Conversations...

I don't believe that God speaks audibly to people anymore.  Not that I think He can't, I'm just very skeptical of people who say that He has.  And if I'm wrong, then I pray God will correct me.

So when I say this was a conversation between me and God that I had yesterday, I don't mean that it was a literal conversation.  But if I had to translate into words what I was feeling in my heart, this is how the conversation would have gone:

Me: "I didn't expect to find you here."

God: "I know."

Me: "To be honest, I really didn't want to.  I didn't want to see you today."

God: "I know.  I came anyway."

Me: "...I've really missed you..."

God: "I know.  Why have you been pushing me away?"

Me: "...I was scared.  I still am...." (To clarify, scared of what I'm not used to.  I explain later in the post.)

God: "Don't be.  Come back to me.  I'll take care of everything."

And then I wept...

When I was in high school, I felt God when I called out to him.  When I was in college, I felt God when I called out to him.  During my time in Seminary, I academically comprehended the existence and presence of God, but I stopped feeling him, and therefore I stopped calling out to him as often.  I just learned about Him.  

Four years later, I'm only now starting to recuperate from that.  

I'm not saying Seminary is bad.  What I am saying is that it is very dangerous to lose the relationship aspect of your walk with Christ.  When it becomes an academic pursuit, or a routine, or a social expectation, or a culturally accepted ritual, then we miss the whole point of why God sent his son in the first place.

Jesus was sent so that we would HAVE FELLOWSHIP with God (1 Corinthians 1:9).  Fellowship is not rote memory, repeated process, obligatory actions, or achieving specialized goals.  Fellowship is a relationship, and with God, it's one that when you experience Him, you walk away from the encounter different from how you were before.  

I've followed God since I was seven years old, but I haven't had FELLOWSHIP with God in four years.  Praise Jesus that He started to change that yesterday.  

And I hope He continues to do just that.

Motivations...

My last post was somewhat heavy, and a lot of people had opinions on what I had to say.  I feel like a little background to the post may be warranted.

My dad and I are going to the Kingdom Man Conference this weekend.  I'm really looking forward to it.  But not for the usual reasons.  Dr. Tony Evans, I'm sure, is a great speaker.  And Shane and Shane leading worship is a guarantee that it will be a night to remember.  But that's not what I'm most excited about.

The topic of the whole conference is Biblical manhood--how to be a man of God and how to measure our "manliness" according to His standards.  It's a topic that has been in the forefront of my mind for months now.

Why?  Because of Brayson.  As he grows older, it's going to be my responsibility to teach him what it means to be a man.  What he thinks a man is, how he views manhood, for good or bad, is going to be directly affected by how he sees me live my life.  And I want to give him his best chance.

I pray every night that one day Brayson will come to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ.  And when that day comes, he's going to need community.  He's going to need to walk with others as he grows in his relationship with Christ.  "There is no such thing as a Lone Ranger Christian," my former pastor used to say.  He needs community to help him grow.

What I don't want for him is for his relationship with Christ to become a sanitized, habitual, obligatory duty to be performed once a week and then forgotten until the next Sunday.  I don't want him to measure his relationship with Christ based on a checklist that even the lost could keep up with.  I want him to desire a righteousness that "surpasses the Pharisees" (Matthew 5:20).  I want him to "throw off everything that hinders" him (Hebrews 12:1).  I want his relationship with Christ to be something so central that it permeates to every part of his life, from the clothes he wears to the classes he takes to the food he eats to the games he plays.  But, lately, it seems that those in a body of believers who truly desire a radical, life-altering relationship with Christ are overshadowed and ostracized by those who desire homeostasis, control, and prestige.  And the only response people have when that is brought to their attention is "yeah, well, no church is perfect."  No desire for change, no yearning to be better than what we are.  Just a simple, defeated attitude that this is as good as its ever going to get.  It scares me to think of sending my son out into that.  Because that's what happened to those two families I mentioned, and they are suffering for it.

I realize that no church is perfect, that there are always going to be problems no matter where I go.  But I can't just sit here and hope that Brayson can make the best out of what's out there.  I want to give him his best chance, and that means I can't just sit on the sidelines and accept things as they are.  In the words of Ross King, "smaller victories will never be all right with me, 'cause I've got my intentions set on bigger things than that."

We'll be moving to Shreveport soon, and once we get there, it's going to be a while before Mandy and I decide to be part of any church.  I'm less concerned about having my name on a roll than I am about being part of a community that is actually going to follow Christ, even if it means stepping away from comfort and control.  Because I want to give Brayson his best chance.  And that is more important to me than a lifetime of Sundays spent sitting in a pew.

Love me, hate me, burn me at the stake---that's where I am right now.

My broken heart and why its broken...

The whole point of this blog was to allow others to see the work that God is doing in my life.  To see my struggles, hear my questions, and watch me seek the answers.  My hopes were that as I struggled to understand my God and what His plan is for my life, it would somehow lead others to him.  If I were truly transparent about my relationship with Him, then maybe someone out there in cyber space could benefit from it.  That's why I called it "God's Forge."  As God forged and molded me and burned out the impurities, it would hopefully become a beacon for others to draw close to Him.

There's a lot I want to say right now, so many frustrations and hard questions I want to ask.  But these questions don't involve just me.  They connect with others that may not want that transparency.  So, in true Dragnet fashion, "The names have been changed to protect the innocent..." and in some cases the guilty, too.  I am deliberately making this as vague as possible.  If you think any of this is about you, that is probably just the Holy Spirit convicting you.

I know a family who used to be active in church.  Now they're not.  The mother has sworn off church altogether, because at every major crisis event in her life, when she has turned to the church for help, she has received none (and before you say anything, I was there when she went through most of those.  She isn't exaggerating.  She needed help and received none.)  The father is technically a member of a church, but he hasn't felt needed or wanted for such a long time that the community feeling he's used to is long gone.  Both of them attend a life group that they enjoy, but have flat out told me that they don't trust that group with their struggles.  They just go for the Bible study.  The oldest child was in vocational ministry, but has since left and has no plans of returning, not wanting to "play the game" anymore.  The middle child gave up on church a long time ago after being stabbed in the back by men and women the family respected, and a relationship with God is just now starting to recover from it.  The youngest child, now a college student, has felt more community and genuine concern in the Greek life on campus than the Christian organizations, college and career classes, or youth groups ever gave.  Fifteen years ago, every Sunday morning, all five of them would be in church in their pew ready to serve God however He asked them to.  Now, they serve God as best they can, but it will be a long time before they feel the need to be in a church again.  If ever.

I've met another family still active in the church.  The father's in vocational ministry, and he's good at it.  He's led scores of people to Christ in the past year alone, not to mention all those he's led over the course of his career.  Everywhere he goes, his ministry is blessed.  But he can never stay in one place for longer than a few years.  Every ministry position he has ever held, there has always been someone with power in the church that takes issue with him, and it always escalates to the point that he either is asked to leave or felt the need to leave himself.  And power is always the issue.  He's doing God's work, leading in the direction God wants him to go, and he meets resistance in every form every step of the way from people that have the audacity to call him "brother."  And all the drama is because things aren't going their way.  "That's not the camp I wanted.  That's not the program I wanted.  That's not the Sunday School material I wanted."  And the stress of it all is affecting him in ways that he never thought it would.

On and on the list goes.  And, yes, I know that "no church is perfect."  But we're not talking about a tiff here or there because someone lost their temper.  I see an epidemic of a consistent need for control.  The buildings on the hills with the shining steeples are no longer beacons of light for their communities   They're glorified country clubs with social ladders, political agendas, and a board of directors that care more about keeping "the company" in the black than they do about being effective in completing the Great Commission.  It's not about serving God anymore.  It's about serving our own ego, so at the end of the week we can look at our monuments we've built to our own sense of self-worth and feel good about our "Christian" label.  And it's happening all over.

What have we become?!?  What have we allowed the Bride of Christ to fall into?  At what point did the church become a business?  When did the traditions of a governing body of old men become more important than the Holy written Word of God?  When did appearance become more important than sincerity?

WHEN DID WE DECIDE WE ARE MORE IMPORTANT THAN THE GOD WE ARE SUPPOSED TO FOLLOW?!?

My heart breaks for what passes as a church these days.  I've done my best to reach out to these two families, and so many others like them.  But, honestly, there are some wounds that all the apologizing in the world simply won't heal.  I hope and pray that these families one day find the community that the Church is supposed to be.

We need to repent, church.  We need to repent.

"Consider how far you have fallen!  Repent and do the things you did at first.  If you do not repent, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place."  --Revelation 2:5