How Can I Sleep Now?

It’s midnight. I’m in the front bedroom of my parent’s house. I’m sleeping hard because I took a Tylenol PM.

Suddenly someone is banging on the frontdoor and repeatedly ringing the doorbell. Clearing the fog from my head I look out the front window and see the bright lights of a car.

Would a bad guy knock? Would a burglar leave his lights on?

I open the bedroom door and look through the glass of the frontdoor to see a man’s sillouette. Neither of my parents have come to the door.

I’m alone. Do I open the door? Do I let in this potential mass murderer?

I decide to open the door. I’m not sure I’m relieved.

It’s a police officer.

“Sir, we’ve had a report of a prowler in the area and the dome light is on in your van. Could you come out here and see if you’ve been broken in to.”

No break in but now I’m lying awake listening for the prowler to bang on the door and ring the doorbell.

Knowing the Future

Today, I read a blog post by Seth Godin about the uncertainty of the future. He listed some things that a few years ago you would have never seen coming in 2008. Who would have guessed that in December 2008. . .

1. You’d know the name of Alaska’s governor?
2. A black man whose father is from Africa would be elected president by a landslide?
3. An earthquake in Myanmar will kill more than 100,000 people and their government will do nothing.
4. The economy will be in the middle of a once in a century meltdown.
5. Starbucks will sputter, but the quality and availability of dark chocolate will get better and better.

Godin’s point is that since we can’t know what the future holds, we need to be prepared for anything.

But I got to thinking, we DO KNOW THE FUTURE and that is what we need to prepare for!  We may not know the details but we do know what will happen. As long as this world exists, there will be wars, famines, floods, and economic disasters. Babies will be born and loved ones will pass away. Fortunes will be made and lost. Nations will fall and nations will rise.

And one day it will all come to an end.

When that end comes, all that will remain is God and his love for you and me.

Another Divine Encounter

You just never know where or when God will show up and use you for something good.

Tuesday my friend and mentor John Bradshaw and I were at Starbucks. As we talked “church stuff,” we sat at a corner table away from everyone so that we could have some privacy. Please understand, occasionally pastors need to vent, complain, cry, critique, and otherwise gripe to one another. This was one of those times. We kept our voices down and tried to be as inconspicuous as possible.

All through the conversation, however, I noticed a woman glancing our way. At first, I thought she was a CPC member whose face I didn’t recognize and name I couldn’t remember (I’m terrible at names!). But she never smiled or waved or acknowledged me when we would occasionally make eye contact. So, I decided she was either a complete stranger trying to listen in on a private conversation or she was a former CPC member who didn’t like me much. In either case, I really didn’t want to talk with her.

When John and I ended our conversation we bowed in prayer. It was one of those long prayers. . . in a restaurant. . . the kind other people notice. When we finally said “Amen,” raised our heads, and opened our eyes, that woman who had been watching us was standing at our table!

I don’t know how long she had been there. I don’t know what she heard in our prayer. But the evesdropper had now invaded our space!

As we looked up at her perplexed, she said, “I’m sorry, but as you two talked I couldn’t help but hear words like ‘church’ and ‘pastor’. I really feel awkward, and I debated the whole time you were talking about whether or not I should do this, but when I saw you two praying I decided I needed to come over. . . . Would you pray for me?”

She sat down and told us about her granddaughter who was born prematurely. This grandmother had just received a phone call saying the doctors were about to remove the respirator and they didn’t know if the infant would breath on her own or not.

John and I each prayed with her. We offered to visit the family, but she declined. . . . It was obvious she wanted prayer but she didn’t want anything else we had to offer (perhaps that’s just my cynical side coming out).

In the end, she left feeling better. A seed was planted. She wasn’t ready for “church” but she was ready to reach out to God. . . . and God was already reaching out to her.

Man! Stuff like that never gets old!

A New Friend

I have a new friend I’d like you to pray for. She is a mall rat.

She is 17 years old, has a lip ring, and is somewhat simple minded. She has a sweet, gentle spirit. She begs me for free smoothies everytime I see her. She has been in her 20-something sister’s care since her sister was old enough to leave foster care. They were placed in foster care after being abused by their real parents. Her mother once kicked her hard enough while wearing boots to break a bone in her back. She hangs out at the mall for hours at a time while she waits on her sister to get off work.

She has touched my heart.

Please pray that she’ll come to know Christ. Pray that God will open a door for me to share Jesus with her.

Also, let me know if you are aware of a place that might hire her for an entry level job. It needs to be a backroom type of job but I think she would be an honest, hard worker.

Great Quote

I love this quote from Perry Noble:

Remember, worship is how you act when you are outside the church…NOT how loud you sing inside the church or how high you happen to raise your hands during a song.

Advent Conspiracy

Why Blog

Why blog?

That’s a question I occasionally ask myself. After all, writing well isn’t easy — I should know, just read my blog for lots of examples of poor writing! It takes time and work. Besides, who wants to read anything I have to write? (Apparently, there are at least two of you). Mine and many of the blogs I run across are such a waste of time. And what’s up with Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter? Isn’t all of this a tad narcissistic and voyeuristic?

Well, yes. But that is exactly why I write. I write for myself. Not for you, my dear reader, but for me.

Writing helps clear my mind, and clarify my thoughts. It helps me process my feelings and work through my pent up frustrations (you should read some of the posts that never make it to the light of day. . . no, on second thought, you definitely should not read those posts!!).

So, there you have it. This isn’t for you. It’s for me.

It’s all for little ‘ol narcissistic me.

Latin Prayers

A few days ago I wrote about a wonderful worship experience I had last Sunday. It was simple and comforting, and I was blessed to be there.

This morning I had a different sort of worship experience; and I was blessed in an entirely different way. Variety is good.

The service opened with Latin Prayers; a call to worship spoken in Latin. I only understood a word or two but there was something majestic and reverent about the experience. I felt as though I was entering the presence of God. Perhaps the tongue of angels is Latin.

We sang traditional Christmas carols (in English), but we sang them as if they were anthems. There was power in the music. We didn’t sing them particularly well because they were difficult to sing. It was as if we had to stretch ourselves to reach the height to which these songs could take us. Again, I felt as if I was in the presence of heaven’s angels.

A “homily” followed. Not a “sermon”. . . and certainly not a “message”. . . it was definitely a “homily”. There was a formality about the reading of God’s Word. The speaker didn’t read a passage to illustrate his point. Instead, the passage was the point. The speaker’s words were mere illustrations of what the Bible had to say.  The speaker had an authority about him that didn’t come from a powerful personality. Instead, it came from the expectation that he was speaking on behalf of God. We were not co-learners or fellow explorers of the Bible with him. We were the students and he was the expert. He was sharing his wisdom with us. He didn’t do this in an arrogant way, but in a comforting manner that made us feel secure in where he was leading us.

The service concluded with a soaring benediction which we were told to “receive”.  Again, we were the students, the underlings, and the speaker was speaking on behalf of God as he bestowed on us the message from on high.

I left that worship experience feeling a little higher because I was a little lower. That service indirectly reminded me that I am the created and HE is the creator. I find myself feeling secure because I know He is God and I’m not.

Cardboard Testimonies

A few weeks ago I used “Cardboard Testimonies” during a sermon at CPC. Many churches have done these moving testaments to God’s grace. Check out some of these YouTube vidoes if you don’t know what I’m talking about.

Many, many people responded during our first service by coming forward and writing their own testimonies. Interestingly, no one came forward in the second service. I’m not sure what that means, but it’s interesting.

But one response really stands out to me in a BIG way. It happened later that afternoon in my garage. My eight-year-old daughter, Kaleigh, and her friend Luka, apparently had a spiritual discussion about that morning’s sermon while they were playing. I guess they were listening more than I realized, because later that night as I was clearing out the garage to make room for our van, I found a cardboard testimony that she had written that afternoon. It tore me up!

Here are pictures of the front and back of her testimony (I’ve also included subtitles if you can’t read her handwriting or decipher her spelling).

I can’t tell you how much this thrills me; both as a dad and as a preacher. As a dad, I’m overwhelmed to know that my daughter gets it! She actually gets that God’s grace in her life leads her to obedience. She sees (in her limited, eight-year-old way) that Jesus makes things better!

As a preacher, it’s nice to know that someone is listening.

I Smell Manure

My sweet bride and I got to spend the weekend in Lubbock, TX. We were there so I could preach the wedding of two dear friends. In between final arrangements, rehearsals, talking with old friends for hours, and the wedding itself, Mimi and I got to spend lots of time running around Lubbock.

Eight years ago we lived in Lovington, New Mexico. Lovington is a little town on the east side of New Mexico, about 90 minutes from Lubbock. When people from Lovington want to go to “the city”, they go to Lubbock. I made countless trips to Lubbock from Lovington to visit people in hospitals. I took several classes at Lubbock Christian University. Both our children were born in Lubbock. Lubbock holds some great memories for us.

We spent most of this particular weekend roaming the streets. We reminisced about restaurants where we had eaten, hotels where we stayed the nights before our daughters were born, stores we had shopped at, and churches we had attended. The weather was crisp, the sky was clear, the people were friendly, and the weekend was perfect.

Lubbock is a clean, modern town. The streets are in great shape, there is construction everywhere. Modern strip centers are going up in an orderly fashion. We didn’t notice a single piece of graffiti. It’s obvious, the city is going places. The weather was crisp, the sky was clear, the people were friendly, and the weekend was perfect.

Honestly, both of us became a bit melancholy as we thought about Corpus Christi and its dirty beaches, sticky weather, backwards thinking city leaders, etc., etc., etc. We soon started wondering aloud what it would be like to move to Lubbock. Mimi even said, “When we get back to the hotel I’m going to look up the schools in the area and see what we can find out.”

I was with right with her. . . for awhile. I was with her until Sunday morning as we walked out of our hotel room to go to church. That’s when it hit me. I was hit head on with the smell of manure.

No matter how you cut it, Lubbock is a panhandle, West Texas, prairie town. Suddenly, I remembered a few other details about Lubbock. Like the spring-time sand storms. They get so bad that the paint on your car can literally be sand-blasted off. I drove  through more than one storm where I couldn’t see the lines in the road. They’re like driving through blizzards. I also remembered the terrible allergy problems I used to have. It gets hot there in the summer (yes, it’s a dry heat; but, it’s still hot) and terribly cold in the winter.

When all these memories came rushing into my mind, I told Mimi, “I smell manure! Now I remember why I don’t like Lubbock. There’s no way I want to move here.”

Of course, my dear wife took a long, deep whif of the manure filled air and said, “I’d move here tomorrow!”

Lord, help me.