Shadow Sons, Desert Daughters

Here's an excerpt from a recent guest post to another blog:

The most furious longing, the most ravenous jealousy, the most tenacious pursuit is that of God’s longing, jealousy, and pursuit for lost sheep. Put your hand to God’s chest, soon you will discover how His heart beats. In thunderous palpitations His heart screams so loud it breaks: boom boom “Seek and save the lost… seek and save the lost…” Come close enough to the fire of God’s heart and all at once He may consume you with the same ravenous desire. Soon the blood transfusion you had with Jesus takes its toll on your desires and priorities – His sense of urgency overwhelms you, His mission consumes you, His passion melts you. And then, in booming rejoinder the palpitations of your heart begin to march to the same beat: “Seek and save the lost… Seek and save the lost.”

I’ve seen it happen to the most unsuspecting hearts. It happened to me.

My heart began to break. I got a little too close to God and His longing for the lost hit my heart like a branding iron. Red-hot jealousy on once-calloused-now-raw flesh. The call of The Great Commission became as urgent as the clarion calls of air-raid sirens at midnight. Time to wake up.

Sometimes it twists in my stomach, my spirit lurches and heaves over the task. So much to do, so little time. How is it that after 2,000 years of active evangelism over 2.5 billion still haven't heard the Name Jesus? These are the hard-to-reach peoples of the world. Children of the 10/40 window. Daughters of the desert. Sons of the shadow. Living under an iron curtain of spiritual darkness and estranged in a far-off country with none to rescue.

I suppose it's time I circle back to the question: "What will I do with Jesus?" Suffocate Him under the weight of cultural normality? Muzzle Him so that I won't offend anyone? Perhaps I will listen to Him when it suits me. Or perhaps I will just leave Him be. I don't pet Lions and I don't gallivant into foreign wars. It's much safer if I leave Jesus at the dinner table - that way He'll bless my food... a spiritual butler with no commanding force upon my life. God forbid He ask me to serve Him. 

The truth is that any response other than "Here am I, send me" is unworthy of Him. I heard it once said that this is the language fit for the King: "Yes Your Majesty, King Jesus." That's it. Nothing less will do. To do anything with Jesus other than bow to His Lordship and advance His Kingdom is to make His cross no cross at all... a valueless relic, a powerless symbol of some nice idea.  

What will you do with Jesus?  

We can exaggerate many things, but we can never exaggerate our obligation to Jesus.
- A.W. Tozer

bride-loving-bloggers.

A few years ago I started writing a book… it was called “I hate christianity”. I know, I started writing a book … I’m too young, too inexperienced, too immature in my faith, too… a lot of things. 

The first promise I made to myself as I set out writing was:

Promise #1: I will not deal verbal spankings to Jesus' Wife just because I can.

… My writing didn’t last very long. The honest truth? I ran out of things to “hate” about Christianity. If you get close enough to the heart of Jesus Christ your heart starts saying, “yeah, I’d die for her.” Broken, Branded, Cold, Cantankerous – You would die for her too, because Jesus did.

But recently I’ve noticed within myself an inevitable leaning towards the negative. It’s easy to get at least a few words of criticism in from your armchair. It is easier to withdraw into the safety of a coffee shop, put your head in your hands, and “write the wrongs” rather than “right the wrongs.”

In fact, the more Christian blogs I read the more confounded I become. Time and time again I am finding it hard not to gravitate towards the “issues.” My generation’s Christian bloggers love to sit down at the feast of the church’s deficiencies and gorge themselves. The table is vast, there’s no denying. At this point I'm pretty sure that blogs on Rob Bell’s Utopia, Homophobic Bishops, and Religion vs. Relationship are the re-runs they'll play in hell.  They're easy targets when you want something to write about… There’s always some pastor acting the fool or some church program that shouldn’t be. Always something to nitpick always some quibble to quack over.

Christian blogging has, as a whole, become a shark-feed that has managed to mutilate every beautiful aspect of the bride of Christ, de-limb every strain of doctrine, and turn everyone into a cynic. Where one blog sings praise another breathes curses. Were every Christian blog Truth I should be expected to walk away a religiously-paranoid, profanity-slinging, American-missions-hating, program-snobbing, self-taught-and-self-proclaimed theologian. There would be no preacher, no denomination, no tradition, no creed, no form of worship that could stand under the weight of some blogger’s “two-cents” and certainly none that I could trust. No one is safe when there’s a blogger around. No one.

Where are the main-stream bloggers that clack about the beauty of creation? Where are the Christians that have something to say about the lavishness of the love of Jesus? Where are the grown ups who actually listened when their parents said, “if you don’t have anything nice to say, then don’t say anything at all”?

They call themselves “faith-bloggers” but often their faith in God’s redemptive power for the sake of His Wife is more or less yet to be seen. Where He says, “If you are faithless, yet still I remain faithful” their elegantly written letters would condemn their weaker brothers and sisters and whisper behind their backs in dark corners of the web that they will never see: “My Brother is going to hell in a hand-basket! And my sister to the pit!” How is it that faith-blogging culture has so bread a movement of faithlessness that we could monopolize on the misgivings and weaknesses of our own family?

It might be accurate to say that the most trending Christian blogs, the most cultured, and the most read are also the least reflective of Jesus Christ’s love for His Wife… “But his blog is a wake-up-call to the church.” “But her writings are prophetic!” some will say. To which I rebuttal and rebuttal with a clinched jaw – show me a prophet or messenger of God, who when proclaiming wrath cannot help but also proclaim, even in the same breath, the redemptive hope and promise of the love of the Bride-Groom. Show me, please.

Computer-chair prophets? I never heard that term used in Bible College… I must have missed that lesson. 

For all these scribbles, these prophetic-slams I’m just going to say: “shame on you.” Jesus didn’t die so that you could make a living off of writing hate-letters about His Wife. All this “do as I blog, not as I do” bull-crap has become itself the disease it hates in the church. It is hypocrisy. It is as blasé as Obama’s drama, as non sequitur as the prosperity Gospel, as ugly as sin.

Admit it, you’ve thought it at least twice – “So wait… He’s blogging negatively about blogging negatively?”

Darn tootin’.

I say this all from a blog… Resolute to see with new eyes the beauty I find in the love Jesus has for His Bride and skimming the horizon for any mainstream blog that is hell-bent on scribbling it for the masses.

Calling all Bride-Loving-Bloggers. The masses await you to tell of the love of Jesus. Feed them.

“If you love me, feed my sheep.”
John 21:17

praying it safe.

I used to think that prayers for travel mercies were the devil. Like they belonged in the toilet right next to the prosperity Gospel and copies of Your Best Life Now . Didn't Jesus say that he who seeks to save his life will lose it? 
 
Where are the dangerous prayers? The ones with real moxie, the ones with gut-twisting gumption that tenaciously insist, "Whatever you need to do to take me deeper, Lord... do that." Past every semi-truck as we grip the steering wheel just a little tighter, around every precarious curve, and through every yellow light - to pray in simplest benediction: "Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done." More than life, limb, health or heart-break to contend that His will be done; nothing more and nothing less. Instead so often we mechanically let loose from our lips a shallow and faithless "Lord, keep me safe" for little other reason than that we hold our lives so very dear. 

I'm writing as I stare down the barrel of a 42 hour 2,900 mile drive. In fact, by the time this blog is posted we'll be well on our way to Chicago. Maybe it's coincidence that my Bible-reading took me past Ezra yesterday.

Then I proclaimed a fast there, at the river Ahava, that we might humble ourselves before God, to seek from Him a safe journey for ourselves, our children, and all our goods.
Ezra 8:21

Now... I'm not taking a 5 month journey by foot. I don't have 1,500 people to look after. I'm not on a mission from the King of Persia. And I don't have the weight of revitalizing an entire nation's faith. No, I'm making a 4-day road-trip home. I'll eat junk-food. I'll listen to good music. And I'll enjoy the company of my girlfriend. 

But how do I reconcile my faith with my very real travel itinerary? I don't want to "be safe" but God knows that for His glory I want to be safe. I want to take every risk and compromise every luxury (even my health) for the advancement of the Gospel, and I'll do it as long and as doggedly as He lets me. I'll take it from Ezra. Who considered the task before Him to be so sacred that he declared a fast, humbled himself, and sought the face of God. He experienced God's goodness very tangibly, every step of the journey. From Babylonia to Jerusalem.