Standing on the Inside
This semester, I’m taking a class called “Song Lyrics and Theology” at Asbury. We’re looking at the collision of theological ideas and lyrical/poetic expression in some great writings throughout church history, as well as writing some of our own songs/lyrics as we try to understand the task by actually composing things.
This week, we’re taking a look at the things that we learn about God from the stories and experiences of others. By putting ourselves in the shoes of other people, we gain perspective on the way the Father has revealed himself to the world. Our challenge this week is to put ourselves in the shoes of someone in the Scriptures and speak from their experiences as to who God is and what He has done.
That got me thinking: who is the person in Scripture you would most identify with if you were standing in their shoes? OR what person in Scripture have you learned the most from by looking at things from their perspective?
Fighting the Urge to Belong
For those who’ve followed along both here and at other blog sites/FaceBook, the Hope Mission trip to San Pedro Sula was incredible. As I’ve talked to people from the team, it is still hard to put into words what we saw and experienced. Debriefing this experience will take a while, and the real impact of this trip will more likely be seen in our lives than in our stories.
As I’ve been back, I’ve wrestled with stepping back into everyday life and everyday rhythms. Part of this could be my own journey of faith; I feel more and more called to foreign mission as I grow. But the real struggle, the real fight, is not allowing missions to be constrained to “what I did on (fill-in-the-blank) trip to (some-foreign) place”.
I read a great post yesterday by David Paul Dorr, where he challenges his readers to view every action of the Church (meaning the living organism that is the Body of Christ) as mission. He states,
“It’s hard to think like missionaries. It is not intuitive to see the world where WE LIVE as missions. After all, it’s home. We speak the same language, we wear similar clothes, listen to similar music. But we have forgotten, or maybe never learned, that we are really different. This culture doesn’t share similar assumptions about God, man, justice, love, righteousness, etc. We don’t have a common language anymore for these concepts.”
I thank God for trips like the one we had, because it underlined something I easily forget in my day-to-day life: choosing to serve Christ means that you will always be set apart from this world. It should never completely feel like home because the Kingdom is both already and not-yet.
And I have to resist my natural tendencies to make a home here and try to belong or blend in. Mission sets you apart (or makes you holy), and this holiness is sacrificed when I choose to fit in here. The mission of God will always be counter-cultural in some way, as will the people of God in whatever cultural context they find themselves in.
Even, and perhaps especially, in the culture in which they should most easily blend.
When I lived in Baton Rouge, I occasionally got to visit a great church there called Grace Life Fellowship. Their pastor, Frank Friedmann, has always been an inspiration to me and a great pastor to many dear friends of mine.
I remember on one occasion, Frank talking about moments in worship where lifting your hands wasn’t enough; that at times, you need to lift a defiant fist against our enemy, against the kingdom of this world, against even the parts of ourselves that seem unstoppable and sure to win.
Jesus has overcome. His Kingdom will reign forever.
This week has been full of moments where it seemed like the Kingdom of God had all but lost to injustice, sickness, poverty and death. Yesterday, Bo and I carried a woman from our distribution center back to her house in Los Bordos; we carried her because the Dengue she contracted had weakened her to the point where she could not make it back to her house. Our medical team had done what we could, but she was tired of fighting and needed medical care that she doesn’t have access to.
Bo and I traded carrying her the distance to her house. When we arrived, her house was locked, so we waited with her to prevent theft of her food and medicines while someone went to find her father, who had the key to her house there. As we stood waiting, I kept thinking about the gospel, and how foreign and even absurd it seemed: to preach that death had been conquered to a woman who was dying.
Yet, it has been defeated. The Kingdom of God is still breaking in. The Light of God will shine when all else fades. I found myself making that fist in my heart, holding it up against the darkness of Dengue and the doubt in my own thoughts:
“He has risen from the dead, trampling down death by death, and on those in the tombs bestowing life!”
This is our hope. All I could do was clinch my fist around that and hold it up.
This trip has changed me. It’s changed us, to the point where many of us don’t know how to be this version of ourselves. And that’s a good thing. I covet your prayers, as I’m still wondering what this means for my tomorrows.
Unclean.
In the Gospels, we often find Jesus talking to, interacting with, and even touching and healing the people of his world that were considered unclean.
These are the feet of a man we met yesterday at Manos Unidos. He works in the watery streets, delivering packages and finding odd jobs to get by. He owns a pair of shoes and a pair of socks, both of which are regularly wet and never leave his feet, ut of fear that they may be stolen while he is sleeping.
Seeing Chuck, Roxanne, Sandi and Elise help this man with his feet, along with many others who needed medical care, reminded me of Jesus’ compassion for those deemed unclean. Some were deemed so for breaking social codes, and others simply because they were, indeed, unclean. But this never stopped Jesus.
As these men and women poured into Manos Unidos, we encountered a world we’d never seen before; prostitution, drug-addiction, the homeless and helpless. Tim, Kevin (our translator) and I cut men’s hair yesterday. It is a stretch to say that I have any hair-cutting skills whatsoever; luckily, they only wanted a certain guard length (3,2,1 or no guard, my speciality).
One of the men in my chair was mentally destroyed due to huffing glue; as he sat,a shell of a man, and I shaved his head, I found myself wondering: can Christ really do anything for this man? And the Holy Spirit quickly responded to me: well, a haircut is a start, and there’s a meal at 3:30…
I have so far to go. Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.
Pray for Shari and Terry and the ministry of Manos Unidos. They are touching the lives of the untouchables of San Pedro Sula, and they are doing so with the same boldness of Jesus. We were blessed beyond measure to serve along side them yesterday.
His Provision Will Be Seen
Yesterday was another incredible day in San Pedro Sula. Each day we’ve been here, we’ve been in different situations of ministry where service or testimony ended up being tailor-made for our team. It reminds me of how the Lord lead Israel through the desert, going ever-before them by pillar or cloud.
For example, one of our stops yesterday was at the town square. There, it is usually required to have a permit to speak publically, though this rule is seldom followed. However, depending on which police officer finds you first, you can either be given permission or denied, and often with gringo’s involved, denial and bribery is the norm.
When we stepped off the bus yesterday and began walking around the square, looking for a place to set up shop, the first police officer we saw approached Justin quickly, then embraced him. Apparently, they’d met this man before, where he was on duty at the stadium there, and had prayed for he and his son. This man created space for us to set up, even moving some things around so we could have the best area of shade for the audience to sit in.
We saw salvation there and prayed for healing. It was a powerful time, and there was an extra confidence about us because we had already seen God go before us, making his provision clear and sure.
As I’ve thought about that simple but profound fact, that God has gone before us in the path that he calls us to, I’ve been convicted as to how often I lose sight of this. His faithfulness to provide in a way that will be seen does not necessarily mean I will see it before I move in faith. These moments are a gift, and a reminder that the Lord is faithful.
I’m also thankful for the Christ who has gone before us, the author and pioneer of our faith, the one who conquered sin and death, that we too may know this victory through his son.
But thanks be to God, who always leads us in triumph in Christ, and manifests through us the sweet aroma of the knowledge of Him in every place. (2 Cor 2:14)
Limes, Avocados and the Coming Kingdom
“The kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard seed that a man took and sowed in his field. It is the smallest of all seeds, but when it has grown it is larger than all the garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.” (Matthew 13:31-32)
We’ve been neck-deep in the agricultural teachings of Jesus this week, and this particular teaching kept replaying in my heart yesterday at Las Casitas, the all-girls orphanage where we were serving. The women on our team were teaching the older girls how to do professional manicures and pedicures; we gave them the equipment and Sandi and the crew taught them the basics. While that was happening, the rest of us were either doing crafts with the younger girls, playing futbol, or planting trees.
When I came here in April, one of the things Ashley, Justin and I discussed was the desire to put our hands to things that would extend beyond our one week visit. There are times where the mission work of an in-coming group can eclipse or even miss the immediate needs of the people in the area, and while some amount of that is inevitable, we wanted to participate in and put our efforts into things that would have more than a day or week’s impact.
We planted four lime trees, four avocado trees, two orange trees and a mango tree yesterday. The long term fruit of this effort is just that: fruit. The orphanage will be able to eat and sell fruit from these trees as long as the trees produce it. Care for trees in this area is easy due to the climate; we simply pray that these trees take root and begin to grow.
Fruit continues to carry that image of the kingdom within it as well. The Kingdom of God is here, and kingdom movement always has the future in mind. It’s never aimless, and it’s aim must always point towards rest for those who could not find it without its coming.
Or as Augustine put it,
“You have made us for Yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in You.”
In our group time tonight in San Pedro Sula, we talked a little bit about growth. James tells his readers that the Word of God shows us ourselves like a mirror image. In the same way, as one of my teachers would put it, the missional call of Scripture always calls us to realign our actions and thoughts with the character and purposes of God. Missional living tends to bring our hearts into the illuminating presence of the Triune God, where we see where our way of living is out of line with God’s character and purposes and must make a choice.
What we do with the things God brings to light in the moment is the pivot point towards (or away from) growth. Conviction, confession, repentance: these are the words of realigning ourselves to Him, and they’re tough, soul-searching things to take on. Paul Tripp compares this process to pulling weeds; in order to prepare a space for a garden, first the field must be cleared, the rocks removed, the soil tended…there’s a lot of removal and renovation that must occur before true growth can even begin.
Chuck Geveden (one of our team members) compared it to the field burnings he grew up seeing in Western Kentucky. I thought about the sugar cane fields of Louisiana. The burning readies the field for the coming harvest.
And there’s the catch: if we’re not committed to the clearing, we’ll never see the kind of growth our heart is made for, the kind of growth that the grace of God calls us towards when we see ourselves in light of the Truth.
My prayer for my team this week, and my prayer for myself, is that we have the courage to follow the Holy Spirit as our hearts are exposed, that we may be changed, transformed, and ultimately bear fruit.
The more I think about it, the more I think selling the David and Goliath story as an underdog story is heresy. This is not Rocky versus Apollo, or even Rocky versus Ivan Drago- why we are surprised when David kills Goliath is quite interesting, actually. No one reading the covenant story of God and his people sees this as a mismatch: to look at it this way is to share the same worldview as the Philistines.
They believe that the stronger, more powerful person is the better agent for the God they represent.
This kind of logic disqualifies the weak for true service; instead, the powerful and gifted are the ones through whom the kingdom and reign of their god will be shown.
Yet if it is the gods doing battle through David and Goliath, the most logical conclusion is the one at which David arrives: “the LORD does not deliver by sword or by spear; for the battle is the LORD’S and He will give you into our hands.” (1 Sam 17:47)
The Lord delivers. He is the deliverer. And God uses the “weak” to display this truth over and over, even to the point where his Son conquers death by death. He uses the ultimate equalizer to show that He alone is God, and there is no other equal:
“DEATH IS SWALLOWED UP in victory. “O DEATH, WHERE IS YOUR VICTORY? O DEATH, WHERE IS YOUR STING?” The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law; but thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.” (1 Cor 15:54-57)
This Can't Last
by Aaron Strumpel
Aaron Strumpel is the kind of worship leader the church needs, but is not the kind of worship leader a lot of the church would want; he’s unquestionably artistic, he’s explosively prophetic, and he pushes back at those who would confine worship to those structures coming out of Australia or Nashville. Some people wouldn’t even call what he does “worship”. And those people have not really listened to his music.
I first heard his work with the Enter the Worship Circle folks and their Chair and Microphone series (he did Volume 2). This album, Elephant (2009), is the first full-band project I’ve heard of his, and it’s incredible. Picking a tune off of it was hard, but I went with this one because I like the horns on it, and the lyrics.
“This Can’t Last”
Chains hold my hands
I almost think they’re friends
But my heart still can feel
Time marches in
Pretending to make me old
But my heart still can feel
Worries rule my mind
I almost think they’re right
But my heart still can feel
Tremors rack my bones
I think I might be broken
But my heart still can feel
This can’t last
World goes round
Sun will rise
In your arms I’ll be found
-Check Aaron out here.
Describing David
I’ve begin sermon prep for next Sunday; with Jeff in Phoenix, I’ll have the opportunity to preach again, and I’m pretty excited about it. The story: David and Goliath.
In my study yesterday, I got stuck on some contextual reading in 1 Samuel 16. After his disobedience and the annointing of David by Samuel, King Saul is tormented by an evil spirit, and he seeks someone to play music for him to soothe his mind. An unnamed servant of the King tells him about David, and he describes David like this:
“Behold, I have seen a son of Jesse the Bethlehemite, who is skillful in playing, a man of valor, a man of war, prudent in speech, and a man of good presence, and the LORD is with him.” (1 Sam 16:18)
…but can he cook?
Seriously, the renaissance man typography is in full effect with David. He’s a musician, he’s a warrior, he’s articulate, wise, and fun to be around. And most interestingly, this person sees David as one who the LORD is with.
And so this shepherd becomes a musician in the court of the King.
Just goes to show that leadership begins with character, not position.
