Jon-Mical's Game Ball

This is Jon-Mical's first trip around the bases.m

Fridays @ 8: Shhhhh!

I am not a man of peace. I can get frantic with the best of them. Too much to do. Not enough going right. Details to oversee and outcomes to control. Life is about crisis management and I am an A-1 crisis kind of guy. (Most of the crises I manage are of my own creation.)

Sometimes, in all too rare moments of supernatural intervention, the Holy Spirit slips in and whispers “Peace.” What a breath! What a transformational fragrance! How quietly  and gently amazing that the God of the universe stands up to the edge of heaven, puts His cosmic finger to His omnipotent lips and says, “Shhhhh! Peace.”

I remember the blind man on the edge of Jericho trying to shout down the crowd as Jesus was passing through. “Jesus, Son of David. Have mercy on me. Jesus, son of David, HAVE MERCY ON ME.” The gospel writer says the crowd told him to be quiet. “Jesus is busy. A lot of people need help. This really isn’t a good time.” But old blind Bartemaeus keeps yelling. “Hey Jesus, What about me?”

Now, it isn’t the best time. There’s a crowd. Jesus is actually on His way to Jerusalem and the cross. He has a lot on His mind and His own crisis to manage but the Bible says, “Jesus stood still.” Do you get that? The One who flung the stars into space and said to the waves, “You can go this far,” the Jesus that John said was the Word that God used to say, “Let there be…and there was,” that Jesus stops, gets still, raises His hand and like a scene from the Matrix, the noise ceases, the crowd freezes, the angels halt all activity, and He turns His face to Bart and asks, “What can I do for you?”

Today is the countdown to Simply Free. We have planned for a year, prayed for four. We have had meetings, formed committees, made assignments, sent out emails, and still we feel the pressure piling up. Stuff remains to do. Last minute decisions. Details to work out. One of the speakers is sick. The Sheriff needs to check out the facility (a number of ladies are allowed to come from the prison), the sound guy has never meet the video person….stuff.

And if that isn’t the half of it. There are the spiritual attacks. One of the video testimonies is so powerful and on the way home from filming she had a wreck. The airline reservations of one of the breakout leaders just got fouled up. My daughter-in-law is sick, my lawnmower won’t start, the family needs prayer….more and more stuff. All of this seems designed to make me hit the frantic button, pick up the pace, turn on more activity, take charge, get in control, move. If I remember I am shouting over the crowd, “Jesus, have mercy on me.”

You know what? He listens. He stops and listens. This morning in my quiet time the Holy Spirit said, “Shhhhh. Be still. I’m going to take care of everything.” Romans 8:27 says, “He who searches the heart knows what the mind of the Spirit is. And He makes intercession for us according to the purposes of God.” In other word, the Spirit Himself will reconcile my frantic activity with the very purposes of God. He will line me up with what God is trying to do and let peace happen. And then, when that happens, Paul says, “And we know that all things work together for good for those who love God and are called to do His will.” (Romans 8:28)

I don’t know what Simply Free is supposed to be exactly, but God does. I am not sure of who is supposed to be there and what is supposed to happen to them, but God does. I don’t know how it is going to turn out (or should turn out) but God does. No amount of hustle and bustle or hurried activity is going to make God’s plan come to pass that come to pass. But He will. I am very sure right now that the God of the universe has stopped, quieted all of heaven, and said, “Let’s take charge of this thing.”

You know what that does for me? It brings me peace. It helps me to let go, to slow down, to get quiet, and to hear Him say, “Peace.” When I understand that He is listening to me then I can quit yelling so loud. I can stop running so fast. I can look at myself in the mirror and say, “Shhhhhh. Peace.” Man does that feel good!

Romans 8:26 and Simply Free

I have been sick for a week. Not the call in the family and get your affairs in order kind of sick but certainly get a shot in the rear, crawl in bed, and feel like I have to get better to do the first part kind of sick. The doctor said it was strep. All I know is that from Tuesday afternoon until Sunday I did not leave the bedroom and barely left the bed. (I’ll spare you the gory details.)

I thought maybe I would use that time to write. Or maybe this would be a good week to catch up on bookkeeping. I even thought once or twice about cleaning out my closet or organizing my sock drawer. But every time I would raise my head from the pillow the room would spin, I’d break out in a sweat, and go back to sleep for another few hours. All I could do for the week was wait and rest and wait some more. I took my prescription, drank my
electrolytes, and ate my soup. Beyond that the healing was really out of my
hands. Wait.

This weekend is Simply Free. We have been planning and praying for this weekend for nearly a year. We have talked to speakers, lined up music, arranged breakout sessions, and ordered snacks. Now there is nothing to do but wait and rest and wait some more. In fact, that’s really what the weekend is about, just waiting on God to heal that sick place within us that we have been working on for so long.

And I’m not talking about you. I mean me. My prayer for me is that once the first song is sung and the first prayer is prayed that I will be able to quit trying and start waiting and resting and trusting. That’s not easy for me. Right now I’m worried that not enough people will come, that the program will be too long, that the speakers will be disappointed. Right now I am fretting about the videos and concerned about transportation and figuring out the cost. I might as well be arranging my sock drawer.

In Romans 8:26, Paul says that “the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us.” That sounds a lot like waiting and resting and waiting some more to me. And it sounds like Simply Free. No high, profound messages. No slick and polished performances. Simply ordinary people telling their stories of being set free. And me and you, not even knowing what we need but just eager to get well.

We are all a little sick. Maybe not the call in the family kind of sick but just not where we really want to be with God. This weekend I invite you to come and wait and rest and wait some more. And let God do whatever it is He chooses to do to heal us in His way and in His time. If you come, maybe I’ll share some soup with you.


(If you'd like to know more about Simply Free go to www.simplyfreeconference.com )

Fridays @ 8 Romans 8:25

This is from a guy in our Tuesday morning group that is just coming alive in Christ. It is a blast to watch. He's out of town this week so he wrote this response. I love the simple direct wisdom:


In the prior passage Paul reminds us that we are waiting for something we are not able to see or touch, but as I said

last week, whatever it is, it is good. So we need to wait. But we have an added blessing, because we can wait in hope! Remember when as little children, we waited for Christmas morning? We waited "in hope" of a wonderful

Christmas, with love and family, and gifts. But we waited for something very special. Now think of a child who has no Christmas. They wait for the 25th day of December far differently. Not with the anticipation of the Christian

child. In the same way, we have a blessing in the hope that Christ will come and our groaning will be over. That is, I think, what Paul is trying to say here. We have a leg up on others, and something to share with all our brothers, those Christian and those not.

My bible says we are to wait with "endurance" another says "patience." I like Patience far better. There is a feeling of

contentment in the hope we have that allows me (us?) to feel the confidence in our belief that others do not have. I know a non-believer who shakes his head mornings as I am reading the bible. I wonder why. I may never

know, but it is one of two things. Either he thinks I am wasting my time, with simple foolishness, or he has a bit of envy that I have something he does not. I hope it is the latter, since it will be easier to get him over the hump, if it is. Either way, I believe I have a good deal more to look forward to than does he. Although he has a very nice home and a very nice life, he does not have the opportunity to wait in hope, that I have.

Fridays @ 8: Free to Be Me

I meet with a group of men on Thursday morning. They are good guys, every one of them. Varied backgrounds, ages, and places in their Christ journey. They speak to me every week, teach me things, challenge me to do better, be better. They have become brothers. Some days we wax eloquent with deep, theological discussions. Other times we spend a lot of time talking about the Boston Red Sox and the difference in real hardwood floors and laminate. One thing is consistent though, I never go away from that group feeling judged or condemned or less than. Sometimes I am confronted. Sometimes some error in my thinking (or doing) comes to light. But it is without guilt or shame or blame. See some stuff. Point it out. Leave it in God’s hands and go on.

We all need a group like that. Don’t we? Aren’t we all a little hungry for a place where we have nothing to prove and nothing to hide? I think there is buried down in the DNA of all of us this little (or not so little) voice that is screaming out the truth about us.” I’m scared. I have doubts. I don’t get this right very often. I hate myself sometimes. I hate God sometimes. I just want to be accepted.” Have you ever heard those things? Maybe coming from inside of you? And our little voice screams them out, desperately wanting to be heard but scared to death that somebody might listen.

The fear of that becomes a shell, a mask that we hide behind. We bump into each other in the hallways, “How ya’ doin?” “Fine, Fine. I’m just fine.” We stop by the water cooler, “Everything okay in your life?” “Oh, yeah. Good. Good. It’s all good.” The muffled little voice behind our mask says, “No its not. It hurts in here.” And we clamp our hand over our inside mouth and smile, “Have a good one.” I have come to say, maybe too much, that the deep need of the human creature is to know and be known. Yet I also believe that the darkest fear of the human creature is the fear of knowing and being known. What if they really knew I struggle with this? What if they could see that I’m not what they think?

We’ll, I don’t know. What? You were expecting some profound wisdom? I don’t know what would happen if we really knew you. We might not like you. We might turn away in disgust, or gasp in disappointment. We might reject you completely and make you feel like the miserable failure you already are. Or…

Or, we might find the courage in your transparency to drop our own masks. We might say, “I am so grateful that you said that. I struggle with the very same thing.” We might throw our arms around you and say, “Welcome home. I have been there too and I thought I would never get out.” Who knows what would happen if we started telling the truth. We might connect on some level that only God has imagined for us. We might become a community of vulnerability, an open, safe, honest place where anyone could speak the truth, be real, stand naked (it’s a metaphor) before God and a group of people that love you and say, “This is who I really am and I am so glad to be able to say it.”

In Romans 8:19-21 (remember Fridays @ 8. You thought I forgot didn’t you? Oh, quit judging.) In Romans 8:19-21 Paul says that in some sense the whole world is hungry to see us do that. Now I know he is speaking eschatologically (impressed?) on some level but he is also addressing the here and now. Verse 19, “The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons (and daughters) of God to be revealed.” In verse 22 he talks about the hope that “all of creation will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.” The whole earth groans and waits for you and me to finally start being, well, you and me. Not some pious, preacher voice, always have the answers, and a scripture verse for every occasion ambassador for the Happy Place. No, what they want, what we want, are people who are free, who walk in the full, abundant, joyful life that Christ gives us but in a genuine, real, honest to goodness way. True Christ followers who can say, “I don’t know about the future (and that is scary) but I know who holds the future in His hands. (and that is GOOD!)

I waiver between to faces neither one of them really me. The one mask, on my good days, is smiling from ear to ear and every time you pull my string says, “Well praise God, Thank-the-llujah. Everything is hunky dory.” The other face is frozen into a frown of despair. I wring my hands. I fret and fume and hopelessly cry, “What are we going to do?” (Ever seen me there?) Neither one of those is the real me. Paul says I am free. Jesus says I have abundant life. My running shirt says I may be slow but I’m ahead…. Oh, wrong shirt. My running shirt says I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength. Now that is freedom.

So, here’s the deal. What about deciding to be real? What about taking off the mask and living life in the glorious freedom of the children of God, sometimes confident, sometimes afraid, sometimes on top of the world, sometimes lower than a snakes belly, but ALWAYS sure that He loves you, that He is really good, and that He is large and in charge. Woohoo! I can be free in that. I don’t have to fake it till I make it. I don’t have to toe the line, or suck it up, or put my best foot forward. But I do have the unbelievable joy of knowing that ‘my redeemer lives,” that He “loves me with an everlasting love.” And that I am His child, saved by grace, full of hope, and able to be far more than I ever dreamed possible because “Christ in me is the hope of glory.”

Sound good? It takes practice. It might be frightening at first but you’ll get the hang of it. Take a deep breath pull off your mask and say “Hi, my name’s Mike…” I suggest starting with a group of guys on Thursday morning….you’ll fit right in.

The Foundation

I have always dreamed of a little cabin in the woods. My friend Robert says, "Mike, you are so optimistic. You are the only person I know who calls a storage shed a cabin." Nevertheless, I managed to get a little building and put it on a small piece of land we have in the woods in middle Tennessee. For about a year it has been sitting in a field, waiting to be moved to the right spot and put on a good foundation. So last week Doris and I took a week off and went and stayed in my sister's nearby, nice cabin (do I sound bitter?) with the goal of building the foundation and getting the cabin moved.

While Doris enjoyed a good book, I went down the hill every day to our little spot and worked on the piers upon which my dream cabin would sit. I dug out the holes for the footers, smoothed the ground with sand and pebbles, and laid the blocks carefully to make sure they were straight and level. Eight piers, four in the middle and one on each corner, stood strong and solid waiting for the cabin. I had contracted with a wrecker company in town to move the building though I was a little nervous about the size of the cabin in comparison to the size of the truck. I took them pictures, gave them measurements, kept quizzing them, “Are you sure you can do this?” Every time the confident response was, “Of course we can. We do it all the time.”

The afternoon of the move was exciting. Doris drove down the hill to watch. I had the foundation ready. A young guy (not the confident man I had been talking to) drove up in the wrecker truck with his girlfriend beside him. He got out of the truck, spit on the dirt road, and said “Man, we’ve never done anything like this before.” Not what I wanted to hear. He hooked the cabin to a cable, tilted back the bed, and to my amazement, hauled the whole thing right up onto the back of the truck without a hitch. This is gonna’ be great. Then he started moving. With every little dip in the rough ground the heavy cabin would shift a little and the not as heavy truck would lift up, wheels almost leaving the ground. He hadn’t gone ten feet when his girlfriend came boiling out of the truck like hornets out of a nest yelling, “I’m not riding in there.” She and Doris went over to the van and smoked a cigarette and prayed. (I mean she smoked a cigarette and Doris prayed.)

Young Guy carefully backed across the rough field, somehow lifted the cabin out over the piers, and sat the thing right down on the foundation perfectly. I was dancing. He was dancing. Doris and Cigarette Girl were dancing. What a day! Then he tried to pull the truck out from under the cabin but the support brace in the back had dug into the dirt. Truck won’t move. Cabin won’t budge. Dancing is not so good. In order to get the truck loose he had to pick up the cabin again, twist it a little bit, and…when he did, down came the piers, down went the cabin, and down sank my heart. Dream cabin in the woods was sitting at about a 45 degree angle with concrete blocks all around it and a hole in the floor where the toilet once had been.

The boys and I, and several other friends, have been reading Rick Warren’s Purpose Driven Life for the last few weeks. It’s a good book, easy to read, about getting back to the basics of our Christian walk. You might say it is about having a solid foundation. I find that in the helter-skelter, hustle and bustle of life I often get away from the things that keep me straight and level and solid. Things like a deep, intentional prayer life, a consistent time ruminating on the Word of God, seeking His face in gentle acts of service to my family, my friends, and to people I don’t know, and, focused accountability with a few guys that keep me honest and know when I am not being transparent. Those things are not spectacular. They don’t have much pizazz or sizzle. They are just the solid piers upon which any life of faith must sit. I forget that. Well, to be honest, sometimes I don’t forget. I just don’t want to do it.

Usually when that happens I begin to tilt, get a little off center. I may look okay at first glance but if you look carefully you’ll see that I am out of balance and there are a few glaring holes on the inside. I’m short with the people I love. I am impatient about the path God has me on. I get worried and fearful about my circumstances. And I lose track of the purpose He has set before me. I’m a mess. But getting back to the basics, doing the elementary things, has a way of righting me, hauling me back up onto a more firm foundation. Jesus may have had my little cabin in mind when He said, “I will show you what he is like who comes to me and hears my words and put them into practice. He is like a man building a house, who dug down deep and laid his foundation on the rock.” (Luke 6:47-48) There are all kinds of neat, special things I want to do for Christ. But the bottom line is the bottom line. What really matters is getting, and keeping my life on the rock.

The next day my friend Robert came out. He brought a little hydraulic jack. We started at one corner and jacked up the cabin and slipped one block under it. Then we went to the next corner and did the same thing. Then the next. Over and over again, one block at a time we lifted the little cabin and rebuilt a solid, firm foundation. It took a while but at the end of the day we had Mr. Tumbles (that’s what Robert named the cabin for obvious reasons) back on level footing and looking good. That’s what we have to do almost continually. One block at a time, one step at a time, discipline after discipline, we build and maintain the foundation of our lives, maintaining our houses on The Rock. And, I have come to believe, when we do that our ability to be used by Him and live for Him is, well, it’s a dream come true. I don’t know where you are in your faith journey today but if you are not solid like you want to be I suggest you look at the foundation. Get that right and the rest will take care of itself. And if you need a big wrecker truck, I’ve got a number for you.

Mike

Fridays @ 8: Cicadas and Courage

It is that creepy time of the year, or should I say of the 14th year. Every 14 years or so a swarm of cicadas crawl out of their burrows and up onto trees, lamp posts, porch swings and slow moving children. They deposit their empty shells and emerge as red eyed, big headed, weed eater sounding winged creatures. Imagine horseflies on steroids. And for about 3 weeks they take over middle Tennessee. They are not that bad singly but they come in droves, hundreds on one trees, thousands in a yard, millions in the area. Literally so many that by the end of the season the gutters along the edge of the streets look like black snow has fallen because of the piled cicada carcasses.

Now I’m a manly man. I’m not afraid of bugs and snakes and crawly things. I don’t bat at eye at a bumble bee dive bombing me or a lizard tickling my toes. But there is just something about the sheer volume of the cicadas that get to you after a while. And by volume I don’t mean number. I mean noise, sound, constant humming, volume. They mass in the trees after they are fully hatched and begin calling. This incessant droning like a million tiny Suzuki motorcycles running all at once. It is a continual background noise even inside the house but outside it is so loud you can hardly carry on a conversation. This morning Jon-Mical and I went to the park and caught cicadas and threw them in the creek. He threw in the dead ones and I threw in live ones. It gave me some twisted satisfaction.

For me, the cicadas are a nuisance. For some people, (I won’t mention names but her initials are Doris Courtney,) it is 3 weeks of terror. She looks furtively out the window before she makes a dash across the driveway to the car. She jumps and jolts every time a leave blows inside the house. And she gets in bed at night and dreams that they have learned to turn the door knob in in the kitchen. She is a slave to her fear of cicadas.

Maybe you are not a slave to cicadas but for most of us there is some deep anxiety that keeps us from living free. Financial worries, health concerns, obsessing over our children, insecurity about our spiritual condition, these things can paralyze us or at the very least distract us from the joyful journey that God has placed before us. Fear is an awful thing. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

Paul says in Romans 8:15 “For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship (and daughtership.)” Knowing for sure that I am a child of God is the perfect antidote for fear. Remember when we were little kids and we would taunt, “My dad can beat up your dad.” There was some kind of confidence in believing that our daddies could whip the world. When I really embrace my sonship with my Abba Father I am set free from being afraid.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m still human. The cicadas are still buzzing. I still sweat over the checkbook and worry about my kids. But I know, deep down inside, I know that my Daddy can beat up the cicadas. He created them for Pete’s sake. (I’m not sure why.) He owns the cattle on a thousand hills. He has healing in His hands and protection in His arms. He “loves me with an everlasting love” and His “perfect love casts out fear.” That is enough to deliver me from the spirit of fear. Bring on the bugs!