She's There Now

Got this text conversation from my son, Josh with his 4 year old son, Jon-Mical last Tuesday, the evening my mother died.

I told Jon-Mical that Nanny died. He immediately asked if she was flying now.
"Flying?" I asked.
"Yes. Is she flying up to heaven?" he responded.
I told him she was.
He looked up and asked, "How far is she?"
"She's already there." I said.

God Far Away

I need God and He is far away. That desolate, desperate cry is not some philosophical, poetic metaphor from ancient literature or the pitiful plea of the fundamentally fearful. It is my testimony for right now. The words from my lips. The echo of my heart. It is the true, simple, unadorned and undeniable condition of my spirit in this stage of my existence. I NEED GOD AND HE IS FAR AWAY. And interestingly enough, (to me at least) I can speak it without trembling emotion or paralyzing fear. To coin a phrase (again) it is what it is. I need God, simple enough. And He is far away, maybe not simple but certainly understandable.

For one thing, the panic is removed from that conditional announcement when I remember that I am not the first. Moses wandered and wondered on the “back side of the desert” before he had a close encounter with a burning bush. I do not know where the back side of the desert is but I have been there often in the last 2 months. Abraham may have felt that as he led the donkey full of firewood, and his son Isaac up the mountain to prepare a sacrifice. Have you ever felt like you were being asked to give up or let go of something so precious to you that sure God could only ask you by shouting from a far, far distance away? Of course, King David is the poster-child for abandonment issues and reactive attachment disorder. Listen to a few of his familiar laments. “How long, O  Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide Your face from me?” Ps. 13:1. “My God, My God, Why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me?” Ps. 22:1. In fact those words remind me that even Jesus felt this eternal, fraternal separation when on the cross He quoted David, “Elohim, Elohim, lama sabachthani.” My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

Come on tell the truth, have you ever felt that? Maybe sometime in the last 24 hours? When the police call and say we have your son in custody? Or worse, you’d better come to the hospital? When the boss walks in with a cardboard box and a security guard and says, “Sorry, there have been budget cuts?” When the couple that lives next door that loved your kids and ate your barbecue pulls up in a U-Haul van and tells you they have taken a job in Alabama? When you’re cut from the football squad? Left off of the guest list? Given the cold shoulder at church? Unfriended on FaceBook? All of us at one time or another have known the pain of personal rejection and made the leap from the loss of a comfortable situation to the abandonment of God. Even if only for a moment.

If you have read my FaceBook Mom-Updates you will guess that my moments have come at 2am sitting beside the hospital bed in ICU. The night is anything but silent. It is punctuated by rattling bedpans, the incessant beeps of IV pumps, and the groans, the groans of a dozen people who perhaps deep in the recesses of their subconscious are asking, “Why have You forsaken me?” I have watched the spark of intelligence and acuity that was my mother flicker and almost go out over the last 2 months. I have felt her pat my hand and smile at me with the same smile she would give the waiter at Shoney’s or the boy who delivers her paper, asked her questions like my name only to have her turn away in embarrassed confusion. And I have asked God where He was in all of this. How far away? I need God and He is far away.

So what help is there in recognizing I am not alone in my dilemma. Is “misery loves company” enough to satisfy my detached heart? I don’t think so but I do find other solace in thinking through these examples of spiritual loneliness and isolation.

First, I recognize that sometimes the abandonment that I feel is a result of my own behavior and is necessary for my purification. Remember Moses. He rose up in anger and killed the Egyptian who was abusing a Hebrew slave. As noble as his motives may have been his action was wrong. Moses fled into the wilderness and spent 40 years letting God burn away the selfishness and control issues in him. Isn’t it possible that what was really burning in the middle of that bush were  what we call in CR character defects? Moses felt far from God so that some of his hurts, habits, and hang-ups could be placed under grace and he could emerge a leader for his people. So, there are times that my separation from God is for my own healing and my own good.

Secondly, as with Abraham, God often has another plan. Who knows? Maybe His plan is even better? Let’s see. Go up the mountain. Build a fire. Kill my only, my dearly loved son and place his lifeless body on the fire as a gift to God. Or…look up and see a ram that God has snared for me, long before He even asked me to come up onto the mountain. So he closes the door on that job only to give me one closer to home. He allows my relationship to end and suddenly a new person, the right person comes on the radar screen. He tears me away from the First Church of Comfort and plants me in a place where His fire burns brighter in the eyes of people that I have ever seen. Many times the isolation I feel from God is a result of Him working behind the scenes to make something different, better.

And finally, like David I remember that He is not far away at all. My emotions get the best of me. It’s just that time of the month or that time of my life. I am fragile and frazzled, over stressed and under appreciated. I am a legend in my own mind and no one else seems to acknowledge that and God seems so far away. I am an emotional creature. God made me that way. And the more I can express my emotions, be honest about my feelings, the healthier I will be. But my emotions are not the metrics for the way things are. In fact, most of the time my emotions bear little correlation to reality. I feel what I feel and that’s okay but that doesn’t mean it is true. Listen, I feel like I’m going to shoot a 70 every time I step on the golf course. I feel like this is the year for Ohio State to beat the SEC and win the National Championship. (every year) I feel like one more MacDonald’s Sundae won’t cause me to gain weight. I feel like I can afford that new BMW I’ve had my eyes on. All of these feelings are real but the facts they point to are not true. (Well, except the ice cream sundae thing.) God is not far away. He has not moved. He is as close as my next prayer. And even when I cannot feel it I know He says, “I will never leave you or forsake you.”

Which leads me to the last thing, Jesus on the cross, seeming to decry the abandonment of God. “My God, my God WHY HAST THOU FORSAKEN ME?” Jesus knew the whole story. He knew about the incomplete sacrificial system and the holiness of His Father. He knew the demands of the law and the plan of God. He knew about the crucifixion but also about the resurrection. He knew that after Friday, Sunday was coming. His cry was the reflex response of His mother’s side of the family. It was His human nature identifying with our human nature. We will cry. We will feel lost and alone. We will struggle with abandonment and question our faith. We are human. That’s what we do. But that is not who God is. HE IS THERE. Even in the hospital room at 2am, He is there. He loves us with an everlasting love. He knows the plans He has for us. He will never leave us or forsake us. He invites us to come to Him when we are weary and heavy laden. He is there.

I need God and He FEELS far away. But He is not. That’s good.

Jesus in Aurora

     My youngest grandson Jakson is goofy cute. Jakson is 1. He has too many teeth for his little mouth. His hair is so blonde that you can see through it. And his head (to accommodate that powerful brain of his, I’m sure) is three sizes too big for his body. It looks like a pumpkin on a broomstick. But there is something about his smile that lights up a room. And when he waddles though the mall heads turn to enjoy him going by. I know I am anything but objective about this but Jakson has a beauty in the midst of all of his awkwardness that captures your attention. At least it seems that way to his PoppyC.

     This week I sat horrified in front of the TV as the news unfolded of the massacre in Aurora, Colorado. You know the story of a lone gunman walking into a crowded movie theater and opening fire. At least 70 people were shot with a dozen fatalities. Like most of America, I wept for the families of those senselessly slain young people. I prayed for the soul of one so depraved that he could unleash that kind of inhumanity on his fellow human beings. And I groaned for the brokenness of a fallen world that created the backdrop against which this all too familiar tragedy played out. A cafeteria in Texas, a high school in Columbine, a classroom building at Virginia Tech, over the last 30 years in our country alone we have rehearsed this gruesome and grotesque scene until we can describe the players almost before the gunfire ceases. Yet, as often as we have experienced it we are each time in utter shock that this would happen again. Horrible. Ugly. Terrifying.

     If I am not careful I can succumb to the horror and hopelessness of those stories. I begin to see only dark, demonic, destructive forces at work in my world. I recoil from the anger and awfulness that surely must possess an individual to drive him to such an act. I begin to look at everyone around me with suspicion and fear. And I only see the ugliness that we have become as a people, as a planet. The cruelty of one human being to another has been a theme of our reflection since Cain slew Able. We are no longer surprised at the capacity within our own kind to unleash damage and devastation on, well, on us. And it is no consolation to remember that this kind of nightmare is not exclusive to America. Mosques and churches, busses and embassies all around the world have witnessed such hellish moments. There seems to be no limit and no end to the atrocities that we commit. It is all I can see. If I am not careful I go there. But I can’t.

     For one thing, I don’t believe we can survive as a culture or as individuals if we allow ourselves to sink to that level of despair. King Solomon came close to that point when he wrote in Ecclesiastes 1, “Meaningless, meaningless, utterly meaningless. Everything is meaningless.” To begin to believe that this is all there is, that the world is now populated and permeated only with death and destruction, that all that is good about life is either gone or so overwhelmed by evil that it is irrelevant is to leave no space for hope or a willingness to work for change. I think the purpose of chaos is to cause us to quit and to only see the horror makes me want to do that.

     Secondly, more importantly, it just isn’t true. When I begin to only see the awful, terrible, ugliness I am seeing a false image. God is good. His creation is good. There is redemption still at work and “greater is He that is in us than he that is in the world.” The wanton wickedness that we see is the exception and not the rule. In fact the very shock and sadness that it brings up in us is proof that this is not who we are, this is not are nature. We are better than this as a people and as persons. The lie of the enemy is that what happened at that movie theater is symbolic of all of society today. Not true! Not true! Not true! Good not only still exists but it still reigns, and always will because the One who reigns is good. Like the goofy beauty of my grandson, there is still something good and right and noble about the world we live in. The positive still far outweighs the negative. We, the people of God, must, we must, proclaim there is still Good News and not surrender our message of redemption to the violent, viral You Tube clips, or the scandalous sound bytes if the evening news.

     So, how do we find hope in the hopeless? How do we avoid the doom and despair that screams at us from the headlines and from our hearts? Where is the beauty buried beneath the bloodbath of last week or the terrorism of tomorrow?

     First, we step in to look closely at the miracle moments of the event in front of us. Several years ago we had the widow of Todd Beamer speak at our church. Todd was one of the heroes of Flight 93 on September 11, 2001 who apparently charged the cabin of that doomed flight and caused the terrorists to divert in to a rural field rather than the supposed target of the White House. Last night I watched the stories of at least three young men in that Aurora theatre that used their own bodies to shield their girlfriends, giving their lives for others. Stephanie Davies stayed with her wounded friend and applied pressure to her bleeding neck the entire time the gunman was walking up and down the aisles of the smoky theatre. She saved her friends life. Jarell Brooks ran back to up the aisle to help a terrified mother and her two young children escape. Out of almost every story of murder and mayhem arises an even more powerful one of heroism and sacrifice. It is as if the good is saying, “You cannot win. I will use your blackness to illuminate the fact that people are still good, that love still triumphs.” In fact, in some ways the more atrocious the evil the more brightly shines the good. That’s what we hold on to in moments like these.

     Secondly, we step back to look carefully at the context of our faith. We live in a fallen, frightening world but it is undergoing the “birth pains of redemption” as Paul says in Romans. God is victorious over evil from the Garden to the Grave. At the fall of Adam and Eve God clothed them and gave them a promise. When Cain killed his brother God gave him a mark to protect him. All through Old Testament history God works for the redemption of His people. Until finally in the New Testament, at the Cross and that horrible, ugly moment when even His Son is the victim of evil, God raises Him from the Grave and gains the ultimate upper hand over the darkness. These awful moments in time remind us that this is the very reason Christ came. The wickedness of the world only serves to prove the significance of the Savior. The event in Aurora, and all the other mind numbing, hope shattering events of our day, focus our faith like a laser beam on to the only One who can make a difference. As someone said, “A messy world like ours obviously needs a messiah.”

     When it gets right down to it, we see in these horrific moments what we are looking for. If we are looking for hopelessness and despair, it is certainly there to be seen. But if we have our “eyes fixed on Jesus, the Author and Finisher of our faith,” we see God still at work, still redeeming even in the darkest of nights. It’s like Jakson. You might see a goofy little fellow with head too big and teeth too many. I see the most beautiful little guy in the whole world. That is what I am looking for. And today, even in the horrible headlines and the numbing nightly news, I am choosing to look for Jesus.

Dancing The Soul Salsa

I grew up in a home that did not dance. Just the mere mention of the word was anathema. My mother called it foot fellowship. She taught us that dancing was the root of all evil and was the portal through which every other vice imaginable entered. “Don’t ever dance,” she said. “All of that closeness leads a boy and a girl to other wicked things like smoking and drinking beer.” We didn’t dance.

At the end of the school year when the area high school held the annual prom our tiny little church would plan a “prom alternative,” a miserable little affair when all 3 of the teens who went to my church would meet in the basement of the Sunday School area to celebrate the fact that we did not dance. There would be balloons, crepe paper tablecloths, and cardboard stars thumbtacked into the ceiling. A half-dozen matronly, old women would hover around us as we sat at the table, filling our plates with sweet potato casserole and baked ham. We tried to look excited about what was going on, and to ignore the 5^th graders that had been invited to make the room more full. We would listen to records of Gene Cotton and Andrae Crouch (the contemporary Christian musicians of that day) and at the end of the evening the preacher (usually my dad) would bring an inspiring devotional message about how much better off we were because we did not dance.

So imagine my surprise when I discovered one day that the Word of God is laced with invitations to dance. Ecclesiastes 3:4 says there is a time to dance. Psalm 30:11 says, “You have turned my mourning into joyful dancing.” And in II Samuel David danced before the Lord “with all of his might.” The most amazing dance note is in John 10:10. It is a very familiar verse where Jesus says, “My purpose is to give life in all its fullness.” The Greek word for fullness is orkaomi. It is the root word that gives us rejoice or dance. Jesus was saying “My purpose is to teach you to dance.”

I love John Ortberg. In his book The Life You Always Wanted  he says, “We will not understand God until we understand this about Him: ‘God is the happiest Being in the universe.’ God also knows sorrow. Jesus is remembered, among other things, as a ‘man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.’ But the sorrow of God, like the anger of God, is His temporary response to a fallen world. That sorrow will be banished forever from His heart on the day the world is set right. Joy is His eternal destiny. God is the happiest being in the universe.”

You see, life is Christ is to be ­enjoyed not endured.

Life is Christ is a party not a pity.

Life in Christ is a dance not a drudgery.

Now I don’t know how to dance but if I did, I would dance the salsa. I got the idea from Leonard Sweet.He says of the salsa, "it is fire and ice, precision and passion, delicate beauty and dominating athleticism all at the same time. The salsa comes from the Caribbean where it finds its African roots and its Spanish rhythm. It embraces the majesty of the royal court and the grit of the street. It has strains in Harlem in New York and in Mexico City. In short, the salsa is the dance of the whole world." And the soul salsa, well that’s the dance of the universe.

I am in a season of my life where dancing the salsa doesn’t seem to be very likely. For one thing my knees are creaky and my back is out of wack. When I stand up it takes me a minute to get my balance and to get my joints all moving in the right direction. Let’s face it the salsa is a young man’s dance with zest and zeal that we old folks gave up a long time ago. But that’s not what makes the salsa, or dancing in general, hard. Right now it’s hard to dance because life is happening. There is sickness to contend with, the economy is tight, I’m a little worried about the state of the nation, and the check engine light has come on in my car. Stuff just builds up all around me and I forget to dance.

In fact, I am coming to believe that this is the time when dancing is most important. Dancing, spiritual dancing, rejoicing in Jesus, enjoying the Spirit, soul salsa dancing brings life back into the heart of those of us who have been beaten down. The ability to dance is fights back the fears and frustrations of the foe and defeats the difficulties and destruction of the devil. Dancing is not only allowed us who call ourselves Christ followers, it is mandatory. While it is not exactly a dancing verse I am thinking of the prophet Joel quoted in Acts 2:17, “In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, and your old men will dream dreams.” That sounds to me like somebody is going to bust a move. Dancing is getting ready to break out.

So, the next time you find yourself in the basement of life, eating sweet potato casserole and baked ham, the next time your problems are telling you that you can’t dance, forget that. You crank up some Gene Cotton, hang out a few stars, and salsa your way into the life that God has designed for you.

Mike

FOLLOW ME

Here is a flagrant, no-holds-barred, begging on my knees plea for help. In fact I have two pleas. The first is very small. The second....it's a doozy. I have been reading a book, Platform, by Michael Hyatt. It's a good one. It deals with the social-media culture of the day and the tools necessary to use that modern day media for good. I am not so much about advancing me (though I certainly have my moments) but I am recognizing the stewardship involved in promoting the Branches story and using my gifts (such as they are) to further the Kingdom of God.

With that in mind I plan to become much more intentional about things like blogging, writing, mentoring, etc. So, here's the first little favor. If you have followed me on this blog will you follow me over to my new blog site and subscribe there. The new site is www.branchesblog.com. It was put together by my good friend Jody Webster at websterville.com and hopes to be simple, straight forward, and helpful. I don't know that I see myself as a mentor type person but I seem to have gotten old and with that comes some wisdom on how to live life better. I plan a weekly post on lessons about faith, practical ways to stay connected to the Vine. We will try to find balance in life, look for ways to engage the world and each other, and hopefully recognize the grace of God in all of life, even the "yukky" parts.

Now for the biggie, flagrant self-promotion. This change to a new blog is a great excuse to ask, will you help me by sharing my blog with as many people as you can. Put it on lists. Refer to it in your postings. Just help me kick-start this by getting the word out. To the person who does the best job there will be a huge cash reward. (That is not true! I just got desperate in trying to motivate you.) Actually there is nothing in this for you except my deep appreciation and the satisfaction that you have shared some things that may have been meaningful to you along the way. In return you have my commitment that I will work consistently and with integrity to present a "product" that you can be proud of and God will be glorified in.

Well, enough grovelling. You are probably here because you are a friend. Be sure I am grateful for that. Now "follow me, as I follow Christ." Let's see where He takes us.
Mike

Variety

Jesus is pushing His way through the crowd and a women who has suffered with bleeding her entire life touches the hem of His cloak and is healed. A young boy that was beset by demons was brought to Jesus and fell on the ground convulsing in front of Him. Jesus reached down and took his hand and lifted him up and he was healed.  There was a crippled woman that was bent over for eighteen years. When Jesus saw her He “put His hands on her” and she was healed. By the pool of Bethesda a man was crippled from his birth. Jesus says, “Pick up your bed and go home,” and he was healed. When Jairus, a man that Jesus did not know, came and told Jesus that his daughter was dying Jesus left and went with him immediately. When they told Him that His best bud Lazarus was dying, he waited two more days before He went. (Healed them both by the way.) Bartimaeus the blind man yells for Jesus, “Son of David, have mercy on me. Jesus says, “Go, your faith has healed you,” and Bart can see. Another blind man comes and Jesus spits in the mud, wipes it on the guys eyes and says, “Go wash this off.” When he does, he can see. Still another blind man, (Where did they get all of these blind people?) comes to Jesus and Jesus spits directly on his eyes. They guy says, “I can see but not clearly. Men look like trees.” Jesus touches his eyes again and 20/20.

Jon-Mical, my grandson, goes to a Methodist church preschool. I take him every morning and pick him up at noon. One day someone had painted a big cross on the parking lot. Jon-Mical said, “Look PoppyC. Jesus painted a cross on the parking lot.” Then he said with all the innocent affection and admiration that a three year old can muster, “That crazy Jesus.” Now whenever Jesus does something special for us, (and He does a lot!) we all say, “That crazy Jesus.”

Jesus used a lot of different ways and words to bring about healing. In fact, it hardly seems He ever healed any two people in exactly the same way. One time He speaks, another time He touches, and sometimes they even touch Him.  Once when the disciples were in the boat and it was stormy He spoke, “Peace, Be still.” Another time He just decided to walk out to them…ON THE WATER.

It seems to me that if Our Lord was not confined to one treatment pattern, if He did not stick with one single modality, then it behooves (I love to be behooved) us to, as Paul says, “become all things to all people so that I might save some.”  God seems to make a point of variety, look around you, and He may desire that we be willing to be creative and varied in our attempts to bring healing to others.

Listen, I am as much a rut person as the next guy. I go to and from work the same way every day. I park in the same place. I eat the same oatmeal for breakfast every morning. I have one really comfortable pair of jockey shorts (but let’s don’t go there.) I’m just saying I can get very comfortable with my routine. And that’s okay. When I do the same thing over and over I know it better. I am prepared for all eventualities inside my routine. I can explain it better to others. And I have faith that my routine works. Someone comes in for counseling, I do an intake, I ask them about their family of origin, we go over their APS Temperament profile, and we’re off to the races.

But maybe, just maybe, God is saying that we are all “fearfully and wonderfully made,” that we all bring unique and complex issues to the table and those things get all intertwined in a way that is a little bit different for everybody. Maybe God is saying, “If you trust me I will show you a new way, maybe several new ways, to bring healing and hope to the broken-hearted.”

That is the model that Branches is built on. We believe healing comes just one way and only one way, God does it. But having said that, sometimes He uses EMDR, sometimes talk therapy, sometimes inner-healing prayer, and sometimes deliverance. You know what, sometimes He heals and doesn’t even use me. THINK OF IT!

A few weeks ago I talked to a guy that I had seen a few times and then he didn’t come back. He came up to me in a store to thank me for the amazing changes in his life and how I had helped him so much. His wife was there and she said, “Since he met with you he has been a completely different person. We could not be more happy.” Cool. I’m feeling great so I asked him, “What did I say that made the difference?” He knew immediately. “I can tell you exactly,” he said. “When you said this…..it changed everything for me.” I thanked him and they went on. You know what? I did not say what he said I did. Never have. It’s good. I might start saying to people but I didn’t say it to him. The Holy Spirit comes and He says what needs to be said and He uses what needs to be used and He heals in the way He desires.

So, get out of the rut. Trust God. He might bring healing to you today in new way that you never imagined. Or He might break through at last using the same old method that you have tried a hundred times before. I do know this. He will come. And He will heal. That crazy Jesus. He loves you like that.

Mike

The Spirit Principles # 6 in the Abundant Life Series

The Spirit Principles

(I was thinking the other day I never posted the 6^th blog in The Abundant Life series. Sorry about that. Here’s the last one.)

Lawrence J Peter, author of the famous and now forgotten business textbook called The Peter Principle said this, “In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence.” In other words, we keep getting promoted because we are doing a good job until finally we are promoted to a job that is just more than we can handle. There we stay, dissatisfied and unfulfilled, until we are fired, we die, or we are demoted back down to something we can handle. Now that’s encouraging. It may even be true. I’ve sure advanced a few times (like now) way beyond my abilities.

But maybe there is another way of looking at it. Maybe I become increasingly less dependent on my own abilities and ever more dependent on the Holy Spirit in my life. Maybe one day I wake up and realize that He was driving the boat all along and I have only been along for this marvelous ride. Maybe the principle I need to follow is the one modeled by that other guy named Peter who stuck his foot in his mouth every time he leaned on his own resources but changed the world on the day he finally trusted the Holy Spirit of God.

Acts 2:38, Peter who has failed, fallen, and really fouled up, denied Christ, ran from adversity, been hiding in an upper room for 40 days, steps out in front of the crowd in Jerusalem and says, “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the Name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.” Do you get the impact of that? This mob is the very group that yelled for Christ to be crucified a few weeks earlier. They are the same guys than ran through the streets with torches looking for more Galilean followers to string up. And now, in their face Peter says, “This Jesus whom YOU CRUCIFIED is both Lord and Christ.” And 3000 of them are saved. Put that in your pipe and smoke it Mr. Promoted Beyond Your Ability. Of course, he was. Peter couldn’t have confronted that crowd on his own. The Holy Spirit did it in him.

We have been talking for 5 weeks now about the abundant life, the life that is more than we are living, greater than we can imagine, and available to us when we really surrender ourselves to the Holy Spirit in us. On this final day I want to suggest some principles to live by, I call them the Spirit Principles. These are the things that I think come out of a life dead to self and alive in Christ. Do I do these things well everyday? Nope. Do I think it’s even possible for me to accomplish any of this? Nope. But when the Spirit is set free to work in me, and when I set my heart toward the Spirit Principles, God does things in me that….well, are just way beyond my pay grade.

The first word is PURITY. Galatians 5:16 says, “So I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.” The Bible is chock full of reminders that we live by grace. We are saved by faith. We are seen by God through the blood of Jesus and our “goodness” is not of ourselves but comes from Him.

It is just as full of calls to holiness, holy living, righteousness and commands to live pure and Godly lives. It seems to me there is a principle here. In every area of life there is a price to be paid for greatness. I’m not talking about some legalistic duty or obligation to live a certain way. Christ has already taken care of that. But for those of us who desire to be sold out, on fire, devil defeatin’, Jesus freaks, tend to go the extra mile, pay the greater price, make the deeper commitment. Not because we have to but because, by the Spirit living in us, we want to. It’s true in all arenas. Michael Jordan in basketball, Luciano  Pavorotti  in singing, Mother Teresa in charity, Billy Graham in evangelism, Doris Courtney in playing the piano (she told me to say that one). People who have done great things have gone beyond their gifts, wonderful as they might have been, and paid the price for greatness. Let me be blunt. I don’t usually do it well but my desire is to be great for God.

Second word, POWER. Having said you have to pay the price let me remind you that that is not enough. You can’t do it on your own. Christ in you, now that’s another story. II Timothy 1:7 says. “For God has not given us a spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.” Listen, when you answer the call of God to use your life for His glory you can be sure that He has and will put everything in you that you need. You got the power. (Something in me wants to say, “Can I get a WITNESSSSSSS?) Here’s the principle. The power of God within us is ALWAYS greater than the circumstance of life around us.

You see part of the reason that I fail to pay the price is that I get overwhelmed. I give up. I’m defeated before I begin. I wrestled in high school. Once when I was in the 9^th grade I went to the district level and wrestled a kid that was a 4^th year senior. (It seemed like that to me.) He must have been 26 or something. All I know is when he grabbed me the first time his chin hit my chest and he had stubble, a two day bristle. I remember thinking, “He’s got a beard. I’m a kid and I’m wrestling a grown man. He will kill me.” And you know what? He did. I was beat before I started. Listen, we fight a defeated foe. We have the power, not him, and we can’t lose.

That leads me to the 3^rd principle. Great people are captivated by noble desires. The word here is PASSION. The Holy Spirit, among other things places a vision within us that moves and motivates all we do. If you don’t have that in you go back to number 1. Start living the life and I promise you God will begin to set a fire in you that won’t be put out.

My young friend Renee Chambers is a hero to me. God put a vision in her to work with at risk teens in our community. She went out to California and enrolled in an apprenticeship to equip herself to follow her dream. After just a couple of months they cancelled the program. So what? Renee did not and has not quit. She has fought and scratched and stayed faithful. She has moved from office to office and printed out flyers with her own money. She has the power and the passion that can only come from the Holy Spirit and today she heads a strong, effective ministry in our town called SOZO. Here’s what Joel said about the Holy Spirit in 2:28, “I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy. Your old men will dream dreams and your young men (and women) will see visions.” That will put some passion in you.

Well, I’ve got to quit so let me give you one more. (There were seven in the original lesson I taught. Make me write a book about these.) Word number four is PURPOSE. And the principle is this. A great life is a life lived on purpose.

I’m almost back to principle # 1. You don’t stumble in to being significant for Jesus. You don’t accidentally live a life of surrender and sacrifice and super-natural influence. Remember, all of the power comes from Him. Everything we do we do in and through and because of Him. Apart from Him we can do NOTHING. BUT…we start. We decide. We move. We make up our minds. We determine. WE DO WHAT WE DO FOR CHRIST ON PURPOSE. Paul says things like, “Make it your aim.” “Let this be your goal.” And in my life verse, Philippians 3:10, “I want to KNOW Christ…” Then, “I press on.” There is purpose there.

We are people of grace. Our old selves have died. We have been crucified with Christ. But we have in us the ability, and hopefully the desire, to set our steps toward Godliness and spiritual greatness. And that only happens on purpose. My father-in-law is one of those Godly and great men. Never accomplished a lot from the worlds perspective but he has been such a man of God that his life has influenced generations of men and women for Christ. He is a saint in every sense of the word. I have heard him pray hundreds of time down through the years. He prays as he lives, directed by the Holy Spirit, empowered by the Holy Spirit, full of the Holy Spirit. I don’t believe I have ever heard him pray when he did not say this, “Only one life will soon be past. Only what’s done for Christ will last.” That is a great life. That is a principle worth living by.