Good People

The poisonous political atmosphere shows no signs of ending soon. I will not be the one to end it. I will not be the one to influence anyone to pay attention.

No matter. I just need to declare that I think there are some good people serving our country, no matter what the political rhetoric may be today.

My wife heard on MPR yesterday someone making a comment that they guessed the presidential election was now down to voting for a “Muslim or a Mormon.”

It’s a disappointing thing to say. All right. I’ll say it. It’s an awful thing to say.

So, to those on the “right” I am about to tick off, just stay steady. And to those of you on the left… same thing.

I think Mitt Romney is a decent man. As is President Barack Obama.

While I cannot agree with either man on everything, I don’t find it in me to declare false things about either one of them. They may do things I disagree with, but I cannot find it in myself to fling nasty comments around.

There are good people trying to do good things in this nation. On both “sides” of the “aisle.” No one seems to be willing to acknowledge that. I will. Not that it will make a difference this election cycle.

Do We Have What It Takes?

5 Those who put their strength in you are truly happy;
pilgrimage is in their hearts.
6 As they pass through the Baca Valley,
they make it a spring of water.
Yes, the early rain covers it with blessings.
7 They go from strength to strength,
until they see the supreme God in Zion. (Psalm 84:5-7, CEB)

Life simply overwhelms us. The pace of life crushes us at times. The worry of finances. The concern over time. We rush to make things happen.

Do we have it in us to take up a passionate pursuit of the Holy One anymore? Are we so tired, so busy, so overtaken by… life…  we just can’t breathe?

We need prophetic words like those of A.W. Tozer to somehow reach deep down into our spirits and call us upward once again. We need to break away from the mundane all around us and take up the hot pursuit of the Holy One. We need to bust away from mediocrity all around us.

It will require a determined heart and more than a little courage to wrench ourselves loose from the grip of our times and return to biblical ways. But it can be done. Every now and then in the past Christians have had to do it. (Tozer, The Pursuit of God)

Do we have what it takes?

 

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The Rewards of Waiting

Hope in the Lord!
Be strong! Let your heart take courage!
Hope in the Lord! (Psalm 27:14, CEB)

No one likes to wait.

“Hope” and “wait” are ways to translate the Hebrew word used in Psalm 27:14. The NIV uses “wait.” What is communicated is this: What you’re seeking from God isn’t coming at the click of a mouse. There is a season where you have to have your eyes fixed on the Father… waiting… hoping… anticipating. We need that sense of longing once again in our lives.

The world moves to fast. We want results faster. We need more instantaneous results. The days of “slow plodding” are gone… or seem to be. There just doesn’t seem to be any need for waiting any more.

But that is the admonition of Scripture. Prophets are told to wait for the answer of a dream or a revelation. The church was told to wait until they were clothed with power from on high.

Our fast-paced world screams out to us to get the lead out! We move quick or we are run over.

And this wonderful call still comes from our Father.

Wait.

 

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A BIG Announcement

Big for me, anyway.

I have been desiring to begin a new venture with other pastors that focuses on pastors. There are a few great people I’ve talked with over the months and years who love pastoring. I have wanted to have a conversation online for pastors who are doing great work, but they don’t get “noticed.” No big conferences for them. They won’t be speaking at any big conferences. But they are FAITHFUL in their duties as pastors.

I am calling it “blue chip pastoring.” This phrase came to me in a conversation with a seminary professor a few months back. We were having a conversation about ministry and she was speaking words of blessing and life into our church. She talked about what we were doing RIGHT. To put things in terms of our current economic crisis, she said, “The American church is into junk bond investing. They are only thinking short term. What we need, and what you are doing, is blue chip investing. It’s the long haul. It has the long view in mind. This is healthy.”

So, I am branching out. This blog remains because I have loved it so much. I love the conversation. I love hearing from YOU.

The new site is called “bluechippastor.org.” Join us. Let us hear from you.

Tenacious Waiting and Our Millisecond Attention Span

I will take my post;
I will position myself on the fortress.
I will keep watch to see what the Lord says to me
and how he will respond to my complaint. (Hab. 2:1, CEB)

We often think we are just THE THING when it comes to walking with God. We’re smarter, faster, more “spiritual”…

We certainly know better than the old fogies who’ve gone before us. While they “tarried” in prayer, we can get things done. Plug in the right marketing strategy and BOOM… instant church. Good stuff.

And even when God seems to throw us a curve ball, no problem. We’ll just lodge a complaint. We’ll even sit and wait for his response… as long as he gets back to us by the end of the business day. And we have a RIGHT to complain! There is injustice in the land! And we know injustice. We are trained professionals!

So, we lodge our complaint with God and wait.

And we think, “Let’s just see what he says about THIS.”

What if God just lets us stew there? What if we wait and five p.m. rolls around?

We may be good at complaining… but how good at we at waiting? And more still, how good are we at taking God’s answer?

He basically tells Habakkuk, “If the revelation lingers… wait.”

Habakkuk probably could wait. Some of the “old saints” of the Church could wait. That was the point of “tarrying.” They knew what it meant to “pray until.”

In our day… do we know what it is to have a tenacious pursuit of God? Do we know what it is to latch on and not let go until we hear from God?

There are times we truly need to hear from heaven. I believe we live in those times. We are suffering from extreme prosperity as an American Church and it is killing us. We just don’t know it yet. We are living in an anorexic lifestyle spiritually that is killing us. Yet, we are not wanting to hear from God… at least not yet.

We need to repent of our ADHD spirituality and get back to the call to WAIT for the vision God gives.

The Secret is in the Response

Come, my heart says, seek God’s face.
Lord, I do seek your face! (Psalm 27:8, CEB)

God wants everyone pursuing him. He is constantly pursuing each of us.

All He has ever done for any of His children He will do for all of His children. The difference lies not with God but with us. (A.W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God)

We need a heart to pursue God. When he calls, do we respond? I look at the lives of those who lived in incredible blessing from God and then examine other lives (even my own). The difference, often, is those who knew the incredible presence and blessing of God were those who acquired a lifelong habit of spiritual response.

God calls. Does he just get our voicemail?

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The Hungry Heart

The opportunity of worship is the opportunity to gaze on the power and beauty of the Lord. Coming into worship in a church isn’t about the “entertainment” value. It is the incredible opportunity to come face to face with the living God.

Yes, I’ve seen you in the sanctuary;
I’ve seen your power and glory. (Psalm 63:2, CEB)

David would come into the sanctuary and allow the elements of worship draw him into the presence of God. Worship together needs to draw our attention to the One worthy of worship. It is about the Lamb on the throne. It is not about US. David would come into the sanctuary and find the elements of the liturgy drawing him to seek the Lord. It was in that worship he found the power and the glory of God.

Come hungry! When you come to church, come ready to feast!

Too often we come exhausted. We drop into our seats and hope that the worship team has something for us. It may just shock our entire system to think WE are supposed to come in with hearts hungry and asking, “Lord, what can I do for you?”

When you come to worship with the Body of Christ, begin with an appetizer at home. Feast on the Word. Read a Psalm or two. Take the time to put on some worship music that begins to draw your heart to the worship of the Lamb on the throne. Have those songs in your heart on the way to church. When the Israelites came to the Feasts, they would sing the “Songs of Ascents.” They came worshipping.

As you come in tasting the Word of God and preparing your heart with song, you may find that you can more readily experience the power and the glory of God when you are there.

As a pastor, and along with our worship team, we want our hearts hungry when we come as well. I have feasted on the Word all week as I try to prepare a great meal for those coming to church. I have asked for a song in my heart. I don’t always come with a song… but I try.

The realization is that neither I nor the worship team can put that song into the hearts of those coming. We can only supplement that song. I’m long done with the guilt that I’m supposed to “crank it up” for those coming. No show. We’re hungry hearts coming to feast on the greatness of our God. And with hungry hearts we will see his power and glory.

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Politics, Messes, Blindness, and Such Stuff

My friend, Joel Watts, is always trying to “out” me as a liberal. I love his effort. It’s futile, but it’s noble.

I am a fiercely political creature. I grew up talking politics and in my young adult years listening to talk radio. I still listen to political news, but with much more sarcasm than before. The days of an individual being able to actually engage an elected official with a meaningful discussion are long gone. No politician will listen to anything other than dollars going into their political campaign accounts.

To be honest, I’ve been a Republican. That’s so hard to type.

The main thing that has always kept me from being a Democrat is I am pro-life. And not just concerning the unborn. There are other key issues, but I am pro-life, and in the Democratic Party you don’t get higher up that city dog catcher if you let it be known you are pro-life. I understand over the last decade or so there have been many evangelicals try to be a part of the Democratic Party and hopefully influence them to a better conversation on the issues of abortion. And that has failed miserably.

The other thing that keeps me from being Democrat are people like Paul Krugman and Keith Olbermann. They are as vitriolic as Rush Limbaugh and Michael Savage, but just like conservatives who live Rush, liberals refuse to acknowledge the foolish things Krugman and Oblermann spew out. Krugman’s column today is a good case. The world would be SOOOO much better without Republicans! All we need are sensible Democrats because there are NOOO extremists in the Democratic Party.

But that’s an easy case to make for me. (And I prepare for the cannon fodder to come.)

But the Republican Party is such an incredible disappointment as well. A colleague of mine has a personal story about how the extreme right of the Republican Party sabotaged his brother’s job. It’s becoming utterly ridiculous.

I have gone through the years of the Republican Party promising the moon to evangelicals on issues like abortion and family values … and then delivering nothing. They would argue, “Well, if we had a SUPER majority in the Senate…”

That was the mantra the Democrats held out going into the 2008 election…

My point is this: They are all sounding the same now. That could have been said 30 years ago as well. The difference 30 years ago was they all sounded the same and stuff could get done. Today, when I say they all sound the same, I mean they are all divisive.

It’s Krugman on the left saying the world would be a better place without the Republicans. It’s Rush on the right railing against anything that sniffs of the Democratic Party. It’s stupid… and no one is stopping it.

Truthfully, as Christians we should have never hitched our wagon to any political party. Evangelicals did it with the Republicans and got burned. Post-moderns are doing it with the Democratic Party and they will find the same result. At first they will just blame the Republicans (like I did the Democrats), and then the realization will slowly sink in: no one is listening. And it leaves a hard knot in your stomach.

A friend of mine who studies Church History loves Francis of Assisi. He tells the story of Francis having friendships with the Crusaders AND the sultans. There were times when Francis would ride between the battle lines calling out prophetically to both sides, urging them to not fight.

Both Democrats and Republicans are incredibly arrogant with their political gamesmanship. It’s foolishness. It’s foolishness to think that if the other party just didn’t exist things would go better. It’s foolishness to think that only YOUR side has something of substance to add to the conversation.

We need healing from our blindness. I know I’ve needed healing from my own blindness.

I want to be able to pastor Democrats AND Republicans. I want to be able to ADD to people’s lives… not destroy them philosophically or with some political rhetoric.

I wish I could mount a horse like Francis of Assisi and ride between the battle lines of the Republicans and Democrats and cry out, “A pox on BOTH your houses!”

Instead, I will take the hits from those who have been offended by turning on the Republicans… or railing against the Democrats.

Such is life.