HCLM BLOG

We’ve been going through the book of Mark in our Sunday School Bible Class at 830AM and it’s amazing to see just how fast the crowds and the message/impact of Jesus grew! In just the first chapter it says the whole city was gathered at the door where Jesus was staying! Just a few verses later, (35-39) Jesus withdrew to a desolate place to get away from everyone and pray. In Chapter 2, the crowd is packed in the house so much so that the 4 guys who brought their paralytic friend had to go on the roof and lower him down in order for him to be healed. And it didn’t stop intensifying from there!

Mark’s Gospel moves pretty fast! it’s amazing how many times he uses the word “immediately” or “at once”. I have an appreciation for the book of Mark because I feel like my life moves pretty fast too. I don’t have the same pressures and the same intensity that Jesus was facing, for sure, but Mark’s Gospel just reminds me that sometimes things move “at once” or “immediately.” So the question isn’t “How can I avoid these moments altogether,” but rather, “What do we do when things get intense or move faster than we are used to?”

I am so grateful for what God has done in the last month with the life of this church. Things have been intense here for quite a while now! I feel like we are kind of in a whirlwind right now. I don’t know if things will slow down or when they will slow down. There’s always something to do or something that can be done! So if our lives reflect the pace of what’s going on in the Gospel of Mark and especially with the life Jesus had, then shouldn’t we do what Jesus did in order to cope with the busyness and the stress of a fast-paced life?

It’s amazing how many times Jesus went off or went away from the crowd. He did it to rest, he did it to pray, he did it to spend quality time with his disciples (those that were closest to him) away from the crowds. May we too pursue those moments. Moments where we rest. Moments where we pray. And moments where we take those who are closest to us and spend quality time with them! Which one of these is easiest/hardest for you?

While we hiked the Canyon a couple weeks ago a friend encouraged us to begin memorizing psalm 90.
I was skeptical.
It sounded like a sunday school assignment for a kid in the 4th grade.
but I try to submit to folks I trust when I get the opportunity.
So I took him up on it. We didn’t get all the way through it that week, but since we’ve been back I’ve been adding to it.

It’s a nice little set of truths to have in my back pocket. Besides the fact that my people have been praying that prayer for thousands of years, I’m finding it is relevant for me throughout my days too. It puts the success and failures of my life in perspective. It sets God in the right place: always older, stronger, bigger than me. But also points out his attention to me in each aspect. Yesterday as I drove around I took a few minutes to say it back to myself; it loosened my shoulders and focused my heart and mind.

I’m going to memorize more, but here’s what I have so far:

O Lord you have been our dwelling place in all generations.
Before the mountains were born or you gave birth to the earth or world,
Even from everlasting to everlasting you are God.

You turn men back to dust saying, Return to dust o sons of man
For a thousand years in your sight is like a day when it passes by or a watch in the night.
You sweep men away in the sleep of death, they are like grass of the new morning
Though in the morning they spring up new, by evening they are dry and withered.

We are consumed by your anger, terrified by your wrath.
You set our sins before you, our secret sins in the light of your presence.
All our days pass away under your wrath, we bring our years to an end like a sigh.
The years of our life are seventy, or even if by reason of strength eighty
Yet their span is but toil and trouble, they are soon gone
and we fly away.

You’ll just have to take my word that was from memory.

It’s a good question isn’t it?  It’s all God has ever wanted.  We see that in Exodus  19 when he’s making the covenant with Israel and he says “I’ll be your God and you be my people.”  The problem is we don’t like letting God be God.

Oh, sure we do, sometimes!  You know, when we talk about love, grace, mercy, and justice we can wrap our heads around a God that is all of those things.  But what about the more difficult passages of the Bible that cause a lot of doubt and uncertainty?  I just read Francis Chan’s book called “Erasing Hell.”  He wrote it in response to another book by Rob Bell called “Love Wins.”  In “Love Wins” Bell argues that amongst Christianity there are different beliefs and views about who is going to heaven and hell and he makes the case and seems to promote a view that in the end all will go to heaven.  That God’s love will eventually win and even if people don’t confess Him as God in this world, they will get to in the next one, or the one after that, or the one after that, and so on.  This is called Christian Universalism.  Chan writes against this and does a good job of being honest with what the Bible is trying to tell us.

Chan, like myself, want to believe what Rob Bell says in his book.  It makes rational sense that a God of love, grace, and mercy would eventually save all people.  It’s what he wants, after all, right?  Isn’t that what the Bible says? “That God desires all people to be saved.”  I would love to say that all people would be saved.  Why?  Because that’s what makes sense to me about God and how I understand love.

But the Bible is pretty clear that some will be thrown into the fiery (which is probably symbolic) pits of Hell while others will be with Him in heaven.  Some in, some out.  Are you okay with that?  Can/Could you believe in a God that says this?

I am convicted that many times as a pastor, I pick and choose what seems comfortable to me about God.  So I pick things like God’s love, his grace, his forgiveness, his mercy all the time.  I fail to speak a lot about his justice, his wrath, his anger, etc. because I’m uncomfortable with those things.  But, at the end of the day, I have to trust that God knows best.  That he’s got a better plan figured out than I do.

Chan goes through different sections of the Bible and says, “I wouldn’t do that.”  Like the flood in Genesis…why destroy everyone not just by killing them but drowning them.  Or in Exodus when Moses comes down from the mountain and the Israelites are down below worshipping a golden calf.  God commanded the Levites to run through the camp and slaughter their brothers and friends and neighbors.  3000 people died that day, and the Levites were blessed for their obedience, Chan says.  And then years later God commanded the Israelites to slaughter all the inhabitants of Canaan…men, women, and children…every single one of them.  He told Ezekiel to lie on his right side for 390 days, to lie on his left for 40 days, to cook food over human dung, to hold himself back from mourning over his wife’s death after God takes her, and he preaches sermons that are laced with sexually explicit rhetoric…I wouldn’t have done any of those things mentioned above! This is a tough paragraph to read through, let alone, explain.

Which is really the problem isn’t it?  That we try to explain everything we can about God when we forget to remember that He is the potter and we are the clay.  We have no right to come before Him and tell him how things ought to be and how he ought to act.  We have to take our God, the full God, even the God we can’t explain and just let Him be the God that He is.  He doesn’t need to fit into our tiny categories and boxes…his ways and thoughts are higher than ours (Isaiah 55) and we have no right to find fault with our God (see Job, especially chapter 40:1-8).

So the question is: Can you really let God be God in all things?  Have you been trying to explain Him away or picking/choosing certain parts to believe at the expense of others?  If so, repent and ask for forgiveness today.  Because there is one other thing that God did that I would never do: He came up with a solution to fix the relationship between Him and us by sending His own Son of all people!  I would never do that.  He sent His Son Jesus to die on a cross for us and suffer a brutal death so that through His defeat of death and by His resurrection we would all receive a gift we can’t explain or deserve: GRACE!  Sometimes it’s good that we have a God that we can’t explain or doesn’t do what we would do, huh?

Wow!  I’ve been amazed at what has happened over the past year.  Looking back, I’ve seen God do some beautiful things!  For some reason, that phrase just keeps coming back to me.  I can’t get it out of my mind.  When Jesus is seen, beautiful things happen.

All throughout the past year, we have seen these things happen.  Throughout the course of the last year many times I’ve said, “Man, it feels great to know that God is behind what’s happening here.”  And while that’s true because of all the things God has validated over the course of the last year, I think a more appropriate thing to say is that “God is ahead of us.”  He is the one that has brought this church together.

And this is always what God has done!  In the Old Testament in Deuteronomy 31:8, it says, “It is the LORD who goes before you.  He will be with you; he will not leave you or forsake you.  Do not fear or be dismayed.”  He knew before we were here what would happen: that teams would come together, a food pantry would start out of that, a core group would be assembled who wanted to start a church, events were planned and held in the community, a building would be ready at the exact hour that it needed to be, kids would learn that God is wild about them at VBS, that a quality band could be found, and that our place was full for our first worship gathering!  All of those things put together show me that God has even greater things in store for us as a church.

 

psalm eight is pretty great.
if feels true. do you know what I mean?
sometimes poetry can feel true before you’re even sure what it’s saying…

psalm eight is like that for me.
what I read it, the first thing that strikes me is:
beauty.
then, humility.
then, honor.
then I want to read it again…
you try

LORD, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!

   You have set your glory
in the heavens.
Through the praise of children and infants

   you have established a stronghold against your enemies,
to silence the foe and the avenger.
When I consider your heavens,
the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars,
which you have set in place,
what is mankind that you are mindful of them,
human beings that you care for them?

 You have made them a little lower than the angels
and crowned them with glory and honor.
You made them rulers over the works of your hands;
you put everything under their feet:
all flocks and herds,
and the animals of the wild,
the birds in the sky,
and the fish in the sea,
all that swim the paths of the seas.

 LORD, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!

There are so many un-joyful noises in the world out there today.  So many noises that just annoy, bother, complicate, or distract me from where I want to go.  Can you think of any in your life?  Maybe it’s a commercial promoting a product, a song you hate that is way overplayed, a whine from one of your children, or a hurtful thing someone has said to you.  I wonder what God thinks when he hears us sometimes.  Many times I’m sure I’m making anything but a joyful noise in front of Him. But I’ve got news for you: It’s time to make a joyful noise!

As I’m sitting here with just one more night before our first worship gathering, I came across a Psalm that reminds me why we are getting togehter for worship.

Psalm 95:1-7 says,
1Oh come, let us sing to the LORD;
   let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation!
2Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving;
   let us make a joyful noise to him with songs of praise!
3For the LORD is a great God,
   and a great King above all gods.
4In his hand are the depths of the earth;
   the heights of the mountains are his also.
5The sea is his, for he made it,
   and his hands formed the dry land.
 6Oh come, let us worship and bow down;
   let us kneel before the LORD, our Maker!
7For he is our God,
   and we are the people of his pasture,
   and the sheep of his hand.

He truly is worth it.  At the end of the day, there’s a lot of good things in the world, but I can honestly tell you, God deserves a joyful noise and we hope to give it to Him Sunday at 10AM at our first worship gathering at theCross.  Clearly, I don’t mean to say that we can’t make joyful noises outside of Sunday morning worship, but I do think that as joyful of a noise one of us can make on our own, when we are all making a noise in unison with one another, combined with the talents and gifts of those that can sing well and play instruments well, I believe that makes our God very happy!  That is his ultimate desire, you know, that all would make that joyful cry out to Him as their God.  That’s all he’s ever wanted:  I’ll be your God and you be my people.  It’s exciting to get to be His people together and I can’t wait to see you Sunday!

today was a wednesday that felt like a thursday.
I know they’re not that far apart, but they feel different.
Thursday is the day before friday, and we all know what friday is.
But wednesday is just the day before thursday; there’s still a lot of week left.

My weeks are not hard in a traditional sense.
I mean there’s no manual labor, blisters or heavy lifting.
I’m not a soldier, my life is not in danger. I go home at regular times, eat good food and sleep in a comfy bed.
So sometimes it’s hard to believe i have enemies, things to be rescued from, or even really places to heal.

That’s why, at first, this prayer Rob picked out for Sunday didn’t really seem relevant.
The first two verses go…

I will exalt you, LORD,
for you lifted me out of the depths and did not let my enemies gloat over me.
LORD my God, I called to you for help,
and you healed me.  

But just now I was thinking that the ease and constant pace of my life can be my enemies.
Together they pull me into the idea that this world could be enough for me, if I can just get a little more influence or power, a few more things or friends. Tonight I’m letting this ancient psalm be my prayer and asking God to save me from those enemies. I’m asking him to pull me into the truth that this world could never be enough for me; my identity and hope are certain and come from God.

at yesterday’s gathering we started a series of weeks thinking about the question, “Why Pray?”
to get us into the experience we posted prayers around the room and spent some time meditating on them.
I liked it, not enough quiet praying time in my weeks.

this week I’m going to post those prayers and think about them a bit.
Today I’m thinking about one that Rob found in paul’s first letter to timothy

I thank Christ Jesus our Lord, who has given me strength, that he considered me trustworthy, appointing me to his service.

I let that be my prayer yesterday, and this morning.
I do that my thinking on the words, what they mean and how they apply, then allowing them to be my words.
it was sort of heart warming to think on God “appointing me to his service.”

in case you didn’t realize it, God appointed you too.
There’s a section in Romans that affirms that; it says that God not only picked you, but called you. That means called you to a purpose. Not bad, and this prayer reminded me what an honor that is; what confidence God must have in you to give some responsibility.

It might be nice, to let this be your prayer today.

Well, we have 12 hours to go before VBS starts and I can’t be more thrilled at how everything has come together at just the right time!!  Literally, we received signatures on our final inspection with just an hour left on Friday and the set-up/decoration was still happening today and the audio/visual is still being figured out as I type.  Things have come right down to the wire!  For the past five weeks I’ve been unsure if what we had previously selected would happen or not.  It feels amazing to know that God made it happen.  I think by him not giving us the assurance any earlier I learned some things about God, myself, and the church God has blessed me with.

I learned that to truly trust in God with a church that He has given to me that I need to rely on Him and others and less on me.  Many things were out of my hands and could only be worked out either by God or by other amazing people who volunteered so much of their time over the past two months.

I learned that all God asks is that I work hard and do my best but not at the expense of my family.  In all of this, I have put in the amount of time needed but still maintained a good balance of being at home with a new baby, a 3 year old son, and an amazing wife!  There were days and nights and even early mornings where all I wanted to do was to work to try to advance this church as much as possible and progress it as best as I could, but I felt like what God was telling me was “Don’t hurt your family…they are your number one priority.”  I think what God was telling me in this is that the church is ultimately his and its success will not be because I’ve poured in more hours than I should have or done things excellently, but rather because He is behind it and is blessing it.

I learned that God is absolutely behind what we are doing.  How else could you explain that things happened at just the exact time (and no earlier and no later) that they had to happen in order for us to proceed with our plans.  I believe God has anointed this place, these dates, these events, and specifically, this church to bring the Kingdom of God to Lake County like never seen before!

I learned that God has blessed me with an amazing group of people.  So many people gave makes things beautiful in His timing.  Going through this has brought me closer to the group than even before and I’m honored and it’s a privelege to serve alongside so many incredible people who have volunteered.

Lastly, I’ve learned that even in His timing God makes beautiful things out of what appears to be a mess.  Our building was a mess just a few days ago…an even bigger mess two months ago.  And now look at it!  It reminds me of the verse in Ecclesiastes 3:11: He has made everything beautiful in its time.  Thank you God!

as I drove in to work this morning the sunrise was pretty sweet. bans of pink and orange and blue.

I got out of bed, as I do most mornings, just before 6a. As I did I thought, I don’t know how many more days in a row I can get up before 7. Just let me sleep ’til 7. I’ve found that I’m not eating quite as well lately as I usually do. Before I eat a snack that I usually wouldn’t I’m saying something like, “I’m pushing myself in lots of places and just not going to push myself here.” So you get the picture, I’ve been feeling a little bit sorry for myself lately.

That’s why the view of the sunrise was nice this morning. I had put Pandora on a Shane and Shane station that was singing a song about the “take my yoke upon you, for my burden is light” verse as I looked through our few high rises to see the sun coming up so pretty. It reminded me about reality: There is a steady, beautiful world coming. One day the sun will roll around to our side of the globe for the last time, everything that makes life hard will be put away and the pieces of my life that are so satisfying will explode to fill up my whole existence.

Inside that truth there is another that clicked into my brain during this morning’s drive. I am glimpsing that world all the time. Not just that great sunrise. At about 10:30 this morning Wes burst into the shop announcing, “Dad, we made you lunch!” and Ellie carried it over to me saying “lunch” as best she can. Somewhere, between me and those kids, is an emotion that is real and tied to a relationship that will endure even into that new world. Plus, I am realizing that the fun parts of work are connecting to something in me that is real and will endure. I was made to create and invest and apply my skills. When I step back for a minute I realize, God is leading toward becoming a real person. One that will endure into that new world. Most of the time it is satisfying. It’s then that I realize, my life is not burdensome–I just make it that way sometimes…