If you don't find yourself in a compelling story you'll be captured by a lesser one.

Standing Defiant

November 7, 2012 by 2 Comments
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I’ve been MIA from blogging and most social media the last two weeks because of some intense things going on in my life and the lives of those in my church community. All I can say is that it is a costly and expensive opportunity for myself and others to respond in obedience, faith, love, and hope.

Satan is attacking with his evil schemes to cause division and doubt and fear, but I am standing defiant. I stand in defiance against the devil’s schemes. I stand defiant against the sin in my life. I stand in defiance against the pride and the selfishness and the lies that the enemy is throwing my way. I stand defiant against the doubt and the shame that creeps into the cracks and crevices of our broken hearts. I stand defiant against that which causes division within the Church. I stand defiant against untruth because I believe firmly on the Gospel of Jesus Christ that proclaims light victorious over darkness, wholeness victorious over brokenness, life victorious over death, and hope victorious over despair.

I stand defiant.

I’ve never been more dependent upon God than I am right now and I’ve never been convinced more of my own inadequacies and His all-sufficiency. That which evil intends for harm, God uses for good. I know this because the most ruthless and intense suffering ever to happen in the history of the world (Jesus on the cross) was used for the most glorious and amazing good ever.

And therefore, I stand defiant.

There are some major train-wrecked lives out there, but standing firm on the Gospel means that wholeness and resurrection have the last word, not brokenness and death. God knows what you are going through, he knows you by name, he knows every hair on your head, he knitted you in your mother’s womb, he knows you. He is the God who leaves the ninety-nine sheep to go out and find the one lost sheep and carry them home. He is the God who runs out to his prodigal sons and greets them with a kiss, a ring, a robe, sandals, and a party. He is a God of restoration and healing. He is the God who breathes life into the dead and dry bones. He is the God who is the only one qualified to cast the first stone, and yet he chooses not to. He is the God who is perfectly holy and perfectly loving. And he knows you.

We have no reason to doubt, no reason to run and hide, no reason to be afraid. We can stand defiant against the forces of evil because our God is victorious and reigning over our sin and train-wrecked lives. God is good and faithful and he never changes. The Kingdom of God that Jesus brings and embodies cannot be scuttled by human failure, no matter what it is. Man may be shaken and failing, but that which is unshakable and unfailing remains.

Stand defiant with me.

Stand up. Stand firm. Be defiant.

Filed Under: Church, Mosaic Tagged With: , , ,

Jesus is NOT predictable

May 16, 2012 by 8 Comments
Jesus_crystal_ball

Our churches have historically preached a secure, controlled Jesus. “Come to church to be secure,” we say.

This is what the majority of Americans want to hear. They want to hear they can have security, control, and predictability. People want to know what to expect. They want to plan, predict, and use crystal ball Christianity.

But if we’re honest with ourselves Christianity is not about security, control, and predictability. It is about surrender, trust, and the unexpected.

Jesus is NOT predictable.

The minute we think we have it all figured out, the moment we stop asking questions, is when we stop following Christ. For many, Christianity is no longer a matter of trusting in God but a matter of self-confidence. From that point I believe there are one of two results:

  • Christians become depressed with perpetual woe-is-me-knee-jerk reactions because they say they are in control but experience daily chaos.
  • Christians become arrogant, hypocritical, and judgmental modern-day Pharisees.  

Both of those results are rooted in pride because they all about self-confidence, self-pity, and self-centeredness.

The focus in our communities and churches must be creating a culture where humility, teachability, and availability reigns in the lives of Christians.  If we aren’t trusting and surrendering there is nothing Christian about us.

A friend of mine just recently planned out his marriage and the beginning of his career as a chiropractor. He and his fiance were preparing to move to Georgia after their wedding but a tiny unpredictable whisper caught their attention this past month. In April they went with a team to the Dominican Republic to serve at a local school for a week. Opening themselves up with an availability to be used by God during that one week taught them to consider opening themselves up to everything.

They had control. They had security. They had predictability. But they didn’t want any of that. They wanted God. And that’s compelling.

In July they are headed to the D.R. to take jobs at the Doulos Discovery School. They are choosing to follow the unpredictable Jesus.

Scripture is full of unqualified and uncertain people who did exactly what my friends are doing. Abraham didn’t know where he was going, but he listened to the voice of God and went. David didn’t know he could slay the giant, but he went down in the valley anyway. The disciples didn’t fully understand until after Christ died, but they followed nonetheless.

Making yourself available to Jesus might not take you to another country. It might take you across town or across the hall. I don’t know, but it’s all about not knowing and trusting anyway.

Are you open to the unpredictable?

Filed Under: Faith, Mosaic

How big is your imagination?

April 25, 2012 by 4 Comments
imagination

More than anything God wants to be with us.

Yes, He wants to be with us.

God wants to be with you.

Do you believe that? I hope you do because it has been His perfect intent from the beginning and His vision for creating a perfect community hasn’t changed. At the end of this grand story God will once again restore perfect commuion with His people.

Yet, what absolutely blows my mind is that God is inviting us to live life with Him right now too. God’s hope for us in our short little lives isn’t counter-productive to His overall eternal hope of being with us.

I spent last week in the Dominican Republic with a team from Mosaic at the Doulos Discovery School. It’s hard to communicate exactly what we experienced, but I’m sure it was just a glimpse of what it will be like in heaven with God.

Whenever you go on a “missions” trip to another country you are always asked, “What did you see that you never expected to see?”

Everywhere I went at Doulos I saw people not just spending time with God but living life with God. The students, the staff, our team, they were all living life with God in obedience.

I got to spend a lot of time with the staff, which were primarily American teachers and professionals who have committed to living in the D.R. to work at the school.

When they told me their stories of why they came to Doulos, whether it was a 2-hour long story or a 2-minute story, all I heard was the word, “obedience.” These people were being obedient to God’s invitation to live life with Him wherever they went.

I asked one of them, “Did you ever imagine that you’d be here in the D.R. teaching these kids?”

“No,” they said, “never in my wildest imagination did I ever think we’d end up here. But you know what… I need to work on my imagination.”

Of all the people in the world Christians are the ones who should have the wildest, craziest imaginations. And our job, our primary focus, should be to present people with a vision of life with God that is far larger than the one we presented yesterday.

How big is your imagination?

 

Filed Under: Community, Compelling, Mosaic Tagged With: , , , , ,

Broken is Beautiful: Mosaic.

March 26, 2012 by 7 Comments
brokentiles.wheelbarrow

I am part of a church community called Mosaic. Our name is very important to us because it describes who we are in Christ.

It describes who all Christians are, really.

A mosaic is created by gathering broken, fragmented pieces and arranging them to form a beautiful piece of art. We see mosaics everywhere. But the most beautiful mosaics are the ones you see walking down the streets, working in your office, sitting in coffee shops, or at the grocery store.

A broken and fragmented life that has been restored and redeemed by Christ is just like a mosaic. And I would argue that these mosaics are the most beautiful pieces of art in the world.

What is more amazing? A perfect, beautiful, faultless creation. Or a broken and ruined creation that has been remade into something even more beautiful?

What is more compelling? That God created Adam and Eve in His own image to reflect His beauty and love. Or that God takes fallen, wretched, horrible human beings like you and me and restores them as His radiant bride?

Yeah. Mosaics are sweet. 

The Church is a mosaic of mosaics. A collection of broken lives remade and gathered together to form a whole new mosaic. What could be more beautiful?

Gather all the pieces, let nothing be wasted.  

Filed Under: Church, Community, Compelling, Mosaic Tagged With: , , ,

Satan Wants Your Mind, Not Your Behavior.

March 20, 2012 by 2 Comments
lucid-dreaming-inception-totem

Mastery of the Mind.

The movie Inception has a complex plot line based around the simple concept that ideas can be planted into someone’s mind. Once the foreign idea is planted, or “incepted”, by the intruders the person begins to believe the idea was their own. They wake up thinking the lie is actually the truth. 

The intruders don’t have to force their opponent to do something they want, the simply get them to believe they came up with the idea on their own. Once they have mastery over their mind, they have mastery over their behavior. 

It is a lot like spiritual warfare.

I believe spiritual warfare is real thing, and because of that we need to let Jesus be our functional fighting Savior.

But, this is a different kind of warfare.

The world was a hostile place for the early Christians. They woke up each morning to a world that was persecuting them. Today, we don’t wake up to a world trying to persecute us, but to a world trying to seduce us. It’s a completely different kind of hostility.

We must believe that spiritual warfare takes place in the mind. It isn’t a fight taking place in a ring or a battle out in an open field. It’s a battle fought primarily in the mind. Evil seeks to gain mastery over your mind, not your behavior.

Jesus called Satan the father of lies. His goal is to secure lies in our minds and to make them seem solid and stunning. Because once he has our minds and we think lies are truth – our behavior follows soon after that.

In a Perfect Paradise.

Just look at how Satan approached Eve in the garden of Eden – which is the very first record of spiritual warfare.

Satan’s one goal wasn’t to get Eve to eat the fruit, but to doubt the goodness of God. Isn’t it interesting that the first sin wasn’t a horrific act like murder or rape or genocide, but the sin that sent all humanity in a tragic downward spiral was simply a lack of trust in the goodness of God fueled by a lie.

In a perfect paradise, Satan came with a delicate subtlety and presented the truth as something to be doubted. Adam and Eve believed the lie.

The Apostle Paul calls the devil a “schemer” and Genesis 3 says he is craftier than all the creatures. His assaults are sudden, quick, secretive, and cunning with the aim to throw his opponents off guard and catch them by surprise. Trickery, deception, intrigue, and seduction are his methods, and he is good at it.

In a Barren Wilderness.

In Matthew chapter 4, Jesus is led by the Spirit out into the wilderness to fast and pray for 40 days.

With Jesus tired, weak, and hungry Satan shows up to appeal to his deepest desires and worldly needs. He is there to seduce him, the same tactic used in the Garden of Eden.

Jesus has all he needs in the Father but Satan tries to convince him otherwise and lures him with sustenance and power. This is a perfect example of what spiritual warfare is like. Evil has no power over us so it takes what you already have in God – security, sustenance, wealth (real wealth), power, and righteousness  – and tries to get to you buy into a counterfeit version of it. 

Unlike the result in the Garden of Eden, Jesus wins the battle against the devil by using truth to combat the lies of the devil. Jesus, the living, breathing, and walking truth of God, is the only person who can win against the corrupt schemes of the devil. 

In Jesus’ most extreme experiences of spiritual warfare – both in the wilderness and when he was dying on the cross – he quotes Scripture. Jesus uses the words of God as his weapon against the devil.

Truth, the very words of God, is the only weapon against lies.

The Battle is Won with Truth.

Compare the events in the Garden of Eden with the events in the barren wilderness. Eve misquotes the words of God when it matters most and Jesus calls on the accurate truth of God in the heat of the battle. I’m not singling out Eve here. Adam was right there with her and by saying nothing at all means he was deceived by the father of lies more so than Eve.

Adam and Eve were tested in a perfect paradise and lost, Christ was tested in the barren wilderness and won. Even in the best circumstances you cannot resist the devil without employing the mind of Christ.

The ultimate truth is that God is good and we can trust Him. The ultimate lie is that we have reason to doubt God and He can’t be trusted.

Putting Christ in the ring for you as your functional fighting Savior is a matter of recognizing the lies for what they are and reminding yourself of the true goodness of God.

 

What lie are you believing, and what truth do you need replace it with?

Filed Under: Faith, Mosaic, Scripture Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Full-Time, Full-Time Ministry

February 23, 2012 by 18 Comments

The Calling.

The calling in my life has always been clear.

There has never been a doubt that God called me to be in full-time ministry. However, I always thought my ministry included having a full-time job in the business world.

On March 1st, though, I am stepping out of my employment as a quality engineer at a electronics manufacturer and will be going full-time in full-time ministry with my church.

Over the past two years I’ve felt God preparing me for something big and I kept asking, “What is it God? What are you preparing me for? Where do you want me, where do you want my family? Where are you leading us?”

A lot of things were changing and stirring inside of me. I started writing a lot and wondering whether or not God wanted me to be a writer. I started questioning whether or not God wanted me to quit my job and be self-employed. Ultimately, I realized God was strengthening my already existing passion for full-time ministry.

Usually when a person feels a clear call to full-time ministry the logical next step is to put together a resume of sorts, look for church communities that are hiring, and pray for God to open up an opportunity. That wasn’t what God was telling me to do.

I have been fully invested in my local church community, Mosaic NEO, for the past six and a half years. The calling to serve at Mosaic is not what God wants to change. What I realized is that God wasn’t calling me into something new but He was calling out of something. God was asking me to surrender and trust in Him.  

God was calling me out of my job and I’ve never been more certain about anything in my life.

The next chapter.

The community of Mosaic has been operating for more than six years with only one full-time staff person, our lead pastor. Because the community has grown over the years and our staff hasn’t we’ve felt the growing pains in many different ways. Just a few of those pains were felt in the areas of:

  • Leadership development
  • Discipleship
  • Administration/Organization
  • Accountability

This next chapter of my life will be centered around equipping, empowering, and unleashing the community of Mosaic in these areas and more. I am excited for what God is going to do in and through our community with the advancement of His kingdom. Having a front row seat to what God is doing in people’s lives is what excites me the most.

God’s people must not only believe in the love and grace of God, but also be armed with God’s love and grace. I am ready to surrender to Him in the arming of His people.

The prayer of my heart.

It is difficult to write about myself and what I’m doing because the desire of my heart is for God’s glory to be on display. The prayer of my heart for my small little community in northeast Ohio is the same prayer that Paul prayed for the Ephesians.

For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.

- Ephesians 3:14-21

What is God preparing you for? What is the calling of your life? Are you doing it?

Filed Under: Church, Family, Mosaic Tagged With: , ,

The Little Life-Saving Station

June 8, 2011 by 15 Comments
shipwreck

On a dangerous seacoast where shipwrecks often occur there was once a crude little life-saving station. The building was just a hut and there was only one boat, but the few devoted members kept a constant watch over the sea. With no thought for themselves they went out day or night tirelessly searching for the lost.

Many lives were saved by this wonderful little station, so much so that it became famous. Some of those who were saved, and various others in the surrounding areas, wanted to become associated with the station and give of their time, money, and effort for the support of its work. New boats were bought and new crews were trained. The little life-saving station grew.

Some of the new members of the life-saving station were unhappy that the building was so crude and so poorly equipped. They felt that a more comfortable place should be provided as the first refuge of those saved from the sea.

They replaced the emergency cots with beds and put better furniture in an enlarged building. Now the life-saving station became a popular gathering place for its members, and they re-decorated it beautifully and furnished it as a sort of club. The members began to hang out there frequently and enjoy their new club.

Less of the members were now interested in going to sea on life-saving missions, so they hired life boat crews to do this work.

The mission of life-saving was still given lip-service but most were too busy or lacked the necessary commitment to take part in the life-saving activities personally.

About this time a large ship was wrecked off the coast, and the hired crews brought in boat loads of cold, wet and half-drowned people.

They were dirty and sick. Some of them were different and spoke a strange language. The beautiful new club quickly became dirty and full of those who needed help. The property committee immediately had a shower house built outside the club where victims of shipwreck could be cleaned up before coming inside.

At the next meeting, there was a split in the club membership. Most of the members wanted to stop the club’s life-saving activities as being unpleasant and a hindrance to the normal activities of the club. But some members insisted that life-saving was their primary purpose and pointed out that they were still called a life-saving station, not a club. Those devote life-saving members were finally voted down and told that if they wanted to save the lives of all various kinds of people who were shipwrecked in those waters, they could begin their own life-saving station down the coast. So they did.

As the years went by, the new station experienced the same changes that had occurred in the old. They evolved into a club and yet another life-saving station was founded down the coast. If you visit this seacoast today you will find a number of exclusive clubs along that shore. Shipwrecks are still frequent in those waters, but now most of the people drown.

-adapted material from Brent Hunter, Personal Evangelism 101, with permission
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My pastor makes a point to read this story to us at least once a year. It serves as a reminder of the Great Commission - the gospel mission: discipleship. Our desire is to be a life-saving station, one which does not become enchanted by the idea of being part of a great club.

The Church is at it’s best when it is empty, when the people are out in the stormy seas saving lives, when it’s gathering out in the cities and creating disciples.

When is your local church community at it’s best?

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Filed Under: Church, Discipleship, Mosaic Tagged With:
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