Answering the Call

So, after a lot of prayer and a lot of thought and a lot of pondering....

Erin and I have decided to move to Mexico.

We visited in October and were invited by Gustavo and Elizabeth Pacheco to come down and live in their building so that we might serve the community of La Mision.

It is exciting. We will be leaving in the middle of January and we feel very unprepared.

But as I remember my buddy, Toby saying about Moses that God did not call him because he was prepared....God prepared him because he answered the call.

So off we go. We need to raise money, set up all of this new insurance, learn Spanish, and then move down to a country that we have never lived.

That scares us a little. We get flooded by different emotions. At times we are so excited, at times we are scared. We often get hit by them at weird times.

We are now at a place where we need to pray to God because He can see stuff that we can't. He has called us (we believe) and so therefore He knows that this is where we are supposed to be. We know this.....but sometimes it is much easier to blog the blog, than it is to wog the wog....

So we answer the call.

Has it been since May 5?

Sorry to disappoint my loyal blog fan(s)....

I can't believe it has been so long since my last blog. I guess I have taken some time to learn, to grasp and to ponder more of life and what it has to offer us.

Here are some things that I have learned.

Life doesn't get any better than this. If we are happy, and we are not encountering pain, it merely means that we are not truly living. We are not on the tracks of the train of life. Instead, we have derailed and are driving to disaster. Happiness is good. But life is not only the search to be happy (just ask Will Smith). Life is rather the encountering and maybe even seeking pain and hardship so that we might truly live.

Do I do that? No. But I want to.

Life also forces us to take some risks. I don't like to take risks unless they are guaranteed or they are worth the risk. So much of our lives are built around only taking risks that are not worth it and are way too safe.

Live a little. Take some risks. Be a friend, don't just demand friendship. Love someone who won't love you back. Give up something you love....just to not hold it too much.

Life is a funny thing. I am sitting here tonight at my computer. The light is low, my wife is asleep. I have the choice to think about all of the amazing things that I have. Everything that I enjoy. But I also have the ability to dwell on the things that I don't have. Who I want to be. Who that movie star portrays...

I usually choose the opposite. Why?

Why do I believe the lies. Why do I derail off the train tracks of pain and life and the richness of joy and living.

I don't know.

But I continue to search for the answers...

GVG (God-Vision Goggles)

It's Cinco De Mayo. Here I sit at my computer in Sunny Seattle. Last night, we began something. A church service with a full band that was the start of something new. Something fresh.

Six months ago, I had a dream to start a church. I pictured doing something big and having it start in West Seattle.

Now, I think that God had other plans. My dream had my friend Toby preaching. My dream had a full band. My dream was to have it start in West Seattle.

God seems to have made this come true. Last night, we had a church service in Burien, which is south of West Seattle, and my friends, Jeff and Isaac, and Toby were there.

This is going to be big. The foundation has been laid. Our hearts are open and honestly put before God to see what he is going to do.

The big issues are things of this world. I don't have a job that I love. Jeff has one, but on the other side of Seattle. Isaac doesn't know where his next one is going to be.

It seems as though the resources are coming from the church where Toby is working....which is a huge blessing. We have a sound system, a place to meet for free, and that takes away some of the risk.

But I believe that God is working on us to reach a people that we don't even know yet. It's like I have to trust Him like someone trust's night vision goggles. You can't see anything, but when you hit that switch, all of a sudden, you see things you couldn't before. God gives us GVG's. I can feel it! I believe it! My job is to be faithful...


(disclaimer--I have only used Night Vision Goggles in video games)

In the egg

As I try to figure out what life is all about, I catch myself coveting people who I think have life figured out. I covet the rich person because I believe that they don't have to worry about money. I covet the person who is popular, because they never have to worry about friendships and having people let them down. I covet the person who is happy, because they don't have problems.

But as I think about this, I know that this is an illusion. In the news, we are constantly reminded of the people who are rich and famous who are addicted to drugs, are constantly unfaithful, and who are seeking after something they can't hold onto like a donkey with a carrot dangling in front of it.

And as I think about this trap that I fall into so often, I am reminded of a story of a boy who has a egg that is about to hatch. He looks at the cracks beginning to form in the egg and he gets excited. As he sees the beak of the bird, he becomes aware of the struggle and hardship that the baby bird is going through. In his mercy, the boy assists it by helping the bird to break its shell.

Unfortunately, what the boy did not understand, was that the chick needed the struggle to build the muscles in its wings so that it could fly. The bird was never able to recover.

We are like that bird. We pray for God to take us out of that struggle and pray for his mercy. But it is God, by His wisdom, that He leaves us to struggle so that we might be made strong, both in character and as a human.

A slave.

What is a slave? When I was in high school, we held an auction to have a freshman as a slave for a day. You would be bought by a senior and have to do his/her bidding for the day and carry their books and open their locker. It was humiliating but fun.

That only lasted a while since it became uncool to say the word "slave." Now, the only thing I even see that is close to slavery is on TV or in the movies. I hear that it still goes on around the world even today....but I find it difficult to imagine what it would be like to be a slave.

The brutality, the lack of freedom, no vacation, no trust. Day after day. Just work. Obey. No escape.

In Philipians, Paul refers to himself as a slave to Christ. That paints a different image than what I believe my Christianity tipically is lived in these United States.

Today we find Christians living out their faith more that they are ENTITLED to the throne than they are a SLAVE to Christ.

Let's compare what that looks like.

ENTITLED

Heir

Good should come to you

Do what you want

Get what you want

Serve when it is convenient

Listen when you want

Eat at the good house

Be served

Talk with only the other entitled ones

Live as though you are privileged

As opposed to...

SLAVE

Do what you are told

Don't ask

Don't complain

Obey

Eat among the poor

Listen to your master

Be ready to go

Live not for yourself

As I read the Bible, I continue to see that we need to trust that God has a plan for our lives and that we must serve Him completely....as a slave serves His master. Our Master is one that is worthy to be served. He will be fair, and he will not disappoint.

While it is true that we have inherited the Kingdom of Heaven, we still must serve our Lord until that time comes when we fully get to take part in it.

We must obey, we must listen, we must be ready to do His will. And when we do, we will more fully understand what it means to love, to hope, and to live.

Brushes With Fame....

So, I noticed that some people are starting to read my blog and I hope that continues to grow. In an effort to increase comments and my reader base, I will list some people that I have met that are famous. If you are famous and reading this, please comment and then I will add you...

Some of these famous people are very famous and some are locally famous. Let me know if you want additional information on the chance encounter.

(I don't count rock stars like Madonna at her concert or Bill Clinton and Hillary when I was at the White House....they were there and I was there but not really as a chance meeting)

Charlie Brown. (the actual guy who the cartoon character was about)
Jeff Siemen --Vikings Linebacker
Billy Graham....twice
Rosie O'Donnell
Sally Struthers
Vicki Lawrence
Michael Damian
Alan Thicke
Ed McMahon
Fred Couples
Shaun Alexander
Catherine Zeta-Jones
Michael Douglas
Anthony Hopkins
Joanna Kerns
Carol Burnett
Oprah's Lawyer
Cindy Crawford
Tony Oliva
Sig Hansen (I think that was the Deadliest Catch captain whose truck I parked)
Mark Harmon
Tim Meadows (made him laugh)
The Village People (said hi to the native american)
Bill Maher (he ignored me when I said hello....he is dumb)
The wife of Kevin Costner in Field of Dreams
Oh....and his kids were in my youth group.
Dallas Raines
Johnny Mountain
Jean Enerson
Andrew Cuomo and his wife.....who is a Kennedy


That's all I can think of for now.

New thoughts...

I continue to open my heart up to where in the world God wants me to dig in, and I continue to not know.

It is so frustrating.

Here I am, ready and willing to go make a difference in the world for the Kingdom of God, and I don't know where I am supposed to do this.

Here are some things that I am pondering.

1. Am I not listening correctly?
I don't want to be someone who is always complaining and not able to see that I just have to get up and go......not just sit and pray......but face my fears and go.

2. What good can I do?
I can't help but face the fact that I am just a spec in the human existence on a spec in eternity. Why even bother? Does God need me? Not really. Does God think that I will fix all the poverty in the world? No.

3. Why do I have so much fear to start something?
Beginning any journey is a big deal. It effects my wife, my friends, my family. Just thinking about making a decision throws my wife into a weighty stress that is not easily shaken. But these are the things that I face every day when I begin to think about doing what God is asking.


So where does that lead me this March morning?

I am left with the fact that now is the time to take some risks. Go for it with all I have and continue to build a foundation of truth and righteousness. Live life with the motivation that God is alive and breathing His life into us and wanting to build His Kingdom using His people. Even people like me. Not because He needs me to spread His good news. But because He needs me to understand what it means to be used by God....


I really wish that I could know.

But I can't.

So I will just take a step.....one little step.....knowing that every step is scary....

One TV station and no radio...

I moved in October to a house in West Seattle. My wife and I decided not to get cable. We are poor and cable has way too many channels. It sucks the life right out of you. With cable, I can watch bad television for hours and see reruns of MacGyver, and watch the Scottish pole throwing championships and forget to go to sleep. It is not good for me.

Our friend, Tony, let us use his TV and so we plugged it in and found out that we get one TV station.......Fox. Any time of the day, I turn it on and there is some form of the Jerry Springer show or a Judge-in-Court show. At least at night we get American Idol. But for me, as I turn on the Television, when I see the show, "Two and a Half Men," it is the perfect way to make me turn off the set and do something else.

And since I lost my radio in my Jeep to some guy who must have thought it was his, I depend on two sources for my information....

1. The internet
2. The Bible

I am trying to read through the Bible in a year. I am using a plan that picks out readings from four different sections. I have already read through Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Acts, and am mostly through Matthew, and the Psalms.

I have thoroughly enjoyed it. I wake up and brew my Starbucks French Roast coffee (since my wife works at their corporate office) and put way too much French Vanilla creamer in an oversized cup and get my reading done for the day.

These are some things that I dwell on...

a. The Old Testament is not easy to read.
b. Acts is awesome.
c. It is better to read this than watch TV
d. That I am glad that being a minister of the church is different now than being a priest in the Levitical Exodus times.


The priestly job back in the day was not for the faint of heart. You had to kill a lot of animals and burn them and wipe the fat on the side of the altar. You also had to determine what skin diseases were clean and unclean. You also had to judge people and determine what they needed to do to fit into the community...which necessarily involved casting some people out...

Not fun.

I am not sure I would even qualify. Since you had to not have a defect. "...whether he is blind or lame, stunted or deformed, or has a broken foot or hand, or has a humped back or is a dwarf, or has a defective eye, or has oozing sores or scabs on his skin, or has damaged testicles..." Leviticus 21:18ff (NLT)

So, as I tried to get something from these laws, I picture myself back in those times. And see it as fresh and novel.

Back in the day, Moses was given the command to ultimately set up a goverment where people had to follow and be obedient. At the time, they didn't know exactly why these laws were made, but they had to follow.

Now, as we look back historically, we can see that they were able to survive and that these laws prevented them from things like the Bubonic Plague, the spread of disease, and allowed them to stay as a community with a central heart.

In Exodus 40, a cloud settles over the Tabernacle and God is present in it. When the cloud moves, they had to pick up everything and follow the cloud.

This is where I am.

I believe that the cloud is moving. I don't know why I am doing the things that I am doing. I just have to be obedient and follow God and go where He is. It might not even make sense to me or my family, but I have to go.

Church...

I quit my job as a youth pastor in January of 2007. I had been there for five and a half years and it was time to move on...

Ministry takes it toll on a person. I decided to take a year off and not stress. It is amazing how much you worry about as a youth pastor. People that you care about make bad decisions and you wonder if you could have helped them better.

Now I am rested.

I feel like I am now able to breathe, to listen to the voice of God and to lead His people into a new way of life.

So where is this way and who are the people...?

In the last year, my wife, Erin, and I have been to lots of different churches and have been mainly disappointed. We have not been captivated by a style or a particular experience. We have seen some good techniques and have been to some fine worship services...but none have captured our hearts or dared us to think about life in a different way.

So we begin our journey.

A journey to discover God and His face and to follow Him with courage and novelty. One that leads us into a life that is truly living and one that we were made to live.

We want to be open, honestly showing our lives as people who are not completed yet and who don't have everything figured out. We want to be loving, so much that we are unable to do it without the help of God. We want to be caring, so much that people respond by asking us to explain where we get our motivation.

We want to live giving all of the glory to God, because we couldn't possibly live the way we live without Him in our lives.

Where am I headed...?

I love going to the airport. You arrive at the terminal (which is a bad name for those who are scared to fly) and begin a journey to every different part of the world. You go through security with someone who has a passport, another who is a business person with their laptop and blackberry, and another family who is heading to see family and worried that their kids are going to bother the other passengers.



But I just slide through security on my way to a location.



I look up at the big wall of screens and try to find the gate that I will be leaving from. And right there, I can see all of the possibilities. New York City, Tulsa, Spokane, Tuscaloosa, Honolulu....



It is overwhelming to know where I could be going and to feel like I am actually in charge of my own destiny. I don't like that feeling at all. I get this way when there is a change in my destination. I quit my job and search for a new one.



But in this exercise, I find that my heart is opened up to all of the places that I could travel. I look up to the monitor and ask God to tell me what is next....



So here I am.



Where should I go? What should I do?



I am trying to metaphorically go to the airport....to check in.....and to pass through security....trusting that God is taking me to the place where I was meant to live.