places even more significance on the right hand. In fact, in biblical times as is still true today, if a person is said to be your right hand, it means they have the utmost importance in your life, that you value them more than all others, that they are indispensable to your very existence. For a king to seat someone at his right hand means that this person is the king's most trusted adviser; it is the highest honor a king can bestow on anyone short of handing over the throne.

For Jacob, that was Rachel.

Additionally, he who finds a wife finds what is good and a prudent wife is from the Lord.

The wife of noble character is the role model for many women, and for good reason. Proverbs 31 describes in wonderful detail how much of a servant's heart this woman has, how her relationships bring honor and praise to her family and husband, and how her family is well-taken-care-of. Earthly women might try to charm people to get what they want, or make themselves more beautiful, but really, the woman who fears the Lord is to be praised.

In much the same way, men are a source of strength for their wives. It is their job to provide clothing and shelter for their wives, and to love them as the Lord loves us. That means, for those of you not familiar with the extent of God's love for us, it is the husbands job to humble himself to his wife so that in all he does, he can serve her. He needs to be willing to sacrifice his wants and desires for hers, and see that in the end, she is praised more than he.

Outside the context of marriage, because not all us dudes are married or dating anyone, the idea is that dudes (like women) need to submit themselves wholly to the Lord. I think King David summed it up best on his deathbed when he swore his son Solomon in as king: Be strong, show yourself a man, and observe what the Lord your God requires; walk in his ways and keep his decrees and commands, his laws and requirements so that you may prosper in all you do and wherever you go.

Let's go deeper. What does the Lord require? To act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God. The greatest commandment is this, to love the Lord your God with all your heart and will all your soul and to love your neighbor as yourself.

Forget that stupid machoism garbage. This is what a real man looks like.

I want to reiterate though that this separation between men and women does not exist in God's kingdom. God through the prophet Joel, in a prophecy about the coming of the Lord, stated "I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions. Even on my servants both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days."

Praise God.

Wait for it, wait for it, bam, daylight savings time

God has made a few promises in his day. Among them is the idea that God's not done working on us yet, that our best days are ahead of us.

While I know this one in particular to be true from past experience, some days I question how long a promise like that could take. Family struggles, girl problems, and too many people in need of encouragement can plant the seeds of anxiety, impatience and restlessness. Even though these issues are trivial in light of all that God is capable of, eventually I wear down and begin to question God, not doubt per se but question.

It sucks to feel like that immediately after witnessing entire days, weeks, a month of God's blessings and power at work in our lives. I'm human. It happens.

I think some of Jesus's followers went through that in the moments before Jesus ascended to heaven. Imagine that.

In the climax of all that had happened until then, God intervened in the lives of every human being out there. By the power of God, Jesus walked with the living forty days after his expiration date. God blessed Jesus with awesome ninja abilities when he entered a locked house. It was a miracle Thomas didn't spew his guts when Jesus got him to poke a finger through his hands. Don't forget the 153 fish God jammed in Peter's net the instant Jesus wanted some noms. God worked so much through Jesus, they couldn't write it all down!

And yet, his followers still wondered how much longer it would be before one of God's promised blessings would come.

Advising his followers not to leave Jerusalem, Jesus said, "Hey, kick it here for a while, until yo Daddy gives you what he promised, that Holy Spirit yo."

That's when they asked if at that time, God would restore the kingdom to Israel, like in the old days.

To put it in context, this was a big deal for the Jewish people. The reestablishment of the kingdom of Israel meant the restoration of justice to the people of God. It meant they would no longer suffer the oppression of a foreign power ruling over them, as was the case during that time with the Romans. It meant a return to a time when God's people had power among the nations.

Since the exile, the Jews had waited a long time to see God fulfill that promise.

We don't know what Jesus sounded like when he andswered, but we know he said, "Chill out, it's neither here nor there, it'll happen in God's time."

He also pointed something interesting out.

"Dawg, when it happens, it'll be crazy! Y'all gonna receive power when that Holy Spirit comes and dang yo, you gonna go and be singin' my song to every nation!"

As the chosen people of God, believers who receive the Holy Spirit, are going to live in God's kingdom, while still living here on this earth. As Paul puts it, "our citizenship is in heaven," which means believers do not belong to any earthly nation or people. They are unique, set apart for God and his work.

But, with the coming of the Holy Spirit, God's people will receive power to go out among the nations. As representatives of the Kingdom, it's as if the Holy Spirit is Jesus's answer to when and how the kingdom of Israel (ie the kingdom of the people of God) would be restored to its former and future glory!

Don't let any promises God made that you think are not yet fulfilled stop you from living the kingdom dream. Maybe you just aren't aware of how God is working in that part of your life, for the God we serve is not a God of broken promises.

A Large Hot Chocolate on a Cold Day

This past week has been unusually cold, considering the warm spell that came before it. It went from being in the fifties every day to the thirties in almost a week. Each of the last few mornings, it's been below freezing, cold enough to merit a trek to the local cafe for their hot chocolate. I've joked with my coworkers that this cold has taught me to roll my wheelchair one-handed, so I can hold my cup without it spilling.

As I sip another taste of the steamy froth, I praise God for the things he's done. Just recently, I've been praying hard about some stuff; the result, I feel refreshed, and warmed up. Prayer is like that, actually. In this cold, frigid world we live in, prayer is the hot chocolate that warms our soul.

Yeah, I admit, I'll pray for healing over something as trivial as a cold. Prayer and hot chocolate can do wonders for a cold. Except with the snotty colds, hot chocolate soothes the throat and sinuses, and for the most part, it relieves cold symptoms. The prayer offered up in faith can do that too, sometimes getting rid of the cold entirely.

I drink hot chocolate for more than colds though. Hot chocolate is good for so much more than just the occasional sick day. A hot chocolate between friends brings them closer, chinking their spoons against the sides of the mugs and sipping pensively. The time it takes for the hot chocolate to drain out of a ceramic mug is the same amount of time needed for a healthy conversation, or for one friend to encourage the other in taking the next step. Prayer gives us that intimacy with God.

Get a large hot chocolate with no marshmallows or whipped cream often enough, and people will begin to recognize you as a hot chocolate drinker. This morning, the barista with the wavy blond hair, she guessed how I wanted my drink made from the hot chocolates I drank in the past. The fact is, I love me some hot chocolate on cold mornings. I don't get it often enough, but man, when I do, it's worth it.

Likewise, I know I don't pray as often as I would like. When I do however, I no longer shudder in the world's icy gale. While they may not know what, people can see it if you're getting your morning prayer in. With a large hot chocolate, there's a tangible cup in the cardboard cup holder you carry; people might wonder whether it's a coffee or a cappuccino you're drinking, but regardless, they know you're drinking something. With prayer, they wonder what you're drinking when they see the peace of God in the way you carry yourself.

Through a large hot chocolate, you have the ability to strike up a conversation with anyone else holding a hot beverage. There is a subtle bond between two people mulling over the steam escaping the plastic sippy-lid, one that wouldn't exist had you not bought a large hot chocolate that morning. Without prayer, so many things are impossible in our lives, but through a single act of prayer God does the impossible.

Finishing a large hot chocolate is always the hardest part. It's not that I can't drink the whole thing, it's that when I come to the last dregs of my cup, I begin to crave more, longing for the contentment to linger a moment more.

Fortunately, prayer leaves my thirst satisfied.

You did not come to know Christ that way

One little verse in Ephesians spoke to me today.

You, however, did not come to know Christ that way. ~Ephesians 4:20

Okay, so, what?

What is it about these nine words that brought me to my knees?

For starters, Ephesians was written to the believers in the area more or less around Ephesus, sort of as a general lesson for the numerous early churches near Ephesus. The absence of any personal greetings from Paul shows it's really not written to anyone in specific, other than to believers in Jesus as the promised savior of God. While Paul did not have me in consideration at all when he wrote this letter, as a believer in Jesus Christ, the letter invites me to apply its teachings to my life.

The reason I feel the need to explain myself here is the very first word of Ephesians 4:20, "You." If the letter is addressed to Christians, I need to pay attention.

The second word, "however," separates the intended audience from some other group of people. Something about Christians is different than with everyone else.

To find out what is different, I read the rest of the sentence.

You, however, did not come to know Jesus that way. ~Ephesians 4:20

There's an prepositional phrase at the end of the sentence that changes the way the verbs in the sentence work. The sentence now either means everyone knows Jesus and has a personal relationship with him, or that one way of life does not lead to a personal relationship with Jesus while another does.

Because the whole world is not saved by faith in Jesus, I wondered what way did not lead to knowing Jesus.

The paragraph prior to verse 20 sheds some light on what way Paul is talking about.

Paul states Christians must not live in the futility of worldly thinking, that a life spent resisting God's truths can only lead to a lack of understanding. Those who harden their hearts to God submit to their passions and desires, craving progressively more depraved and sinful behavior.

So, now Ephesians 4:20 makes a little more sense.

You, however, did not come to know Christ that way. ~Ephesians 4:20

Still, the verse brings up the question of how believers actually come to know Jesus Christ.

Verses 21 through 24 begin to illustrate the process.

Believers first hear about the truth of Jesus little by little throughout their lives. At some point, they accept these teachings and learn to leave behind their old self in exchange for who they could be in Jesus, and from then on, they live a new life devoted to God as best they can.

I think this verse really spoke to me because I caught myself wishing I led a playboy life. Part of me yearned to have my sensual desires satisfied, however, I did not come to know Christ that way.

In my struggle, I wanted a right relationship with God more than sex.

God is so worth the wait.