Crazy Love by Francis Chan...

I just finished reading "Crazy Love" by Francis Chan.  I'll admit openly that I was reluctant to read any of Chan's books.  I unfairly lumped him in with the Emergent crowd of too-cool-for-school, hip new pastors that I aspire to be, and being how I don't like myself too much, I figured I wouldn't like him either (read that again, but now with sarcasm - I do like myself sometimes).  This couldn't have been a more wrong appraisal of Chan.  He is now one of my heroes and, as a side note, will be at Winterfest this year in March. (Heck yeah we're going!)

"Crazy Love" for me was crazy bad, but in a good way.  As with his other book, "Forgotten God," it was terribly difficult for me to read because it points out so easily how I've become a nominal Christian (something I'm allowing God to remedy at all costs).  At one point, hours after my allotted reading time for the day, I remember stating out loud to myself "to know this and to not change is to damn my own soul."  The temptation now is to forget having read this book and seeing the light that has broken the darkness of a spirit gone to sleep.  There's nothing more easy than being spiritually benign.

I've also realized that the lukewarm people of Revelation 3 were not in fact Christian people.  It is impossible to be lukewarm and to be Christian, which Chan drills home in page after page of examples of how we too have become lukewarm.  I don't want to be God's spit! I want to bring Him the most honor and glory that can be mustered by a Spirit led life.

I really do recommend everyone read this book who is serious about loving Jesus... really loving Jesus. I've got some changing to do...

Pacifier...

My wife found her hiding behind the overstuffed olive colored chair in our living room.  The perfect cover for a four year old not wanting to be caught with her passy.  Now how she came across this passy is still not clear to us.  We’ve not had a passy in our house for nearly two years.  Annsley was a sucker (pun intended) for a pacifier.

Ever since she was able, she had a pacifier firmly in place and was to never be without it.  Pamela and I thought we’d never break her from her pacifier.  We pictured her graduating from college diploma in hand, passy in mouth, waving to her family that was trying not to be noticed to be related to the passy sucking graduate.  But through persistence and much bribery our little Annsley was broken from sucking a passy by the age of almost four.  Not bad, right?

Her dependence upon her pacifier was so much that I had to drive to Wal-Mart at eleven o’clock at night to buy a new one, and it had to match perfectly, when hers was lost; something I swore I would never do (Father, please forgive for I have sinned).  Once she had been broken of her dependence on taking a pacifier, we burned those wretches (threw them in the trash actually) in the style of spinning wheels being burned in “Sleeping Beauty.”  However, like “Sleeping Beauty,” there was one lone spinning wheel, I mean passy, that was forgotten about.  And when Annsley found the passy the other day she again didn’t want to give it up.  Her mother argued with her reminding her that she was a big girl now and didn’t need a passy any longer.  Annsley argued back that she was a big girl who needed a passy.  Her mom shot back that when her daddy got home he would be mad that she was not his big girl any more since she was sucking a passy (a low blow I thought).  But persistent, Annsley shot back that she could have it until her daddy got home.  Touché. She takes after me…

But God invented mothers and put a brain inside their heads.  “Mother” was the version 2.0 of “father” and the brain was the upgrade that we fathers didn’t get.  In a stroke of pure brilliance, my brain-headed-wife suggested that Annsley give her passy to a baby that really needs a passy.  It was a bit manipulative given the fact that we’ve been teaching our children there are kids in the world who have nothing and we need to learn to share our blessings with them.  And in the style of a slick televangelist, Pamela pleaded with Annsley shedding a tear and using the TBN tactic of “just sow your passy-seed right now and God will pour blessings of big girl stuff upon you.”  Pamela then showed Annsley pictures of all the passy starved children living in the Sudan.  At this, I suggested that Pamela stop watching TBN.  But she was able to convince Annsley to “mail” her passy to a baby girl that needed a passy. (I also then forbid Annsley to ever watch televangelists as well.  She was too susceptible to the manipulation.) So together mother and big girl found an envelope, placed the pink passy into the envelope and she helped Annsley write a letter to “Babies”.  The envelope was addressed “To Babies” and the letter said,

“Please give this passy to a baby girl who loves pink,” (her words) signed Annsley.

So mommy and big girl walked to the mailbox dropped in the letter and walked back to the house for fresh big girl cupcakes (also part of the bribe… or God’s blessings, I can’t remember which).

And do you really have to ask?  Of course when I got home from work I checked the mail, secured the contents secretly under my shirt and then placed the envelope, the letter and the pink passy in the top of our closet.  I just wanted to be sure that when my little big girl was old enough to move off to college, that she could find it in the top of our closet so she would have the passy for her college graduation day.

Scary Sister

Eye of newt, witches brew,
A ghoulish, gaggle mummy crew..
You know what scares me?

I sure do.

Nothing but my sister 
In her princess costume!

Coming Calamity...

I've gotten several comments from a reader of my blog (I didn't know I had any of those!) who was asking some questions about the posts I made about some dreams that I had a couple of years ago about coming calamity to our nation.  Since those few posts, and David Wilkerson's "Urgent Warning", with exception of the looming recession, it seems we've been business as usual in America.  Nothing so far has happened.  No calamity.  No collapse.  No decimated city.  And no further dreams or words of wisdom or knowledge or messages from God have come concerning this. Things have been quiet.

I'm no "wrath monger" so to me this is a good thing, especially to my human sensibilities because who in their right mind wants to see wrath from God?  If there are any out there, then we have no clear understanding or fear of the terrible God that exists.  Wrath isn't nice.  Wrath from such a cosmic deity as God would be the most unthinkable, terrible thing that could ever happen to a people group in any time in our human existence.  Francis Chan wrote in "Crazy Love" (and I'll paraphrase), that if our mind is the size of a soda can and God is countless vast oceans, then how do we think we can understand Him by what little water we can scoop into our can?

The silence makes me even question what I saw "in the light".  Did I really dream something from God or am I taking it that way?  Was God really speaking to me, or did I just assume those were spiritual dreams?  One wise person said, "It's easy to doubt in the dark what you saw in the light."  Which is so true.  I had no doubts what I saw at the time, but time and distance from the dreams makes it harder to hold onto especially when those dreams and sensings aren't fresh and have grown stale with age.

So what do we do???

I'm glad you asked...

First, we recognize that the problem of our distance from God is real.  We must see the ways in which we hold more tightly to this temporary world than we do His eternal kingdom. This causes us not to regard Him so highly in all aspects of our lives.

Once we recognize this, then we should pray and turn away from our clutches of this world by letting go of the things we hold more closely to our hearts than Him.  We should ask Him to help us through out our inhibitions that keep us from proclaiming Christ Jesus to our neighbors out of fear for what they may think of us.  We must learn to love those who are in love with this world and see every one as the one Jesus died for.

Second, we should prepare our hearts for whatever God's will may be.  When we try to figure out the details of such things, especially where details weren't given in prophecies, dreams, etc., we run the risk of missing God's plan because it doesn't match our imaginings or our own plan and how we see things.  Remember, He is the author of such things and if we desire to know what the author means then we should ask Him and not guess.  If He is silent, then we shouldn't make things up according to our own understandings.  Look, we don't have to be in control of every situation.  He apparently doesn't want us knowing everything so we will trust in Him instead of our own devising of how to get ourselves out of the mess we're in.  We are only capable, apart from Him, of messing things up not making them better.

And, lastly, we shouldn't despise prophetic utterances.  I have a tendency to do this even though it seems that I've written things under God's anointing that would be labeled as such.  The scriptures teach us to not despise prophecy but try everything according to the Spirit.  I'm on no ego trip, so if I've missed it then I'll be the first to admit my error and ask God to forgive me and receive my stoning under His grace.  My intentions were to report His word not to manufacture His word.  This isn't a confession that I have missed it.  Jeremiah preached for 39 years before God performed what Jeremiah was speaking for Him.  Our trust is in the Lord, and to quote Jim Elliot, "He is no fool who gives what he cannot not keep to gain what he can never lose."  When our life is given to Him completely, it's then our life has never been more sure.

I'm resigned to wait upon the Lord, teach my family to honor God in Christ with all of our hearts and live to bring Him glory upon this Earth.  Great is His faithfulness forever.

Gone-bies...

Gone-bies are Zombies
We no longer can see.




They were here before,
My dad got to the door.




But now they're no more..
They vanished through the floor...




                                      They're Gone-bies,
                                      Can't you see?!

Wishing for Winter Near November... In Alabama...

"Let me pretend like it's Winter,
So I can wear my new scarf around,
And slide on my pink gloves that Mommy has found."

"I'm in the Winter now," she pretends,
"Let me go put on my jacket."

"Daddy, can you help me put it on?
The zipper is too tough
For my fingers covered in gloves."

"Sure, baby, but just for a minute
It's much too warm still
Even though it's almost November."

"Why isn't it Winter yet, Daddy?
I want to wear my new scarf and gloves!"

"No worries, my dear.
It will be cold enough,
As soon as March is near."

Gathered 'Round...

To be gathered 'round with friends and family
Makes hearts warm as together we
Give thanks for blessings with bended knee
To our God above who, one day, we'll see
Gathered 'round with those He'll be
Who aren't here to hug so happily
Their hearts more sure than ours may be
Till we all are gathered 'round eternally

From Cold Rain...

Cold rain drizzling.
(Entombed indoors all day.)
Warm drink sipping.
(Layered blankets, a shallow grave.)
Bound heart freeing.
(Lazy day with you. Oh, keep raining!)

Elsewhere holds my heart in vain,
But here with you from cold rain.

No Hitter!

The ball was thrown
And the wind was blown
When the bat was swung
As their heads were hung
Because I just pitched
My first no hitter!