A New Year

2011 doesn't feel "new." Yeah there are the "best of 2010" lists and magazines dedicated to them. However the changing of the calendar just doesn't feel fresh. It could be that I have had a cold for most of the new year. Colds have a way of keeping me unmotivated and depressed. Maybe it is the grayness of the days and the empty trees that keep my head melancholy. Maybe it is because my prayer life has suffered because of my laziness and sin. At any rate this year has come and I don't feel the newness of it. I still feel the weight of time misspent last year and the opportunities I missed out on. Maybe this new year holds new hopes and dreams, maybe.

I did not make any resolutions this year. I decided the best way to not break them is to not make them (real ambitious on my part). I have decided instead to try to live out of my beliefs.

I need the gospel as much as I did last. I believe that Jesus has changed me. I need to live out of that. It's funny how you can know what you need and yet ignore the very thing that will uplift your soul. I feel like 2011 offers a restart for some things. But, I am still doing the same things I did last year. I am still in the same routine. I desperately need to spend time with Jesus, but there are always the demands of the urgent. And Jesus isn't exactly in my face asking me to spend time with Him. I wonder sometimes how some of guys have a handle on life. I mean, kids, wife, career, discipleship, and all the while tending to their own spiritual needs. I know that I am the one that has to apply the Gospel to my life. I just feel like I am failing in all of my life. Like I am slipping down the mountain instead of climbing this rock. Each day seems to slip past and I am going on autopilot, with no plan or direction.

I need three days to plan my new year and I don't have three days to do that. One day to decompress, one day to love God and journal and dream and one day to plan and map out a vision for my family and the ministry. It doesn't look like that is going to happen anytime soon. My wife needs a few days to just be - she is phenomenal. She loves and cares for our two little girls and for me so well.


I need to get back to deciding what I am going to do in youth ministry this year.

Let me know your thoughts and what your "New" year has in store for you... comment on the blog!

Here's to 2011.

On Having Not Taken a Beating for Jesus, (Yet).

Sometimes I wish God's discipline came in the version of an ass kicking. This way I could clean up the blood and mend the wounds. Instead, I am left to wonder - "how long O Lord, how long will You continue to bear me up under Your wrath?"

Okay. I admit that might seem a little serious. But here at the end of 2006 I am ready to move out of the desert of this long night. I have been praying, thanking God for His mercy and for His grace. Mostly I thank Him for His discipline. I know that the Master, Jesus, bore all of my guilt and shame. And that He took my portion of the wrath of God. However, as His child I know from reading Hebrews that He chastizes those He loves in order to put in them what cannot be bought with gold, namely His character. Financial burdens, grief, loss of loved ones, loss of mission, and working at jobs just to survive is getting to me. This is not the suffering I had in mind when I told Jesus that I was willing to suffer for His name. The weird thing is that I don't think I am "suffering". I am aware of the plight of our African brothers and sisters and our Middle Eastern and Asian Christians who face poverty and death everyday.

It is foolish of me to think that this minor "inconvience" of living with another family and living to pay off credit cards is really suffering. Lame. That kind of thinking is lame. I mean Jesus had no place to lay His head. The discipiles and the early Christians took beating after beating for preaching the Name of Jesus. But, there in lies my mental problem. These circumstances I find myself in are not from preaching the Gospel. It is not as if the local government and the religious leaders took my possessions and my job and pummeled me with rocks because I was in the marketplace declaring the name of Christ. No. I am more inclined to believe these things are readily happening because I have little faith. I am not talking about naming, claiming nonsense. I am talking about walking on water, seeing blind men see, lepers beeing cleansed, Spirit of the Living God eveloping faith.

I have forgotten what it is like to really trust God and to have hope that tomorrow is going to be better. I have lost touch with doing all things for the glory of God no matter what the result. I am stuck in the thought pattern that because I stack boxes, sling lattes or whatever that what I am doing is of little eternal signifigance. I sin. And the enemy wants me to stay right in that mindset so that I will keep on sinning. That I will forget that Jesus took my beating and that each day is a gift no matter how broke I am. I am rich in that my inheritance is King Jesus. It's just hard to think properly about earthly things sometimes. It is hard to live out the Sermon on the Mount. It is difficult to be a follower of Jesus with all these stupid things the enemy and the world throws at me. Suffering, heh! I have not begun to know His sufferings. Each day Jesus must become more sufficient for me. His grace must become relevant all the more.
Each day I must die to worry, guilt, shame, pride, laziness and lust.

Today is a good day to die.