restored to grace

So today was an interesting day. It was unseasonably cool with a slight chill in the air. It was dry today (which is extremely uncharacteristic considering the massive amounts of humidity we’ve been getting these last few months).

I went to work for the last time at the job I loved more than any other job I’ve had. Definitely a bittersweet time. Yesterday was tougher though. Today wasn’t really as difficult because there weren’t a whole lot of goodbyes involved. Just a lot of “I’ll miss seeing you more than once a week” types of things.

Yesterday was loaded with some extremely difficult goodbyes. Too many. But I’ll probably talk about that in another entry. For now, I’m just talking about today.

I got home from work and had some amazing breaded chicken dish that my mom made. Simply astounding. I’d forgotten just how awesome she can be at this stuff.

After dinner digested, I went for a run in Parsippany with some good friends. Somewhere near three miles I think. Our normal course was interrupted by the darkness that overshadowed it, so we ended up using a shortcut through some better lit areas. That probably shaved several hundred feet from our projected three-mile run. I hadn’t gone since last Saturday, so it was good to get back out there. My left shin wasn’t doing so hot at the end of it, and I noticed some serious pain there during the post-run stretch.

Earlier today I had bought a case of Sam Adams’ Octoberfest for a BBQ I’m having after the 5K on Sunday. It’s probably my favorite Märzen (if not my favorite pilsner or even lager), and I couldn’t resist pouring myself a glass tonight. It was such a welcoming flavor. I’m so glad it’s back on the tap. It’s possibly the perfect taste to complement the coming autumn months.

The Octoberfest pours into a rather dark reddish amber with a creamy off-white one- to two-finger head. It has a fairly insignificant fragrance; a bit of bread mixed with a sweet nuttiness and a smooth caramel. The smell is typical of most lagers. The carbonation hits pretty quickly, carrying a biscuity flavor with it. Initially I tasted a hint of freshly baked bread, but it finished with a rather syrupy sweetness and hints of apples and grapes. It’s a full-bodied Märzen that’s a bit heavy, but quite enjoyable.

I started reading through Revelation again today. Wow. More on that in another entry.

So that was my day. All in all, an excellent Monday. I can’t wait to see what Tuesday has in store for me.

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My friend Beth posted a fantastic entry on this passage, and as I read it, I couldn’t help but be struck by the inclusiveness of the language.

God pours out his blessings on everyone. No matter what.

All we have to do is ask him.

What’s sad is that we often assume that we have to live a certain way or do certain things before God is willing to share his love with us.

So we slave to earn God’s favor, and hope that he’s happy with the work we’re doing.

But Paul wrote a different story about God.

“If God didn’t hesitate to put everything on the line for us, embracing our condition and exposing himself to the worst by sending his own Son, is there anything else he wouldn’t gladly and freely do for us?”
~Romans 8.32

It’s interesting to see how much our lives change through a simple change in perspective. You can look at your life one way, believing God to be an angry judge waiting to see us screw up, seeing every difficult or painful situation as a way for him to find fault in what we’re doing. Or you can look at life another way, seeing God as a benevolent king who wants nothing more than to watch you grow and mature, embracing every trial as an opportunity to become stronger and wiser.

And God wants this for us. He’s longing to give us great things. He wants our lives to be fulfilled and joyful. The letter writer James put it this way:

“Every desirable and beneficial gift comes out of heaven. The gifts are rivers of light cascading down from the Father of Light. There is nothing deceitful in God, nothing two-faced, nothing fickle. He brought us to life using the true Word, showing us off as the crown of all his creatures.”
~James 1.17-18

We mean a lot to God. Isn’t there comfort in knowing this? Maybe a simple shift in perspective is all we need.

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I’m pissed off about the impotence of today’s Christian culture.

We’re a powerless lot, with no agenda beyond that of finding fault in everything our society is doing.

But we’ve been given so much more.

Uncle Ben said it best: “With great power comes great responsibility.”

We’ve been given an enormous amount of power with which we’ve been charged to change the world. Christ left us this promise:

“But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

But what exactly is this power?

Christ did all kinds of powerful things while he was on earth. He healed the sick, he raised the dead, he multiplied food. But all of these acts were but a reflection of the immensely powerful act he would perform at the end of his life.

He would put an end to death.

And that power resides within us.

And with that power comes a charge: to unite the world and reconcile everything back to God.

But now in Christ Jesus you who were once far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us. He has abolished the law with its commandments and ordinances, that he might create in himself one new humanity in place of the two, thus making peace, and might reconcile both groups to God in one body through the cross, thus putting to death that hostility through it.
~Ephesians 2.13-16

It’s somewhat depressing to see that Christians don’t take this charge seriously. But what depresses me even more is seeing Christians who think they’re taking it seriously, but are doing more harm than good, and are actually doing everything they can to turn people away. If something isn’t working, get rid of it! It’s not bad to look at numbers; numbers can be a good way to judge whether your work is effective. If it’s not, try something new. This calling is too important to be wasted on clinging to tradition or what worked twenty years ago.

God calls us to something much bigger than ourselves. He wants to use us as vehicles for his message to the world.

If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us.
2 Corinthians 5.17-20

Yes, it’s thrilling to think that “the same power that conquered the grave lives in me,” but if that power isn’t doing anything through us, maybe it’s time to take a long, hard look at ourselves and reevaluate what we’re doing with that power.

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Have you ever been alone with God?

It’s funny how for much of my life I talked a lot about how awesome God is, how amazing Jesus’ work was, blah blah blah.

But when I came face to face with my Creator today, all of that changed.

For two hours my entire world was wrapped up in every facet of his being.

Majesty.

Splendor.

Glory.

And I was left speechless, dumbfounded, and in awe. I fell to the ground, my knees jolting with the impact. The trees above me seemed to whisper as the wind whistled through their branches: “Hallelujah,” they hissed.

As I pulled myself from the ground and began walking again, images of those whom God had used in my life flashed through my mind. And he began to reveal more of himself to me.

Love.

Grace.

Excitement.

I thought of the deeper friendships that I’ve cultivated over the past few years. The men who mentored and discipled me. The friends I shared my love and companionship with. The children I taught and cared for. And once again, I was left humbled and confounded.

This God who spoke breath into my life, who raised up and destroyed nations, who whispered entire galaxies into existence. . . this God is my Daddy, and he loves me.

That’s what I found in my secret place.

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Last Friday I had the opportunity to listen to the new MUTEMATH album Armistice. Okay, so I’m a little partial here, but it’s one of the most amazing albums I’ve ever heard.

I won’t go into a whole ton of details, but suffice it to say that this is an album you don’t want to miss.

As Paul Meany was recounting how this latest album came to be, I couldn’t help but be more impressed by the care that went into putting this record together.

The band wrote 36 new songs while they were on the road touring for their debut album.

None of those appear on Armistice.

They scrapped them all and decided to create a completely new, cohesive sound for this new CD.

I hope you come to love it as much as I do. It releases August 18.

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Was anyone curious about what goes on at work that pulls me in so early on Sunday mornings? Well, even if you weren’t, here’s a video to give you a sneak peek on my job.

Special guest appearances from fellow bloggers Kenny Jahng, Mike Leahy, and Rich Birch.

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I’m tired of seeing other people through the eyes of a Christian. Sometimes I’m sickened by my own perspective.

But yesterday I saw through different eyes.

Let me tell you a story.

I was working late yesterday trying to finish up some stuff before the start of the weekend. Around 7:30 the door buzzed. I couldn’t see anyone through the office security monitor, so I walked over to the door. I figured it’d probably be one or more of my coworkers coming back from the Verizon 5K.

As I got to the door, a young girl—no older than 17 years—was standing outside. She had dyed black hair and freckles and was wearing a pink camisole and black leggings. A large tattoo stretched from her shoulder to her elbow, and she was clutching some papers in her hand. One of those was our brochure.

I began to sense a barrier building up inside me. Tread carefully, Nate, I heard in the back of my mind. She might be after something.

“Can I help you?” I asked as I cracked the door.

“Someone over at First Choice told me about you guys. Is there someone I can talk to? I’m going through a rough time right now.”

First Choice, huh. Nate, just look at her. Put the two and two together. She’s not the kind of person you want to be talking to. The voice in my mind seemed to be growing louder.

Suddenly the girl vanished in my mind’s eye, and I saw an old friend standing in front of me. “Nate, this girl is me.”

“Have you forgotten where I came from? Have you forgotten what I’ve been through? You say I’m becoming a world-changer. So is she, Nate. I’ve just been on that road longer than she has.”

The girl walked in, and we sat in the lobby/foyer for about five minutes.

After a short chat, I let her out. “I’m sorry there was no one here to help you, but look for us on Sunday.”

As she walked away from my office, I paused. I could almost hear God’s voice whispering to me, “She’s my daughter too, Nate. I’ve given her the same potential to shape the world as I’ve given you. She has so much potential. Can you see it? My Son can. He died for her because he believes in her.”

The band was practicing in the basement. Through the floor I heard Dave singing these words:

There is no guilt here
There is no shame
No pointing fingers
There is no blame
What happened yesterday has disappeared
The dirt has washed away
And now it’s clear

There’s only grace
There’s only love
There’s only mercy
And believe me it’s enough
Your sins are gone
Without a trace
And there’s nothing left now
There’s only grace

And in that moment I realized that God’s story is too big for Christians to get in the way of it.

God’s Kingdom is infiltrating our lives and cutting each one of us through his unparalleled love and grace.

If we’ll look at her through Christ’s eyes, we’ll find that this girl’s story is going to be more beautiful than any we could possibly imagine.

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Do you remember Sunday School? What kinds of images does that phrase conjure up in your mind? I don’t know about you, but my memories of Sunday School aren’t particularly great. For starters, it was far from cool. It just didn’t have that “I’ve gotta tell my friends about this” quality.

Kids love a good video presentation. It’s not always the most effective way of teaching them timeless truths, but it has its benefits.

What I’ve tried to do (both successfully and unsuccessfully) is incorporate a relatively rudimentary media presentation in the lessons. No amount of technology can replace interactivity, but technology can be a platform for creating high levels of interactivity.

Prior to Liquid, my exposure to children’s ministry had always been extremely low-tech. The most advanced form of technology was flannelgraph, which was only as effective as the person using it.

No matter how low- or high-tech the environment, one thing remains the same. The platform (video, flannelgraph, picture books) is only as good as the user.

I’ve been mulling over this for a while. The Liquid Kids program is, at its core, a Sunday School program (the dreaded phrase!). But when you take a look at what we’re aiming for, you’ll find there’s something much deeper than that.

Ultimately we strive to leverage the short time we spend with the children against the many hours that their parents spend with them. In methodology, we want to have as much interaction with the children as much as possible. But that doesn’t mean we can’t employ “cutting edge” technology in doing so.

While it may be tempting to put the kids in front of a video screen and let them sit there, bear in mind that it’s more important that children need personal attention and guidance. No amount of environment or media can replace interacting with children.

At Liquid Kids, we trade in the classroom environment that comes from a Sunday School mentality for a more interactive and exciting atmosphere. We’ve discovered that giving children the opportunity to play, interact, and have fun goes a long way to helping them understand the lesson.

You may want to follow this basic flow of activity for a children’s program:

1. As the children enter the environment, engage them in a “preview” activity. This could be anything from a crossword puzzle to a game of “Telephone.” Gain some familiarity with the lesson (if you’re facilitating the preview activity but not teaching the lesson) so that your activity pairs with the lesson well. After this initial activity, lead the kids into the lesson environment.

2. Teach the large group lesson or play the lesson video. If you’re teaching a lesson, allow children to be involved.

3. Break into smaller groups for activities and games that review the lesson and help the kids remember what they’ve learned.

Just remember that the effectiveness of your program is not based on the technology you use, but on how you use the technology you have.

Serving on the Liquid Kids Team!!! from Liquid Church on Vimeo.

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(continued from this post)

Somewhere along the way, Christians decided that an effective evangelism technique would be to talk about the end of the world.

I apologize for the tone, but really?

As if we had any idea what the end of the world is going to look like anyway.

Have you ever thought that perhaps Revelation was revealing to us something different? That perhaps we were supposed to read beyond the metaphor and allow our eyes to be opened to something deeper than our own world?

What if Revelation were something different from what we initially perceived it to be?
I won’t go into exegetical detail (I’m no theologian, so you don’t want me writing that kind of stuff), but I want to give you an idea of what happened as I read this book with new eyes.

The book of Revelation is one of those books that is often run away from because of its daunting nature and weird metaphoric and apocalyptic language. So naturally, it’s not a book you want to be going to if you don’t know anything about the Bible.

But here’s what I noticed about much of the imagery in Revelation: the stories seemed oddly familiar. They were different somehow.

Check out Chapter 12. Look familiar? Do you see it? It’s the Christmas story.

Different though.

It’s being told, not from our perspective (which you’d find in the writings of Matthew and Luke), but from heaven’s perspective.

The Advent of the Christ was so much more than the birth of a child.

It was a war of universal proportions.

That’s just one example, but it got me asking the question, “What if that’s what Revelation is really about?”

What if Revelation isn’t revealing to us the end of the world and how it will play out? What if it’s revealing to us the history of our world from heaven’s perspective and playing out the most important events throughout that history through the eyes of the Author?

I’ve discovered a deeper richness to the book since allowing my mind to grasp a thought that didn’t come from something I had been taught.

It’s more alive to me now; it’s more exciting, more real.

And suddenly the Bible means something to me.

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I don’t know who you are. We may have already met, or we may have never seen each other. I used to be afraid of you. I used to think you would place unattainable expectations on me and try to turn me into someone I’m not. But I know now that’s not what you want.

Maybe I’m different from most guys. I realize you’re not supermodel hot. But I don’t want you to be. You’re beautiful because you’re buried so deeply inside our Father’s heart. You’re captivating because you’re captivated by God.

Your soft smile and gentle touch will be enough to send me to the stars. And your strong, silent support of who I am as a man will empower me, strengthen me, and energize me in ways nothing else can. I won’t ask that you always agree with me, but I will ask that you trust my intention to always seek your best interest. My methods may be wrong, and I may never understand you, but please be patient. I’m trying so hard.

I can’t promise that I’ll be your knight in shining armor, but I can promise that I’ll protect you from the dangers and hurts of our world. I’ll give my life to ensure your safety, security, and joy.

And I’ll listen. I’ll sit still and just hear what you have to say. My natural inclination is to spring into action and fix the problem, but I’ll deny that and just be an ear to talk to and a shoulder to lean on.

I know you’ll want an adventure. An endless adventure where we’ll explore the depth of our Savior’s heart and the intensity of his love. I’ll take you there. I may not have the money or ability to take you to beautiful European countries or to see breathtaking natural wonders. But I can promise you that I’ll take your hand as we discover the love that God has for us.

My love for you will be flawed and weak, so I won’t pour it directly on you. I’ll pour my love on our God, and he will amplify it and rain it down on you.

I can’t say I’m ready to share my life with someone else right now. But after I find you, I know I won’t be able to imagine facing the challenges of life without you by my side.

Listen for my voice. I’m calling out to you. And I love you.

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