Go West young man!

 Go West, Young Man!

What if Lot would have gone West?

Gen 13

10 Lot looked around and saw that the whole plain of the Jordan toward Zoar was well watered, like the garden of the Lord, like the land of Egypt. (This was before the Lord destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah.) 11 So Lot chose for himself the whole plain of the Jordan and set out toward the east.

How often does the “Looking” bind our minds into a lust that we can’t untangle ourselves from?  This East choice of Lot’s became his family downfall.  Abraham had no children, at this time, but all of the promises of God were with him as he chose to defer to his younger cousin.

Abraham was happy to be God’s joke on the world of his time.  Father of many children? Ha, ha, ha.

Lot had a lot and wanted more.  Daughters, reputation, servants, all because he stepped out on the promise to Abraham.  Is the promise we are living under our own, or a borrowed one.  God will make us show our hand with him.  Come out from under the blessing of Abraham and see if you will still be blessed.  There is no way! God said it. I believe it!

God does so move in a mysterious way

 The Hymn of the Day

God Moves in a Mysterious Way

The mystery of God's movement is sometimes a quiet thing and sometimes a loud thing.  The clouds and the sky are usually quiet and the designs of the beautiful wildlife are a quiet mystery.  What a funny stripe the skunk has on it’s back and the perfume of gore is its amazement.  Who thought of that? God! Millions and billions of design elements in the birds and flora and fauna around us.  Still we find so much time to look at animations of people when the animations of God are so fascinating. The designs of God’s loudness are the sounds of the laughing hyena, or the calls of the whales to eachother from the deep.  Loudness with humor and meaning.  Loudness of thunder that strikes such fear in us, that if we heard it rattle more than one clap at a time, we would cower under the bed.  He gives us what we can handle of loudness.  

His mystery in design is as infinite as his attributes.

The hymn says that He plants his footsteps in the seas and ride upon the storms.  Tiptoing around us and riding above us as though we are in the middle.  He cares and entertains us in his mystery and yet we are often so unaware.

Just a thought!

 True Worshippers are true listeners?

Can we worship with our minds disengaged from the process?

So much of worship in today’s system is an emotional cajoling of the conscience to frenzy.  Frenzy might be attached to worship at times, but it isn’t the core of worship, now is it?

Listening and agreeing with preaching might be a sober experience, but it isn’t worship either, is it?

We can sit in classes and learn much from a savvy educator.  We can emulate their motions and attend to their every word, but is this worship.  My mental ascent must be engaged and my emotions must be involved, but true worship is an amalgamation of infused real information received from an esteemed individual about the most esteemed Creator and Savior and acknowledging His grand superiority and sovereignty.  Yes, He is Almighty.  Some who are grand demand a curtsy or a bow.  Our hearts are arrested in humble confusion of whether His grandeur demands such an obeisance.  He doesn’t strike us down when we make the wrong gesture in His presence.  He has all power and all superiority and yet He is intimate with us. 

He stops His creating schedule to listen to our cries.  He accepts our miniscule efforts to ascribe glory to him in our culturally colored limpness.  We are indeed inept to attempt to lasso others into our accepted mores for our comfortability.  Still there is a commonality among all colors and cultures.  John was allowed to attend the worship of Heaven in the book of Revelation.  There were all colors represented.  It wasn’t a monolith.  Shouldn’t they all speak one language?  Shouldn’t they have melded into the grayness of intermingling?  Isn’t this what we have been socialized to believe in wokeness?  Only multigrained colorized intermingling is acceptable.  No one culture has a monopoly on the worship styles. Nothing historic is going to be accepted because of the sins of the fathers that is attached to it’s expressions.

I must say that when I read BB Warfield's expressions of  racism, I was tending to throw out all of the history of doctrine that I had imbibed and respected, because of its eloquence and prolificness.  “Throw it out!  They hated my ancestors. I have no time for it!”

What an insolent thought that was.  What we bind on earth and what we loose on earth will become useful for the victory that we are engaged in.  Jesus is the champion of using our biased expressions of study for His glory to subdue our sins and make us ONE Church. 

Lets become true listeners and true worshipers and true examples of the unified Church of Jesus.

From my Spiritual Greenhouses

Martha Stewart's greenhouse
 Breaking up the fallow ground of my soul.

About this time of the year, with the holidays behind us and all the festivities settling as a fond or piercing memory, for some reason the blah’s seem to settle in.  My heart seeks out other things to start lusting after.  I remember that Santa didn’t get me quite everything that I wanted. I remember that I am not exactly happy with who I am or what I am doing right now.  I am nudged to maybe attempt some new large project or to invest in some great new endeavor.  Will I ever lose that last 50lbs.? Or so?  Will I ever climb mount everest?

Where did all of that joy and peace on earth go that was palpable last week?

I have to go out to my spiritual shed and pull out my contentment shovel.  I start digging!

Roots of bitterness have started to deepen and make their homes in my soul.  I have to dig them out!  I don’t like doing this work.  It is dirty and it is painful and it is not something anyone will ever look at and say what a wonderful root system you have.  It is underground.  It is deep in the pits of my soul where these roots start.

The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment!

That is a book that I have read many times much to my own chagrin.  I should be an expert in this, but still I am a neophyte in subduing my own discontent.  Yes, I remember that God is good.  Yes, He is with me in worship and in my daily life.  Yet, I find myself spiting my “less than” condition.  Less than her and him.  Less than them and well.  I am glad they have what they have, but I want more!

Wrong answer!

If Christmas is just the building of greater wicks to enkindle more and more desires in my heart, I will never be satisfied in Jesus.

The gift-giving in Christ doesn’t start and end at Christmas.  Awaking to the gift of the borrowed breath that I breathe.  The skills that God has sharpened in my life are fuel to praise God and keep my eyes open to the use of them.

Now confession of those horrible roots of bitternesses and remembrances of the No’s that God has said to me.  Bitterness holds tight to those roots and often I must blast them with serious dynamite.  If I don’t read and keep my tongue from complaining and bitter accusations against God’s goodness in this or that missing.  

Hath God meant you well in this or that thing?

God has meant me well in all of his dealings with me, is my rote reply to the devil’s often and loud accusations in my heart.

Where is your…?this or that?

He is so merciful to help me pull and pluck and tear at the roots of bitterness that grow up as tall and high as my grief tree which was built upon my praise and tears for His glory.   Why is my bitter root growing as deeply as my Praise Tree?

One look at His Wonderful Face dispells all of my discontent!

If they don’t rise to loom large, we can’t see God crushing them under His amazing Gaze!

It isn’t me growing my praise Garden.  It is God who works in my soul both to work and to have ambitions for His Glory.  Only eternity will show the truth of how much he has crushed the giants and quelled the roarings of Giant despair and kept me from the sloughs of dispond.  Purpose and usefulness in the greatness of His Glory.  

Did I? Am I? Will I?  We can’t hear the well done’s from the distance that we are standing from God.  Often our new songs don’t use language and don’t even seek to lift our language.   “You deserve it all”

Who “you”

Eternal, Immortal, Invisible, God of Glory Everlasting Might and power, etc., etc.

My mommy used to say who’s she “the cats mother”  Which you are you singing about?  You Omnipotent, Beneficent, Eternal?

These ambiguities have a tragic occurrence in our souls.  Satan himself finds purpose for our ambiguousness.  We must fight back.  We must give vent to the reality of the very high and loftiness of the one with whom we are enthralled or we are living far below our privilege.

Jesus, the powerful name is enough, but with what measure we engage ourselves to aspire and exalt ourselves on resumes and in articles about us.  We find superlative words to exalt ourselves and yet we only refer to He who built the lofty skies as YOU.  I am inept!

January 1st was a Sunday!

 In Search of my own “Vicious Pursuit” of God’s Will.

This past Sunday was an amazing experience in the presence of God.  Worshiping in unity with God’s people is refreshing and weighty.  I always come away lifted and heavier.  I get a fresh view of myself and a fresh view of my responsibility and a fresh view of God’s worship.

I am always grieved at somethings and encouraged at other things.  Sitting under Pastor Martin has made me unavoidably aware of man-worship that sits on the throne whenever we gather to worship.  We can’t seem to help finding a way to pat ourselves on the back for having gathered or for some other sundry odd thing.  Aren't we so great for being here.  Pastor Martin used to beat our bottoms sore for even thinking such a thing.  Not a Sunday past that he didnt reprove our man centered thinking.  I have grown to expect that aspect of my sensitization.  I am not sorry for always praying that God would cleanse us from our selfishness in worship and our Humanism.

To and For the Glory of God!

Worship is to Him and through Him and for Him.  Our unprofitable servant status should be understood and it often isn't.

We have some songs that exalt God and some songs that exalt ourselves.  Sometimes I am so wrung out by the spiritual battle that is the singing, that I hardly expect God to say anything else.  Pastor Loran always, always surprises me.  He never backs down from the towering place that we are when we are in unison and one accord worshiping God.  He knows that there are some there who are simply entertained by the beauty of the Holy Communion of God’s people and the amazing skill of those who are given to the task of prepping us for the surgery of hearing the Word of God.  There is some sedative value in the music of Central and much needed, because Pastor Loran never has to apologize for cutting us and taking our mysterious unconscious state on as a serious Western gunslinging battle.  He takes us on with our self aggrandizement and our fake self flagellations, both.

God is to be praised and I really felt like his mini sermon meant that I was going to have a reprieve from the usual weight of conviction and brooding over the state of my soul.  He tricked me, as usual.

I say to myself, “this isn’t consecutive, expository and thus it will be the pablum that is for my aged and ailing soul in these last times.”  He always grabs my decrepit reasoning and throws it around the room in awe of the way that God can come in there like a guntoting cowboy and shoot up the entire room of drunks who sit there drowning their sorrows in the most beautiful mixed drinks in the universe and He says “get up!”  He punches us into sobriety and shows us ourselves every time!  I question the ability.

That wasnt my focus.  He started with a rant of God’s goodness, yesterday.  Do you know who he is?  Is your mind in your empty glass of spiritual drinks?  Wake up! We is in a battle, y’all!

God has saved you and you know it, but what are you doing with it?  Checking your consciences with false convictions about what? We are his workmanship, working and willing his good pleasure.  His rant got me on my feet, spiritually.  Who are we talking about?  He is amazing.  He grabs my limp soul by the collar and throws it around the room until it decides to fight back.

Oh boy, I wasnt ready for such a spiritual fight in a minisermon.  And then it was over.  Not consecutive, not exegetical, Doctrinal spiritual warfare with a bunch of spoiled American Bible belt babies, who “have no clue”.

Finally it was over, I was bleeding and cut and beaten and determined to give my service to the Lord again this week. Why? Because He is Worthy!  Not because I think I am so good or so bad.  Dont get caught up in the distractions of your fighting with your soul about the rightness of this or that doctrinal deception.  Get up!  Do your part!  Be what God intends you to be and then we segued into the yearly Bible verse.

Hooray, now it is play time.  He put his gun in the holster! Yippee!

Boy, was I wrong.

We got our verses and that was his slingshot practice shooting the verses and his vision for the verses coming to life in our experience in his prayer for each section of the church.  What an amazing unification of our huge congregation?  I felt one in the spiritual ambitions of God’s true purpose for His people.  Warriors in faith.  I see my life in the reality of who my real enemy is and I pull out the big guns that I have in my arsenal and use them to mortify my own sins that plague me.  All without Exegesis or Isogesis or Expostitory, it’s a miracle!