simplicity

We saw an interesting play last weekend - The Boys Next Door. it was about 4 mentally challenged guys living together. the money line was by their counselor who checks in with them - "i change, the world changes, they don't change." everything was so simple, so basic for them.

i write that to create a huge opposite picture of how government works in recent times. Everything is an emergency and there is crisis upon crisis upon crisis. it's almost like the thinking is "if we hit them with everything at once with amps set on 11 we're bound to get some of it past them."

it's numbing and after a while i don't think we even recognize a true crisis. we're so jaded and caloused to a life where all news is "BREAKING" or tv is non-stop cliff-hangers or movies are a 2 hour blast of sound, adventure, explosions, stunts and action. How do we even sleep anymore?

Gary Skinner from Watoto Church in Uganda was at our church last weekend talking about the need for reaching out to HIV/AIDS orphans, child soldiers and the misplaced victims of a decades long war. there was no bright red banners or tears or cries for "the world will end." he is just an amazing man serving an Amazing God telling a story of need in a very needy part of the world. the simplicity of the presentation was more powerful than walls of sound and screams of need.

after the great & powerful wind, earthquake & fire there came a gentle whisper. are we too busy, too numb, too deaf to hear the still small voice that calls us to a simple faith? James 1:27 says: Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.

confession time

OK, bit of brutal, heart-on-the-sleeve honesty here.

these have been 3 or 4 of the toughest years of my life yet God is still amazing and i'm truly in awe of Him.

We came back to the states after a couple of years of Bible college @ Hillsong with huge plans and dreams to take all this vision and faith and life and bloom wherever we planted. Wave Church is an amazing church with ties to Hillsong and is truly a world-changing church so we planted there.

But then life hit. Vision and faith and life are hard things to keep fresh without hard work and diligence. i have a tendency to get caught up in the day-to-day and you can't keep a Kingdom perspective easily when focusing on all the mundane daily details. don't get me wrong, those are important, but not as important.

i've heard that we are moving forward faith to faith. i thot that meant life was an incline - it was hard but you keep moving up and up to the next level. i'm finding my life is more like stairs with some that take some serious scaling to get up and others that go on for miles until the next one up comes. yes, i'm moving forward, but sometimes it's uphill in peanut butter.

my greatest fear is mediocrity and right now i feel like i'm fighting that big time. it's easy for me to see potential and greatness in all those around me - in creative, in my cell, my friends and family and especially Brook and the girls. i'm just not feeling it in me. and right now i'm fighting to trump my feelings with my faith. i AM more than a conquerer. i AM the head and not the tail. greater is He that IS in me than he that's in the world.

i'm thinking it's pride. i'm not where i think i should be and so it plays on me. i don't have the tight friends like i've had in the past and it plays on me. i'm not contributing as much as i would love to and it plays on me. i, i , i, me, me, me...you'd think i'd be waaaaaay past all this by now, but i guess another trip around the desert is needed to work this out.

ok, time to read and renew my mind and think on things above...