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Whom have I in heaven but you... (Psalm 73)

I was singing these verses this morning, putting a tune to the words and found myself feeling that this song was for our dear friends Charlie and Judy Whitley, as they go through a trying time with Charlie in the hospital.  So this is for you guys, hope it is an encouragement, we love you and and thinking of you and praying for you.

  
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Impacted by the Gospel.

We have to be radically impacted by the message and power of the gospel if we are to take this message out with authority and authenticity. This has to radically, radically impact our lives; we have to stay with this message till it breaks us open; till it explodes in us; this multi-colored revelation coursing through our veins. This is it; if we don't have this we have nothing. We must seek God for this revelation and live on it for the rest of eternity.

If the congregation is not alive with the joy of it, they have not heard it enough. If the preacher does not preach with joy this message, then he has never really seen it, or he has let the old life cloud out this true reality. To know it, is to know joy unspeakable.

One Thing...

Getting back to the simplicity of it all...

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Live in You

Inspired from our series on Ephesians...

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Bruce and my quiet time

This morning I was just getting ready to read and sing a psalm.  I was ready to get into psalm 87 but I hadn’t looked at it yet.  I was looking on my itunes account and came across a version of Bruce Springsteen’s song “My City of Ruins”.  For some reason I decided to listen to it.  I have loved this song since the first time I heard it in an airport just after 9/11.  The first time I heard it I was captivated, it conveys the heartbreaking, soul wrenching tragedy of the terrorist attacks on New York and yet turns to prayer for strength and faith, with the call to “rise up” even from the ashes.

Then maybe getting more distracted I felt that I wanted to play it on the guitar, a strange way to start a quiet time!  So I looked up the lyrics and began to sing it…my city of ruins.

After I had done this I looked to psalm 87 and started to sing and knew that what I had been doing hadn’t been mere distraction.  “On the holy mount stands the city he founded; the Lord loves the gates of Zion more than all the dwelling places of Jacob.  Glorious things of you are spoken, O city of God…. And of Zion it shall be said, ‘This one and that one were born in her’; for the Most High himself will establish her… singers and dancers alike say “all my springs are in you.”

There is another city, that God has established, instead of death and destruction there is life; instead of hopelessness, hope; instead of sadness and tears, joy everlasting.  Man’s ways lead to death, but God’s way leads to springs of life.  Lord I pray that you would bring your rule and reign into this place, let your kingdom come amongst us, let this one and that one say they were born in you.  Lord build your kingdom here, you alone can do this. “The Most High himself will establish her”.

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Works of social justice verses a so-called spiritual church.

I watched an interesting interview the other day with Bono from U2 and Bill Hyballs from Willow Creek church. In the interview Bono conveyed the heart of God for the poor and how we must also have a concern for the poor.  He said many things that I thought were great and other things that I did not agree with, but it got me thinking about what are we doing to meet the needs of the poor.  I thought about how it seems that some groups of people or churches can become very focused on acts of social justice and yet lack what I would describe as the supernatural spiritual power in their churches to see the lost saved, to see signs and wonders, to move in faith for healing.  And then there are churches so focused on the so-called spiritual side of life that they sometimes have no regard for the poor, little or no impact on the society around them.  These churches can remain isolated, cloistered groups of believers disconnected from the world around them and the desperate needs close at hand. 

As we are almost in our 2^nd year of leading a church plant Bono’s interview provoked me to think about what we should be doing, where God might lead us to touch the needs of our community… and yet it can also raise up this feeling of stress or striving, “what should we be doing??  Shouldn’t we be doing more?”  As I thought about this dilemma, it came to me that these two areas of social justice and moving in signs and wonders are perfectly brought together in the person of Jesus.  In Him alone they are interwoven and married together, in fact you can’t find one without the other.  In him there is wholeness and when he comes into a situation he brings complete wholeness to every area of our lives, whether we see its completion in this life or the next. 

If you seek one area alone to focus on you quickly get off track and miss Jesus.  But if you seek Jesus himself, if he alone is our goal, if to know him more is our chief occupation then he changes us from the inside out.  If we spend time with him we cannot help but to catch his heart for the lost and broken around us.  If this concern for the lost, hurting and poor does not begin to grip us then we are not actually spending time with the real Jesus…. You spend time with the real risen Jesus and the things that affect his heart will begin to affect yours.  You let him be Lord and yield to him and his desires and he will start to move you to the broken, to bring his life, to be ambassadors of reconciliation, ministers of healing.  You spend time with him and you will have faith to ask for healings and miracles, you will hear his whispers and his promptings and they will push you out of your natural self into his supernatural flow of life and power that can quicken mortal bodies and raise the dead, both physically and spiritually…   Everything comes together perfectly in Jesus.

If you focus on works of social justice without it being led and guided by the Holy Spirit it becomes just that “Works”, and no matter how good they appear they are as filthy rags compared to the righteousness that is offered us through Jesus alone.  If a church is focused on just having a so-called “spiritual” isolated time together and that’s all it is then you probably are meeting around a different spirit all together because the life of Jesus always breaks out.  If you are meeting with and through the Spirit of Jesus you will find that he will put on your heart and mind concern for the broken.

I don’t want to be side tracked into seeking anything else, I want to seek Jesus and him alone and let his life move me and infuse me.  I want it to control me, for his passions to me my passions, his desires my desires.  As Paul said “But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ.  Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.  For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith – that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.  Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own.  Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own.  But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on towards the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Jesus Christ.  Philippians 3 v 7 – 14.

Jesus and Jesus alone is our goal, our great pursuit, our consuming ambition, our resting place and home, our life source…  everything is found in Him and is held together in him.  I want to know him and let the rest flow from that place.