Paint the Town Red...

"Paint the Town Red," a fitting expression wouldn't you say? Why doesn't America just dig up the slain students from Tienanmen Square, prop them up next to the Empire State Building and point and laugh at their corpses? Isn't that basically what we've done?

We have shown support - the ESB is the tallest standing building in NYC since the topple of the Twin Towers on 9/11 - to an Evil Empire and mock all those who protest and wish for freedom behind China's walls.

Just to fill you in, the Empire State Building is lighting it's tower Red and Yellow in commemoration of China's 60th anniversary as a nation... a "Red" Communist Nation.

Have we completely lost it as a country that stands for freedom? The hundreds of slain students and intellectuals desired what we have and take for granted all too often..., freedom from an authoritative, oppressive, communist regime. It seems that America has lost its way in standing for freedom for all peoples including the Chinese oppressed.

Here's some fun facts for you concerning the great and wonderful impacts of Communism's take-over and rise in China:

• Historian Chang Jung estimates that as many as 72 million people died due to the toll of the revolution and China's communist rule, which has taken an additional tens of millions of lives through years of war, famine, reeducation and wholesale slaughter
• During the Great Famine of 1958-1962, 36 million Chinese are believed to have starved as a result of Mao's "Great Leap Forward"
• During those years of ruin, peasants ate bark, maggots, bird droppings, human flesh — anything to survive — as government storehouses stood full with grain and other cereals

These statistics can be found in this Fox News article.

Thank you Empire State Building People... you are wonderfully blessed to be able to exercise freedom of expression in honoring a country that does not allow the same to its people... .

Sipping From the Ganges River...

There is a river that flows through India called the Ganges River.  The Hindu's believe this river to be the most sacred, holy river in all the world.  It is believed by the Hindus to originate its flow from the lotus feet of Vishnu - the supreme god of the Vaishnavite tradition of Hinduism.  It is said among the Hindu peoples that "Even a breeze from the Ganges River can wash away your sins."

However, India has launched the greatest environmental clean up in its nations history - the Ganga Action Plan or GAP in April 1985 - to clean this so-called "pure" river.  The river rises from the western Himalayas and stretches east 1,560 miles to drain in the Sunderbans delta in the Bay of Bengal.  It is estimated that two million people bathe daily in the river, as well as many cattle, also considered holy by the Hindus; they are watered there daily as well.  It is not uncommon to find rotting corpses of both humans and animals in the river.  Ecoli bacterium, dysentery and cholera exist in this river as well as many other pollutants from sewage systematically dumped into the river and pollution from industrial manufacturing plants and the hundreds of communities that share the water's borders.

This however doesn't stop millions of devoted Hindu followers from daily drinking and bathing in this river to be cleansed of their sins.  The followers also are not unaware of the pollutants put into this river, but they believe that because of its holy origins that it can never be polluted.  The secular Indian government knows this to be a problem for its people in controlling disease and due to the health concerns they rightly have, thus the launch of the GAP restoration and cleaning plans years ago.

These believers believe that a drink from the river or by bathing or even a simple breeze from the river holds healing powers both for the body and, again, to cleanse one's spirit from sin.  Our American minds cannot fathom drinking from any such source.  The booming bottled water industry proves that Americans take our drinking water very seriously and are blessed to have access to clean drinking water without having to go daily to a river to gather personal water for daily needs.

It's unfathomable that anyone could believe such dirty, disgusting, polluted water filled with dead corspes, feces and urine would ever be drank by anyone... especially for spiritual beliefs.  But we Christians drink daily from the Ganges River.  No, we don't fly or trek to India to drink from its waters but we spiritually sip from the Ganges River and commit the same heinous-to-health acts as these Hindus.  We live our lives so secularly with the only notion of a different life - or belonging to a spiritual, heavenly city - when we attend a church service once a week if it's a good week.  We have been cleansed by Christ and have sworn allegiance to walk after Him and to follow Him with all that we are yet every day we drink from the pollution of the world.  We watch movies and television and listen to songs that promote murder, espionage, chaos, brutality, adultery, fornication, mayhem, deception, homosexuality, lude jokes, innuendo, blasphemy, witch craft, atheism - and these can all be found on current prime time television and PG-13 movies.  We watch these concepts and are so inundated by these images and concepts that we think nothing of them.

This is not a diatribe aimed at readers for the sake of condemnation but a revelation received about myself.  I am careful to guard my eyes of what I watch but how many countless - seemingly innocent - romantic comedies do we sip into our hearts that promote promiscuity and then chalk them up as great romantic movies.  It has escaped us what love and romance actually are to the point that we see couples sleeping together with no thought given to marriage and then get a warm fuzzy feeling about what such a love story it was.

Daily we sip from the Ganges River of pollution and think this is okay because we are saved, or covered, or bought by the blood - or whatever term we use to excuse our natural sinful desires for such vices.  This isn't an incitation to throw our televisions, magazines, books, music, etc out the door - but should it be?  Is our slow fade into assimilation into this world keeping us from being the Church that God came - the broken and polluted Earth - to die to create? 

Someone said to me yesterday that they wished Adam and Eve hadn't eaten the forbidden fruit that caused our Earth and our forms to be cursed, bringing all our pains upon this Earth causing it to groan for redemption.  But we drink from forbidden rivers daily and that we shouldn't be so tough on the celestial first couple because we are given daily their same choice and we jump into the river and bathe.

From Above...

Catching up this morning on the status updates of my Facebook friends, I find no shortage of complaints against all the rain we're having lately in the south. I don't know the official count of how many days worth of rain we've had presently but I stopped counting at one-hundred-eighty-two days straight. I've reminded God several times that this is 4.5 times longer than in the days of Noah.

Of course this can be aggravating to our routine and our wanting to go out and enjoy the last fleeting days of southern summer, but this morning I was reminded of the drought of last year. We were on serious water restrictions and two states were locked in legal battles over how much water the other state should receive from a shared reservoir.

We were praying for rain. People did rain dances. Politicians in the worst stricken areas even called times of prayer that God would deliver rain to a normally saturated area such as ours. Now we have rain by the buckets and our response is to complain. Most of the complaining is tongue-in-cheek and harmless, but some are severely perturbed that we have so much rain as of late. My how our memories are as fleeting as the summer.

Rain was once the sign of blessing and favor but now has become a sign of inconvenience to us. Rain used to make people worship, even inventing gods - such as Baal of the Canaanites who was thought responsible for the winter rains - to praise for rainfall. We know that the One True God - Jehovah - is responsible for all of Earth's functions including rain, however the barometer of much of the church is reading a high pressure in the area of complaining.

We've lost our way a bit. We've become so secular-ly dependent on Wal Mart, Target, Publix, Bruno's, Food World, et al - that we no longer see rain as a blessing. In fact we look at the scripture, Matthew 5:45, that say God sends rain on the "just and unjust," as meaning bad things happen to good people as well as bad people - who really deserve it. We see it with sort of a "raining on our parade" mentality. This is because we've become so blessed that the natural phenomenon known as rain - which was anciently a mark of favor, blessing and prosperity by the "gods" - has become a negative connotation to us who know the true God responsible for it.

Are we so prosperous that blessings have become curses because they don't fit our agendas and wants? We are a spoiled kid crying over the two lollipops held in each hand because they aren't big enough. We must remember from where every blessing comes - our magnificent God! He pours them upon us because of His great love. It has come to the place, however that we are spoiled and in order for God to remain true to His nature as being a good Father, that He will have to do His Fatherly duty and restrain gifts from us to teach us gratitude and to remember Him as the One knowing best.

Rain, in the first place, is where we got the notion that God is up, as in "up there," or "up in the sky." Our ancient brothers who depended on God's good Earth in farming would see the rain falling down from the sky, watering their farms, producing food to keep them from famine and praised God from "where" blessings flowed. They determined that God was up in the sky because the rain falling down was so good and so vital that every good and perfect gift comes from God who must be above where the rain is.

We would do so good as to leave our modernity and progressive theological knowing to turn again our eyes upward in thanksgiving to God from whom all blessings pour... I mean flow.

Webster's Dictionary, Curiosity and an 8 Year Old Boy...

My wife and I were driving home the other night, it was late as usual, and the only child still awake was our oldest son Caleb. He's eight. From out of the dark silence of our minivan, Caleb spoke up and said, "Hey, dad... we were using the dictionary today at school and I saw the word s_x." He didn't want to commit such a heinous act as actually saying the "e" in "s-e-x-" so he just said the word "blank" between the consonants.

Pamela and I cut a quick glance at each other both thinking, "Here we go... we are going to have the talk." So I spoke up and asked him ever so nonchalantly, "Oh yeah? What's that word?"

He reluctantly said, "You know, 'sex'," very uncomfortably.

What is it about parents making things much more uncomfortable and weird than they need to be? I responded with my no-big-deal-attitude wanting to put him at ease over the word so I screamed "Don't ever say that again, ever!!! How dare you!!!"

Now calm down... I'm just kidding. I didn't do that at all; but that was the attitude of my father's generation in dealing with "the talk". Parent's used to corner the market - some still do - on making naturally-curious-kids feel much weirder over something - unbeknownst to us - that our parents frequented as often as we stayed the night with some friend or ran down the street to the corner store for a gallon of milk. I used to wonder so often why my family needed so much milk!

I responded to Caleb, "Oh, so what did the dictionary say that "it" was?"

The only thing he could come up with was "something about males and females."

With all the other kids asleep, I turned to Pamela with a quick nod and wink as I began to give him this grand fatherly explanation: "Caleb, sex is how mommies and daddies have babies. When two people love each other - a boy and a girl - they eventually get married and when they want to have children they have sex." (Ok, stop squirming in your seat, please, while you read this!) I decided this conversation wasn't the time to begin to explain to him the perils of the real world, jobs, mortgages, stress, gaining weight, night-time-TV and all that contribute to the stopping of parents making all the babies. I decided - in what I felt was a good fatherly move - to kept it simple for him.

My answer sufficed him on what sex is I guess as he jumped to another question. "Dad, does God have one girl out there for me? And how do I know who she is?"

"Phew!" Was my reply. Glad to change subjects! I said, "Yes, there's someone out there that you will meet one day, and that you two will have things in common that you both like and then you'll decide that you will want her to be your wife." I continued, "You'll be old enough to date one day when you become a teenager and you will need to be praying that God will show you the right girl for you."

He thought about that for a moment and said, "Well, there are three girls at school who I have stuff in common with."

I asked, "Oh really?"

He said, "Yes. There's this one girl who likes dinosaurs... and, I like dinosaurs. Then there's another girl who likes guy movies, but sorta girl movies too which I like. Then there's another girl that likes the same food as me." Then very seriously, as though the answer would turn his fated stars forever, "Which one do I pick?"

Pamela and I lost it at "dinosaurs", but not wanting to make him feel weird or funny about sharing with us we kept our laughs very low and under our breaths.

I told him, "Buddy, you keep praying, and mommy and I will keep praying too, and one day you'll meet a girl who likes the same movies... the same food, and, yes, even dinosaurs..., then God will let you know that she's the one that you can marry."

He seemed good with that answer. And eventually, Pamela and I know, that we are going to have to sit down with our precious, innocent little boy and explain to him "the thing" (without an "e") that will both drive him crazy and, if misused, cause him more grief than imaginable. Yet it is still "the thing" too that God designed that will bring him much happiness in marriage... when there's no stress, woes of jobs, mortgage worries, gained weight, the real world and night-time-TV. But thinking about it, it will be enjoyable then too.

It's amazing the conversations you will have with a dictionary, curiosity and an eight year old boy.

Lying Sermons... From Ezekiel 12: 17-13:8...

I've held the following message since July 20th, 2009. Yesterday while reading again in Ezekiel - the same book from where this message was inspired - I was reminded of this message and the question came to me as recorded in Ezekiel chapter 22: 1-5, "Son of man are you going to judge this bloody city or not?" After prayer, I've decided to share this despite my own personal insecurities, which was the reason that I held this in the first place.

The Enemy battles us by any means necessary and so he capitalized on my weakness of not wanting to offend or come off as one of those "weird doom-sayers". The work of His will, however, is inconsequential to our feelings or weaknesses. Where we are weak He is strong.

We as believers give up our rights to our lives and to this world. The great delusion that Satan propagates to the Church is that we are a people of rights. We have rights to nothing pertaining to ourselves and this life. We are not our own and have been bought with a price. The freedom we receive in Christ is the freedom to do His bidding here upon the Earth... we are free to serve the Master.

Lying Sermons

Shake and tremble church; eat your food nervously in fear and drink your water in terror. God declares: The judgment that I've appointed isn't for some far off day that never comes. Everything will not continue business as usual. Time is almost up and every warning that I have spoken through my servants is about to come true! "False alarms and easy going preaching is about to be a thing of the past for my church!" You lying preachers proclaim that everyone will be alright as long as they cling to their religion and to your system. Well, their religion is false. Your system is false. Everything won't be alright! I am shaking every pretense from your religion that says you can continue to host your weekly services and your assemblies acting 'Holy' all because you showed up and graced a service with your presence. Then you sit there without caring for the truth or the poor and lost. You are only there for a show or a benefit for yourselves. All you really care about is yourselves. Well, soon you will be the show. Soon all that I've warned of will happen and your flimsy self-religion will fall like paper walls and be scattered in the storms of my judgment. You soon will see that I am God! No more doing whatever it is that you want that is inconsistent of my character then pretending to be Holy on Sunday. I will expose everything that is hidden. The sins you commit behind locked doors, well, I will kick open those doors and I'm starting first with the church - my people. You fair weather preachers, so shy from offending, I'm going to offend you first. It's because of you my people are not warned. You've learned to craft sermons with skill, but know nothing of being in my presence or bringing a word and message from me. You call it that, but it's nothing more than a lying sermon sent from your shallow understanding of the way you think my word works. There are no formulas or witch-craft potions that you conjure up to invoke my favor or blessing. I am the Lord God! It's my business to be me and remain in my nature to bless and heal. I bless those according to my favor and loving kindness. I do not jump for you like the dog you treat me like - not needing me until you need me. You lying preachers who preach smooth sayings inoculate my people from the terror and judgment that is coming, you haven't lifted a finger to repair and prepare my people for what is about to happen. You will be among the ruins of a system that has failed you. The people will demand from you answers for why weren't warned and why you said everything will be okay and now it is not. Your lying sermons that once you thought held your kingdoms together is now the very thing that tears it apart. You will soon realize that I alone am God! My judgment is soon and I would warn you to repent but you won't. You don't even realize this message is for you, but you soon will. All that I have spoken I will do. I will open your eyes to who I Am. I'm through with your lying sermons that are nothing more than clever marketing for a crowd not interested in right living.

Inspired when reading Ezekiel 12: 17-13:8... .

Divorced...

Eight years ago we vowed to never forget the numbers - 9/11. The day rocked our notions that we were untouchable, that our defenses were impenetrable and we said that we would never forget.

We vowed that our lives would never be lived as they had prior to that dreadful day. For a few days, maybe for a few weeks, there was a sense of unity and our petty differences we once held with such high import and magnitude suddenly lost their vigor.

Now eight years later, we seem to be back to the same mentality we had before. It seems that we are more divided, more godless, today than ever. We have broken the vows we made with such passion on that fated day that now only lives on in faint recollections of where we were when we heard the news.

We've divorced ourselves again from God.

We began living again with our entitlement attitudes that someone somewhere owes us something; we live as a nation with diluted ideas of guarantees of belongings and possessions. These ideas of guarantees to stuff - fine homes, cars, things in general - are not guarantees at all. They are blessings... not rights. Billions of children today won't eat. Billions of people in the world do not have access to clean drinking water. There are toddlers this morning who woke up in Indian streets with no parents to care for them because they've been discarded. They will wake up on city sidewalks and make themselves busy with the business of begging for scraps and change just to survive.

It's ever apparent that we missed the message on 9/11.

Emerge... Twentysomething Ministry...

We recently re-designed our College & Career Bible Study to take on a new form... yes, a coffee shop. Of course, what else right?

We have young college students, the budding young minds of tomorrow, who need an outlet where they can look smart and cool and studious and feel connected in a bohemian-vagabond-artsy sense so we started a Thursday evening coffee shop worship service called Emerge... each week @ 7:30pm.

Emerge features acoustic praise and worship music by our Emerge Worship band lead by Aaron Griffin (vocals & guitar), Brett Hand (bass), Steven Garmon (drums, djembe) and Joseph Pierson (guitar). We also feature - twice a month - worship leaders from the area who come in a do an acoustic worship set; the likes of Kenneth Belue, Cody Stutts, Rock Sandretto and Chace Austin Butler who will be with us October 8th. We host an open mic night every last Thursday of the month and I provide a teaching or discussion each week.

The purpose of this ministry, other than the obvious ministery to this group and giving them an outlet of worship expression, is to be a community for the community in our area. One recent, yet repeated, statistic is that 85% of church-ed kids who graduate high school will actually leave the church most of them indefinitely. Only a small precentage will ever return.

Most average sized churches (65 members +/-) in our area don't have a consistent outreach to this particular group. Our near-future plans are to begin to partner with area churches to provide Emerge as an outlet for their high school graduates and twentysomethings.

My thinking on this is that if we all have a little, and we all put it together, we can all have a lot. (I know that sounds a little socialist, but in this case it's not so bad... anything we can do to reach our liberal college brothers, right?!?! Trust me, we won't be passing out Theories of Surplus Value as our weekly reader. LOL)

If you're in the area and would like to talk further about coming together on this, then I would love to get with you. You may leave a comment here - just your name and church will suffice - and I will look you up and get with you. I will be eventually getting around to each church, but don't wait on me!

Peace and blessings!

President Obama's Speech to our Children...

I read the President's speech this morning after a long Labor Day weekend wondering what my two sons would be subjected to this morning. I wondered if there would be an attempt to indoctrinate my children to socialized medicine or maybe some other liberal agenda talking point that I'm opposed to and want to protect my children from.

But after having read the speech myself, there was nothing in the speech that I objected to specifically. I know many parents considered keeping their children home from school, which - let me remind everyone - is their freedom and right. I asked the question myself not knowing what was going to be discussed in the speech. Pamela and I, however talked it over and felt that this would be a good opportunity to have our children possibly exposed to ideas that we don't support and take the opportunity to teach them why those ideas aren't the best ideas. We saw this as a teaching opportunity. We sent them on to school prayerfully asking God to guide us in teaching them what is right in His sight. Also, before having read the speech I was pretty sure that President Obama wouldn't do anything too controversial given the fact that he has been embattled all summer over Obama-care, and to do something or say something controversial would ignite a firestorm of further opposition.

I encourage you to read the speech and judge for yourself in the link to the speech given above. The speech was at moments inspiring and keeps the tone very general and encourages kids across America to pursue the American dream and to get an education despite the circumstances in which they find themselves. He also ended the speech with "God bless you, and God bless America." I find that the most controversial part of the speech given the current status of God and public schools... .