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When I was in college I used to use this analogy when I would teach about intimacy being likened to a house. It was called “don’t settle for egg rolls.”

I was at a conference this past weekend called “Onething” which is associated with the International House of Prayer. In one of the meetings God was really stirring my heart and speaking to me about the different things over the past four to four and half years that have slowly captivated my heart away from God. This is where the egg rolls come it. Read the rest of this entry »

I remember when I was a kid there was this one house that my family lived in that had a huge back yard and at the back end of the the yard there was this beautiful wood that seemed to go forever. I swear you could get lost in those woods and never come out. I used to go out into those woods and spend the whole day making this fort out of downed trees and branches and scrap metal, whatever I could find. Once that was done I was off to explore the reaches of those musty, cool woods. Everyday was an adventure. During the summer I think I ws in those woods everyday, and during the school year I would rush home from school, throw my bag down on the front porch and off I went until dinner time. I loved it! I never did find the ends of those woods. That whole season was a time of adventure. Everyday would bring something new and the fact that I had never found the ends of those woods made want to go further, explore more, go a different direction. Read the rest of this entry »

One of my favorite quotes is by a man named Andrew Peterson, he is a musician and in one of his songs he has a line that says, “I know that falling down ain’t graceful, but thank God falling’s full of grace.” You know why this is one of my favorite quotes if you have ever been in a place where you had done something that distanced yourself from the God you love and know loves you. Lets get a little real here, I am talking about sin. When we sin it separates us from God, not His love because that is impossible, (Romans 8:38-39) but rather his presence.  And if you know what it is like to be in His presence and you have tasted the goodness of it, when you loose it, it feels like you are at the bottom of the ocean and all the pressure of it weighing on you, knowing that you could come up and get away from the pressure but in the midst of it you also feel helpless.  Read the rest of this entry »

I am caught this morning. I feel as thought I have been given an opportunity to see something today that I have seen my whole life but with much more clarity. You see I hate injustice! I can’t stand it in my life or in anyone else’s life. Not to through a pity party for myself but I have experienced a fairly large dosage of injustice through the years. I don’t need to go into details. I just say that to say I can spot it a mile away. I can smell it coming like a thunderstorm rolling through the Texas plains. And when I see it I still haven’t overcome all the obstacles that stand in the way of dismantling the power of them.

Here is what I mean. When I see some sort of injustice taking place in my life, whether it is intentional or not, I have a really hard time saying anything to the person in which this encounter is taking place. Basically I get offended and hurt and the enemy of my soul sees and takes advantage of the situation and starts with an onslaught of lies about the person, myself, my life and God. It sucks to be honest and usually takes a day or so and a miraculous encounter with the grace and truth of God to get my equilibrium back. When I see it in someone else’s life I fall into insecurity about 8 out of 10 times and say nothing in defense of the person until later when the are so bound up by it they need a prayer team to help them walk through it because I might just get a little on myself. Or worse yet feel like I if I help I will be associating with someone deemed lower on the social pecking order than myself thus lowering my own position. Read the rest of this entry »

I have a problem. And the problem is that I have to fight to be wherever it is that I am. Let me explain. I have this tendency to be always looking towards the next thing. What is going on next? Where is the next happening party? Where is it that I am going to find the next round entertainment or social interaction? Or where is it that I can go to encounter God next. Can you see the problem in this kind of living?

This is not new news to me. I realized I was behaving in this kind of pattern a long time ago, but never really knew why let alone how to change it. Well then it came to me. See, God is the same yesterday, today, and forever right? (Hebrews 13:8) Well if that is the case then God is outside of our sense of time. He lives without the barrier or constriction of time. In other words, to us, He is always in our now. He comes in from with the knowledge of the past and future and interacts with us in the only time we can engage in. He is always in present time, past time and future time but interacts with us in the now or present time because that is the only time that we can be part of. We cannot go into the future or take a step back into the past as much as we wish sometimes that we could. Read the rest of this entry »

I was recently in a state that was absolutely crippling spiritually and mentally that in turn sent my emotions into a tailspin.  I couldn’t tell which way was up or down, right or wrong, good or bad.  I hate these times because usually it is because there is some sort of injustice that takes place and knocks me off mental equilibrium and then spreads throughout the rest of my being like a shock wave of an earthquake.  I know that I should be past all this offense and realize that it is probably the enemy of my soul taking advantage of one of the weakest elements of my and maybe all of our personality, our past.

All growing up we have been opposed because of the greatness that has been interwoven into the fibers of our being by the loving, gracious and foreseeing King we call Jesus Christ.  The enemy of our souls has worked all of our lives to break us down mentally so that we cannot see our lives being the way that they ought to be or God in the way that Adam first saw him, as a friend without barriers.   He has tried all of our lives to blind us from noticing the Lover wooing us into the greatest of intimate relationships.  With all of the enemies works he is trying to steal a healthy perspective.  Read the rest of this entry »

 I had a revelation this morning that has changed my life.  I was sitting in Cutters Point coffee shop downtown eating a bagel and drinking my coffee, looking out the window at the sun rise over the 509 bridge after reading a chapter in Donald Miller’s book Searching for God knows what and writing in my journal.  He was talking about Adam’s life in the second and third chapters of Genesis and how God saw that it was not good for man to be alone.  Adam probably started to get lonely having no one to engage in relationship with on a human level.  So then the Lord God started to bring to him all the animals to have him name them.  Donald says that this probably took a long time.  Just think of all the animals in the world, millions of millions.  But all this time there was no suitable helper found for Adam.  So after the gigantic task of naming all the animals was done God caused Adam to fall asleep and from there God took a rib from Adam and formed Eve.  When Adam wakes God presents Eve to Adam and the first time Moses, the writer of Genesis, writes poetry.  Moses sees that there was a breathtaking encounter that happened when Adam first saw Eve and Moses writes the words of Adam, “This is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh…” Adam waited a really long time in anticipation of finding a someone he could connect with on his level.  And when he sees Eve I can see his eyes filling with tears and his voice getting shaky and this lump forming in his throat, then he utters the poetic phrase.  This is the beginning of the romance between Adam and Eve.  Read the rest of this entry »

I have spent a lot of time in the wilderness. Whether that be in the Rockies of Colorado or the Medicine Bow mountain range in Wyoming, to the big blue Pacific Ocean off the coast of Oregon and Washington, to the Appalachian mountain ranges of Kentucky and North Carolina or a secluded little beach just outside Manuel Antonio National Park in Costa Rica. I have spent a lot of time in the wilderness because I love it. There is something that happens when I get into it. I have been thinking about this for a while now and I think about it more when I haven’t been in it in for some time. There is something that happens to my spirit when I get away from all the fabricated illumination, climate controlled environments and groans and shreeks of the city. I feel as if I am connecting to something that is beyond my control, outside of my ability to adjust to my comfort level. I feel as if I am taking a step back from all the industrial genius and civilized cannibalism that we call living, into a place that is still untouched by my dirty and overindulging hands.

Paul says in Romans 1 that “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities - his eternal power and divine nature - have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.” Now to me that clearly states that there is a transformation that happens when we step into something that “has been made” by someone with “invisible qualities” that has the power to create something out of nothing. I love that! An all powerful God revealing His invisible qualities through what? Nature. Paul must have know about this too. He spent a lot of time on foot walking through the the wild desert to get from one city to the next. He spent a lot of time at sea, and if you have ever been at sea you know that you are at the mercy of that sea regardless of how great a sailer or captain you are. And to be quite fair, I think that the sea is one of the most wild, dangerous, beautiful and inspiring places to ever meet God and see his invisible as well as visible qualities. Read the rest of this entry »

I love surprises! I think most people do. Surprises for the most part are generally great things. They take you off guard, you don’t see them coming and when they happen to you that child in you wakes and a euphoria takes place that just makes your insides tingle with a joy that is almost unexplainable.

Think about what it must have felt like for Peter and his brother Andrew to be out fishing in his boat working their tales off trying to make a living and have Jesus, this kind of newcomer Rabbi figure come up to the edge of the beach and call out to them name and say “follow me.”

I was reading Rob Bell’s book Velvet Elvis recently, and he was saying that in those times schooling was everything to a young Jewish boy. They would go through all sorts of different levels of training to hopefully end up being under one of the local Rabbis discipleship. They would have to pass all the different levels of schooling and at any point they didn’t pass one of the sections they would return home and learn the family business and that is what they would do the rest of their lives. So the picture we see in Matthew 4:18-22 is these two brothers that didn’t make the cut at some point in their schooling and returned home learned to fish. Then this Jesus turns up and shouts out to the brothers “Come, follow me and I will make you fishers of men.”

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I have been thinking today about what it is that I really want. You know that feeling that there is more to my existence than what I am experiencing right now, that there is something that I am missing. I’ve overlooked it or forgotten about it or am having revelation about it for the first time. In any case, I am finally able to put some of the pieces together and make sense of it. If I get real honest, all I want deep down is to know that there is someone out there that is truly interested in allowing me to open up to them and give them the real me. With all the worts and flaws, strengths and greatness, weakness and shortcomings, the things that are pleasurable and comforting, and those that are challenging and provoking. And seeing all this that, someone would still want to hang around me, like me, put up with me, or maybe even love me. My deepest, and I think everyones, desire is to be known for they truly are, not that that would give them the right to stay that way, but rather be given the grace to take time to change those things that are unfavorable.

To show who you truly are is dangerous. It is risky. It takes what my great grandma Mummu, who is Finnish, used to say, “life takes Sisu.” Which means guts or pride in the sense that you feel you have what it takes to do something. It takes Sisu because you could be rejected, your actions or thoughts to be thought of as incorrect, out of place or just plain dumb. To take off the masks, to drop your guard, to come out from behind the wall you’ve been protecting yourself behind and open yourself up to those around you takes real courage. And as Rob Bell explains in his book ‘Sex God’, it’s like getting naked in front of someone. You feel vulnerable, at risk of getting some real lash-back, or even feeling shame that you would do such a thing.

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