Sexy Doctrine

Doctrine.
I love it. It's sexy. It's hot. It's rich. It's beautiful. Sadly, most people today don't really scartch beyond the surface of Christianity. Doctrine is something that seems not worth the effort, the work, the struggle.
That is unfortunate. The deep and weighty truths of God's Word are rich and beautiful. We have to move beyond this idea that we love Jesus simply because that is what feel like we should. You love Jesus? Great. Which Jesus? There are so many versions of Jesus we have to get after which Jesus the Scriptures talk about.
If I go up to my girl, Sarah and get on my knees and just lavish her with words of love and praise then that would be a good thing.
I could tell her that I love her red hair and her blue eyes, and that would surely be a compliment, but it would fall short on one key point. Sarah has brown hair and green eyes, not red hair and blue eyes.
I love Sarah because I know about her, I know the real her, not just some idea of her. We must recover this in the Church of Jesus. Before we go off and send people to go change the world and "serve" and become "disciples" we need to point them first and foremost towards Jesus Christ.
Who is this Jesus? What is He about? We must learn about Him before we can go off to the ends of the earth...otherwise we risk just telling people about some random Jesus that we know virtually nothing about except that we "love" Him.
Get into the Word. Read the great giants of the faith.
Read Augustine. Read Calvin. Read Luther. Read Wesley. Read Spurgeon.
Read men who are stepped in the Word, who love it, and who spent their lives protecting it and fighting for it. Then doctine, the great truths of our faith become real to us, they transform us. They are not just academic ramblings of professors and PhDs, they are truths which transform our hearts and our minds and move us toward a deeper understanding of Jesus the Christ.
So let's recover doctrine. Doctrine that dances. Doctrine that is not dead, but that right doctrine, right theology, right thinking that challenges us to move towards the cross of Christ with greater and deeper understanding of the Jesus revealed in the Scriptures.

watching the rain

Rain poured down today.  Tons of it.  

Walking outside before the storm I was bombarded with absurd gusts of wind.  It felt almost tropical, like perhaps the world's first winter hurricane was going to hit.  I don't know why this seems so important, but it was so refreshing and I just spread my arms out and took it. 

I got home just as it was spitting rain.  A few minutes later, it was an all-out downpour.  So I did what any rational person would do: opened the back door, pulled up a chair, turned on the flood lights and watched the rain.

I just sat there.  Watching it, contemplating whether or not to get my camera and just take pictures of rain drops.  I thought...you know what?  I'm going to try that stillness thing.  Just sit.

So that's what I did.  I sat, praying and thinking about what or where in the world God was calling me.

I've tossed lots of ideas around in my head.  Some big, some small.  Start up an NGO in Africa?  Latin America?  Get acquainted with inner-city Athens?  Start a business?  Find another job?  All of these things?  

I got what I didn't expect.  An answer.  And it was the most unexpected, beautiful, and decidedly romantic answer:

Pursue your wife.  

Wow.  Happy Valentines Day.  Love, God.  PS.  This year it's not just a Hallmark holiday.

It was an awesome calling.  So easy.  So perfect.  So divine.  And so deserving for Bailey.

And it makes so much sense.  As a married couple, we should be one in purpose, united in flesh and in Spirit.  We should be of the same spirit, desiring each other's goals for ourselves and the other.  Encouragement should be the hallmark of our relationship.  We should continually push the other to love God and to pursue Jesus.  

Listening to a Francis Chan talk, he mentioned that married couples should have the same mission.  This mission should be our focus and should be what we both pursue wholeheartedly and alongside one another.  An awesome image.

To be ready for that mission will take a marriage founded in nothing less than the grit and the essence of Jesus Christ.  So I'm going to do my part and spice up our relationship with a little bit of that Jesus love.

So perhaps the big be-all-end-all mission calling is coming.  But at least I know where to start.

tailgating Jesus | turning down the volume.

I yearn for a self-exodus: to flee my complacency, flee my worries, flee my doubts, flee my fears. 

I think it's my nature to try to flee these things myself.  I want to conquer complacency with ambition, worries and doubts with plans, and fears with disregard.  This, surely, is how I can get out of MY box.  With more me.  Brilliant.  But not.

But that's not how we're to do it.  That's not the way of an exodus.  In an exodus you're led out, like sheep...only I'm the runt lamb that thinks he can make it on his own.

I love Moses' response in Exodus 14.  Everyone's freaking out.  Pharaoh's army is on their heels.  And there's the...uh...Red Sea.  This was a bad idea.  And Moses just says...

"Don't be afraid! Just stand still and watch the Lord rescue you today.  The Egyptians you see today will never be seen again.  The Lord himself will fight for you!  Just stay calm".  vv13-14.

Awesome.  Yeah.  Ok.  I'm going to stay still.  That sounds good.

But it does!  It so does. 

It's amazing, too, how in their stillness God finds them and almost sarcastically is like..."Start walking through the Sea".  Duh.  

From this story it seems so simple.  All you have to do is be still and then...bam...God delivers.  

I don't think it's this simple.  But I don't think I've given it a shot.  Really being still.  Finding a place where I can just sit and find a way to fix my eyes on God's providence.  "Be still and know he is God".  I think we need to commit to being still at some point in our day, at least our week, and just sit and marinate on who God is and see if our problems don't start to dissolve.

It sounds so simple, but I know in my life, finding five minutes of quiet is something I rarely do.  Feel free to join me in 'turning down the volume'.