DownshoreDrift

I'm Back

It's the last day of October, the 31st to be exact, so I thought I'd return to the blogosphere. I took a self imposed blog fast for the last half of the month and I made up my mind not to comment on other blogs or write a post of my own. It was refreshing to not feel the need to publish every thought that was rolling around in my head.  For a week of that time, my family took a much needed vacation to the sugary white beaches of Florida's Emerald Coast (where the picture of the sunset came from). The rest of the time has been immersed in 2007 planning, budget meetings, the Fall Family Fun Night, and ministry.

Another reason why I took a break is because I wanted to clear my head and reset a bit in regard to my writing.  The idea of Downshoredrift is that God is at work all the time, moving us closer to Him. It's like when you are in the waves at the beach and you think you are in front of your umbrella and chair, but in reality you have moved down the beach and you didn't even realize it. That's called Downshoredrift.  Well, God is always at work to draw us to Himself and sometimes, it is so imperceptible that we don't realize it unless we are really paying attention.  I want to continue to write about that and keep giving praise to God.

Sometimes, we can also drift away from God.  One decision leads to another, and before we know it, we have grown lukewarm or have compromised ourselves. It can happen so quickly, that we do not even realize it. Fortunately, grace is greater than all of our sin and coldness of heart, and like a life guard, God rescues us from the waves that would tear us apart.

So, Downshoredrift embodies the movement of God in our life and it also characterizes the battle that we are in to keep our eyes open and to stay aware regarding truth and lies. I want my writing to be both pastoral and prophetic, so that I can call people to the loving arms of their Father God, and also warn against dangerous paths that we might be headed down. Downshoredrift has become a powerful metaphor for me, in that it describes the full range of emotions and activities that present themselves in our daily lives. Fortunately, God is always at work and His grace is sufficient. He is more than enough. I want to live with my eyes wide open and see God at work and give Him praise. I don't want to miss a thing.

So, God has been at work! Caelan, my 1 year old son with cancer, seems to be getting stronger every day as he gets over the effects of his radiation. His appetite is up and his blood counts have been higher. Thank you SO MUCH for your prayers! God is faithful!

God is really working in our church as people are growing in their relationship with the Lord and others are coming to Christ. God is adding to our church in awesome ways and we are reaching out in our workplaces and neighborhoods like never before. We had a big Fall Festival type gathering on Sunday night that was probably the biggest event we've ever done, and there was a lot of joy. So, praise God!

I have been reading about the continuing issues in the SBC in regard to the gifts of the Holy Spirit. This continues to grieve me and I'm going to be writing quite a bit about it later this week and in the future. But, I know that God is up to something and I pray that we all submit to Him in this.

We are facilitating several trips to South Asia next year, and I might be going on two of the three. We'll see, but there are some really incredible opportunities opening up for us. I'll keep you posted.

Well, it was good to reintroduce myself! Let me leave you with this verse, Job 42:4-6:

4"You said, 'Listen now, and I will speak;
       I will question you,
       and you shall answer me.'

5 My ears had heard of you
       but now my eyes have seen you.

6 Therefore I despise myself
       and repent in dust and ashes."

May we all have encounters with God this week that moves us from the realm of hearing about Him to truly experiencing His presence for ourselves. May we all be brought low before the magnificence of Almighty God, the Creator of the Universe. May we trust Him completely and throw our lives into His care with reckless abandon. May we see the Lord and worship Him.

 

 

Walking Away . . . Taking a Break

I'll be back to the blog around the end of October.

Please keep praying for Caelan and keep looking for where God is working in your life.

I'm going to focus on living a bit more over the next couple of weeks.

Let's see how far down the shore of life God's grace moves me  .   .   .   .

Caelan's Struggling a Bit (And a Note from Erika)

I just wanted to write to give an update on Caelan.  I haven't done that in a while because things have gone fairly well lately, except for one trip to the ER in Birmingham because of a fever.  We finished radiation over a month ago.  He had a large burn and blisters over 2/3 of his chest/stomach there at the end which looked horrible but didn't seem to bother him too much.  His skin has healed well, and although it was a difficult time for our family, it now seems a distant memory. This week, however, he has been struggling and I wanted to ask folks to pray for him. Monday for the first time a portion of his white blood cell count was too low for him to receive his chemo treatment.  It was so low, in fact, that we have to keep him home all week.  He is most likely suffering through some of the residual effects of radiation and his increased doses of chemotherapy.  Basically, he is very susceptible to illness and has little ability to fight against infection at this point because his immune system is weakened. This is a common side effect of the chemo, but it is not one that we have faced yet. We are praying for Caelan's strength to return, for his blood count levels to rise, and for his ear infection to go away. Also, Erika and I have had a lingering cold over the past several days, and the boys have been coughing all over the place so that doesn't make matters any better.  It's not really possible to stay away from him.  He kind of needs us. 

Justice Issues Revisited

Last Wednesday night in Bible study, we talked about Micah 6:8: He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.  My hope was to talk about justice, mercy, and humility-faithfulness and use all of those issues as take-off points to pray for ourselves, our community, and our world. We got the acts of mercy (love), and faithfulness alright, but we stumbled over justice. When I asked for examples of injustice, we struggled to come up with very many. Then, there was a short discussion over people calling things unjust when they had every opportunity to change their own situation. I found it all very enlightening and have been thinking about it ever since.

Why do we stumble so much with the Biblical mandate to bring justice to our world? I think that, primarily, if we are predominately white, middle class, evangelical Christians, our perspective is that the world is just. We've all had problems and disadvantages, but we worked hard and overcame them. Can't everyone just do that? Why do people complain? Why do people stay poor? Do they just want a hand out? Why can't they do what we did? That perspective, while valuable in regard to the need for a work ethic, falls short because we do not see the whole picture of people's lives. We also don't see what happens behind the scenes. We are also very American. While, the American perspective is that everyone has opportunity and that life must be fair, that is surely not the case around the world (the caste system in India being a prime example), nor is it entirely the case here. In every community there are power issues where individuals or groups are marginilized or taken advantage of and they have no ability to stand up for themselves. This is where the Church should come in, especially as it relates to children, the infirmed, and the poor. But, do we think about such things?

Exploration of the Atonement

Since I wrote about Andrew Jones yesterday, I thought I'd link to a post of his today on differing theories of the atonement. The historical Reformed view is of penal substitution as the focus, and that is where I find myself as well. However, as the Bible lays out other views, such as the atonement providing victory over the powers of darkness and this world (Christus Victor), I feel that we should embrace those views as well so that our view of the atonement is as large as the Bible makes it out to be (this is what Mark Dever proposes in his Christianity Today article). We probably have no idea what Jesus fully accomplished on the Cross, but it is clear to me that He paid for our sins, defeated Satan, death, hell, and conquered our flesh and the curse of sin.  He also restored us to the image of God and through the resurrection and ascension He gave us new, eternal life, and the power of the Holy Spirit. God did so much on the cross, that I think that is is hard to limit it to just ONE perspective, although for me, the substitutionary atonement for our sins leads out, but not to the exclusion of everthing else.

Romans 11:33-36 says:

33Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and^[i] knowledge of God!
      How unsearchable his judgments,
      and his paths beyond tracing out!
34"Who has known the mind of the Lord?
      Or who has been his counselor?"^[j]
35"Who has ever given to God,
      that God should repay him?"^[k]
36For from him and through him and to him are all things.
      To him be the glory forever! Amen.

The Cross of Christ is the wisdom of God. Shouldn't that wisdom be multi-faceted? Shouldn't we have a FULL understanding of what God did through Christ instead of just a narrow focus? I like what Scot McKnight says:

“For goodness sake, let’s use all the images for atonement so the story will become grander that we can imagine! The atonement, friends, is a banquet, and we need to sample each course as it comes along.”

Just some theological thoughts for the weekend. How do you see it?

Tallskinnykiwi Is Back

If you've never been to Tallskinnykiwi, the blog of Andrew Jones, you regularly miss some incredible insights and discussion where he writes about the emerging church, technology, and his missionary travels and experiences all over the world. Andrew is from New Zealand, has lived all over the world, and now resides in Scotland. He took a blog fast for the month of September and has come back in October on fire. I went over there today and discovered reason #4,387 why I love Tallskinnykiwi: Andrew and Tim Keller were engaging in a discussion on the future of the church in the comment section of a post on John Piper's take on the emerging church during his Desiring God Conference. If you don't know who Tim Keller is, PLEASE inform yourself. He is the pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian in NYC and is doing incredible work.

I first ran into Andrew and his wife Debbie in San Francisco in 1997. He was doing work with street kids in the Haight-Ashbury District and was living in a flat with his family and about 10 other people on Ashbury Street. He pastored a store front church on Haight Street of about 25 people and it was amazing. My wife and I went there for several months, and every afternoon, we would go into Golden Gate Park with Andrew and others and hang out with the hippie kids and feed them sandwiches and have a picnic. We'd sing, hear about their travels, and through conversation, talk with them about Jesus. We prayed with them over their fears and even saw a guy come to Christ. On Monday, they had a time of study and conversation at Andrew's home where they would let the kids get showers, etc. I learned so much from Andrew and his family about incarnational ministry and a missional lifestyle.  He was also heavily influenced by Thom Wolf, so we have that in common as well.

I ran across his blog several years ago and it is usually insightful and inspiring. I actually started to blog because of him, and if you think I'm confessional and personal in my posts, just read Andrew for a week or two! I got to spend the night with he and his family in London two years ago, as well, and was there for one of his famous pizza nights, although, I couldn't keep my eyes open from jet lag. I even used to email him a bit, but now that he's an international blogging celebrity, I refrain. So, Tallskinnykiwi is back, and you should check it out.

Thom Wolf and the Ordained to Ordinary Conference

Last weekend, we had a great conference with Dr. Thom Wolf on how God is raising up ordinary people to change the world through their jobs, vocations, time, etc. We pulled together a couple of churches, heard from speakers in many different domains of life, had a roundtable discussion with experts on globalization, the war on terror, and the impact of global Christianity, had many meetings with leaders all around the Montgomery-Troy area on how to move resources and create strategic partnerships with India for the advance of the gospel and the economic development of that nation, and did lots of other stuff! It was an amazing time.

I had written a massive post about the conference with pictures, links, and summaries of each session. It was quite impressive, actually. Then, Typepad ate it in the publishing process and I haven't been motivated to reproduce it. Ugh. So, I was thinking: If you were at the conference, why don't you share you insights? What stuck out in your mind the most? What was a new concept? How will you see things differently? Let's collaborate, instead of me just writing it all. One, I don't want to. Two, I want to hear from you. If you weren't at the conference, I still invite you to interact with the ideas shared by others (Andrew, I'm especially calling you out on this one!). I hope to hear from you! I might add some pictures to this post later in the week as well.

Update: Here are the Audio Downloads of the Conference.