Discontinue Discontent

The view from atop Mt. Princeton is majestic.  Pike’s Peak is in the distance to the east and all around you are rocky, rugged mountains for as far as you can see.  It makes you feel small and insignificant.  It can make you feel helpless and hopeless – unassisted survival wouldn’t last long up here.  But it can also make you feel secure that God made all this, commands all this, and is more interested in you than all this.

On the hike up this 14er, God reminded me of just how blessed I am.  I have done more, seen more, been in more places, loved more and been loved more than I can even remember or deserve.  As the Lord flashed all these things in front of me, I heard him clearly say, “Stop being discontent.”

I’ve always been a go-getter, a self-starter, and an entrepreneurial thinker… and those things aren’t bad or ungodly.  But when the spirit of adventure causes me to complain, get angry, or jump ship and disobey the Father, that’s a problem.

Are there any of you out there who – like me – need to be reminded just how huge God is, how much he loves you, and just how blessed you are?  Perhaps God is calling you to discontinue your discontent.

Confession

“Confession is good for the soul.” – Anonymous

For centuries people have confessed.  Some confess to a priest, others confess in quiet prayer, still others confess into a journal.  Several years ago I had a close friend come to me and confess about things they had done and said behind my back.  It was a wonderful feeling to forgive them and free them from their chains of guilt.

This week we gathered to be the church together again (Wednesday nights at 6:30) and after dinner and some biblical discussion, Hailey blurted out, “I have a confession to make.”  It was obvious to everyone that this was a cork that needed to be popped!  Hailey began to unload her heavy burden of guilt regarding how she had treated someone over the phone.  After she was done, one after another, others joined in confessing their sins and shortcomings.  What a blessing it is to be part of this church God is planting!

“Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed.” – James, the younger brother of Jesus

Crazy Love free audiobook

During July only, ChristianAudio.com is giving away a free download of “Crazy Love: Overwhelmed by a Relentless God” by Francis Chan.  It’s been blessing me and challenging me.  Get it free here.

Joy in Generosity

Mario and I have been meeting once or twice a week for the past four months.  He’s a Peruvian with a strong work ethic and his first child on the way.  Mario is a young believer and is soaking up everything I can teach him about Jesus and this Kingdom way of life.

Unfortunately, Mario blew out his knee playing soccer and had to get knee surgery.  Their health insurance paid for the surgery, but didn’t cover his lost wages – Mario cleans commercial buildings.  So he and his wife were going to miss a full month of their mortgage and bills.

Now we had a choice… One could argue that Mario should have had enough in savings to handle this.  Or that there are other people in far worse situations we could help.  But Mario had become like a brother.  And we felt Jesus leading us to help.  So we asked our church plant if we could all listen to Jesus for a few minutes while we were together this week.  After that, each person came to me individually to donate what God had spoken to them to give.

Yesterday, I got to call Mario and tell him that our family of believers would be paying his entire mortgage payment!  We even had a little left over to help with a few bills and meals.  It was a little like witnessing the feeding of the five thousand… we are not a group with a lot of cash, but with everyone sacrificing and praying, God came through in an amazing way.

Mario was so grateful, and he told me that he “owes” us.  I told him this was not a loan and he is not expected to pay back a penny; that someday he’ll be in a position to help someone else.  He agreed to pay it forward.

This is the second time that our little group has been able to significantly help a brother or sister in need.  It feels so good to be obedient and used of God in this way.  We believe there will be many more of these stories to come!

Crowded House

Growth is good.  Growth is natural.  And sometimes growth is inconvenient.

For the past few months, we’ve been meeting as a new church plant in our living room.  We now have someone’s physical trainer, a couple from an hour away that found us online, and our backyard neighbors joining us as often as they all can.  We’ve had as many as 24 on one night…even the trampoline gets to be quite crowded.  Praise God!

Each week we have interesting conversation about what God is doing in our lives and what we’ve been hearing him tell us.  At this point, we are all simply learning to listen to Jesus and do what he says.  In the meantime, we are really becoming a family of Jesus followers.  Please continue to pray that we are salt and light to the people we rub shoulders with and that the life we live is attractive to them.  Along with growth in spiritual maturity, we pray we will grow the Kingdom as well.

Fun phone call in Florida

We got a phone call on Wednesday night while we were on vacation.  Our group was meeting at our house as usual, and they had some news they didn’t want to wait to share with us.

Hailey has been part of our group for close to a year now.  She was raised Muslim and is a relatively new believer.  She shared with the group that she’s felt God speaking to her a lot recently, and believes that He wants her to be baptized!

We rejoiced with Hailey at this exciting news.  We are also pleased and grateful that our group is not dependent upon our presence.  After all, we’re operating on the assumption that this is Jesus’ church, not ours; and He’s there whether we are or not.

Obviously this is an historic event for our church start-up.  We’ll be doing Hailey’s baptism in the local resevoir in early August.

Professional help

Our leadership team has now completed two meetings (via iChat) with our branding consultant, Matt Reiswig.  Having Matt’s professional guidance is already proving very valuable to us.  He’s been giving us homework, which mostly consists of answering a lot of questions about our goals and values, and the goals and values we want our church to have.  

This process of choosing a name for what we’re doing feels a bit like naming a child.  We want it to be meaningful as well as attractive, and one that we all can be on board with.  It may take us a while, but we don’t want to rush through it.

In the time we’ve spent so far, we’ve already begun to hone and sharpen all the ideas and aspirations we have for this church plant.  By the end, we expect to have an even clearer vision of exactly who we are and what our mission is to be.

We’ll keep you posted, and we look forward to the day when we can unveil the name we decide upon together.  But have patience; we don’t know how long that may be!

So All Might Eat

My friend Jen sent me a message about an extraordinary place to eat here in Denver.  It’s called “SAME Cafe” (So All Might Eat) and it has a very interesting approach.

See their website.

View the TIME magazine article about it.

We’ll go this weekend and post a review.

The Balance of Being and Doing

I’ve never planted a church before, so I’m getting a little training called the MCAP.  One of the discussions we recently had centered around the balance between Being and Doing.  In the process of becoming like Jesus, there seems to be a pendulum that swings… from studying, learning, and ministering to our needs so we can Be like Jesus to putting faith into action, going and sharing our faith, serving others, and Doing what Jesus wants us to do.  Anyway, if you’re interested in the discussion, here is the question and my response.

QUESTION:  Describe some of the challenges and tensions of finding balance between Being and Doing – This relates to the tension of integrating aspects of spiritual formation and the missional impetus to go.

RESPONSE:  I’ve always had a difficult time with discussions like this and splitting Being and Doing. For me, if you’re a soccer player, than you must play soccer. If you are a fisherman, than that means that you spend time fishing. You can’t Be a fisherman and not Do fishing. And you certainly can’t Do fishing very often without Being a fisherman. So, in my simplistic mind, you are what you do and you do what you are.

As it relates to spiritual formation I’ve noticed that some people are naturally drawn to intellectual discussions and others are more action-oriented. While my wife would be motivated to join a book club and discuss intellectual things, that would bore me to tears. I would be motivated to join a hiking club. In the first club, the members might enjoy discussing and learning about hiking and eventually take part in hiking and thereby they would be hikers. In the later club, the members would take part in hiking and might eventually read books on hiking and discuss hiking. They, too, would be hikers. So I don’t think there is a right way or a wrong way to become a hiker, but no matter how you come at it, if you are going to one day be an experienced, knowledgeable hiker, you have to eventually Be AND Do hiking.

In all of this rambling, I’m trying to say that while I understand the discussion of balance and tension of spiritual disciplines with doing missionary action, I believe that the two are so closely nit, that it’s like trying to split the double-helix of DNA. You can’t be an effective missionary without spiritual disciplines and you can’t have healthy spiritual disciplines without doing missional action. Some people might need more spurring in one side of the equation than the other, but eventually both sides should be working in tandem. My guess is that if you showed me a person who’s spiritually undisciplined, they wouldn’t be very effective in missional living. And if you showed me someone who is missionally effective, they’ve learned that spiritual disciplines are their lifeline.

Nearly Hit by a Tornado

It was beautiful outside, so we wolfed down lunch, threw the kids in swimsuits, and went to Southlands outdoor mall where we played in the fountain.  Clouds rolled in and the temperature dropped, so we put on our towels and headed out.

We got home, put the kids down for a nap, and it started to hail.  We had no idea that we had just dodged a bullet.  Today, five tornados touched down in Colorado… the worst was at Southlands mall just 15 minutes after our departure.  We’re thanking God for his protection over us as well as everyone at the mall.