She will Rise!!!

I am reminded today of women who have been kept down.

My lovely wife is a woman of passion and full of life. She loves people, she loves music, she loves God, and she loves to share God and Music with people. I am so glad God has gifted her the way that he has. I am so glad she can has a heart for kids. I am so glad that she got to go to Wenatchee last weekend and share with the people there her love for God and inspire them to worship, repentance, and relationship with him. This is her mission in life, and I am so glad.

The unfortunate toll that this sinful world takes on us in this circumstance is, when Laura has poured her life into the people God has given the opportunity for her to use her gifts to minister too, she is worn out. She lives with the balancing act of outputting energy and then having to recover it. It takes a while to recover usually a couple of days of really hard core resting, pretty much strait up sleep. I am grateful we have come to understand this and have learned to create space for this rest so she can continue to minster to both our family and many others. All the same it feels at times that she is another woman who is being kept down.

Gen 38 is the story of Tamar, Judah's daughter-in-law. She is given in marriage to his first born, but he is wicked and is struck down by God. (Yikes, this is a whole different conversation.) So then she is married to the second oldest son, but he doesn't want to give his dead older brother children through Tamar so he pulls out a little early every time conception is opportune. He is also seen as wicked in the eyes of God and is taken out. (once again, Yikes!) SO Judah tells Tamar to go home and wait for his third son to grow up. She does, Judah doesn't. The youngest grows up but there is no marriage. Tamar is a woman kept down, a woman in the chains of circumstances. She has a responsibility to Judah's family and yet she is stuck in morning clothes with no husband or family to raise.

I have been spending the day in cannon beach today in retreat. I have been seeking God and was reminded by John Eldredge of the beauty God intends for us to behold. So I was taking in some works of art in the galleries here. My eyes fell on a sculpture of a woman laying face down on the ground. She is just raising herself up on one elbow high enough her hair is draping to the floor, but still covering her face. One hand is clenched and the other is forming a powerful claw pressing with all it's might on the finger tips determined to find some source of strength. It actually looks like a woman in the deepest of depressions. But the title of the sculpture is, "She Will Rise!"

Judah's wife dies and Tamar hears he is coming to town. She dresses up in the current lady of the night garb of her day and tempts Judah in. She forces Judah to give her his seal, cord, and staff as a promise of his payment he will send to her later. Judah attempts to send the payment of a young goat to the "shrine prostitute" in the area, but his servant can't find her. The men of the area tell the servant there is no such prostitute. So the servant gives up and so does Judah. Judah then finds out that Tamar is pregnant and sends to have her burned alive. But she produces the seal, cord, and staff of her father-in-law. Judah says, "she is more righteous then I, for I have with held my son from her." Needless to say the charges are dropped, Tamar has twins and one of her sons Perez shows up in Matthew Chapter 1 in the geneology line of who...Jesus. She will Rise!

I talked to Laura on the phone just a little while ago, I can hear the strength coming back into her voice today. She is answering the phone again, starting today, and she cleaned the whole house yesterday. God has created her gifted, talented, beautiful, and strong in the midst of this perilous condition.

She will Rise!!!

The trouble with dreaming

I wonder how many dreams have gotten people into trouble.

I have a dream today...that little black boys and black girls will join hands together with little white boys and white girls. I have a dream that there would be no more children sold into the sex trade. I have a dream, women stuck in the porn industry would find value in who they are without having to sell their bodies. I have a dream, the church would truly be a hospital for sinners where the smell of cigarette smoke would be a sweet aroma because of the souls of men and women who were walking through our doors. I have a dream that mental illness would be healed and the weight of depression would be lifted from our souls. I have a dream the love of junior high and high school kids was so rampant in my church that I would no longer have to pull teeth to find people to serve. I have a dream, we would be just as present in the public high schools as we are in our academies. I have a dream...

It seems to me the people who truly embrace their dreams live the most amazing and passionate lives. We always here the stories of the amazing things they have accomplished. There are books written about them, by them, and sold like hotcakes. The truth is most of them went though an awful lot of trouble getting to the place where they can actually live their dreams. Some like Martin Luther King Jr. don't even survive the pursuit.

Gen 37 warns us again of the danger of dreams. These aren't even dreams Joseph came up with on his own. These are dreams given to him by God. He shares them and jealousy grows to the point he is thrown into a cistern and sold into slavery. Now I know the rest of the story, it all works out, he ends up in charge of all of Egypt. But in this chapter all we know is dreams get you in trouble.

This can go either one of two ways, dreams can been seen as too dangerous to even think about let along have and God is to dangerous right along with them. This reaction inspires fear and a desire for the status-quo. If we can just keep things the way they are, then we will be safe. We can spend the rest of our lives tending the family flocks and everything will be fine. Sure God has given me these dreams, but I'm just going to keep my mouth shut. The problem with this path is everything would not have been fine. Famine would have eventually come and Joseph's family would have starved.

The other perception is to see this horrible story as an encouragement. Living ones dreams, living ones call from God can start out horribly difficult. To be despised by your family, your church, and have strangers more than willing to take advantage of you. But somehow God will see us through. This is the way living great God given dreams begins.

So when we feel stuck, when we feel despised or not listened too. When dreams seem so far out of reach. We can realize this is the way living a dream begins so we might just have a great God given dream. The bible promises in the last days God's spirit will be poured out. Young men will dream dreams and old men will see visions. The dreams are coming. They won't be easy to begin, but God will see them through. Somehow.

If you are against the wall today, if you are in the pit today, if you are suffering from the jealousy of others today. I hope, as we submit our lives to God, you would find yourself at the beginning of a God given dream.

All in Good Time

Do you ever wonder about the timing of things?

I wonder a lot about what might have happened if the timing had been just a little bit different. What if I hadn't met my wife when I did. What if I had taken the call to boulder Colorado instead of Portland, OR. What if Laura and I had found our current counselor 2 years earlier. Would things have been different? Sure, they would have. Would they have been for the better? That is impossible to say. What I know is what has happened with the timing I took or the timing that I was given.

I wonder what would have happened if Jacob hadn't tricked Esau and Isaac out to the firstborn's blessing. What would have happened in Isaac had died when he thought he was going to. Gen 35 is the story of two deaths. One is tragic, Rachel dies in child birth as she gives live to Benjamin. The second death is Isaac's which is also sad of course and yet it is peaceful in my mind. 20some years earlier Isaac thought he was about to die and Jacob tricked him into blessing him instead of Esau. Esau then consoles himself with the thought of killing Jacob when his father dies. But somehow Isaac lives for another 20some years as a blind old man apparently. He dies after the resolution has already come between Jacob and Esau. The two brothers actually bury their father together. Chap 36 while informing us of the descendants of Esau also tells us that he moves to a different place because the land of their father is not large enough to support both of them.

Do you see what just happened? God keeps Isaac alive long enough for the brothers to stop their feuding. In fact the feud is so long gone that Esau moves away from the land which would have been his as the first born and actually gives the land of the birthright to Jacob without a fight. Its just amazing the way God works out the timing in this family.

I don't think time heals all. I think God heals all. I also think God's timing is working out for the good of those who love him and are called according to his purpose. We know Jacob wrestled with God, we don't know Esau's story. But it seems God had done some work on Esau's heart as well even if it was only through Jacob's change. What an amazing story.

I love to find 20 years later God has worked out the timing just as it was needed. It gives me faith in the way he has lead my life, when I met my wife, when we moved to Oregon, when we met our counselor. And it also gives me hope he will continue to lead and guide me in the timing of the future.

This is especially helpful to me on days when I just feel like quitting and moving on to something new. I know that he has the timing worked out and I just need to depend on him. I thought a week at a university in Colorado was crazy but he used it to call me to ministry. I didn't understand why I was interviewing for a different position 15 months after starting as a pastor of a five church district, but he knew the position in Portland was open just then. I have faith he will continue to move me as needed. In his timing and he will sustain me until then as he knows is best.

Vengance is mine, says the Lord?

So I am currently at bible camp this weekend. We assigned all the kids to different cabins and gave them the room numbers. When they found out they we preassigned there was plenty of complaining the inssued. One of the guys was asking me over and over and over again if there was any hair of chance of switching rooms. The persistant asking reminded me of the constant asking of my four year old daughter. Hearing it from a 14 year old freshman, pushed me from zero to sixy in nothing flat. I responded to yet another question with, "No, there is no chance and if you ask again you can get back on the bus to go home." Then I tried to cover up my moment of harshness with, "I'm sorry man you just reminded me of my four year old daughter." I don't think he felt a whole lot better after that one.

I remember hearing from Rich Mullins one time, "I know vengance in mine says the Lord, but I just want to be about my Father's business." We all laugh we hear a statement like that, but it is too often true.

In Gen 34 we have a story of...just...plain...nastiness. Dinah one of Jacob's daughters is raped and then when the guy finds out he likes this woman he raped he decides he wants her a his wife. Can you imaging that ladies? Having you family make arrangements for you to marry your rapist? Well neither could Dinah's borthers, so while they promised to give her to this guy, they said all the men in the town had to be circumsized first and then 3 days later as all the men are nursing their wounds two of the bothers go in and wipe out all the men in the town. They take the women, children, and possisions for their own.

All Jacob has to say is, "this is going to make for bad public relations, why did you do this." The brothers respond, "Would you have our sister treated like a prostitute?

Just plain crazy and nasty, rape in the first place and then slaughter. I think this is the kind of damage that is caused when we follow our own instincts and desires unchecked. The sinful nature just has a hay day. If our lives we checked with the will and the love of God we wouldn't find ourselves in these situations. The rape never would have happened, the slaughter would never have happened. I never would have compared a freshman to my four year old daughter.

I pray today, I would open myself up to the wiser guidence of the Holy Spirit in my life. I want to leave vengence in the hands of God, becasue he is way smarter than me and way more loving. It would have been way better if I had extended kindness, which leads to repentance. It would have worked out better and both the student and I would feel way better about ourselves.

God save us all from ourselves!!!

Jacob the kissup?

Have you ever received more in the giving than in the taking?

Its a strange thing to be a man of God. Its a stranger thing to be a man who works for God. And its a stranger thing still to be a man who works for God who wants praise for the work that he does, just as any other man for the work he does, when he works for God. I'm not really supposed to want praise for preaching well, am I? I'm not really supposed to want praise for making the band sound great when I run the sound board at bible camp, am I? I'm not supposed to want praise for the blogs that I write, am I? This is work I do in the service of God, it is all to bring him glory. And yet I still want it, I still want the praise and I still want the glory.

Jacob has just wrestled striven with God and man and overcome in the previous chapter. Now in Gen 33 he is going to meet his older brother again for the first time in 20 years. This is the brother he tricked, lied to, and stole from. But he is the one who got the blessing from his father. He is the one who is to be ruler over Esau not the other way around and he just stove with God and overcame. So why does he send all these gifts first and then when he meets Esau he bows down to him and has all of his family do the same? Jacob calls Esau his lord and insists Esau accept the gifts even when Esau says no the first time. Jacob should be giving the smack down to his older brother. But instead he serves him.

This is something amazing that has changed in Jacob. He leads his family out, not hiding behind them, but he bows to Esau, he doesn't try to wriggle around and take he position as the head of the family. He knows who he is, the son with the patriarchal blessing, and he knows he has overcome. He then chooses to serve. He gives himself away, he gives away his glory. Usually when we do this God has a way of restoring the glory too us. When we surrender we end up with more than if we steal and cheat to get it.

Philippians 2 says that Jesus humbled himself even to death on a cross. And because he did God raised him up so that he name is above every other name and at his name every knee should bow and every tongue confess that Jesus is Lord.

I had the privilege of receiving a surprise compliment on my blog this evening. I didn't know this person was reading it. She just offered heartfelt thanks to me. I wasn't even looking for it. I wasn't checking my stats or looking for facebook replies and there is was a little bit of glory a little bit of praise. Thank you God, for blessing me in the times when I'm not looking for it!

Wrestling for the sake of our families

How do we overcome God?

I wrestled when I was a kid for one season. I liked it OK, but I must not have liked it too much cause my parent's didn't sign me up again the next year. It was fun to learn some of the holds and starting positions. I think I gained a little bit of a sense of balance and strength from the times I spent on the mat.

Although I only wrestled formally for one year, there was plenty to be done on dormitory floors and trampolines through out the years growing up as a guy. My room mate and I got along really well. When ever he got a little angsty though he would attack me. He had a nasty headlock and he was just strait up crazier than I was, but I was way bigger then him. So it usually worked out to be a good time for letting off steam for the both of us.

I never really learned to fist fight, I don't think I would do very well in one. But when it comes to wrestling I feel fairly confident. I can throw my weight around and stand my ground well. I have found myself in some very different sorts of wrestling matches as I have gotten older though.

In Genesis 32 Jacob is faced with coming home to meet his brother. He sends messengers to Esau to tell him he is coming. The messengers come back with the news the Esau is coming with 400 men. Jacob gets scared and sends out welcoming gifts in front of him offering livestock and servants to his brother hoping to lessen the conflict. He also has some personal preparation to go through. He sends everyone and everything across the river then stays on the other side by himself for the night. A man comes, says scripture, and they wrestle all night. The man realizes he cannot overpower Jacob and so he touches Jacob's hip and puts it out of joint at sunrise. Jacob will not let go until he is blessed. The man asks his name and then gives him a new one, Israel. Because Jacob has striven with both God and man and he has overcome!

How in the world do we wrestle with God and overcome? The times I have felt my wrestle with God have been in difficult life circumstances. I am going through something I know God could take away. He could stop it or fix it or save me from it. But he doesn't. He leaves me there in the situation struggling and wrestling. Often in these circumstances I strive with God in prayer asking, begging, pleading, and roaring for relief.

I was just sharing with my good friends this morning the journey that I have taken through counseling and the help it brought to my marriage. Four months ago my wife was ready for me to move out and work all I wanted. She never wanted a divorce, but it was too painful to live with me when I was so disconnected. As you can imagine we had been striving with one another and with God for quite a while. We went to see a new counselor starting in May and she began to give us good, solid, formal training on how to live in relationship. As I reflect on this now, I can say we have overcome both man (each other and ourselves) and God (the situation God gave us for growth i.e. marriage) at least for this round.

I am recognizing our next wrestling match today. It will be the one to take hold of our health, not just on our own, but together. I need to give my strength to Laura and I will need her to give her strength to me so we might be able to say we have overcome in this area of our lives as well, together, and for the sake of our family.

There is always another match, there is always the next struggle. But I can honestly say, overcoming the last struggle makes this one seem much more possible. I am glad to have victory in Jesus today in my marriage and I look forward to victory in my health as well.

I encourage you to strive today because the victory is available and because it tastes sooooooooo sweet!

Freedom from the inlaws

Are God and freedom connected for you...at all?

I think the closest I have ever come to prison is a sick day at boarding academy. When you we're pronounced sick by the nurse you were in your room all day no outs except for walking down the hall to the bathroom. They would even bring you a take out tray from the cafeteria so wouldn't have to go out to get food. I have to admit I faked sick a couple of times no doubt. It was great all morning, I basically just slept in. But come evening I was usually a little stir crazy. A 12x12 cinder block dorm room can get a little old after a while.

To tell you truth though, my most serious captor has been depression. I don't know if you have ever dealt with depression or not. I have never gotten to the clinical proportions my father has, or others I have known. Mine has been a high functioning low grade depression. I still go to work, and get stuff done, but I'm not really engaged with the people around me. I don't have the energy to really enjoy any of the things I am doing. There have been days when I don't have work to get me out of the house I find myself sleeping on the couch on and off most of the afternoon. It feels like I am just under the surface of the water. All I need to do is a good kick and my head would break the surface, but I just don't have the energy.

I have a feeling this is what life under Laban felt like for Jacob. In Gen 31 it describes their relationship. Jacob has been working for Laban 20 years. It started out as 7 years for Rachel, but he got Leah so he worked 7 more for Rachel. Then he had to work 6 more for any of the livestock he has increased for Laban over the years. Laban has changed his wages 10 times. It must have felt like Jacob almost had his head above water and then Laban would shove him back down with another change.

While God is all for perserverance and long suffering, they are even fruits of the spirit, he is also against opression of our freedom. It is God who has brought Jacob to this place and it is God who calls him out. Enough is enough and it is time for Jacob to take what is his and move on. So he does, Laban chases him down too. But God steps in again and warns Laban not to do anything stupid. So Jacob is finally able to break free from the tyrany of his inlaws. This freedom in God's leading is not without challenge the next chapter is the meeting with Esau. God's freedom usually comes with challenge. The challenge to grow, the challenge to do some hard things, but it is freedom.

I have found freedom from this depression as well. I am an advocate of meds and couseling both which gave me the courage I needed to begin to make important changes in my life. The freedom has come with challenge, the more freedom that I have the more God challenges me to do. But there is an excitement in life. Emotional healing is hard work. You can't just let it happen you have to fight to break free from the prison of depression and emotional brokeness and not every day is a good day. But the days are getting brighter and the air is fresher.

God has given me strength to endure the oppression and now he is giving me strength to break out in freedom. I pray the same for you whether you oppression be depression, addiction, emotional numbness, emotional chaos, stuckness in work, struggles with your church organization, or the messiness of your house. What ever it is may God call you and strengthen you to deliverance and the strength to make things better!