Letting Go

Jaden has a turtle. He has had it for a few months now. It lives in a plastic swimming pool. My father found the turtle and to dress it up a little he painted a peace sign on the shell. I would have probably let it go sooner but felt sorry for the turtle. I didn't want him to get ridiculed for being different. He would be the only turtle I know who walks around in the woods advocating world peace.

It is time to let it go and Jaden is having a difficult time. The turtle needs to be in the wild. It needs to roam (slowly) through the woods. It doesn't need to be hanging out in a plastic pool in a garage. But Jaden is convinced that he can give the turtle what it needs and is worried that it won't be safe outside in the woods.

Letting go can be hard. I know its just a turtle but there is a lesson. The ability to let go gives power back to the source of our power. We cannot be in a power struggle with God. Letting go of the things we are powerless to change or control is an act of trust. I am confident that God cares for Jaden's "peace turtle" and that God knows better than we do what brings "peace turtle" life. So tomorrow we will let the turtle go. Jaden will cry. But he will also learn a lesson - letting go brings life.

Quiet Time

The reason I believe in a quiet time is because I believe in more than that God exists. I believe that God longs to be intimately involved in our lives. God is personal. God wants to be included in our decision making process and we need God to be involved in our decision making process. The life of Jesus gives witness to the importance of setting aside time to commune with God. Throughout the gospels we read where Jesus goes off to pray. He separates himself from the crowd to get personal with His heavenly Father.
Another reason I believe a quiet time is important is because it establishes the boundaries of our lives. It reminds us that we are not controlled by people or circumstances that fight for our attention but instead our life is governed by the God we serve. By setting aside a time for prayer and study of God's word it reinforces the fact that the flow of our lives is not based on each and every crisis but on the overflow from our time with God.

Understanding God

This morning as I went to wake up the children I asked Cohen (three years old) if he had any good dreams. He said, "yeah!" I asked if he dreamed about me. He said, "No." "Then what did you dream about?" I asked. "God" he said. "What did God look like?" "He looked like God" Cohen said. It's like duh daddy!

A.W. Tozer says, "What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us." He also says, "the most revealing thing about the Church is her idea of God." Uncontainable. Psalm 145:3 says, “Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised; his greatness is unsearchable.” God’s greatness is beyond our discovering. Because God is infinite and we are finite, we can never fully understand God. As the psalmist says, “Great is our Lord, and abundant in power; his understanding is beyond measure” (Psalm 147: 5). In chapter 11 of the book of Romans, the Apostle Paul goes to great lengths to speak on the history of God’s plan of redemption. As a way of conclusion he says, “O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and inscrutable his ways” (Romans 11: 33)!

The uncontainable nature of God can be overwhelming when considering all we have to rely on is finite language to express an infinite nature. The incomprehensibility of God implies that if we are to know anything about God then it must be revealed to us. We understand God best by looking to Jesus. God is made known to us through Jesus. He (Jesus) says, “All things have been handed over to me by my Father; and no one knows the Son expect the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him” (Matthew 11: 27).

Even though we cannot know God exhaustively, we can know God personally. Some people say that we cannot know God personally, but that we can only know facts about God or know what God does. Others have said that we can only know God as he relates to us. I John 5: 20 says, “We know that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding so that we may know him who is true; and we are in him who is true, in his Son Jesus Christ.” The richness of the Christian life is that we can have a personal relationship with God. We have far greater privileges than knowing facts (nature, characteristics, etc) regarding God. We speak to God in prayer. God speaks through the Word. We are aware that God dwells among us and within us to bless us. I am reminded of this when the temptation comes for ministry to become routine, mundane, or less personal.

Visioneering By Andy Stanley: Faith

Chapter Five: Faith, the Essential Ingredient
Quotes:

"Faith is confidence that God is who he says he is and that he will do what he has promised to do."
"Embracing and owning a vision is in itself an act of faith."
"God-inspired visions ultimately lead back to God."
"Success often leads to self-sufficiency"
"When hopes become realities it is so easy to shift our faith onto the thing we have dreamed of and off of the One who was the source of our provision."

Evaluate Your Prayers
Stanley says, "I think it is safe to assume that most Christians are not attempting anything that requires God's intervention. If you want to know how you score on this issue, listen to your prayers and prayer requests. What do you pray for? What are the things you find yourself praying for night after night? Those are your passions. Those are the things that matter most to you. Other than heaven, and possibly your health, what are you consciously depending on God to do?"

E. Stanley Jones

E. Stanley Jones

E. Stanley JonesE. Stanley Jones (1884-1973) Eli Stanley Jones was born in Baltimore, Maryland, on January 3, 1884. He studied law briefly at City College before moving to Asbury College in Wilmore, Kentucky.
In February of 1905, Jones and three other men were having a private prayer meeting when, about 10pm, the Holy Spirit seemed to enter the room. Other students joined them, and revival spread across the Asbury campus and around the town of Wilmore. There were confessions of sin, powerful prayers, and new deeper commitments to the Lord. In his spiritual autobiography, Jones said that this revival liberated him from a sense of superiority, which prepared him for future work as a missionary, opened his ears to the Holy Spirit, and led directly to his calling to the mission field.
Jones graduated from Asbury in 1907 and became a missionary to India under the Board of Missions of the Methodist Episcopal Church. In India he met a fellow missionary, Mabel Lossing, whom he married in 1911.
Jones began his mission work among the lowest class of people. He did not attack the predominant religions of the area, but tried to present the Gospel of Jesus Christ without attaching Western culture to it. As the Methodist Board of Missions' "Evangelist-at-Large" to India, Jones conducted large meetings in Indian cities. He presided over "round table conferences" where people of all faiths could sit down as equals and share their testimonies of how their religious experiences improved their lives.
Jones' ministry soon became worldwide in its influence as he stressed that the reconciliation brought through Jesus Christ was intended for the whole world. He helped to re-establish the Indian "Ashram" (forest retreat) where men and women would come together for days at a time to explore each others' faiths. Jones would later go on to establish Christian Ashrams around the world.
His reputation as a "reconciler" invited him to many political negotiations in India, Africa, and Asia. He was a close confidant of U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the time preceding World War II, and after the war he was greeted in Japan as the "Apostle of Peace". He played an important role in establishing religious freedom in the post-colonial Indian government. He became a close friend of Mahatma Gandhi and even wrote a biography of Gandhi, a book which Martin Luther King said influenced him to adopt strict non-violent methods in the American civil rights movement. Jones had a strong influence in preventing the spread of communism in India.
Jones died in India on January 25, 1973. A prominent Methodist Bishop called E. Stanley Jones "the greatest Christian missionary since St. Paul." (From Asbury College)

My own missional theology has been shaped by two of his writings: "The Christ of the Indian Road," and "The Unshakable Kingdom and the Unchanging Person."

Here are some Stanley Quotes:

At the cross God wrapped his heart in flesh and blood and let it be nailed to the cross for our redemption.

If the Holy Spirit can take over the subconscious with our consent and cooperation, then we have almighty Power working at the basis of our lives, then we can do anything we ought to do, go anywhere we ought to go, and be anything we ought to be.

Prayer is commission. Out of the quietness with God, power is generated that turns the spiritual machinery of the world. When you pray, you begin to feel the sense of being sent, that the divine compulsion is upon you.

Many live in dread of what is coming. Why should we? The unknown puts adventure into life. ... The unexpected around the corner gives a sense of anticipation and surprise. Thank God for the unknown future.

Fear is sand in the machinery of life.

Picnic & Baptism @ LibertyHill

Picnic and Baptism @ LibertyHill

Early Morning Conversations

* I wake up at 4:00 A.M. and feel a nudge from the Lord to get up because he wants to have a conversation. I try to stay in bed. Then I hear a door slam. My six year-old gets up and goes to the restroom. So I get the message. I get up.

* I read in Jeremiah 31: 32-33 where God talks about a new covenant. He says, "I will put My law within them and on their heart will I write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people." They will not teach again, each man his neighbor and each man his brother, saying, 'Know the Lord' for they will all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them," declares the Lord, 'for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more."
For some reason as I read this I started thinking about my M. friends and how God longs to give them a new heart. How he longs to extend forgiveness to the M.

* Then I read a poem by Samuel Moor Shoemaker entitled "I Stand by the Door."
He ends:
I admire the people who go way in.
But I wish they would not forget how it was before they got in.
Then they would be able to help the people who have not yet even found the door,
or the people who want to run away again from God.
You can go in too deeply, and stay in too long, and forget the people outside the door.
As for me, I shall take my old accustomed place, near enough to God to hear him,
and know he is there, but not so far from men as not to hear them, and remember they are there, too.
Where? Outside the door - thousands of them, millions of them.
But - more important for me - one of them, two of them, ten of them,
whose hands I am intended to put on the latch.
So I shall stand by the door and wait for those who seek it.
"I had rather be a door-keeper . . . "
So I stand by the door.

* I started praying:
That I will be a door-keeper in the M world so that when Jesus is revealed I may simply be able to guide a hand to the door.

* I open outlook and the first email that is in my box is from a M connection I made a few months ago.

And all this before 5:00 A.M. on Tuesday morning.

Salaam,

Jamey

New Orleans 2009 Mission Team from LibertyHill

New Orleans 2009 Mission Team from LibertyHill

Sunday @ LibertyHIll

* Sunday Small Group: role of the conscience, difference between guilt and conviction, and other thought provoking stuff!

* Infant baptism - love recognizing God's grace at work in our lives.

* Celebrating communion - dancing to the table!

* Worship old school with new flavor. Jason and the gang did a great job.

* Message: Ruth - God's purposes are worked out through our loyalty.

* 17 join the church. 4 Professions of faith.

* Food and fellowship at the lake.

* Baptisms in the lake - cold but warmed by the Spirit of God.

* Hearing wife singing to the boys - priceless.

* Conclusion: God was all over the place today.