Tag Archives: Gospel

Critical Mass

 

Back in the day there was an advertising campaign that said, “If you want to capture someone’s attention, whisper.”  I’m sure it sold a lot of perfume.  Honestly, that notion has never been more relevant than it is today. It’s so freaking noisy.

In this day of mass consumption and mass communication everybody has the ability to talk things to death and beyond, leaving little room for the thinkers, doers and listeners. We’ve been pushed to the fringes, trapped on the jagged cliffs of Mt. McBlahBlah while the lemmings leap over us to their deaths. Somehow, we need to regroup and remember there is a better way.

Critical Mass

You don’t necessarily have to be “qualified” to become an outspoken expert in the field of   ALL THE THINGS— along with half a bazillion others— myself included. I realize this truth.  However, there is something important to be said for motive, wisdom, logic and integrity—necessary ingredients for any decent conversation. I must ask myself this all the time, “Where is your heart anchored”? Because Jesus said that’s where the words flow from.

Until yesterday, I refused to read the recent news. I couldn’t. Not because I do not care or don’t want to know. I simply could not bear the cacophony and white-hot frenzy of more “qualified” experts quite unwilling to listen, hear, empathize or, for God’s sake, REASON with any level of intelligent compassion. Genuineness and integrity getting tripped up and stomped on by those just “here for the show”.  Loud voices with fingers poised on the trigger of their chosen weapon, lobbing word bombs from the safe distance of their comfortable homes. Bang-Bang.  AK-47s may not be the most dangerous weapons in the room considering the power of mob mentality versus the truth.     Think about it.

Satan couldn’t possibly be more pleased. Chaos and confusion—his specialties— are in perpetual supply and we have become a society that thrives upon them. His task is so easy now: drop the hint that the problem is “out there” in the form of terrorism, sexuality, religion, politics and patriotism—whatever. Set the bait, stand back and watch hungry masses tear one another to bits because somebody took a bite out of their sacred cow.  It doesn’t take much because we’ve reached the point of critical mass: the bare minimum required to initiate and sustain a chain reaction.   We’re close.    Feel it?

Sadly , it’s all satan has ever been good at: fear-flavoring every good thing. “Did God really say….?”  BAM:

Doubt.
Confusion.
Anxiety.
Self-ishness.

That one question reverberating across every “modern day” situation we face.  If somehow we buy the lie or at least invest time doubting God’s faithfulness, presence, goodness…or existence… a chink in our armor forms just wide enough for the arrows to bring us down.

Real damage is being done by all the “Us’s” and every “Them”.  No matter where you stand, it’s nearly impossible not to feel the anxious, spiritual buildup like the forges of Mordor rumbling beneath our feet. Not everyone will acknowledge these things. Too many prefer living anesthetized lives of stupefaction through various forms of media and medicines. Numbed and dumbed by an excess of pleasure thinking we can somehow avoid the pain while ignoring how even amongst the most successful in our society, the suicide and drug abuse rates are climbing steadily.

Because there is real pain. But the fact remains that what we’re experiencing in our world today — every bit of it— is not the central issue. These are *symptoms*. Horrible, horrible mutations and manifestations of the terrible disease of sin within.

You know, sometimes.. I can imagine why Jesus wept.  Standing before Mary, He knew even sparing  her this moment of pain would not stop it’s flow immediately. Looking out over Jerusalem then, wanting to gather that city safely into his arms, surely He could see ahead to the world as it is today. His heart was grieved that even in light of His example and sacrifice, choices were going to be made to look away and hurt others anyway.

Even as a Christian, sometimes I find myself wandering into the middle of the fray forgetting that’s not they way we have been called to do this business of life. Sometimes I struggle to remember that God is not a part of the chaos and has no need to shout past Calvary. It is finished.  So how can I live as a part of the “it is finished” people? What is there to say on behalf of those who have to exist in the midst of a world entangled in all the “These things” Paul talked about?

It was this statement this past week from Audrey Assad that brought me back to the center of the issue and before the cross:

Not Easy to Offend

I was reminded that though I’m a warrior for the Gospel, my anchoring and methods of doing battle must be radically different from what I see around me today.

Sometimes I have to take a step back from the noise to gauge more clearly and remember thankfully, our Savior is still speaking ferocious love through the same, steady whisper throughout the ages:  “Return and rest.” ,  “Be still and know.”  and then  Go and tell through and with our stilled, knowing, returned and rested lives.

Salt and Light: It’s how we can be the healing, preserving and seasoning of salt while we illuminate and guide with our light-saturated lives.

Being still, knowing, returning and resting doesn’t seem like much of a solution when you look at it in view of the chaos.

Seems too basic—like putting a bandage on a gaping wound. Instead it’s more like a kiss from God on that ancient snake bite that doesn’t just heal for the moment…it’s the cure— the antidote for the poisonous sin deep in our souls.

And perhaps, in this age of hyper-awareness it may be the only way we can “capture the attention” of this noisy world around us so that the healing Gospel can whisper through the chaos.  It’s my prayer: Let them see Jesus in me.

SssshhhhhhhLorretta signature

All That #Matters and Why

The very last thing in the world I have wanted is for this writing space to become a place of quasi-political ranting.    Who needs more of that, right?

Besides, I’m ridiculously emotional and thin-skinned when it comes to criticism and I don’t think I have the guts to take the virtual sucker punches being doled out left and right by people who don’t seem to care either way— they just like to punch.

However, I do know the need to obey the Holy Spirit’s nudge telling me to speak up and write out some of the the wrongs I see today. Even though it seems like nobody is really listening….really hearing anymore— it matters enough to at least take a stand. What’s the point in “playing it safe” anyway?

For that matter….what’s safe?

All That Matters

Explain “safe” in the eyes of at least one dear Christian woman I know who sends all four of her sons out in shifts to wear a uniform and a badge in a world that has become increasingly hostile towards them simply because they wear a uniform and badge.

Because someone on the side of evil—not justice— said it was ok and others mindlessly decided to listen. These brave and godly men know the risks. Their wives and family know it too. And tonight, their momma knows the power of prayer and how the safety of their souls rests in the capable hands of their Savior. There, she knows, they are truly safe.

This is the part of the writing where I ought to insert a deep and meaningful quote on safe-ness and somehow draw the conversation around to the ideal safety we should be working towards versus the ridiculous place as a society we’ve wandered into. However, I don’t believe that safety has ever been a reasonable ideal at any point in Christian living.

Truth be told: the need for perceived safety has often led to compromises largely responsible for the upside-down confusion we find ourselves living with today. Little by little, we’ve given away valuable territory in our gospel, thinking we were being tolerant and wise “peace makers” until now, the joke’s on us when we try to talk about “right and wrong” and bring value and meaning to the larger conversations.

The sad fact is that while Rome is burning, the people in charge of making the rules have been fiddling around with definitions and modifiers for relationships they only inherited —they didn’t create—leaving large gaps where the unchanging truth of God should be.

As a result, anarchy has taken root in the underbelly of every institution and is slowly creeping into every crevice of our society. It ought to terrify us. Instead we seem more concerned with what Miley wore last night, whether or not the stock market is going to hold up or if having a Trump card in our back pocket will save us all.

We can point “out there” at the barbarism of ISIS or where people are treating one another like animals and leaders are barrel-bombing their own people while other countries have shut their borders against the ones who’ve manage to escape or avoid dying along the way.

We don’t have to care too much because at least it’s not happening here. Or is it?

It’s all so very real and getting closer all the time. There’s been a quiet erosion of all our stabilizing foundations to such a degree that when it finally collapses around our ankles, stunned we’ll be looking for someone to blame until we realize we might have been the ones who looked the other way

when the babies were murdered
and injustices took place
and the mobs burned down the towns
and the officers were gunned down like nameless, faceless animals
because someone said it was open season.

We’ll wonder how the enemy got in so close and so fast while nobody was looking because we’d forgotten how we were told that a house, a people and a nation divided against itself    Can. Not. Stand.

Oh we’ve got our hashtags. #BlackLivesMatter. #PoliceLives Matter. #EverythingMatters.  Texas Sherrif Ron Hickman dared to say we needed to drop the qualifiers and simply recognize that #LivesMatter and take that to the bank. Maybe. It’s a start but divorced from the Source, what’s a life anyway?

How can ANYTHING or ANYONE  matter at all if God is taken out of the equation? How can any life matter if the One who gives meaning, definition and validity to all of life is removed from the picture?

How can we be enraged over injustice if justice is a fluid concept based on who gets to define right and wrong, life and death, valuable or worthless?

Life only matters when it’s anchored to something solid and unchanging… Someone outside, beyond and bigger than ourselves Who imparts His unchanging meaning and value to all of creation. Otherwise…value? Meaning? It’s all subjective and dependent upon the mood of the moment.

The problem is not somewhere “out there”…. Its right here, in our own hearts where we’ve gotten disconnected from the foundational, unchanging Truth of God thinking we were liberating and expressing our souls freely.

In his essay, The Portrait of a Soul, Ravi Zacharias expresses this place of disconnect so well:

Today we find a limitless capacity to raise the question of evil as we see it outside ourselves, but often hold an equal unwillingness to address the evil within us.  I once sat on the top floor of a huge corporate building owned by a very successful businessman.  Our entire conversation revolved around his reason for unbelief: that there was so much darkness and corruption in this world and a seemingly silent God.  Suddenly interrupting the dialogue, a friend of mine said to him, “Since evil troubles you so much, I would be curious to know what you have done with the evil you see within you.”  There was red-faced silence.”

Oh, I know— in so many ways, I’m preaching to the choir here. Most folks who read here do believe that God created the heavens and the earth and believe in His unchanging holiness and love. Your hearts are burdened like mine in all the right ways for most of the right reasons. We do falter and occasionally we fall but, praise Jesus— we know how to get back up and where to stand.

The problem is only that maybe we’re just way too quiet about it all.
We’ve got our Jesus-ticket to heaven and that’s enough.
We’re just sitting down and waiting out the storm…
trying to play it safe when really— there’s no such thing.

overcoming through vulnerability

Here and now, for such a time as this and as the ones here to serve God in our generation, we’ve got to live out loud, get our hands dirty, bare our beating and bleeding hearts to our dying neighbors and live like we really believe what we say we believe— joyful and strong in such a way that shows we know Who and What really matters…and most importantly, why.

Otherwise… what really matters?

why I’ve stopped inviting people to church

I realize this may sound like a bunch of hype and hooey… and a little crazy if you know me at all. Crazy, because if you’ve spent any time visiting with me here or have read my about page, then (I pray) you’d quickly know exactly where my heart is with the Lord and how passionate I am for His gospel.

So I don’t want what I’m about to say to be misunderstood but I have to be honest about my struggles. See, my eyes are open now and …so is my Bible.  God is showing me things like never before. I’m learning and repenting. Then, I’m learning some more.

Learning more about how some of the “churchy” attitudes and “religious” practices I once was led to believe were good,  right and acceptable, may sometimes do more harm than good all by themselves.

Learning that there were times when, if I wasn’t an outright stumbling block to the Gospel, I may at least have been a poorly-placed sign directing people down a maze of confusing side streets instead of the narrow, and only, direct road to Home.

Honest before God; I meant well.

 

Fortunately, God is still GOD and doesn’t waste a shred so He’s used it all one way or another…and in fact, I trust He’s’ using it here and now. Because I’m ready to share….   

Why I've stopped inviting

Don’t get me wrong; I love the Church. I’m an active member of an active congregation which is part of a major worldwide denomination. I’m a member of the worship team, have facilitated a few Bible studies and I volunteer with several of our ministries–happily serving alongside a handful of people I’ve come to love dearly.

They’re my family.

Let me tell you more…