Quoting me
Sometimes a question is the key: Jesus told me he was the way. I asked the way to what and all he said was come and see and I did and now I understand.
Culture as I have witnessed: “don’t want to deal with the past, I’m fine being broken, i’m taking something to dull the pain… don’t care about what I do, everyone is so screwed up anyway, I’ll just take something to dull the pain.”
Summer Blogging and it feels so right
I gave blogging a try and my life just can’t fit it in.
The online world is a mess of twitters and FB posts and blahhgggs.
This make me long for a simple time. Oh 1998, when the internet was still a barren waste land with random patches of chatrooms, websites and MSN messenger.
If I can find a place of clarity and a method of communicating online that is effective I may return to the habit
This is now an archive, back to journalling with pen and paper.
Grace and Peace
Adam
God Bless the Fall
Working back at full speed has given me a jolt. Sept is no time to rest in ministry. I long for the peace of the summer nights.
I know a few things, the leaves will turn colour soon, some one will mention something about sweater weather and hockey is back!
I know it isn’t deeply spiritual but for me watching Hockey is a reprieve from the cooling atmosphere. The fall is a rush, a movement, a real whirl-wind but watching a game you can push everything else out. Football is alright as well but I find myself drifting to other things between the plays.
All this to say is do you have time to rest. I have committed to several types of rest. Godly Rest: Focused time of worship, prayer and devotion. Personal Rest: Time to myself to breathe and just be. Couples Rest: Connecting, talking and being there for each other. Family Rest: Also known as lying on the carpet and getting climbed on and singing, growling and playing. Friendship Rest: Hanging out, just being me with a friend who is just being him. Work Rest: Taking the time at work to know I can detach, that I am separate and then I dive back in.
Take time to rest with all the important things in your life. God bless the fall and take the time to enjoy his miracle of this season.
Grace and Peace
Fitting God in
Is it just me or do we jam pack our lives so much that when we do have a few moments free time we actually don’t know what to do with ourselves.
I am going to go out there on a limb and say it again. We are too busy. So we we can’t no be busy. Our holidays are full of other busyness and activity just different from the norm. To get some down time we, watch TV an extremely stimulating experience, or go on the net.
If you are finding yourself bored, why? There is so much to do around us. I think what you are experiencing is that you are unsatisfied. All of the busyness around us can’t fulfill your deep and constant need for connection, rest and for peace.
We are busy distracting ourselves from anything that even resembles the still small voice of God in our lives. A while back at youth we practiced a prayer exercise called silence prayer. Not only do you close your eyes but you cover your ears and you are for once cut off from the world. It was a powerful experience for some. For me I was taken by the sound of my breath. Noise always drowns out our breath and I could also heart my heart beat. Breath has the same root word as Spirit and your heart beat pumps the blood through your body and is a symbol for life both in our society and in ancient times.
From being silent and drowning out the noise I was able to connect with the life that was flowing through me and the blessing that it is to be alive. I felt God’s presence in this experience in that as we breathe, God’s Spirit is moving through us and as my heart beats, my life blood brings me life.
How can we take for granted a life that is so precious and get caught up in such busyness and distraction? Take the time. close your eyes, cover your ears, get somewhere silent. You will feel more alive then any amount of busyness can bring you and you will hear God. Not on the outside but in you.
Take that and use it as appreciation for this life. Don’t waste it, don’t live it for yourself, take it and give it back to God to use it to do good.
The closer we get to that the more we will be satisfied and feel the peace and rest we so long for.
Grace and Peace
Adam
Do Good
We live in a world where although all of our basic needs are met we continuously convince ourselves we need so many things. I just need the latest Ipod, game , vacation or type of pants.
We neglect so many others in our pursuit of empty needs. As said in a Song called kingdom of comfort. “What I gain is someone else’s loss”. How to we break this addiction to being selfish?
Do Good. You get up, take your time, energy, possessions, influence and skills and you do something with it that helps someone else in a positive way. Meet peoples real needs. Make things better.
Even better do it together: Then you are being together and doing good at the same time.
There is something to be said about being a good doer. Many of us have bitterness towards the world a chip on our shoulders about doing anything because what has the world given them. This is pure pride. Everything we have is by grace, we should have a deep gratitude for life but just like a smoker can’t smell their smoke. The selfish person can’t see their bitterness and ungratefulness, it is just a stench that follows them around leaving a trail of lost opportunities for good.
I pray we can begin to be less selfish, take it seriously, get on the wagon and make choices out of a heart that says what is the best thing I can do with all that I have been given.
Grace and Peace to you
Adam
Come Together
If we want to be a community we have to be together.
Quality time is the only way to connect and enable close and trusting relationships to happen. It is this process that makes a church so much more than a Sunday morning activity, scheduled in and closed off. The church is the living body, I think we all know that by now, and we need to be with each other.
Coming together should be an act of worship and an opportunity to always enable good deeds and hope. We need to be interacting with each other in meaningful ways, opening up to each other, being present and real, ready to give and take.
This is the part of the process that scares us: vulnerability, trust and really listening, is a recipe for anxiety in the best of circumstances.
But we must persist, break through and be there for each other.
We are God’s hands and feet in this world (I think we all know that now as well)
He wants us to help each other, bring about healing, repair trust, build up faith, courage and love. Who is to say that these action are above the natural way things occur, who is to say that if we do these things that is not God’s supernatural presence on this earth. Where ever 2 or 3 are gathered, I will be there.
Regradless, if we open up and come together, the result will be one of strong relationships, good deeds done and hope increased. It is a simple plan to make things better and follow Jesus.
Keeping that Jesus is at the center as the object of your affection and inspiration. Continuing to be grateful for the things that he lived, taught and the sacrifice that he made.
Come together, lets hang out, wanna grab a coffee, eat some pizza or drive some golf balls in Jesus Name, we can begin to put this world back together. Wanna serve the poor, spend time with the lonely, give rest and hope to the weary. Come together, open the invitation, go out and make some friends, stand with, sit with or walk with someone.
Come Together, Do Good and Bring Hope
Grace and Peace
Adam
Be together, do good and bring hope…
There is some simple things that no theology can refute and no denomination can be divided. There is so much we cannot know in this life, why assume and presume and argue that which can only be taken by faith. Being together, doing good and bringing hope to the world: these 3 simple things mirror what Jesus spent all his time doing on his journey towards Jerusalem.
I pray that as our faith changes and evolves past the modern architype that these 3 simple things become the new way to be Christian. Be together, do good and bring hope in Christ’s grace and love.
I hope this simple message rings true and you can begin to live a simple, honest and encouraging faith.
Grace and Peace
Adam
The Naked Christian
I just finished reading: Jesus wants to save Christians by Rob Bell and I am blown away. Between that and YM 3.0 by Mark Oestreicher, listening to David Crowder, Remedy, Jars of Clay’s new album, the long fall back to Earth and Jon Foreman’s, leaves and branches. I have seen a lot of parallels and points that bring my faith to a whole new level of honesty, simplicity, grace, love and passion.
In Rob’s book he shares a lot about what a Christian is in relation to God. What God has been trying to do and how we have constantly misunderstood Him and took what he has given us for granted and selfishness, to the point of our own destruction and damnation.
The idea that we are blind to God makes a lot of sense since, even though passively, we are the oppressors of the world. God is with the poor and broken. We see God moving, in the midst of out pains. But honestly we are shattering on the inside and not turning to God for healing and freedom. We look to drugs and methods. We see God in the people who need God. Not those of us who act like we are God.
This is what Rob said in his book that struck me most: We are God’s body and blood called to use whatever blessing we’ve received, whatever resources, talents, skills and passions God has given us, to make the world a better place. We are to suffer, to bleed, to open the heart, to roll up the sleeves, to have hope that God has a plan to put the world back together, and it is called the church.
It is so simple and so naked. That is took me ten years of hearing about God, learning about theology, praying, worshipping and serving. To hear this to get it. It takes a long time to be intimate with anyone, but this has been a journey that has brought me to my knees, to the edge of disbelief, to South Carolina, Wisconsin, New Brunswick and everywhere in between.
All of this to say that God wants us to be in a committed loving relationship with Him and join him in the healing of the world by doing good, where ever and however possible. I think it’s simplicity that makes it so powerful for me. It isn’t easy and it can’t be done in a moment or finished in a lifetime, it is the process of being God’s and living out that relationship in all seriousness and being practical, REAL. Really engaging this world, which a struggle with, the people, the injustice, the misuse of power all of this we must engage wrestle with and find ways to make things better.
I hope you hear me in this. God is doing something amazing here. He is stripping us down to our bare bones and showing us that it is okay to be vulnerable, to be real, to be naked again. Believe me people will notice.
Jesus has paid the price and given us this glorious opportunity. Join us, be part of the remaking of the world, be part of making all things new.
Strip down your faith and run naked with nothing but God’s love and a passion to make things better. Just don’t stop running, don’t stop loving and don’t stop making things better. This is a war, we have no weapons, but we can win because God has laid on us all eternity, a hope for something better and a feeling that things aren’t as they should be.
Grace and Peace
Adam
A GOD who is REALLY REAL
The thought came to me over a period of time that we all to often believe in stereotypes of God in order to avoid being changed by Him. What happens is that we then become a stereotype of a Christian with shortfalls and habits, some of which look very Godly, that actually are inhibiting our ability to connect with the living God and become what a little Christ. There is so much that holds us back from truly following a GOD who is REALLY REAL. There is sin, that is a whole book in itself, but also tradition, unnecessary theological conclusions imposed superficially rather than supernaturally on young Christians who are just trying to figure things out. The bottom line is a believe we make Christianity so fantastical and controlled that we lose its sense of reality and our own sense of reality that we end up set aside rather than set apart. We will continue to fail at truly following a GOD who is REALLY REAL so long as we neglect the things Jesus was doing and live by the grace that God give us to live. We will continue to fail at being relevant with our culture and they will continue to see the stereotypes that we live out before them until we come to grips with our reality and peel off the fantasy and tradition that entangles us from, instead of bring us to the GOD who is REALLY REAL.
Things are changing. The movement of solidifying the salvation of individuals is taking a back seat to a movement of justice and the cry of the oppressed, the damage of culture on our youth and trying to reverse the breakdown of the family. Even getting saved as a term it seems was a tradition in itself and now salvation looks more like a long term realization for many, full of ups and downs and experiences that add up to only one conclusion, a GOD who is REALLY REAL.
A prayer that we can all seek out the GOD who is REALLY REAL and break down all of our stereotypes of GOD. That we also break down the stereotypes we become when we let pride and our inability to let GOD be GOD in our lives and our reality take over.
The biggest problem is this is all of us at times. That is when ultimately we rely on Grace and we press on, learning, growing and living more and more like Jesus.
Grace and Peace
Adam
Under the Influence of Culture
We tend to look at Drugs as a physical thing, but Culture has a far more powerful effect. Culture has always had a huge impact telling us who we should be. In church history it was said that we should wear our Sunday Best, appear Holy and be judgemental no matter the state of our heart. Not to long ago it was common that one person could tell another person they are going to burn in hell, or one race could terrorize another and think that there is room in the kingdom for them. But all of this stems from cultures (who obviously didn’t have it all figured out) that dictated it so. It is no wonder many smart and good people abandoned the Church.
I am sad to say that Christian’s have never figured it out. Take Paul for an example, he stated the words there is no longer male nor female, slave nor freeman, Jew or gentile that all are one in Christ but he also takes time to tell people to not let the women speak or Martin Luther who took a stand against a corrupted Church but held strong prejudices against other peoples.
Grace is the only way any of us have been redeemed. How can we look past the trapping of our Culture, Christian and Not and see a genuine life devoted to following Jesus. Ask yourself this question. Is it okay to get a Tattoo? I wouldn’t look to leviticus for answers but I would suggest thinking about where else that time and money could go. I don’t know the extent to which Jesus wants us to be set apart but I do know that we do what is easy and selfish far to often. We have been preoccupied with our own status with God and not focused on those who are in need. Jesus said him self, do not worry about your own life, but it seems that is all we do and we are afraid not to.
Our culture feeds us messages in the thousands but the hardest part about it is that they are enjoyable. Advertising is an art form, professional persuasion. Jesus’ message is basic, simple, pure and selfless. What does it take for someone to see Jesus in the midst of a selfish barage of messages that ask you to buy into, a lifestyle, an image, products, entertainment and more? I like to think it takes relationships, honest and open conversations about faith and what it really means to follow Jesus. It takes commitment, it takes honesty and reflection.
We can’t simply ignore or escape our culture but we should learn how to follow Jesus through it. Perhaps wake up and quit taking in culture as a life altering substance and get out from under the influence of Culture and seek out the influence of Jesus.
You won’t figure out how to perfectly manage the balance of faith and culture, you won’t know exactly how set apart you should be but you will know that you are loved by a God who would send his son to die for you and you will be able to live for something and someone worth following in Jesus. Maybe then you will decide to forgo that tattoo and build a well in Africa and take the time it would have taken to enjoy a coffee (fair trade and organic 
) with a friend and continue this conversation about how to get out from under the influence of Culture.
Grace and Peace
Adam
