Spirit Gives Birth To Spirit

I have been reading Henri Nouwen’s Discernment and he touches upon the idea of God’s time (Kairos as opposed to Chronos).  In Greek, Chronos is sequential time – the minutes and seconds that make up our lives and our collective history.  Kairos is the right or opportune time for something to happen. It is a length of indeterminate time in which everything happens.  There are many sermons and websites dedicated to this distinction, so I will not break it down any more here.   But Christians often acknowledge a desire to live on God’s time.  To do this, I think we have no further to look than the ancient Jewish custom of remembrance through festivals. The Jewish calendar is full of festivals commemorating God’s interventions in their history. The seven Jewish festivals or “feasts” in the bible are Passover, the Feast of Unleavened Bread, the Feast of Firstfruits, the Feast of Weeks, the Feast of Trumpets, the Day of Atonement, and the Feast of Tabe...

I don’t think anyone, especially Christians, should be surprised at the pope’s remarks that entertain the validity of evolution and the big bang theory, or the church’s attempts to reach out the LGBT community, or seminaries teaching us to read the bible critically instead of just taking the words on the page in English as the will of God.  Jesus followers are doing what Jesus taught us to do: to seek out those who do not know the gospel, bring the gospel (ONLY THE GOSPEL) to them stripped of all the trappings of religion, remove the disease of man’s desire to exclude and to never miss a chance to rail against religion at every chance we get.  Jesus turned the Jewish religion on its head because he saw what was in men’s hearts – the desire to know good and evil, and its result, the desire to push one’s views of good and evil on others by excluding people from the community.  Look at how he treated the Pharisees: the entrenched religious who had a vested interest in pro...

I decided that I am not going to eat tonight.  Because the homeless guy outside the café where I am sitting might not eat tonight.  It is 8:22pm and I am hungry.  The first thing I did when I decided to do this, though I haven’t eaten much today, was to go down the street to the gas station and buy a pop and smoke a bunch of cigarettes.  So I threw them out.  When I get hungry, I smoke.  So I am not going to do that anymore tonight either. The first thing I noticed when walking back to the café was all the restaurants on this street.  All warm and inviting and filled with people who were eating and enjoying each other’s company. I noticed several people smoking along the sidewalk.  I noticed the want in my heart.  Want for food, want for companionship, want for nicotine. Back at the café I settled into a Henri Nouwen book.  He describes what it means to be Beloved. “Listening to that voice with great inner attentiveness, I hear ...

You become what you behold.  Paul knew it (Col 3:2) The writer of Hebrews knew it (Heb 12:2). And Jesus knew it. When Peter walked on the water towards Jesus (Matt 14:28), it says he lost focus on Jesus, and instead began to focus on the storm around him.  As soon as he lost this focus, he began to sink. I ask myself from time to time, what my focus is.  Am I consumed with problems at work, or money, or my own inner turmoil?  Am I like Peter, so full of faith one moment, saying, if it is you, then I will walk out to meet you on the water. but then stepping out in the storm and forgetting the object of my faith?  And so I sink. I have done an experiment these past few months.  I have stopped watching TV.  Stopped reading the news.  Stopped perusing facebook and just posting a few thoughts or pics from my phone from time to time. I have switched to reading my bible and a Christian book and listening Bethel church sermons.  Alwa...

26000 children die every day from starvation or preventable illness. About 26000 children will die today, senselessly. I have seen this statistic before but yesterday I was really wrecked by it, to the point of sobbing.  I am reading a book called "Radical" on the radical love we are supposed to bring to people in need around the world.  As Christians, we are called to this.  We have a mandate to spread the gospel.  Gospel means "good news."  And I don't believe it is all about proselytizing… if proselytizing's goal is creating as many converts as we can.  No, spreading the gospel, in my opinion, is showing the love of Christ to others.  This naturally creates disciples.  And creating disciples is a slow and loving process where we care for others and God uses us, circumstance, and others that come after us to bring people into the kingdom.  Just look at Jesus… he spent most of his time discipling twelve men.  But what he did durin...

I am sitting out on the deck of the shops on Star Island, one of the Isles of Shoals off the New Hampshire coast.  The sun is warm and bright and the salty sea breeze rolls off the water and makes me feel at peace.  I am thinking back to when we arrived, earlier in the day.  We walked up to a small church that had been here in some form since the 1700's.  There was a Unitarian service going on. (Unitarianism seems to be the religion Du Jour here in this area of New Hampshire).  As they bowed low their bodies in an expression of homage to an indistinct God, the leader of the service droned on about the creator God who does not have a name but has been called many things, "God, Allah.." and so forth. I considered all the unique things about Christianity, the gospel, and my view of God based on scripture and experience.  I considered the pamphlets I had been reading on Sharia Law of Islam.  I considered the hurried apostatizing of the Jehovah's Witnesse...

So I used to believe that God was on top of a mountain, and all religions, being essentially the same, are pathways up the mountain towards God.  But what if that is all wrong? Christianity says we are not capable of making the climb.  We cannot climb to God by doing the right things or bettering ourselves through the humanistic dribble we sell ourselves from the self-help book shelves, or worse, from the modern day self-help gospel we hear in our churches.  Just do the right things, just go to church and say a simple magical prayer that you accept Jesus; just improve yourself by reading the right things or by controlling yourself.  No, we are sinners.  Dead to spirituality.  We hate God and his precepts because we are utterly incapable of not sinning. No, we cannot find our way up the mountain to God.  Instead, God came down the mountain to us. Without the sacrifice of himself, we would die in our sin.  Paul says, what I want to do, I cannot...

Where do you turn when things get rough?  When the road is hard and you don’t think you can go on?  This world is disappearing slowly, what will be left when it is gone? Why do people act the way they do?  What is the point of existence? I can tell you where I turn. When I started reading the bible I had come with many questions.  But, in it I found that I was not asking the right questions.  And when it slowly seeped into my bones, I found solace there.  And I found that to the really important questions I began to have satisfying answers. Answers for myself that gave me peace. Answers for others who were lost and disillusioned. I learned that the supreme question is “how do I love?”  And the answer for me was, “Love like Jesus loved.”  When I am burdened with questions and feel that life is unfair or I feel the burning pit in my gut, from stress and depression, or the resigned sadness that comes when I give up on little battles, one by ...

I am sitting out on the deck of the shops on Star Island, one of the Isles of Shoals off the New Hampshire coast.  The sun is warm and bright and the salty sea breeze rolls off the water and makes me feel at peace.  I am thinking back to when we arrived, earlier in the day.  We walked up to a small church that had been here in some form since the 1700's.  There was a Unitarian service going on. (Unitarianism seems to be the religion Du Jour here in this area of New Hampshire).  As they bowed low their bodies in an expression of homage to an indistinct God, the leader of the service droned on about the creator God who does not have a name but has been called many things, "God, Allah.." and so forth. I considered all the unique things about Christianity, the gospel, and my view of God based on scripture and experience.  I considered the pamphlets I had been reading on Sharia Law of Islam.  I considered the hurried prostheltyzing of the Jehovah's Witnes...

God is so big. He is bigger than your problems.  He is bigger than your disbelief.  I go through cycles where I question if Jesus is who he said he was.  And if the Christian hope (the hope of resurrection, first for Jesus, then for us, and finally for the world) is just the invention of a group of downtrodden people living in the back woods of the known world.   But there is something I never question.  I never question if God is real.  I never question that he has a personality.  I never question that he is involved intimately in my life and cares for me.  (What is man, that you are mindful of him, O God?).  I never question this, because I know Him.  I know him as well as I know my own father… possibly better.  And he is not my invention, because he is so much bigger than I am, so much more unexpected and imminent and wise than any figment of my imagination.  He is not my invention because other people tell me they k...

When you think of heaven, what is the picture that comes to mind?  Do you see a medieval painting with rotund Cherubim lounging on clouds, far from the reach of man?  Is it more down to earth than that?  Where is God?  What does he look like? Is Jesus there? In ancient Jewish cosmology, specifically in first-century Jewish culture, heaven was not a place that was distant.  It was all around them. It was in the atmosphere that surrounded them.  It was in the air that touched their skin and as close as their next breath. Somehow over the next 2000 years, popular culture (though it is not popular anymore to consider these things) succumbed to an uninformed and two dimensional rendering of heaven.  It is a heaven that is far away - somewhere where we go after we die. Somewhere that has no impact on our thinking in the here-and-now grinding monotony of the every-day, in the secular life. It is safe to say that this is not the view Jesus h...

God is not the person you might think he is.  Many people read the Old Testament and see a picture of an angry and vengeful destroyer.  This is the God experience without the personal experience of God.  It is one thing to seek God intellectually, but God likes to come to us though personal experience, and so you have a grounding from which you can seek him with your intellect.  God came to me, gently and slowly.  First he sought me out, making circumstances in my life work out for the better, redeeming my suffering (I have a condition that cost me the first half of my 20's), and bringing beauty into my life.  He came to me bearing gifts of happenstance and serendipity that were too numerous and too life changing to be mere chance.  From chance meetings with people who changed my way of thinking, to circumstances in my life coming together to provide a much better path than I could have orchestrated on my own. At the same time, prompted by these unus...

I was writing a blog post tonight, heatedly pouring out my thoughts on paper.  I had just read a chapter in “The Good and Beautiful God” by James Bryan Smith and was inspired to write.  Without much thought, I attacked the problem of modern Christians believing that suffering was the result of sin.  A large percentage of Christians, according to the book, saw a judgmental, vindictive God who repaid sin with suffering. And I had good evidence to support the pervasiveness of this view.  From people offering pat answers for horrific suffering, to televangelists proclaiming to the nation that 911 was the result of sins committed by our nation or New York or even better:  the gay lifestyle. I wanted to change people’s views and convict them of their error and prove to them that God is gracious and just and doesn't want or need suffering. But this was not what God wanted me to do.  While I was writing, I heard a still small voic...

What is the hope of the Christian message?  Is it like Plato’s followers and the Gnostics believed, that an elect are spiritual beings living in an irrelevant and corrupt world, just waiting to break these earthly bounds and obtain a purely enlightened spiritual existence?  Or conversely, is it that we are like rats trapped on a sinking ship, and there is nothing we can do save delude ourselves with a spiritual pie-in-the-sky way of thinking?  No, far from it.  Jewish thought believed that there was a day coming, when the heavenly kingdom would come down and the saved would be welcomed in, on a restored Earth, in a return to the Garden of Eden. And the early Christians found that they no longer needed to wait until the end of time and the final resurrection of all souls to see the beginnings of this. They were surprised and their world view shifted with the early resurrection of Jesus Christ: in history rather than at the end of it. And so he adopted us as sons and ...

"It is that “oh yeah” feeling when you see something like you are seeing it for the first time." 50 days after Jesus ascended to heaven, he appeared to a group of his disciples in the upper room and poured out the Holy Spirit on them.  It was like a mighty rushing of wind that settled on each person with tongues of fire. They went out and spoke to the crowds from all nations gathered in Jerusalem for Pentecost, and everyone heard them in their own language. 3000 people converted to Christianity that day.  What was this thing that could settle on people with such power? In the trinity, we speak of the father, the son, and the Holy Spirit.  I have heard the Holy Spirit is that thing that causes sight: that thing that causes the Son and the Father to lock eyes, and understand each other. So too, it causes people see with new eyes, the truth in the Gospel, God in a sunset, and all of creation. The Holy Spirit is that personality that brings clarity.  It brin...

It is an ironic twist built into reality that sooner or later, you will come to believe in Jesus Christ.  It is just a matter of if you do it now, on this side of death, or later, when you meet him at the door. To do it now, means to gain a way of thinking and living that is purposeful, comforting, and exciting.  To do it later may provide you intolerable eternal accommodations.

In 1993, after graduation from High School, I went underground.  It was not my choice. It was not fair. It was because of an illness that onset in my first semester of college.  When I came out of it, it was almost two years later.  I started a part time job.  Then someone told me about the internet.  I was shocked to find that the dial-up system which I used to spend hours on text-based MUDs (roll-playing adventures) in high school had become an international commerce phenomenon.   I was asleep when the world changed. In Luke 9, Jesus takes his closest disciples up to the mountain to pray.  The account appears in Matthew, Mark, and Luke.  But in Luke, it offers the detail: They were sleeping while he prayed. While they were snoozing, his countenance was changed to bright white like lightening and he was conversing with Moses and Elijah who talked with him about his future death in Jerusalem. (Luke 9:29-36) 1 His sleepy disciples awoke t...

At church this Easter, my pastor spoke about experiencing God. To this end, he had us do a prayer exercise.  We were to be silent for one minute and pray, “are you there?” Just then my wife, who was sitting next to me, put her head on my shoulder. In that instant, something said to me, “I am the bond between you and her, just as I am the bond between the Father and the Son.” I realized that I was being addressed by the Holy Spirit.  If you believe this is outlandish, there is a long tradition (4000 years long) of God speaking plainly to humans in the bible.  We believe he is a living personality and he gives us nudges and words that we evaluate to see if it is God in light of a relationship with him (and knowing his personality from the pages of scripture.)  This is an especially strong tradition in the Evangelical spirit-filled church of which I am a member. After prayer, we did the doxology and I got up and went to the restroom. There, standing at the urinal,...

Surroundings are important.  I am sitting in the Starbucks at Meijer’s just down the street from my house.  The noise of the blue carts on the concrete floor is deafening.  I miss the old quaint cafés in little towns like Saline.  Now it is all big box, cookie cutter and impersonal spaces.  I have been thinking about spaces recently and where I spend my time. To this end, I have been doing an exercise where I picture myself in a calming and beautiful place.  For me, it is on the rocks by the ocean in Bar Harbor, Maine.  We went there on our honeymoon, and this picture is from that moment when I looked out over the sea and was filled with such peace and tranquility, it calmed me from the inside out.  The sun was shining, and sea gulls were flying overhead.  The rocks were warm from the sun, and the crashing of the waves was soothing music as they ebbed and receded from the rocky shore. I have been going to that place several times a day...

What does grace mean?  In a secular sense it is simply a refinement of movement, or to honor someone by your presence. But it can also mean a disposition to an act of kindness. In a religious context, it is a much bigger can of worms to unpack. The concept of grace appears in the old testament as well as the new. In the Hebrew old testament, the commonly translated grace, or favor is  chen.   It occurs 69 times and means the unmerited favor with others or with God. (but in some instances, it means elegance, as in speech). In the new testament   Charis   can refer also to elegance in speech, charm, loving-kindness, or good will.  But it is most often used as divine favor with God.  As in " Do not be afraid, Mary ; for you have found   favor   with God." Lk 1:30.   The specifics of how it is dispensed or what vary from Catholicism to Protestantism.  However, we know some important things about it. Namely, that it is ...

Jesus's final prayer, in John 17 was a call for unity among Christians: " that they may be one as we are one —   23  I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me  and have loved them  even as you have loved me."   He knew that this would be a sign to the world that no other religion could bring. And where are we now? The  Center for the Study of Global Christianity   at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary estimated 34,000 denominations in 2000, rising to an estimated 43,000 in 2012. These numbers have exploded from 1,600 in the year 1900.  We are not headed in the right direction.  Jesus desired that unity would be the mark of his church. I used to look at the proliferation of denominations as continuously splitting branches reaching out the the end of the tree.  The tree, then with all it's multiplicity then makes up the church as a whole. I think this only works i...

I am reading "what good is God?" by Philip Yancy.  It is a collection of speeches he was invited to give and one was to an Alcoholics Anonymous group. In it he compares the church to AA. In AA, everyone knows that they are an addict and that they are utterly dependent on God to give them strength. To keep them from that first drink. To better their character and help them make amends to all the people they have hurt (and to the ones that they are hurting now).  Church is often quite the opposite. In church, we can be lured into the trap of the Pharisees, whom Jesus called "White-washed tombs." They looked so good to other people by keeping up appearances, but were filled with stinking filth on the inside. It is the trap of righteousness: when you begin to feel that you are better than others, closer to God, or that you know the truth when others do not. Jesus warned us of this path. But to often in church, we shy away from the truth that we are sinners and that we ...

My favorite story in the old testament is the story of Elijah's encounters with God when he escaped from certain death by the hand of Jezebel in 1 Kings 19.  Elijah barely escapes with his life, and runs out into the wilderness.  At the point of death, God comes to him and cares for him. 4  But [Elijah] himself went a day’s journey into the wilderness, and came and sat down under a broom tree; and he asked that he might die, saying, “It is enough; now, O  Lord , take away my life; for I am no better than my fathers.”  5  And he lay down and slept under a broom tree; and behold, an angel touched him, and said to him, “Arise and eat.”  6  And he looked, and behold, there was at his head a cake baked on hot stones and a jar of water. And he ate and drank, and lay down again.  7  And the angel of the  Lord  came again a second time, and touched him, and said, “Arise and eat, else the journey will be too great for you.”  ...

"Come now, and let us reason together, says the Lord" -Isaiah 1:18. How does God come to you?  Like a whirlwind, like a bolt of lightning?  This is not my experience or the experience of most of the people in the Bible, nor was it the experience of the first disciples (in Luke 5).  He comes like a living being with a personality, inviting you to stop and listen.   God did this over and over in the Old Testament. In the New Testament we see God doing the same thing through Jesus, God made flesh. Here is how he called his first disciples: He was teaching a crowd within earshot of the fishermen. First he invites you to listen. Then he asks you to inconvenience yourself for him. He got into Simon Peter's boat and asked that he put out from the shore so he could teach the people from there. (Luke 5:3)  Then, once you are willing and a little invested, he asks you to do something that you have probably done a million times before, but he invites you to see diff...