wrongful birth?

When I first stepped into ministry many years ago there was much I did not know. Honestly, one of my biggest fears falls into the category of what most people would see as my strength, managing people. Within my first month I made the decision to take a trip to a Passion conference in Chicago with some of the students. I have to admit that one of the students was a high functioning autistic and I was terrified to take him with us but he ended up riding with me. After 8 hours in a car with him, I realized that he was a gift from God and not to be scared of. Over my time at WFC I learned more about him and became more enamored by the way God had made him. This is why when I came across this statement in our local newspaper I was completely taken off guard.

A jury this afternoon awarded nearly $3 million to a Portland-area couple whose daughter was born with Down syndrome even though a prenatal test found she didn’t have the chromosomal abnormality….The couple contend that they would have aborted their daughter had they known the facts and now face the financial burden of raising her.

It took me a few minutes to process what I read, I found myself at a loss for a response. until I found a blog from Deanna J. Smith entitled “Perhaps you should sue God” and it was in excellent. Here is a snippet:

I’m not sure how you look into those almond shaped eyes-grasp that warm hand smaller than most-hold close the body vibrating with life and say “We wish we could have aborted you”.But since you have, there are a couple of things I would like to say- some things that clearly you haven’t already thought through. Sometimes unexpected things happen to us in life. Bad things that we didn’t ask for. Some of us would call them blessings in disguise-the gifts that we didn’t even realize that we needed- while others label MISTAKE and WORTHLESS all over the unexpected.

The truth is, I can see why you’re angry. You have a baby that you didn’t want. A diagnosis that you feared is now a very real part of your life without your permission. Since I have been there myself, I understand the hurt and anger. But what I don’t understand is, why did you sue the DOCTOR?

Didn’t you mean to sue GOD?

Please check out the rest of the article and I would love to know your thoughts below.

When life is not fair

A few weeks ago I once again received a call to come back to Park Hill Baptist Church. This church asked me to fill in the pulpit again as they continued the search for an Interim Pastor and eventually a new Senior Pastor. Much like last time I found myself not feeling comfortable with any of the subjects that came to mind for to preach. You see, for me, if I am going into an environment I have never been to before, and possibly will not return to, I try to prayerfully seek a subject that the Spirit leads me to say, and this time it was a doozy. Once again, I traveled back to my pastoral study (aka BlackDog Coffeehouse) and prayed until the Father answered. This sermon was for me and as I soon found out for many people in the attending audience. I pray that it is half of the blessing it was to me in preparing it. Maybe this will give you an idea of where I am going with this sermon:

“Life is not fair. Good people have to die early. There are people that waste money like water, and there are other people who struggle to pay for their parents hospital bills. There are people that spend thousands of dollars on a vacation, and there are other people working three jobs to make ends meet. The funny part is people that spent thousands of dollars on vacation wouldn’t pay for their children’s tuition, and people that working three jobs wants to pay for their children’s tuition. How sad…Life is not fair. And it never will be. What’s the point of life anyway? See the injustice and then you die, painfully.”

Below you will find both audio and video versions of the sermon “Patience in the fires of life” (Malachi 2:17 – 3:7a). Please enjoy!

Audio:

[audio https://somajc.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/patience-in-the-fires-of-life-malachi-2_17-3_7a.mp3]

Video:

Video: Poor audio quality

[vimeo http://vimeo.com/38177824]

Forgive but please don’t forget

So I do not usualy watch the Grammys and this year was no different, but when I return home from work and jumped on Facebook and Twitter, I only seemed to be able to read about it. The next morning I went online to see if I could find the performances and I was completely surprised. Usually, all of the performances on the Grammys are not good, in my opinion, but this year seemed to be the exception. Though the performance of Nicki Minaj moved Hip-hop back [somewhere between] 15 to 20 years the other performances were amazing. Bruno Mars, Alicia Keys and Bonnie Raitt, Jennifer Hudson and more. Seriously, if you have not seen any of the footage you should check them out here.

Anyways, I noticed something that disturbed me and I wondered how many people were as disturbed at The Grammys choice to showcase so much of Chris Brown. If you remember Brown was arrested and subsequently convicted for assaulting his then-girlfriend Rihanna on the eve of the 2009 Grammys,but his acceptance speech after winning best R&B album included no act of contrition whatsoever .

It seemed odd to me that Chris Brown performed twice and won an award in front of the woman that he assaulted. I also realize the the Grammys are by no means the moral compass of my life but it did make some truths clear.

Chris Brown is a great entertainer, his performances were great.
Based off of his abilities and album Chris Brown deserved to dance, sing, and get an award.
For Rihanna, this whole night could not have been easy at all, I could only imagine.

Reality is that Grammys and music industry are built for fame and seems to be much quicker to forgive Chris Brown than most communities built for Christ are.

This is where it becomes hard for me and the place where I would love for you to weigh in. I have not been hurt [physically] like Rihanna before nor have I had to watch the perpetrator be rewarded with the most illustrious award in the industry that I work. I can not imagine what it must feel like to be in that place, but I also know that the Bible is clear that I am to forgive as I was forgiven. This is where you will see me differ with convential wisdom that says:

“Forgive and Forget”

I don’t have the ability to forget nor is it my job to forget the Chris Brown’s of my life, but it is my job, as a Christ follower to forgive. I do not know that the Christian community, as a whole, does a great job in this regard despite the fact that our salvation begins with the forgiveness of more heinous crimes than that of Chris Brown.

I would love to know some of your thoughts…

You are not extraordinary, you are just ordinary…

…just like everyone else on this earth.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=02vku-6fZWQ]

I know it seems to be a harsh statement but it is a true statement that needed to be said. Between X-Factor, American Idol, America’s got Talent, and other talent/ reality shows you see the tryouts that make all of us laugh profusely but in retrospect are a by -product of one of two [really] sad things.

They are just trying to get their 15 minutes of fame or…
They have been lied to and truly believe they are a good _________ (you fill in the blank)

You see we hear a mantra that is shaping our thinking when it comes to our lives. I have heard it so many times before and I thought no one actually believed it until I began to listen what my peers and culture had to say. They both screamed to everyone I knew that:

“I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and doggone it, people like me.”

Now at first I saw nothing wrong with this message until it morphed into “I’m unique, I’m better than everyone [at something], and doggone it, people need me! The [basic] problem with that message is the whole thing! You are not unique, I am not unique, we are just ordinary people. I promise you that there is someone taller, stronger, more beautiful, talented, intelligent, etc. than you are. The problem is that we begin to buy this lie hook, line, and sinker. This in turn subversively begins to shape the way we speak, live, and how we interact with our world.

As a Christ follower realizing this about myself was disconcerting to say the least. When I look at the Dr.Pepper commercial (featured above) it’s a prime example of what I am talking about. All it is doing is impressing on you that you are special when really the only extraordinary thing about you (as a Christ-follower) is the Holy Spirit that resides in you.

Please hear me, every Christian has the opportunity to be extraordinary, the word simply means “beyond what is ordinary”. Unfortunately, in our culture, we have satisfied this desire with celebrities. We have become voyeurs of the “extraordinary” when the Lord wants to give us extraordinary lives of our own. As Christians we need to stop walking around like pigeons with our breast puffed out and look to what could make us extraordinary.

Do you want to be extraordinary? If you are born again, the Holy Spirit lives in you, you have the extraordinary One on the inside. However, you must be willing to let what may seem ordinary work in you the character necessary to be extraordinary.

Truths learned from the life and death of JoPa

It’s been over 2 weeks since the passing of Joe Paterno and I wanted to offer some thoughts about his affect on my life and thoughts about his greater affect for our community.

Upon hearing of the death of Joe Paterno I was saddened to say the least. I began to listen and read different peoples opinions of the man, the myth, and the legend. Everything was customary and nice until I read this:

For 50 years, he was a god of college football. He may be the best college football coach of all time…. [h]e was so great that I think the ultimate story about him will eventually outshine the awful ugliness of a child molestation scandal that happened right under his nose, on his watch, by his coordinator, on his turf. You know why I’m OK with this?

We are all Joe Paterno.

Hundreds of thousands of children are molested right under our noses, on our watch, in our country, in other countries AND only a few people are out there fighting for them.

While I do not disagree with what this blog and it was not unique in its assertions, my mind began to race because of its opinions (especially by Christians) misses the point completely.

In Acts 19:21 – 41 we encounter a situation that is not all that different from the one we are seeing in Happy Valley. It’s not exactly the same but very similar. Paul and his disciples find themselves in the middle of a riot. The Spirit led Paul and his disciples to to the Ephesus to preach the Gospel and eventually plant a church. The Spirit moved and people were saved, because of this the idol makers in town began to lose money. The idol makers, angry about lost wages, spread the word and eventually raise up a crowd to protest and eventually it turned into a riot.

I am not saying that JoPa preached the Gospel, or that there was lost wages because of his firing. The similarities lie in what happens when we [humans] lose an idol. Read this definition and see if it applies:

idol |ˈīdl| noun an image or representation of a god used as an object of worship.• a person or thing that is greatly admired, loved, or revered.

The night that JoPa was fired and the riots began, the only thing i could think was, “this is what happens when we lose our idols, when we lose our object of worship.” Harold Best says explains this best in his book Continuous Worship:

We begin with one fundamental fact about worship: at this very moment, and for as long as this world endures, everybody inhabiting it is bowing down and serving something or someone—an artifact, a person, an institution, an idea, a spirit, or God through Christ.

The point here is that worship describes something that is bigger than singing a song, or any specifically “religious” action. When you take your first bite of an amazing meal, when you witness the phenomenal catch in a baseball game, when you hold your newborn child for the first time, you naturally and freely proclaim your wonder and joy to everyone without shouting/tweeting (new school) distance. These are not bad responses in and of themselves in the right context, but they help to illustrate that we can not help but worship, all the time. Worship involves our entire life. The problem is the opposite of worship is idolatry. Every human being, at every moment of their life, today and into eternity, is continuously doing either the former or the latter. On this point a scholar i read said (and I’m paraphrasing),

“People are not to be defined by skin color, gender, by geographical location, or even, shockingly, by their good behavior. Nor are they defined by the particular type of religious feelings they may have. They are defined in terms of the god they worship.

This brings us back to the first quote of this post.

For 50 years, he was a god of college football.

I know that I will be derided for this but it must be said this is the truest summation of the whole situation I have heard yet. Whether you consciously or sub-consciously worship him or anyother figure in your life (including yourself) as god then maybe we should all reevaluate our priorities and realize that the Bible is still true when God told Moses in Exodus 20:

“I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.”

These are the first 2 of the 10 Commandments. I know that some of you will read this and hear me saying that I hate JoPa or Penn State or (fill in the blank), but this could not be further from the truth. What I did realize is in this moment an idol was exposed and I began to wonder exactly how many more idols there were in my life [specifically] and in others lives that we just do not identify. So I wanted to provide some practical steps from Pastor Mark Drisoll (Seattle) to help you avoid idolatry, in the hope that they might be helpful:

Be careful of making a good thing, such as marriage, sex, children, health, success, or financial stability, an ultimate thing, or what Jesus called our “treasure.”

Avoid participating in any religious community where the clear truth claims of Scripture are ignored while contemplative and mystical practices are favored simply for their spiritual experience.

Be careful of any church or ministry wherein acts of mercy and environmental stewardship are devoid of a theology of the cross and wind up being little more than the worship of created people and things.

And be careful not to worship a good thing as a god thing for that is a bad thing.

Well that is it, I would love to know your thoughts below…

4 World-views that rule our world

A few weeks ago I received a call out of the blue. Park Hill Baptist Church‘s pastor of 28 years had retired and was looking for some people to fill in there pulpit while they began the search for an Interim Pastor and eventually a new Senior Pastor. I was overwhelmed by the invite but I quickly obliged. Over the next week I did not feel comfortable with any of the subjects that came to mind for to preach. You see, for me, if I am going into an environment I have never been to before, and possibly will not return to, I try to prayerfully seek a subject that the Spirit leads me to say. This is NOT said in anyway as a swipe to those pastors who use the same or similar messages for different venues, in some ways I envy you. After a rather interesting conversation with a barista at Blackdog Coffee house (aka my place for sermon prep), I found myself framing a few basic world-views that most people fall into.

Religious world-view: Which says, that there is a god, whoever he or she is, that must be appeased through a series of actions. So there are things that we do and do not do in order to curry favor with that god and to somehow get eternal life when we die.

Secular world-view: says, that there is no god, there are no forces, there is no energy; there is simply us and what we make of it.

Spiritual world-view: Which is different from a religious world-view. The spiritual world-view says there’s probably not a god, but there are forces driving things. Maybe that force is karma, maybe the universe itself is driving, but we need to tap into those spiritual realities and be aware of them to milk out of life all that we want.

Gospel centered world-view: Is really simply living in such a way that this gospel is central. Thus when any kind of a situation arises we can say, “How does the gospel apply to this situation?” When I am dealing with a particular sin or temptation I can ask, “How can I apply the gospel to this sin?” When I am confused about parenting, how I am to raise my children, I can ask, “What does the gospel tell me about my task in parenting?” The primary reality of the Christian life is this one: Christ died for our sins and was raised. Thus everything else flows out of that gospel and every question is answered in reference to it.

I’ll be honest, after the conversation and as I looked back over my life the Gospel centered world-view has not dominated my thinking and movement through my life. This realization was humbling and encouraging and the sermon turned out to be more of a reminder of just how faithful our Father as been throughout my life. My prayer is that as you listen to this message you prayerfully apply what is said and examine yourself.

Below you will find both audio and video versions of the sermon, please enjoy!

How the Gospel saved my life!

Audio:

Romans 5:1 – 11