Remembering Grandad (John 10)

This last Friday night Feb 23rd my Grandfather died. As I reflect on his life I am reminded of a man who pursued life. As a child I knew him as a loving grandparent who would take us to the park, taught us how to fly kites, a man covered in paint who had great patience and exuberance over a child's painting, a musician who loved to hear his grandchildren play their feeble songs on the piano and who picked up his violin to play along. He was the man who taught us all how to dance, not only around the dance floor flowing with grace and music, but through life. This is what he did, he danced with life as a partner flowing and moving from one phase of life to the next.

After retiring from teaching at Western Washington University, he began painting with water color in earnest. He had always done art but now he really dove into the dance. Painting tours around the world, art shows and galleries displaying his work. Life led him into writing as well producing stories and books. And he continued to love well. He always upheld personal relationships and connection as his highest value.

He also knew when to rest. He was never ashamed to lie down on the floor for a 20 minute power nap. Rising refreshed and off to the rest of life. Open heart surgeries caused him to rest and recover, but soon he was once again up and moving again walking the WWU campus. Grandad knew the voice, the call, the lead of abundant life. I am sure that he was not perfect and I know he was human because he is now at rest, but I know he pursued the dance of life always.

Jesus said in John 10:10 he came to give live in abundance. This was the life, which Grandad sought after, and abundant and full life. While I don't think he would have called Jesus the source of this abundant life he pursued it nonetheless. He heard the voice of life resonate deep within his heart. Just before Jesus makes the offer of abundant life, he tells us there is a thief that has come to steal kill and destroy. Today I feel the work of the thief. The dance floor is silent, empty and still. I walk out looking for my grandfather to be moving across the wooden paths, but he's not there anymore. He has been stolen from us...from me.

The voice of the thief has been trying to get through to me the past few days. "Wouldn't it be easier if this were all over?" he whispers, "Just let the dance floor go completely silent, the dance of life simply ends empty." But this is not the voice of a resurrected Christ, and this is not the voice my Grandfather heard. For the voice of Christ strikes up the music once more and invites us to dance again.

So may we dance...my dear friends and family. May we remember Grandad and dance...

Still in the Dark (John 9)

Can you see yet? Cause I'm not sure that I can.

I realized the other day that I really just want to live a life of Joy. I don't want to be stuck in the muck anymore. So much time is wasted in worry and disbelief. It's like a darkness, a fog, a layer of thick mist that you just can't seem to look through. Joy is above the clouds. When you are rising up and up on the plane you know...and you finally rise above the clouds to the clear sky. When the blindness of worry is finally removed and the sight of joy is finally discovered. Even though I have realized it is joy and clarity that I want...It is really hard to break through the clouds. If I could just be grateful for the things I have in my life, live in joy, and passionately work hard for the things that I still need. God has given me the skills I need...so why am I blind in worry instead of soaring with the joy of hard work and accomplishment. I often feel like I'm still in the dark...

In John Chap 9 Jesus comes across a man who has been blind sense birth. The disciples even ask who sinned the man or his parents that he would be born this way. Jesus replies that neither have sinned but he is blind so the glory of God can be revealed. Jesus mixes spit with dirt and puts the mud on the man's eyes. He tells him to go and wash and when the work of washing is done the man can see. It just hit me just now what this is saying. When we are faithful even when we are still blind, when we do the things that Jesus has sent us to do...at the end of the task our eyes will be opened.

I have been reading this same passage for the last three days without blogging on it, because I just couldn't break through the blindness. And yet when I do the thing that God has given me to do, blog, the clarity comes in the obedient service to my Lord. The blind man when he comes through the ordeal with church discipline is once again confronted with Jesus. When he realizes who Jesus is and has faithfully defended the miracle from God in the midst of the darkness of the church, he is able to see who Jesus really is. His response is to bow down and worship Jesus, something only reserved for God. 

The members of the church government tell the man they don't know where Jesus is from the man is simply faithful with the testimony that he has. I don't know all the theology, but what I know is I was blind and now I see. Only someone who is from God can perform such miracles. Faithfulness in the midst of darkness leads to the clarity of who Jesus is and the sight to believe and worship.

If you are still in darkness today, as I feel so many times, may we be faithful to trust and serve in Jesus and find that we will have sight on the other side. Whether our darkness is financial worry, the oppression of church leadership gone wrong, or the debilitation of some physical condition…we can be faithful to our God and come into the light. May we worship him in the darkness and the light.

Children of God or of the Devil (john 8)

How do we know whose children we really are?

I have been visiting my parents in my childhood home for the last several weeks while on Christmas break. It has become more and more clear that I am their child in the last few years of my life. They say that in your 30s is when you discover what it is you really want to take from your parents and what it is you want to leave behind. My mother is a truly godly woman who seeks after her relationship with God and values relationships in her words and actions. She loves our daughter well and is active and engaged with her. I would like to keep this in my life. My Father loves us dearly and he serves us through the cooking of many meals and the giving of many gifts. He has a generous heart and these are things that I want to keep. There are patterns of life that I do not wish to keep and the reason I can recognize them is because they are in my own life; times of compulsion, times of anger, times of worry. I have prayed many times for the cloud of depression over our multiple family homes to be broken.

How do I know that I am the child of my parents, because I have taken upon myself their words and actions. My life is patterned after theirs. In some ways I am different, but in many ways I am the same. In John chapter 8 Jesus confronts the people around him with whose children they just might be. He gets very blatant and strong about it actually. "You are not children of Abraham, for Abraham looked forward to my coming, but instead you are children of the devil, for you speak in lies and he is the father of lies." (Cory's paraphrase) What does it mean to be children of God? Over and over again Jesus says to be children of God we must accept his words, his teachings, and the words of his Father. 

One of the unfortunate patterns of our family and for many families is the worry over money and finances. Most people are concerned about how they will live. For us is goes into our value as people and whether we are doing everything we can to be good fathers and provide for our families. It is easy to become obsessive about it and let is drag us down. I have spent many days is prayer over this even just this morning. If I am to be the child of God then I am to believe his words, the words of Christ in the Sermon on the Mount for example. Don't worry about what you will wear or what you will eat, for you Father in heaven knows what you need before you ask. Today has enough worries for itself. To be a child of God I need to accept, believe, and act upon these words.

Our fates will also follow the father that we choose. If we do not accept his words, which is what it means to believe in him, then we will die in our sins. Death is the fate of the devil and his children. But if we do accept his words of truth then we will be set free "for if the son sets your free then you are free indeed." Freedom and life are the future of God the Father and his children.

Oh Father, May we believe in your words today! May I live in the freedom of depending on you to provide for the needs of our family! May we all be children of God.

Cory the "playboy?" (John 7)

How much of God do we miss in life?

I remember having a conversation with a girl in high school. I was trying to get to know her a little bit and I found out on senior survival as we talked that I had a reputation that I didn't know anything about. Apparently I had gotten this reputation as a guy who would date someone and then whenever I decided I was finished with them I would simply leave them behind, love them and leave them kind of thing. The strange thing was, I was a marathon dater. As a sophomore the only dating relationship I had lasted 10 months and I was the one who was heart broken and dumped. It was “mutual” of course, we both knew that we were in different places and it was over, but she was the one who was ready for it, not me. And by the time my senior year started I had been dating another girl for more than a year. So love them and leave them wasn't really my M.O. but that was the perception among some of the girls.

This reputation was obviously not based on reality. This girl had never talked with me before, and she obviously had not been observing my actions either. We do this so often, we think we know something about a person and we just go with it, not listening and not seeing we believe what we want to believe because of hearsay or the little box of understanding within which we live.

The same thing is happening in chapter 7 of John. Jesus has been teaching, healing, and acting now for a while and there are those who believe based on these actions and words because they have been listening and seeing.  When the temple guards are sent to arrest Jesus they come back empty handed because they have listened to Jesus and tell the Pharisees, "No one speaks like this man." But the Pharisees, others in the crowd, and even Jesus' own brothers do not believe in him. They are stuck on where Jesus is from. "No prophet comes from Galilee," the council responds to Nicodemus when he tells them that they should listen to what Jesus has to say before judging him. They are unwilling to listen and they choose not to see the works of Jesus as miracles from God because they are outside of their own Sabbath box of understanding.

Jesus tells them that he comes from the Father; he tells them that he is doing the works of his father, and he tells them that he is going back to the Father to a place where they cannot find him, a place where they cannot go. But the deaf and blind minds of the people say he is from Galilee, doing the works of the devil because he heals on Sabbath, and he must be going to the people who are dispersed in Greece or something. There is more to Jesus, there is a need to believe in order to understand. The people who listen to his words and really see his miracles conclude his must be from God, “what more evidence do we need?”

The question for me from this is; what am I missing when it comes to Jesus? What don't I see? What don't I listen too? In what way am I stuck in my perception of who Jesus is? What could Jesus do in my life if I was open to him? Jesus references the man healed on the Sabbath, that his whole body was healed (see previous blog on john chap 6). This man listened to Jesus and followed his words, thus he saw the healing in his life.

May the eyes and the ears of our hearts be opened today so that we may hear with our ears, see with our eyes and turn so that we might be healed.

Belief is Work (John 6)

Is it work for you to believe in Jesus?

It has been for me. My greatest spiritual struggle over the years has been doubt. I have gone into some very dark places in the thought patterns as I think away God. There have been multiple ways and for multiple reasons that I have done this, my own sinful desire for one. If God didn't exist then I could go as far as I liked into a lustful addiction. If there is no God then I don't have to listen to what he has to say. I find at this point in my life by greatest struggle with unbelief is in God's provision. I am back in school once again and this means no income from my side only lots of output. My disbelief manifests itself in worry and uncertainty where rent will come from and then if I am in the right place with doing this whole degree thing. The work of belief has to be done to remember the call upon my life to come to this place.

In John Chapter 6 Jesus does amazing miracles -- he feeds 5000+ people on the hillside, and then he walks on water. And then he has one of the most difficult conversations for his followers. He could have keep the energy going and been made king that day. But instead he uses the great miracle of feeding so many to winnow his true disciples. The people ask him what they must do to be doing the works of God. In verse 29 Jesus answers them that the work of God is to believe in the one whom he sent. The work of God that the people must do is to believe in Jesus. Then he goes on to give them something very hard to believe. "You must eat my flesh and drink my blood." This is the work of belief. Only through this action can his followers abide in him.

Jesus clarifies in verse 63 that he is speaking of the words of life that he is offering to them. They must believe his words, they must believe in him as messiah, they must believe that as he offers his flesh on the cross for all of us that he has done so to save us. The work of God is to believe in the one whom he has sent...to believe in Jesus.

Thanks be that his is the work of God! Jesus also tells the people that those who come to him only do so by being drawn to him by the Father. So this work of belief is not all up to us, it is rather the work of God. He draws us to Jesus all we have to do is surrender.

All I have to do is surrender my sin and those addictive desires and find freedom in Christ. Is this hard? Is this work? Oh Yes, but it is the work of God in me. I must surrender to his provision in my life and do the task, which he has set before me to accomplish believing that he will see me through.

May we surrender to the work of God in our lives today and believe anew in the one whom he has sent...Jesus Christ.

Do you want to be healed? (John 5)

What was the last good idea you actually put into action?

I am a great dreamer. I can dream up new possibilities all day. We could do this and this and the other thing, would that be great!?! But how often do they actually happen? I do this with ministry all the time I also do it with physical health. I could start a new blog that would perhaps help me to loose the rest of the weight that I want to loose, but the amount I have started to put back on. I could start a fitness club or group at the YMCA. I could have an online facebook accountability group. But have a done any of these things? No. Have I lost the weight? No.

Following this line of thought there comes another question: How bad do I really want to loose the weight? Cause if I really wanted to then wouldn't I do these things, wouldn't my thoughts become action? I could just get back on my exercise and eating program and accomplish these goals -- if I really wanted to.

In John Chap 5 Jesus approaches a man who has been lame for 38 years. For 38 years he has been laying by this pool believing that if he could just get in the water when stirred by the angel then he would be healed. Jesus approaches the man and asks him, "Do you want to be healed?" The man responds with an excuse, as most of us do, "I have no one to help me to the water." Was that a yes? Jesus then gives him the chance to make his thoughts a reality. "Take up you bed and walk," says Jesus. And the man does so...he takes up he bed and walks...he has been healed! 

Do we want to be healed? Do we really? Yes I do want to be healed...am I willing to hear the word of Christ and then act upon it? Will I take up my bed and walk? 

This same sort of question is asked of the Pharisees in the rest of the chapter. Jesus challenges them with the reality that they seek the scriptures seeking eternal life and when eternal life is there before them, in Jesus Christ. They don't take the action to believe and accept him. Jesus tells them he will not judge them, but rather it will be Moses, the very one they cling to. Moses wrote about Jesus and they are not accepting Jesus so they we be condemned by the writings which they cling to. It is one thing to talk about ideas it is a whole different think to truly accept them and act upon this with belief in Jesus.

Last night we watched the original "Guess who is coming to dinner." A powerful story in the 1960's when a white girl brings home her black fiancée to me her liberal parents. The question is posed directly to the parents, will they take action on the values that they raised there daughter with and embrace the marriage or will they shrink into hypocrisy? (It's a good movie, you should watch it.)

Jesus, I want to be healed today...Dear Lord I will take up my bed and walk!

Float and Consume the story of my life (John 4)

Do you ever have a ache you just don't know how to fill?

We are on Christmas bread right now, its one of those perks of being back in school. We are visiting my parents and have a nice time with family. Two days ago after a fun filled day of decorating a gingerbread house and playing multiple board games with my sweet daughter I found that I was feeling empty. I told my Dad I was going to go to the store in our little tiny town just to get out of the house for a little while. My usual M.O. in these situations would be to find some fast food restaurant or some snack at the grocery store to console myself. I could tell though that I needed something more. I realized I had not been in the bible or prayer for a couple of days sense coming to my parents house. So I plugged in my phone to the car stereo and began to listen to the book of John. The words I heard were a substance that seemed to fill my ache of spiritual thirst.

In John chap 4 we have to story of Jesus meeting with the Samaritan woman at the well. John tells us that Jesus was weary. There are several times in the gospels where Jesus was described as hungry or tired, he really did become human, he really did get weary. On this occasion he sits down at a well while the disciples go into town to buy some food. This Samaritan woman comes along to draw water and Jesus with all the political incorrectness speaks to this woman…this Samaritan woman. He asks her for some water and then tells her of the living water that he has to offer her as the messiah. She runs off to tell the towns people about Jesus being the messiah and the disciples return with some food. Jesus however has already be refreshed by doing the will of his father. Many believe in that town because of the testimony of the woman, many more believe after hearing Jesus for themselves as he remains there for the next 2 days.

I heard a speaker the other day call out what my life usually looks like. He said that much of our life is spend in floating and consuming. This is especially true of my “free time.” When I am in school or working on some project I am pretty solid, but when I get to these open free times I start floating and consuming. I don’t know what it is I really want out of life. I don’t know how to fill the ache I feel inside. But every once in a while I recognize it for what it is. I have a spiritual thirst for living water that can only be filled by the words of Jesus and doing the will of the one who send me.

Are you thirsty today and you just can’t figure out why? May you come to Jesus and drink deeply from his words of life and find fulfillment in living a life filled with the mission of God.