The issue with religion is that religion says, something scared has to take place in order for something to be spiritually “Holy”. But the question is what makes that thing any Holier then the other thing? And the answer is….(wait for it, wait for it) it is not. We miss the power of God if we think that He is limited to ritual. This misunderstanding of ritualistic Holiness ends up harming us and confusing God’s plan, purpose, and presence in His creation. Holiness and Sanctity are everywhere and we are not awake to it. He is everywhere and we are asleep. He is always in the place and we are the ones that just showed up.
Jesus was teaching us to be in tune to what is always happening around us. The idea is that you might live a better life if you understood that He is involved and concerned with every area of your life. Every interaction, every conversation, every place, every person, every mess, every time, every problem, every location. God is always doing something. It’s not a view that He is involved with the things that are “churchy”. He doesn’t get bored with one thing and moves onto another thing and forgets about the first thing. If He is not done with me then He is not done with you. If He can be here then He can be there. He is always working. Life in Christ is about being fully awake to the work of God in all things. (John 5:17)
“The purpose of worship is not to escape from this world, into the other world, but to open oneself to the meaning of Christ in the Common.” Church is not supposed to be a bubble that you run to, to hide from the world. It is a place where you go to learn how to make every place a sanctuary. We are to learn how to be like Christ in unChirst like situations. Worship is to help is realize these depths of our world. If worship doesn’t do this, then it is an empty ritual.” (John Robinson-Honest to God)
CHURCH!
What would you sacrifice to get to the next level in your life?
The difference between music and noise is knowing when to be on, and when to be off. There is a clear rhythm in music and it can be heard when everything is on beat.
God made the world with a rhythm; 6 on and 1 off (6 days and rest on the 7th).When we don’t follow a rhythm, our life is less and less music and more and more noise. If we want experience next level living and master life, then we have to understand to have a life of rhythm and know when to be on and when to be off. If we don’t learn rhythm then we butcher the song that we were created to play. Do you ever feel that your life is always on, and you’re just going and you’re just existing, and you feel like a machine? You feel like you have less and less of a life. You were not created to just exist, you were created to have meaning and purpose. Life is about having rhythm.
Life will kill you if you don’t find a rhythm. This is why God instituted the “sabbath rest”. The sabbath rest was interpreted as a 24 hr period where nothing is urgent. A 24 hr period where your not in a rush. A 24 hr period where life is not moving fast. Slow down and see the joy of the Lord. There is a restaurant in my city, that have a huge deck where you can dine outside. Everyday at sunset people come to this restaurant and while the sun sets they applaud. They give the sun a standing ovation. They do this because the understand the beautiful site that they just witnessed. Slow down. Get on beat, and give God a hand for what you have seen in your life.
CHURCH!
Liberation is a process not an event. There is a distinction between salvation and liberation. It is possible to be saved and still need liberation. Your personal sins have been remitted from the cross, but the after effects of the victimization that has been done to us still lingers. It is miserable being a Christian that is converted but still be bound by the oppression of your past that is affecting your quality of life. It is God’s will that you enjoy liberty. He wants you to be able to do the things that he called you to do without the constraints of past entanglements and problems. It’s a great thing to be free. But there is some residual effect of that which was done to you. It’s not based on geographical location, because you can leave the scene of the victimization but still have some residue that still haunts you. Deliverance can be difficult. It’s a difficult process because of a challenging problem that continues to manifest in your life Identification: Your experiences in the world shape what you call “normal”. You spend years defining yourself through the things or people that you are connected to. But once you get freed from a bad relationship, the struggle is now regaining a sense of “who am I now, apart from you?” (Children of Israel vs. Egyptians) What is this thing that posses us that we find it difficult to break our tie with our oppressor? You have to allow yourself to be blessed. Do not be afraid to be redefined. The way to break the tie of the past is to be fascinated with the future. You have to be intrigued with where your going instead of being attached and wrestling with where you came from.
CHURCH!
The style of the beginning of Genesis is as a Mesopotamian poem. There is a rhythm that is created in this poem. “It is good” continues to pop up time and time again. The “good” is woven into the beat and rhyme of the scripture. The scriptures even end with a new rhythm, “it is very good”.
Death, destruction and curse are temporary invaders. The story begins in Chapter I; not in Chapter III. The story begins with good, not with curse. Sin, death, corruption, curse, and exclusion are not the way God intended things to go. These things come in later in the story, after God claimed that everything was good. The world with these temporary invaders isn’t how God made it; it isn’t the way God intended it to be; and it isn’t how it will be forever. So that means, there is no amount of human sin can push out the good. This is because sin was simply a second thought. God made it and said “IT IS GOOD!” The world was already good before anything contaminated it or invaded it. This statement only holds true if you believe the story begins in Chapter I and not Chapter III. If you believe that the world was good before it was invaded, this should make a huge difference with the way that we live on earth today.
Everything that God created is good. He will continue to prove the things that he created are good. We see this happen from time to time in places that we would not expect. Don’t completely write anything off, because God will always prove that something He created is still good. If we believe that the story starts in Chapter I and that the resurrection is a reality, then we believe that life can come out of any dead situation. We want to reclaim the good, where ever we find it.
The Resurrection Story is about the pivotal moment in time where death, destruction, disease, pain, hurt and any other temporary invader gets ousted. The invaders have been removed so that we can live the why we should have if we had never been invaded. Now that the invaders are gone lets get on with the life He intended. Let’s CELEBRATE as we go UPWARDS.
We believe that the world the Lord God created is good; and that He creates people in His image and no amount of darkness can erase that divine imprint. Because we believe that all of life is sacred, we look for God’s fingerprints everywhere. We celebrate the divine in the daily; pursuing lives of hope, gratitude and worship. God invites everyone, everywhere into this way of life, and we believe that it is the best possible way to live!
CHURCH!
I might be a little late, but as I was trapped in the Dallas/Love airport for 5 hours, I had the opportunity to completely absorb Kanye West’s latest album-808’s and Heartbreak. Now opinions start flying as soon as you mention Kanye and his musical expressions or musical genius, but this is not a musical review. This is simply an interpretation of Kanye’s innovative music.
Regardless of being a fan or not, we are all aware of the darkness that has entered into Kanye’s life with the death of his mother. Anyone who has ever lost anybody close to you will agree that it seems that you can never escape the darkness of death. But the darkness gains it’s depth when we overlook the pain that someone is facing. This is what Kanye is explaining to us. You see an “808” is the sound used to create the booming base that we can so easily recognize in hip-hop music. An 808 is loud and it’s presence can not be overlooked. On the other hand, a heartbreak, in contrast is very private and silent. We can’t hear each others heartbreak because of the distraction of the 808 that we hear.
Pain is pain and we all experience it, but pain loses it power when people pay attention. The most powerful thing that I can ever do is say:”I know what that feels like”. We can stop being human beings for each other. We have to dig deeper that the surface “I’m fine”. No you are not and that is OK that you aren’t.
Sacred history is littered with people that are referred to as heroes, but they experienced great heartache and pain. The bible is full of stories of people that dispel the belief that when you do things for God, everything will be great! It is actually filled with people that do everything right and everything falls apart. We have to understand that you cannot control people, places, or things, or most importantly—GOD. The freedom your life needs, begins when we trust no matter what uncertainty life unveils.
Let’s look past the 808’s of life, and assist each other with the heartbreak. Now this is genius.
CHURCH!
