Like a Bad Memory

I have not blogged in quite a long time.  I'm sure my grade will suffer, but that's what you get for neglecting your small plot on the interweb.  I am currently sick, and I am frustrated, but I am also very excited.   This past Thursday I got to ask Brittany to marry me, and with all the tension I was feeling leading up to that point, she said yes!  That made me think of what it means to be loved by God and love Him in return.

God comes to us boldly, asking us to follow Him through better or worse.  He doesn't feel the worry because He knows that life with Him is good.  He knows that no matter how many time we get kicked, injured, or sick, He is constant.

Sadly, it seems that we love God when we feel good.  We can find it easy to love God when things are going well, when happiness seems to never end; it becomes second nature.  When we fall however we see ourselves faced with a different reaction.  Sin, like a bad memory, triggers a feeling of sever discomfort.  We find ourselves nervous, ashamed, scared, and timid to respond to God.  We know that we have done wrong, and sooner or later we will feel guilt from what we have done.

This is why God is so good.  This is why no matter what we feel, He is constant.  We may hurt ourselves, and we definitely hurt Him.  He is the one who made the commitment to never leave our side, the one who took on our humiliation so that we can remain with Him.  

I like that kind of love.

Like a Commercial

I hate commercials more than most things in my life.  I feel that they distract me, waste my time, and don't apply to my life.  As I am reading through this book I am getting frustrated; I feel as if I keep reading the same things over and over.  I am reading so many books that all touch on similar topics of history and liturgy.


I feel that I have come to a crossroad in my spiritual development.  I am beginning to look at my learning as I was watching TV.  I find a new show and I begin to envelop myself in it, I look at the new characters and I start looking at my life and how I can emulate the good things that they are doing.  Then a commercial strikes, I see something come that I have heard over and over again.

Do I ignore the commercial, or do I allow both things to speak to me.

This Kairos moment was challenging...

Like An Update

For me, this week has been Christ centered.  From our reading to my devotional time I have been overwhelmed by the gospel, and for those concerned, it has been fantastic.  From the reading we read about Christs mission set into action.  Because of His sacrifice we have found the gift of free worship.  I read this and can't help but find joy in the fact that the Father gave His Son.

Christ is like the official update for a humanity that has contracted a virus.  We see humanity 1.0 as Adam, flawless in the garden, he was designed to be one with the Lord.  Sin overtook him and we begin to see the immediate effects of the virus taking place.  Pain in child birth, envy, anger, murder, and hatred all seep there way into what was originally designed for good.  We then see the first update for humanity through Noah.  Noah redeems a world that is horribly broken by obeying God when all seemed ridiculous.  After Noah the upgrades do not stop, no matter how much Noah did it still wasn't enough to save us from the virus.  God then called up another man, Abram, the one who He would build a nation from.  Again Abraham did not fill the qualifications of the perfect human, he took God's promise and was faithful, but still struggled with the human plight.

Humanity seemed to be lost, but yet God's plan was bigger than what the people of God saw.  David, the great king, was next in line to be a grand update to humanity.  He was humanity 2.0, his heart was after God, his life was centered around the a covenant that set the world into a new trajectory.  Sadly, humanity 2.0 failed, and at the end of David's life he was alone, longing for the years when he was strong and a mighty warrior of God.

Now surely this must be it, humanity is doomed.  The update had failed, and no one was good enough to heal the broken world of God.  The Davidic covenant did not fail however because the Lord always holds true to His promises.  Out of Davids lineage came the most perfect human being ever to be on this earth.  Humanity 3.0 found His way into our lives and began repairing what the other had failed at.  Christ was born, and through His mission he did not simply re-arrange our lives, He redeemed them and made them new.  He prevailed where all others had fallen, He created the new model for humanity by simply living as the word of God.

This is why we can worship today, this is how He has saved us, and this is what we must do for humanities sake.

We have been given all the tools we need, now we should plan on following the update.

Like A Well Oiled Machine

I don't have anything witty to say

I'm tired.

I do have a thought though;

here it is

We should operate like a well oiled machine.  I have been thinking about my latest Kairos moment from the book and I have found myself hoping for something that we may never fully experience here on earth.  We are crafted in the Lords image, sculptures of an invisible God placed on earth to do one thing.  This one thing of course is to spread the Kingdom of the Lord, and we as human beings are the only ones capable of doing so.  The fall finds us as broken, cracked icons with the same original task but without the proper tools to do so.  

I was thinking this morning during worship as to how I should be remembering while I worship.  As I began to recall some of the history that I have learned I began to find myself seeing each worship song in a different light.  I sang songs with move vigor because I now knew that what I was singing was bigger than my immediate situation.  As I did this I realized that I taped into a deeper level of worship, one that I have never spent time in.  I stopped myself and wrote down a question: What if the body is a rusty machine?

A well oiled machine runs at full capacity and always completes the task that it was designed to do.  We were once flawless beings with the ability to maintain the task we were given.  When we fell into darkness the inner workings of our heart and soul were bound by the knowledge of our sin.  The beings that were designed to create only good now produced sin and because of this we could no longer do what we were designed to do perfectly.  I believe that through this Kairos God is showing me that I need to observe and absorb more.  I believe that when the body operates at full capacity we see the truest form of worship, one that holds account of the past as well as plans for the future.  We see the body of Christ moving in unity with one another in a forward progression of like hearts, minds, and souls.

My Kairos has not moved further, it has only gotten deeper.  My heart is rusty; I need a tune up.   

 

The First Kairos: Like a Bloody Nose

I truly love blended worship.  It is true that I have not always found favor with it, but my heart can't deny the truth I find in it.  I am excited to read this book and I am excited to hear from the Lord.

As I was reading I kept searching for what the Lord was going to show me through this text.  At the end of chapter II I found myself coming into the observational stage of my Kairos moment.  Worship as a whole is far too big for a Sunday morning.  The covenant sealed in blood with Abraham, the promises made to the Israelites on Mt. Sinai, all of these moments are great acts of worship.  Webber states that the way to proper worship is by remembering, anticipating, celebrating, response to signs, and expressions of our heart.  That seems like a lot to put in a Sunday morning and in reality not many churches do.  The Lord calls us to worship and if we do not receive his invitation then we are missing our opportunity to do all of the things that generate proper worship.  The final thought that truly captured my attention was in the biblical themes of worship section.  Webber states that "worship is not complete without hearing from the Lord."  These words cut to my core, and I began to reflect on how I have led and not heard or been led and not followed.

So that is how God grabbed my attention through these few chapters.  Worship is not confined to our Sunday mornings because it is a subject rich with history, love, repentance, and justice.  The scary part about all of this is that I don't know half as much as I should.  Every time I posture my heart to receive His revelation I always seem to get smacked in the face.  I heard someone quote Rich Mullins recently saying "God's the kind of guy who will give you a bloody nose and then offer you a ride home on His bike."  Seems to me that sometimes I need a good punch, what I want is just a ride home.