God is still so good!

In a world gone insane, it is good to know that God is still good.  His word is still true, His character ever reliable.  I am so thankful that in spite of all the facelifts American preachers have tried to give Jesus, He is still the same!  He isn’t less manly, He isn’t less Godly, He isn’t less powerful, or loving.  I came out of a drug obsessed narcissistic lifestyle in 1997 and little did I realize what I was in for.  The nation that I have grown to love and appreciate, is fast leaving it’s anchors of principle for a floating morality.  Every wind that blows brings in a new “normal”.
Take the following promise from Jesus’ mouth “in this world you will have tribulation”.  That isn’t exactly a promise we pull out of our promise box and meditate on.  But indeed it is a guarantee.  What is crazy to me is that it seems as though we are inflicting trouble on ourselves!  We are to be prepared to suffer for the name of Christ, in being a bold witness for Him no matter the cost.  If we are honest, most of us have perfected the art of disobedience to the gospel.  We won’t witness to the glory of Christ, we won’t stand for truth, we twist grace with the pig slop of false religion like a swirly cone at Dairy Queen.
Yes, the trouble we face as a nation is a result of our own negligence.  Maybe we couldn’t stop the madness, but we do have  a voice, and we have allowed it to be silenced!  Jesus was not silent about truth.  Jesus was not silent about corruption.  Jesus was not silent about abuse of power.

Joshua 24:15 And if it seem evil unto you to serve the LORD, choose you this day whom ye will serve; whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the flood, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell: but as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD.

God has given us the power of choice.  I see two incorrect extremes in today’s Christian commentary on world affairs and the state of the church.

There is some truth to both extremes, but we have to find the middle ground to really understand how to respond as believers.

1st.  The burning anger of God is kindled and ready to pour out upon the earth!  God is anxious and eager to punish you.  You are at war with God and He has the nukes, you got a nerf gun.

First, we are living in a time of the patience of God (2pet 3:15 Bear in mind that our Lord’s patience means salvation).  The bible clearly states in Ezekiel that God does not delight in the death of the wicked.  He doesn’t delight in the destruction of something He created for His glory.  Mankind was created to share in God’s glory.

The Father poured out His wrath upon His only begotten son, Jesus Christ.  God almighty chose to release the full measure of His wrath for our sin upon Jesus.  Does that mean He has no wrath left?  God is still Holy right?  Yes, He is still holy, and perfect, and just.  The wrath of God does remain a part of His nature.  I would have to believe that there is still a measure of wrath that is meted out upon earth today, but it is not unleashed with the intent to destroy people.

Remember there was a day before “God so loved the world, that He sent His only begotten son, that whosoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life”.  We live in the day after He sent His son.

The Goal of Father God is to restore, save, reconcile, not steal, kill and destroy.  Jesus clearly told us that was the enemy, Satan’s nature.  We cannot make the mistake of exchanging the nature of God for Satan’s!

There is still wrath that works in disobedience and reprobate minds.  Romans makes that clear, as well as most of the new testament scripture.  The anger of God is revealed as a wake up call to us!

God can and will forgive any sin committed in this life, except one.  If you reject the gift He gave, Jesus Christ, you cannot find any place with God.  If you believe there is more than one way to have a right relationship with God outside of Jesus Christ, you have made a fatal mistake with eternal irreversible consequences.

The full anger and wrath of God will be released upon those who reject the incredible offer of salvation through Jesus Christ.  It is abundantly clear through scripture and observing life that God is reserving the full demonstration of His wrath for Satan and the fallen angels, along with a Christ rejecting Humanity.  That day will come, even among the living at some point, terribly soon I fear.

I have seen terribly evil people enjoy wealth, status, friends, all the joys of this world.  And sure, I believe there is an emptiness inside of them, because they are spiritually dead.  I have seen cruel, evil people do terrible things and get away with it!

When Katrina devastated our gulf coast, there were men of stature in the church that called it the judgment of God.  Isn’t it funny that the French quarter stood intact, and you could still get a drink and a hooker, but churches were under water?  If God were truly judging wickedness, you would think He could wipe out the darkest parts of a city right?  Was God indeed involved in the destruction in Louisiana?  I would say He at least would desire us to wake up from an event like that!

God wants us to have a good life, but that does depend on our willingness to live a good life, in the grace of God that empowers us to live Godly before Him.  While God is certainly aware of what is happening in this world, His desire is that we wake up and follow the call of God no matter the cost!

I am not trying to open up every can of theological worms here, but I desperately want to see the people of God wake up!

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Here is the 2nd school of thought…

God doesn’t do anything that we could even misinterpret as evil.  God is so loving and gracious that we can just “rest” in His goodness and live life however it suits us.

It doesn’t matter how we live, it doesn’t matter what we do, He will forgive us, so go ahead and have fun, just don’t hurt anyone.

Also, while your at it, don’t warn anyone about hell, and don’t worry, God knows our hearts, and he has called us to peace.  Don’t like your spouse?  No worries, just divorce.  Don’t like church?  No worries, just watch tv preachers.  Don’t like the word of God?  Don’t worry, God loves you and He knows you hate His word, but that is ok with him.

Can’t lift a finger for the Kingdom of God?  No worries, excuses abound here.  Just come up with a good one, or try.  We as pastors and leaders in the body will be nice!  Are you bitter?  We will counsel you for decades.  Living with or sleeping with someone?  Don’t worry, it is just a piece of paper! You have needs!

God, a judge?  No way, you got it all wrong.  His words are soft and fluffy and you have nothing to worry about!   Standards?  What standards? Where?  I didn’t find any!

God would never send anyone to hell.  God would never, never never….

What I believe is this:

We reap what we sow, individually and collectively as a nation, and globally as humanity.  God has placed laws in this earth naturally and spiritually.  Gravity can be devastating if you violate the principle.  As we are seeing now on a global scale, greed and rejecting basic economic principles such as living within your means, or not rushing to obtain wealth by questionable means is handing us the butt kicking of historical proportions.  The end is not near either!

Is God judging us, or have we just left the principles He placed in our hands to guide us?

I believe that one way that God judges us is by allowing the penalty of our wrongdoing to be felt.  That is not evil, it is done out of love.  We cannot expect to violate every principle in the word of God and do well in this world.

We cannot expect to be a blessed nation while we kill babies like they are roaches or ants.

We cannot expect to have peace when we will not punish evildoers.

We cannot expect to have peace while we don’t enforce our own laws.

We cannot expect to have  a strong church while being indifferent to the word of God.

We cannot expect to have supernatural results when we won’t even be a witness to the Cross and resurrection of Christ.

We cannot expect to have revival in the church when we are hungry for the worlds approval.

We cannot expect to do well without regard to what Jesus said!

Christianity is about Jesus!  It is about who He was, who He represented, who He is now, and how that affects our life!

Jesus!  Jesus!  Jesus!

 

 

2008 Election Obama and Beyond

Well, we have done it.  We have elected a president!  My biggest regret is that it isn’t David Palmer of Fox’s 24.  We need a decisive leader, and that is something we do not have in Obama.  Someone who votes “present” is about as bold a decision maker as a child responding to roll call in 1st grade.

I am sorry that sounds so blunt, but wer are currently facing true crisis of a magnitude we have never seen.  The challenges we face as a nation are in every arena.  When I saw 24 a few years back, before Obama was even on the political scene, I saw a president in David Palmer that I was ready to vote for!  I sure wish leaders were like that in real life! 

Please understand, I can relate to the euphoria that many are experiencing on some levels, but that will quickly fade.  I am just a young man myself, 34 years old.  I am too young to really understand racism.  I never have been racist, and if you want me to be honest, I have only experienced the opposite, black anger toward the white man syndrome.  Racism does go both ways you know. 

Of course I have met racist people, but they have always been seen as an anomaly to my generation.  Maybe we were blessed, but it has never been a problem for us. 

I have noticed the older generation always saying ” I don’t see color”  and “I am color blind” .  I have always found that laughable.  I have always seen color.  I am not color blind.  There is nothing wrong with color!  Thank you God for painting our world with beautiful people!  Thank you for all of the races and nations and cultures! 

It is hard for me to comprehend the way it must have felt to not be able to eat at the same restaurant and drink at the same water fountain.  That era was just a few short years before I was born, yet I look at the people who held those disturbing views of humanity as blind at best. 

When I look at this election through the lens of the pain that African Americans have endured for ages, it is cause for serious celebration for me.  I rejoice that we have given ourselves the message that we are not racist as a people.  It has been true for quite a while, but at least we have made that statement. 

We need to know however that as sure as there are people who will cheat on taxes and their spouses, as sure as people will become drug addicts and murderers, there will always be racist people.  Those issues are sin issues and can only be effectively dealt with through the Cross of Jesus Christ. 

We should feel pride as Americans that we have moved beyond the petty race card as a people.  I hope that it is understood that Obama would not have been elected without white people.  I hope Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton will retire now, since they are relics of the past.  All they do is gin up hate and racism toward white people.  Their hateful rhetoric is obsolete and embarrassing.  

Obama has a chance to do some amazing things for America.  He also has an opportunity to destroy this nation.  Which road will he take?  Will he allow criticism of his decisions and policies to be painted as “racism” by the media on his behalf?  Or will he be a true leader and accept the controversy and flack that will be his in abundance simply as part and parcel of the office he will occupy? 

Today Oprah said she has never seen such unity in America, less than 24 hours after Obama’s acceptance speech.  Unity?  56 million were not in unity with the decision to elect Obama!  I am not a republican.  I am not a democrat, or a libertarian.   I do love my country, and believe the constitution is something we should  adhere to.  It is inspired by many principles that agree with the ultimate King, Jesus.

 I am a Christian first, and my allegiance is to Jesus Christ.  He paid the ultimate price to be my leader, he shed his blood on the cross for my sin.  God accepted His perfect sacrifice in place of my judgment, and He raised Him from the dead.  I serve a living, speaking leader named Jesus Christ.  He has given me His Spirit to live on the inside of my heart and to strengthen me to live as a new creature.  Although I am not perfect, my heart is not utterly sinful, it is regenerated and I delight in the laws of God.  My viewpoints are to represent the King of all Kings, Jesus Christ.  I have been commanded to be salt and light. 

James 1:27 says the following “Pure and undefiled religion in the sight of our God and Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.”

An orphan is a child or baby that has been abandoned by its parent.  Abortion is killing an orphan.  It is that simple.  My religion is worthless if I don’t stand to protect the innocent.  Any leader that promotes abortion as a choice is violating the most basic human right, the right to life.  Obama has taken a strong stand to protect the right to abort a baby.  Millions of orphaned babies are being “aborted” in America.  It is truly a silent holacaust.  These innocent children have blood that is crying out to God. 

I know, the intellectual high minded people that now simply yawn at such an argument have hearts of stone.  How can you expect a stone to understand? 

Despite the fact that I believe Obama’s economic ideas are a nightmare, and his energy policies will be painful to endure, and his “out of the closet” socialistic philosophy if implemented could steer our nation down a road that only revolution could reverse, I have to park at how his agenda to promote and protect the right to kill innocent babies will be the most horrific to endure. 

To my brothers and sisters in Christ, if you voted for Barack Obama because he was black and overlooked his position on abortion, you have chosen honor man and dishonor God.  Do you realize that?  

I know that is the celebration of the day, that we elected someone of color.  I have to stand and thank God that we did that.  But that was not the most important crieteria for choosing a president.  I don’t care what color the candidate is. 

Nevertheless, he is my president, and I honor the highest office of my great nation.  I will pray for him and his family, and I will stand with him and support him. However,  I will not dishonor God and agree with promoting sin and evil on any level.  I will still let the Bible alone declare what a sin is. 

Mr President, your past statements and affiliations give me pause, but I know we all have fallen short of God’s glory.  His forgiveness and love are extended toward you.  I pray that you will hear the voice of the almighty and be strengthened to take a stand for the innocent lives being terminated on a daily basis. 

Character comes from conforming to Christ, and being obedient to His ways.  When I look at the criteria by which the majority vote was cast, it causes me to dig deep for the resolve to face the battles ahead.  We all must stand for what we believe, and do it unashamedly and without fear.

Ultimately, I feel like I have to stand with Martin Luther King jr. in my lament.  I long for the day in which we will judge someone not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.  We sure didn’t follow that recipe this time around.

 

The miracle of common sense

Ok, so about a month ago, I was grocery shopping and was shocked to find that I couldn’t buy orange juice in one gallon containers! What is going on here? Here I am with a growing family, and my food items are shrinking! That is really bad news for us. I thought to myself, please don’t let this spread past my beloved orange juice. Then it happened again! I went for my favorite ice cream, Breyer’s Rocky Road. It felt a little different, and then I looked at the size, 1.5 quarts instead of 2 quarts! It got worse, the last time I cooked a kielbasa sausage, it barely covered the hunger quotient of my family of 6, now the stinken sausage shrunk too!

Yesterday I filled up my minivan, are you ready for this, $95.08! Are you kidding me? Fruits and vegetables have gone way up, you can hardly get apples for under $2.00 per pound now. All of this is based on one commodity, oil…

I have decided to pray for the miracle of common sense to hit our policy makers. I pray a giant angel with the anvil of common sense drops it on their heads.

I am sorry, but you cannot build an entire economy on oil, and then say let’s use less. The fact is, the population is growing, the need for energy is increasing. If you want to transition our economy to another lifeblood, then you can’t just stop the engine until you build a new one!

I am going to say the foulest most hideous dirty word in America, according to our media and elected officials. I will get stares, glares and snide remarks. Are you ready?

DRILL! DRILL! DRILL! DRILL!

Ok, I will wait until you are done foaming at the mouth. On second thought, I think I better not wait, because the Democratic and Republican parties are insane! They are so full of themselves, their minds are so bloated with self importance, they are deaf to the cry of common sense.

Yes, the miracle of common sense. It is safe to say that word is a misnomer now. Uncommon sense is the need of the day.
As a young man who got a rough start on life, I am scratching out my path to success in life. When I see the country that is being handed down to me and my children, and compare it to what the founding fathers structured our great nation to be, it is downright scary.

I pray for a return to morality, a return to civility, a return to hard work being rewarded and not disfunction. I pray for a country that isn’t looking to make more victims with more itis’s. We need to pull ourselves up by the bootstraps and get down to the real work.

We don’t have an abortion problem, we have a sex oustide of marriage problem. We have a immoral problem. We have a fornication problem. Can I even use these words anymore?
I can’t live my life politically correct, because if I let that philosophy train me, I will have allowed myself to live a life of dishonesty with myself.

Being politically correct puts peer pressure on you to say what you are supposed to say instead of what you actually think about something. It cultivates a disconnection with you from your soul.

It is better to say something that might be genuinely wrong and learn, than to spew out in lobotomized fashion the acceptable status quo and live like a zombie.

Let’s return to the foundation of real life, honesty! Look at the problems in your life and the world, and don’t accept the answers the powers that be are trying to force down our throats! The answers empower them and bind us to their every whim.

We are being taxed to death. Nobody even thinks about or talks about the craziness that we are facing!

Look at property tax. That is against the constitution! You can lose your land if you don’t pay tax to the government! It is an evil tax, and robs families of their God given and constitutional right to own land.

If you really look at how much tax we are paying, it is significant. Most people are so glad to get a tax refund, but fail to realize they paid the taxes in the first place! The government held that cash that belonged to you and returned it at 0% interest!

I do not want to rely on government to take care of me. I want them to give me the freedom that was fought for by our visionary founding fathers. I don’t want to pay property tax, I want to own my property. I don’t want them telling me what trees I can’t cut down. I don’t want to empower a few to spend trillions of dollars every year. I don’t want to pay for other peoples prescription drugs! I don’t want to pay for other peoples retirement! I don’t want to fund abortions and drug needles, and government surveys on the habitat of the freckled mole.

I want the miracle of common sense. I don’t want to hand over a nation that is backward to my children.

I want to have the option to vote for someone besides Larry, Curly or Moe. I demand honesty from my politicians. If they lie, I want them gone, bye bye! I don’t want my president to be getting oral sex in the oval office by some young chic, nor do I want my president to spend my grandchildrens money on medicare!

I pray we open our eyes to what is and demand what should be. It starts with ourselves. We have to be standard bearers. We cannot demand something we aren’t willing to live out ourselves.

Well, it feels good to vent a little, but I better get back to my 60 hour work week. When I am not working, I will be teaching my children to love the Lord Jesus. Then I will be cleaning my house and keeping the yard, doing maintenance, holding my infant daughter, changing diapers, teaching virtue and character to my boys, loving my wife. That doesn’t leave a lot of time to change the world does it….

 

Thank you!

I just have to put this thank you on my blog.  I am so thankful for my friends and family.  There is nothing more difficult than being in a season where you can’t make it alone.  Over and over again, the precious people God has put in my life come through with their prayers and support in numerous ways.  The encouragement, the food, the prayers, the care for our children, words cannot express my gratitude.

We need to make it another 4 weeks with Briana on bedrest, and then she has to have a c-section delivery, so with recovering from the surgery, we have about 10 weeks of impossible in front of us.  I am learning so much from the Lord right now, and He is truly sustaining me daily.

I know we are going to make it through this time and be stronger than ever.  That is the heritage of the Kingdom of God, He causes us to be overcomers.

We love you all so much!  Thank you!

 

B-Team Hero

We are playing basketball for several weeks. Just thought I would show you a clip that ESPN missed.

 

Snow

So I wake up and it is snowing.  It is March 28th!  I am ready for some sunny days here!

 

The mouse

Last Saturday we were discussing our vacation options.  We were planning on going to the beach for a weekend before our daughter Willow was born, but suddenly changed courses.  We went from the beach in April to Disney tomorrow!  It was incredible fun to do something so spontaneous.  We had a beautiful family time together, shared a small hotel room, and spent 3 days at Disneyland.  Jordan had been asking for the last 18 months if we could go to Disneyland.  It was so fun to surprise him.  There is nothing like sharing moments with your family, just enjoying life.  My kids are growing up so fast, I realize I have to just make things happen sometimes.  With each season in our children’s life passing so quickly, this was truly a blessing to have these memories to treasure for the rest of our lives.

 

Pneumonia anyone?

So, Thursday night our friends Tom and Lindsey come over to give us a date night.  About 30 minutes before they arrive, I start getting this chest pain.  I have never had a bruised ribcage or strain in my chest, but I concluded that somehow I must have strained it.  I could only take in short shallow breaths.  I have a high pain tolerance, so I just wrote it off as a mystery injury.  I couldn’t remember lifting any heavy objects or roughhousing with the boys.  Thursday night I could not sleep.  I could hardly breathe in bed, and just the slightest adjustment in bed caused me to writhe in pain and increased my difficulty in breathing.  The next day I went off to work and about 10am realized I had better go see a doctor.  As much as I hate pain meds, it was really sounding like a good idea to be nauseated instead of getting stabbed in my lungs with every breathe I took.  I went into the doctor at 11:30 and they took a chest x-ray and EKG to make sure I didn’t have a heart condition.  After doing so, they concluded that I must have some strange strain.  The doctor prescribed a muscle relaxer and some vicadin.  I popped them right away and it did nothing.  By 6pm the pain had gotten much worse and if I was even slightly winded I could barely breathe and became faint. 

Reluctantly I admitted myself to the emergency facilities at the hospital.  I am self employed so I am never excited about the co-pays on top of my insurance premiums.  After taking an x-ray they found that I had bacterial pneumonia!  I guess I was relieved that this mystery had a name and we could now take a course of action against it.  How do you get pneumonia at 33 years old?  I thought it was caught by the feeble and elderly!  I am perplexed by how many things can go wrong at the same time in life.  Especially in the light of what we have set out to do, obey the word of the Lord.  As much as I can even teach on enduring contradiction after receiving a word from God, going through it certainly is another matter in itself.  Warring over the prophetic words you have recieved, fighting the good fight of faith, resisting the devil, standing when you have done all, withstanding weariness is a life consuming season for me right now.  I have no doubts that God is going to take us through this season victoriously.  We might come out with just our lives intact, but we will come out ready to see His church established.  I knew stepping out into this would be the battle of my life.  Sometimes I wonder just how long it will take to see a breakthrough.  I am determined to make it through with joy, and full of faith in God’s goodness.  I would have to say that I have been afflicted in my emotions, physically and in life circumstances like no other time in mylife.  Thank God, that I don’t live by my emotions or circumstances or physical condition, I live by the word of God.  Honestly, I wouldn’t have made it out of the gates if I didn’t believe the word of the Lord.  God is bigger than anything I am facing in life and that is enough for me.  Even though life seems to be so much louder than God, He will never forsake us.  I can find Him in the stillness, and I know when I come forth, my faith will be stronger, and I will have a greater capacity to obey the Lord and see a harvest for His glory.  I just pray I am getting close!

 

I’ts been a while!

Well, I thought I would post some updates in my life! We have been so busy! We are expecting a 4th child! He/she will be arriving in late May 2008. Briana’s pregnancies are very difficult, so I have been on tilt for quite a while now. Between pioneering a new church plant (www.portlandcurrent.com) running a home business, parenting and husbanding, all I have to say is wow! I have never been stretched like this in my life, and I thought my last 7 years was challenging! I have been at the edge of myself and beyond for the last 2 years now. I would like to say that the Lord has been so good to me during this time. In a season with the struggles I have faced, I can see how easy it could be to crack or let down on some area of my life. If I didn’t have Jesus in my life, I really don’t know how I could have made it. His faithfulness, patience and grace have strengthened me and I am believing we are entering into a very fruitful time in our life. Reflecting on 2007, I really have grown personally. Many things I had been taught in principle I had the opportunity to live out and apply to my life in very personal ways. Tough times are precious times when you have the right perspective. Many of our friends have come through some difficult times as well and I praise God for that. I have never had more expectation in my life as I do now. To have the opportunity to serve the Lord in this capacity is such an honor for me. You see, I got plucked out of a hopeless life by Jesus, I was going down fast, and He has lifted me up and put my feet on solid ground. Those are not hollow words to me. I have such a passion for people to know Jesus personally and to experience the same love, acceptance and purpose I have received from Him. If you are down, I want you to know that Jesus is alive and wants to lift your head. He will give you hope and strength. Christianity is not a religion, it is a Kingdom with a king, who’s name is Jesus. If you call on Him, expect a miracle! Have a wonderful Christmas! We are going to enjoy this Christmas, we don’t have any money to do anything, but it isn’t sad. We have a tree and a couple things for the kids. It is actually nice to be out of the money spending frenzy this year!”  I will just let Violet fix us  up with Christmas dinner!