God's Pattern for Revival

Have you ever felt like you needed a fresh encounter with God? It is easy to fall into the trap of going through life living on past experiences with God. The truth of the matter is that we cannot live today simply on what God has done in our lives yesterday. We cannot continue to live each day on yesterday's walk with God. We must choose each day to follow Christ and we need to do things that feed our relationship with him (ei. prayer, scripture, fellowship, solitude, etc.).

In the book of Judges, second chapter, we see what happened early on in Israel's history and see a pattern for revival.

1) The people followed God. Judges 2:7

2) The people forsook the Lord. Judges 2:11

3) God defeated the people through their enemies. Judges 2:14

4) The people cried out for help. Judges 2:15, 18

5) God had compassion and delivered them. Judges 2:16, 18

Revival begins and ends with God. Henry and Richard Blackaby point out seven phases of revival in their book "Fresh Encounter". 1. God on Mission, 2.People Depart, 3. God Disciplines, 4. People Cry Out, 5. People Repent or Perish, 6. Revival, 7. Spiritual Awakening.

As I reflected on this pattern I couldn't help but think about my relationship with my 3 year old daughter. There have been countless times when she has disobeyed. Many times in her disobedience I have become sad and even angry at times and really frustrated with her. However, those feelings are often short lived. She is usually quick to say "I'm sorry" and after disciplining her and correcting her behavior she inevitably more than welcomes my embrace as her father and I am more than willing to give it. When she cries out to me, her father, with remorse in her voice, my heart is always filled with love and compassion.

In our lives we make mistakes. Often there are consequences to these mistakes as well. God never condones or approves of these mistakes and may often discipline us for them as well, but he is always ready to show compassion and forgiveness. When we cry out to our heavenly father, just as Israel cried out, he will forgive us and will heal our wounded hearts.

"If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land."

2 Chronicles 7:14

A host of a guest?

"Leaders take the initiative in relationships. They are intentional about them. They see themselves as hosts, not guests, and go out of their was to connect with people and provide for them" - Dr. Tim Elmore

We go through life either as a host or as a guest. More often than not, I think we end up as the latter. We would rather be served than to serve. As I look out at my church congregation I wonder how many are hosts, and how many are simply still guests. Never have I thought about being a host at church, but it makes great sense.

What makes a good host? 1) Take the initiative, 2) Connect with others, 3) Provide for others, 4) Direct (give leadership) others. We have all been to a party or a get together that was very poorly hosted. We have also been to some that have great hosts. The challenge as I look to my life is what kind of a person am I? Do I take the initiative or do I just wait around and let someone else do it? It places a high priority on the relationship when we take the initiative.

I have learned in my relationship with my wife, when going on a date, the destination is not as important as me taking the initiative and setting up the reservations or baby sitting or whatever it is that needs to be taken care of. When she is the guest, and I am the host, it doesn't matter what we do, 99% of the time she ends up happy.

A good host sees the problem before anyone else does and fixes it. When someone new walks into the room a host will jump out of their seat to introduce themselves and make the guest welcome. If we want to see people come to know Jesus we have to quit being a guest and start owning the party. We have to start being the host. We need to take some initiative.

Bald Eagles

This past week I had an experience most will never have in a lifetime. As I was walking into my front yard I heard some rustling in the bushes and out of the corner of my eye I saw what I thought was a giant cat. I looked again and to my dismay it was a full grown bald eagle, not 10 feet away. He (or she) was injured due to what looked like a fight of some sort. Its wing was broken in half and he/she was stranded to the ground. It wasn't long after that my neighbor arrived home and we stood on the sidewalk starring at this bird, dumbfounded over what to do. After making a number of phone calls we finally got a hold of somebody from the autobahn society and they quickly sent out a team to capture this magnificent creature. 

To see a bald eagle in ones front yard is so foreign because it is so out of place. An eagle is supposed to soar high above everyone and everything. They are a magnificent bird which loses much of its splendor when its ability to fly is taken away. The same is true for the church. In the book of Isaiah we read that those who wait on the Lord will rise and soar like the eagles. As Christians we ought to be flying high above this world. We should have a magnificence that comes from Christ who makes us fly. All too often though, we find ourselves stuck on the ground with broken wings. 

I am reminded of a song that is titled "Shout to the North"

Verse three talks about our redemption:

"Rise up Church with broken wings

Fill this place with songs again

Of our God who reigns on high

By his grace again we'll fly"

With much work and some time I am sure this bald eagle will one day be able to soar again. When we, as humans, find ourselves broken and unable to fly, with some work and a little bit of time and a lot of grace, we will once again find ourselves soaring high above this earth. The God who created you and me reigns above all. And it is through his grace and his strength that we are able to fly higher than ever before.

Awe and Wonder

Late in life, Charles Darwin wrote in his autobiography: "I have said that in one respect my mind has changed during the last twenty or thirty years. Up to the age of thirty, or beyond it, poetry of many kinds...gave me great pleasure, and even as a schoolboy I took intense delight in Shakespeare...I have also said that formerly pictures gave me considerable, and music very great, delight. But now, for many years I cannot endure to read a line of poetry: I have tried to read Shakespeare, and found it so intolerably dull that it nauseated me. I have also lost any taste for pictures or music...I retain some taste for fine scenery, but it does not cause me the exquisite delight that it formerly did...My mind seems to have become a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of large collections of facts..."
(an excerpt from a Christianity Today article by Virginia Stem Owens)

God has placed inside all of us a sense of wonder and awe. However, it seems the older we get, the more our lives are exposed to, we begin to lose that wonder. Charles Darwin tried to explain everything by pure natural science and in the process he lost something, his sense of wonder. He no longer could enjoy that "exquisite delight" that nature once brought him. Children are full of wonder. Their favorite question is "why". Everything is new to them. As we grow older we attempt to answer all the why questions. We fill our minds with general laws and large collections of facts and we fail to see the mystery in everyday life. 

I am not advocating ignorance. I feel often people are just too stubborn to admit reality and face up to the facts, but I am advocating a new sense of awe and wonder. We can have assurance in the unknown. When we walk outside, we don't always need to know where rain comes from, or where the clouds go on a sunny day, or why the grass is green, or why grandpa has lost all his hair. We can just imagine, and say "Wow! That really is something. I wonder..." 

Bamboo and Basements

Being a home owner has its advantages but let me tell you it also has its problems. When I bought our house two years ago the backyard was like a jungle. There were two clumps of bamboo. They were pretty big and in inconvenient locations so I decided to cut them down. The bamboo didn’t like that idea and came back rather quickly with a vengeance. So I tried to kill it. I cut it all down again and then over fertilized the back yard and covered it with clear plastic. This was supposed to completely burn t out. This was a sure way to get rid of the stuff. It worked! So I thought. It looked like all the bamboo had died and I wasn’t going to have a problem tilling up the backyard to plant a new yard. Well, about a month ago it decided to start coming back. And it is everywhere again.

Another frustrating thing that happened recently was my basement flooding. This past winter we had some heavy snowfall and when it started melting water got into places that it had never gotten into before. One of those places was my basement. I went outside and the water was puddling up right at the downspout at the corner of the house. I was sure this was the problem. I piped the water into the yard and then started mopping up the mess downstairs. Well, just a week or two ago it happened again. I ran outside to see if I could see where the water was coming from and I saw 4 inches of standing water in my window well. The water was just pouring down this thing from all directions of my yard. I quickly moved some dirt around to fix the problem but the damage had already happened.

I started thinking about our spiritual lives and how much they are like owning a home. We work and work and work on our lives fixing problems here and there. But how many times have you felt like you fixed something in your life just to find out that you were wrong. Just when you thought you had conquered that temptation in your life something came up and you fell. When it came to my bamboo and basement I thought I had eliminated the problem. It didn’t take a real long time to discover that the problem was a lot deeper than I first had realized it. If I want to get rid of my bamboo I need to go deeper than I have gone before and if I want to prevent water from filling up my basement again I am going to need to do some irrigation.

We see the easy road and think that it is going to work. It is the quick fix. Matthew 7:13 tells us to enter through the narrow gate because wide is the gate that leads to destruction and many go through it. We look for the wide gate, the easy fix. We try to fix things ourselves and in frank honesty we suck at it. We are having to fix the same things over and over and over again. We are living in bondage. There is no freedom in that.

This past week in Sunday School we talked about the spiritual discipline of confession. What a lively discussion we had. If you want to see change in your life, if you want to see problems you battle with day in and day out disappear, than tell somebody. There is a great freedom and release when you share your burden with another. When fixing things on my house I have always counseled with my father. He is a mind full of wisdom when it comes to solving problems related to houses. He always has an answer, and if he doesn’t it doesn’t take him long to figure it out. At times, if my problem is too great, he will also come along side me and help me fix it. With his help I am able to get to the root f the problem and fix it for good. The same is true when it comes to confessing our sins to one another. We are able to seek counsel from others who have dealt with the same thing. And then they are able to some alongside of us and help us along the way.

Dream!

“Whether in poverty or wealth, whether educated formally or informally, whether from the Americas or Africa or Australia, I have found the same result—people are the most underused and undervalued resource on this planet.”
Erwin McManus – Wide Awake


I love to dream. I can dream big. I can imagine a lot of things. But when it comes to actually following through and seeing those dreams come to pass something gets lost in translation. Call it reality, call it pessimism, call it laziness, call it whatever, but it seems like the older I get the less I find myself dreaming. Sure I may dream something up, but it doesn’t last as long as it did before.

Think back to when you were a kid. Do you remember the dreams we had? We wanted to be a professional basketball player, or an astronaut, or a fire fighter. Life set in and 30 years later we find ourselves doing the same thing we never really wanted to do in the first place. I recently talked to one of the checkers at Safeway who had a 25-year employee badge on. I said, “25 years huh? Wow!” He proceeded to tell me that the job started as a part-time job just to get him through college. I began to wonder how many humans are working in an environment that they do not really enjoy, but have just grown complacent and comfortable in. It pays the bills so they don’t pursue anything else.

Here me out when I say this. I am not condemning anyone’s job. If you are in the same place you were 30-years ago and loving it, than all the more power to you. But if we have a different dream than the life we are currently living, what is stopping us from pursuing that dream? God created us with so much potential. The greatest most extraordinary tool that God has given us is our mind. And we use so little of it. It is the single most untapped resource in the world. Imagine what our world would be like if we started using our brains. I don’t care how “educated” we may or may not be, how young or old we may be, how rich or poor we may be, we all have huge potential that goes beyond any form of education, age, or money. God gives us dreams and desires for humanity. He gives us visions of what life could be like. And we let a little something like “reality” stop us. Is reality bigger than the God we serve? Listen to the Holy Spirit, follow his promptings, dream dreams, and follow after them. Lets start using what God has given us to its fullest potential. Lets make a difference in the world we live in.

"look daddy..."

we do silly things. i was watching my 8 month old daughter the other day and i set her on our bed for just a moment. i turned my back to get a shirt out of the closet and the next thing i know she is on the floor crying. i of course quickly ran to my daughters rescue, picked her up into my arms and comforted her. you see, while she was on the bed, i had given her my keys to play with. she quickly moved to the edge of the bed, dangled them over the edge, and then cleverly decided to drop them on the floor. its her drop it and you pick it up game. unfortunately i wasn't there to pick them up and so in just a matter of seconds she decided she was going to pick them up and scooted herself right off the edge onto the floor.

after consoling her and figuring she learned a hard lesson i put her back on the bed, this time keeping a closer eye on her. she quickly grabbed the keys and sure enough, moved towards the edge of the bed. she then dangled them over the edge and then dropped them. i thought to myself, did you not just learn a painful lesson? what are you thinking? this time as she scooted herself right off the edge again, i was there to prevent her from falling. i could not figure out how or why she would make the same painful mistake just a few moments later.

it made me think about the israelites during the exodus. God saved them and brought them out of egypt. he made a deal with them when he gave them the ten commandments. he entered into a binding relationship with them. he only asked them to obey. as the story progresses, we read that they failed. God had compassion on them... and then they failed again. God had compassion on them yet again... and then they failed. each time making the same stupid mistakes.

how many times in our own lives do we make the same stupid mistakes. you would think we learn, but we do not. just like my daughter, we walk to the edge, dangling whatever we have over the edge, flirting with what we know will cause us eventual pain. and although God is always there to pick us back up it still hurts.

after my daughter dropped the keys a second time i decided to take her off the bed and put her on the floor. she quickly raced towards the keys on the floor, grabbed them and then looked up to me as if to say, look daddy, i did it. sometimes in our own lives we need to allow God just to take us off the bed and place us on the floor. when we allow him to wrap us in his arms and place us where he wants us life is a lot less painful. we can take hold of whatever it is he gives us, and then look and say, "look daddy, i did it."

In Memory of Benji

Last week I was at a ski retreat in Idaho. Benji and I had many memories there. I did some cool jumps and hucked this 25 foot cliff. As skiers, one thing we always did was talk about how big the jump we hit was or how fast we went or how good the snow was. I was thinking about how much I really wanted to show Benji this jump. It was so cool! So, Benji, here it is. This jump was for you. I think of you every time I watch this and wish you were with me, jumping it together. I love you bro!

muddled thoughts

This morning I was talking to a friend at work and we began to talk about heaven and hell and other spiritual things. I have always enjoyed talking about this subject with people whose opinion differs from mine. He made a comment saying “I don’t believe anything I can’t understand.” That comment really resonated in my mind. I began to dwell on it and think about how for so many this is quite true. However, instead of not believing, many people just try to understand. We have tried to understand what cannot be understood so that we can believe it. For example, we have pictured heaven in our minds and have theorized about it in such a way that we feel like we can almost understand it. We attempt to answer questions that are unanswerable just so we can believe them. If there is no answer how can I believe it? In the midst of dealing with the loss of his wife C.S. Lewis writes this:

“Can a mortal ask questions which God finds unanswerable? Quite easily, I should think. All nonsense questions are unanswerable. How many hours are there in a mile? Is yellow square or round? Probably half the questions we ask—half our great theological and metaphysical questions—are like that.”

We get caught up in questions of these sorts and then get angry when God fails to answer them. We ask questions like “why did this happen?” or “why couldn’t it have been someone else?” or “why didn’t you heal him?” By asking such questions we are seriously limiting God and what he can or can’t do. We are putting him in a box. We have been so accustomed to hearing messages that fit nicely into a box. Messages that tell us to do one thing and in return we will get another thing. I have learned we cannot interact with God on our own terms.

Maybe our prayers and our interaction with God is more like a vending machine than an ATM. How many times have you stuck your dollar in the machine and not gotten anything in return? The machine has eaten your dollar. Or how about those sticker machines where you put a quarter in hoping you will get a certain sticker and out pops the sticker you prayed you wouldn’t get. The irony comes when the person right behind you puts their quarter in and gets the sticker that you had hoped you would get.

Why do these things happen? Why doesn’t life make sense? Well… God is on a whole different wavelength then we are. We cannot expect God to answer us on our terms. He sees the bigger picture. What makes sense to God makes no sense to us because of our lack of ability to understand. While wrestling with this concept and really getting angry with God, C.S. Lewis again writes

“Lord, are these your real terms? Can I meet Helen (his dead wife) again only if I learn to love you so much that I don’t care whether I meet her or not? Consider, Lord, how it looks to us. What would anyone think of me if I said to the boys, ‘No toffee now. But when you’ve grown up and don’t really want toffee you shall have as much of it as you choose’.”

I thought this was so profound. Much of why I long for heaven is again, to see my brother. C.S. Lewis asks the question “Can I meet her again only if I learn to love you so much that I don’t care whether I meet her or not?” Wow! Is this true with Benji? Am I only going to meet him when I come to the place where I love Jesus so much and want nothing more than to just be with him? But this doesn’t make sense to me. This is not the answer I am looking for. If this is true, then I must ask the question, “Am I willing to sacrifice my memories of my brother and my desire to see him again in order to just be with Jesus?” Do I trust Jesus enough to sacrifice these things? Wow!


I think back on the comment my friend made “I don’t believe anything I can’t understand.” The reason we struggle believing what we cannot see is because of our lack of faith. We can’t trust God enough and so we formulate our own ideas about the supernatural so that we might be able to believe in them. Why? Because we struggle to believe in what we do not understand.

The loss of my brother has made me ask so many questions and there is so much more I do not understand, but it has been by faith I have been able to accept and cope with these things. I have to just trust Jesus. I have to put my faith in him. This is how we believe what we do not understand. We believe because of faith. As I think about my brother and his fate, I do not understand. I do not understand heaven or what Benji is currently doing, or where precisely heaven is, but I do have faith and I am trusting God. He is bigger then anything I could ever dream up, therefore it is in his hands that my brother lays.

The Aftermath

When the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima havoc was wreaked. However, it was not over. After the bomb fell, the havoc had just begun. The aftermath of what fallowed was nothing short of hell itself.

On September 11th, 2001, terrorists attacked our country by crashing two planes into the World Trade center killing thousands. However we still see the effects of what happened. For weeks bodies were pulled out of the wreckage. And even today, over five years later, when we look at where these two buildings stood we see a huge hole.

Last month, when I learned of my brother’s death, I was hit hard. It knocked me off my feet. It was a very numbing experience. I didn’t know how or what to feel. It was like nothing I have ever experienced. Today, over a month later, as life seems to carry on, the numbness has begun to wear off. I no longer feel the initial shock of the tragedy that was experienced, but the reality begins to sink in deeper and deeper. No longer is the first conversation I have with people related to my brothers death. I feel as if I am in the aftermath of a horrible tragedy.

I was recently talking to a firefighter about this and he shared with me some of his feelings about 9/11. He shared with me how each year he has a special flag he hangs at half-mast to remember that awful day. People have forgotten and have moved on. The truth is that there still remains a giant hole and will continue to remain a hole.

Benji has left a giant hole in my life and it hasn’t gone away. The dust has settled, and the pain medication has begun to wear off, and the pain is once again setting in. It is a different pain; one not quite as excruciating, but more constant. There is something missing in my life. Something I held dear. It was ripped from me. Torn from my possession. And although I know I must move on, the wounds and the scars still remain. The pain continues to linger on with no sign of letting up. Why must life continue?

In the case of the atomic bomb, the aftermath can be just as deadly, if not more, than the initial shock. People died by the thousands from the radiation that was a result of the bomb. Those who didn’t die faced deformities in their bodies. There lives were never the same. Benji will never be a part of my earthly life again. This is hard to grasp and very difficult to live with. It is hard to continue—day after day, moment after moment. My life will never be the same again. There is something missing. Something is not right and while I am still here on this earth it will never be made right again. Death is not supposed be easy. It doesn’t just go away.