I’m reading through the Bible in 90 days right now.  I finished the Pentateuch yesterday.  One interesting verse I ran into a few days ago says, “If the prophet predicts something in the Lord’s name and it does not happen, the Lord did not give the message.  That prophet has spoken on his own and need not be feared.” (Deuteronomy 18:22 – NLT)

So in scripture when things were destroyed, like say the world or Judah or even evil, cannibalistic, homoerotic places like Nineveh or Sodom (My Sunday School teacher had a terrific imagination), typically those things were foretold by a prophet of God or even an angel of God who came beforehand and warned people that they have time to repent before God acts.  Now before you get all bent out of shape that I’m making light of the OT, please know that I believe that these things did happen and that God, though He is love, is also a God of justice.  And I believe there are plenty of times in Scripture when God reacts immediately to people’s individual sin.

But I can’t find a time anywhere in Scripture when a tragedy of epic proportions happened to a group of people, and a prophet of God reacted with “I told you so.”  “You know, I’ve been preaching for years and years about God and who He is, and now this tragedy happened, and I’ll tell you why it is, because of the way you acted. I told you so Sodom!  I told you so  Judah!  Now God got ya!”

No, welcome to the modern world of reactive prophecy.  We don’t actually have to prove that we are speaking for God, we can just talk about stuff after the fact.  Oklahoma Bombings.  September 11th.  Madrid bombings.  Tsunamis.  Hurricanes.  It’s easy for us to speak of why God did it after the fact, isn’t it?  Parents, this makes for an amazing child rearing technique.  You share with little Johnny that he shouldn’t touch the hot stove, and then when he ignores you, bring it up again.  Amidst the pain and bruising on his hand, at the moment when he’s writhing in pain,  feel free to bring a “You should have listened to me.  If you had listened to me, your hand wouldn’t be red and your skin would still be on your hand, and you wouldn’t feel the pain that you do now.”

The truth is, if God wanted you to speak to Haiti, Mr. Robertson, I respectfully ask you to consider the fact that he would have asked you to do it a month or two ago.  Yesterday was too late.  The pain was there.  The lives were lost. The homes were destroyed.  And now we pray that we all learn something about life and love and God.

But we don’t say or even infer, “I told you so.”

Please donate to help Haiti here.

Fremont Baptist Temple’s Christmas Cantatas in the 80’s and 90’s were big.  Big everything.  Big drama.  Big music.  Big crowds.  Big hair.  Practice for the choir started in the fall on Sunday evenings a few hours before the Sunday 6pm service.  From the age of 13 I sang in the choir, first as a tenor, then sometime after puberty when I didn’t sound like Charlotte Church anymore, bass.  I loved getting to sing with guys like Steve and Bill, and contributing to the production as a whole.

Sheltered isn’t even the word to begin to describe who I was in those days, because it wasn’t just that I was actually sheltered, but I embodied my parents desire to shelter me.  That is, I never really fought it.  I so wanted to not disappoint them or even impress them at times that I did my best to tow the line when it came to all things “worldly.”

So one Christmas our church performed a production entitled, “Born to die.” The story and song told of a young man who walked away from his family’s Christian tradition to go live with his friends in “the world” and no doubt do some pretty monstrous things like listen to AC/DC  and smoke and get to 2nd base and beyond with his worldly girlfriends.  Eventually our young protaganist loses his job and has no money, which is right about the time all his friends leave him for better concerts (Poison perhaps?) and his girlfriends  go looking for hotter guys with money.

Eventually he gets to the place where he gets evicted from his apartment, and has nothing but a desire to return home for Christmas, a very few dollars, and a gold watch his grandfather had given him years earlier.  So he goes to the bus station trying to get home and attempts to talk the ticket guy into giving him a cheap ticket since he doesn’t have enough money to get across the street much less back home.  A conversation ensues and the guy ends up feeling bad for the repentant hero, and barters with him to trade a ticket home for his grandfather’s gold watch, which also happens to be the last remaining worldly possession the young man has.

I remember sitting in the choir during the rehearsals and the performances refreshed to know that I would never end up like that guy, stripped of everything because of his stupid decisions which could have been avoided had he just listened to what the Bible taught.

Years later I found myself in Christian college, still towing the line and making my parents proud of me for what I was not doing, when I became a floor leader (the rest of the world calls it an RA, but the “tattle tale” structure was different there).  One of my responsibilities was called “shadowing”.  “Shadowing” was necessary when a young male or female college student didn’t tow the line via the rules of the college, and when they got caught (if it were a big enough crime, like going to the movies or talking to the person they were dating on an unchaperoned sidewalk), they would have to go through an appeals process to stay in the school.  During the appeals process, the person being “shadowed” would have to follow the floor leader around their classes or to their rooms and they couldn’t talk to anyone else besides administration or floor leaders.

I remember “shadowing” several of those people during my junior and senior years in college, and feeling sorry for what they were going through, but also encountering a certain happiness that I was glad I would never go through that situation or be like those people, having lost many of their college friends because of one or two bad choices they made when they could have just followed God’s advice.

Then I graduated from school and moved to Atlanta to become a high school history teacher.  I really loved it, but working at a christian school I got paid enough to eat and sometimes pay the rent.  My real life had started, away from the rules and the people telling me what to do and towing the line.  I remember one beautiful September day walking on the school campus feeling like I could take on the world, having put myself in a great situation, loving the co-workers and students with whom I was constantly  surrounded.  And I thanked God I was not that guy who would sell his soul and his family out for a good time, or those people who messed their life plans up by some stupid choice to go off campus and visit Hooters or other people I knew who did bad things.  I towed the line.  I did the right things.

And then, just like that, I became that guy/those people and I would never be the same.

The people who get things done for God are people who take risks.  I believe He actually created the world to be this way, and our selfish nature fights against that by putting comfort first.  And when comfort gets put first, the irony is the world becomes more broken, more empty almost, and it takes more sacrifice to rebuild that once whole, then broken world.

What do you need to risk that you would rather keep?

People and the way they connect and build one another up to become more like Christ.

This is the one reason why I love church.  Sure you have serving and teaching and organization and leadership and bearing one another’s burdens and music, and for some there might be other reasons why they love the church, but for me, that’s it.

Last night Carie and I finished another season connecting and building up (and being built up) a group of people who we have come to love as our family.  We mixed in there a few people who will be a part of our next season of community, and in the midst of all this, I’m reminded why I do what I do.  It will be another few weeks of awkward time getting to know a new group and having them get to know us.  No doubt there will be some lull in the conversation and an inability to decipher what someone is trying to say, but in the end, I’ll be back here in a year or two writing in this blog, on a natural high, telling you how I’ve come to love this new group of people.

We are expanding our influence, challenging one another to serve, love, and give more than we think, and moving to deeper levels of intimacy with the God who we serve and the Christ who makes it possible.

And in the process, we become different people

I think Thanksgiving gets shafted.

Seriously, we pay more attention to Christmas and Halloween because they make for better marketing, but Thanksgiving is one of my fave holidays.  And not just because it’s the one holiday I can watch my dad suffer through another defeat of the Detroit Lions, his favorite team.  No, I love being thankful.  So all this month I want to share with you what I’m thankful for and I’d love to get a glimpse of what you’re thankful for.

Let’s start with God.

I love His continued presence in my life.  Though I’ve fallen away at times and been as selfish as a bear holding a picnic basket, He is always there, watching, guiding, convicting, loving.  This week I fly to Atlanta to be in the wedding of one of my closest friends.   I have a love/hate relationship with that city.  I loved the year I spent there and the people that were in my life, and I hate the way I acted so selfishly.  Through all of that, God was there.  And through where I am now, He is here too.  You might even say I’d have a difficult time getting away from Him. I love that!

How are you thankful for God?  Or are you?

If I was looking from the outside at the life of a Christ follower, probably the thing that would intrigue me the most would be the “talking to God” thing.  I mean, why in the world would anyone take a chance at talking to a being that you’ve only been told exists?  You’ve never actually seen God, Marty, so why talk to him and risk being linked in with the wacky crowd?

And if I were to answer myself who is looking outside at myself who is talking to God, what I would say is that I don’t fear the risk of being labeled “wacky” for God.  I do fear misrepresenting God or presenting something I say as “from God” that is not really from God, but I don’t fear being “wacky for God.”

You see, anyone who has ever been anything in regards to the passion they have for something has been labeled as “wacky” some time or another for the object of their affection.  Whether its Heath Ledger taking on the passion of acting, Ernest Hemingway and writing, or Michael Jackson, the king of pop, these people have all been labeled “excessive” for the fields of their passion.

I have a passion for God.  And though I don’t make people drink strange kool aid or tell them a space ship is going to take us all up into heaven if we destroy ourselves together, I do have a strong desire to connect with Him more than I have for making large amounts of money or “living the good life.”  So I talk to Him.

Today there will come a point where I shut my computer off, my music, my phone, and walk away from people, and I talk to only Him.  I don’t ask Him to bring me lots of good things like Santa or to heal every person I know who is deteriorating like I’m some sort of witch doctor, but I just want him to know I’m here and I’d like to know more about Him, and what he wants me to do.  I frequently share with Him some of the great things I believe him to be, and lift Him up as the most important part of my life.

And if that makes me “wacky”, so be it.

Have you ever felt indistinguishable from everyone else?  Like you’re just another name in a seemingly endless group of names?  That’s the way I felt amidst the masses vacationing on Cape Cod this week.  No news reporters focused on my vacation time there, and I had to share the beach with countless others (I know, where’s my private beach anyway?).  But this morning I think about the ways, not that I am different, but the ways God views me.

A.  He allows me the right to become his child. (John 1:12)

B.  As I abide in Him, just as a good father would treat his son, He allows me to have fruit. (John 15)

I know that there is a lot of confrontation among Christian circles as to how one becomes one of His children or what “fruit” means in this context (coincidentally, my bank account would tell you that I don’t believe it means a lot of money), but I’m happy to place myself within these molds.  I thank God that I am His, and I pray regularly for more fruit as I stay connected to Him.

This makes me feel especially individual, yet not alone.

ps If you don’t relate to this post, it’s okay.  This is a post I’ve written to express some thoughts I had this week.  As far as I know, I’m not expressing your thoughts.  But here’s something for all of us.

Everyday on my vacation I’ve been at the beach.  It’s been so amazing, beautiful, and sunny.
I’ve read, talked, prayed, ate, enjoyed the company of friends, and wrote down many of my thoughts.
I’m excited about leaving, but thrilled that I have a few more days.
I’m in a sort of limbo where there are few things scheduled, and a lot I could do.
And this is the only thing I know:
I want God to work through me, to use me for His glory and honor

Everything else can fit into that category.

How does a phenomena that reaches the many reach one heart?

A song that becomes popular resonates with me so strongly that I can feel the pain or joy of that song?

A movie that thousands, hundreds of thousands and in some cases, millions of people will see brings me to tears and laughter like it was about me?

A book or series of books that hang onto the bestsellers lists makes me want an 7th sequel when it stops at the 7th book.

It’s simple really.  The reason a phenomena reaches out and affected me after it’s touched the many is because it has affected  me.  And I am more alike with someone who lives in Orange County, or the boroughs of Louisiana, or downtown Tokyo than sometimes we’d care to admit.  There’s not a lot, but there are some things that speak to us universally.  Why?

Because that’s how God made us.

I’m feeling quite lazy today concerning writing, but I’m all about reading, and Katie brings it in this essay on theological musings about salvation.

Read it and conversate!