Read Colossians 4:2.

Depending on your translation, the verse says something to the effect of...

Always be in constant prayer, and watch what for how the Lord will honor this.

(personal paraphrase)

I read that this morning, and it is a pretty appropriate summary of recent events, not to mention very self-fulfilling. God has been faithful as of late to consider myself worthy of His blessings, and I have seen them poured out in an ability to be more passionate about Him. We have been seeking Him and found Him more faithful and abundant than any man can ever fathom without being in the midst of such circumstances.

Over the past few months, my single male friends and I have been pursuing Christ with a hope to live in closer community for fellowship, accountability, and general discipline. God has shown Himself faithful in that He has provided vision within the leadership of our church to go one step further, and a few of us will be entering into a 3-month "boot camp" program which is specifically designed for these goals, along with greater accountability, enhanced discipline for more responsible living, and purposeful mentorship from older men who seek to see us mature and take on church leadership. And to think all we asked for was more interpersonal discipline!

God is also showing Himself faithful as we seek to find more unity among the churches of this community, of this entire city even! We desire to see churches as He sees them, overlooking the numerous flaws and recognizing those redeemed for His Glory. I am broken when I realize that all believers hold on fiercely to some viewpoints or doctrines of God which are not true, even when they are seeking Him, and yet He remains faithful to men! We believe and pray for unity among denominations, that churches would partner together to see Him and His glory reaching out to the world, and the specific places where we are involved. This past week in Over the Rhine, Dave and I were able to participate in a Bible study which we were unsure about attending, and the Lord blessed it amazingly. It was an unbelievable experience to go into a completely unfamiliar situation and seek God's praise with new people in earnest. Let cultural boundaries be broken and all voices join as one!

God desires us to be pursuing Him in prayer. We know not how to follow in ourselves, so we must simply pursue Him to have His way with us, and then actually allow this to take place. We must pray for Him to act through us, because we won't know what to do with His will and more of Him in us. We don't only need wisdom, but we also need His action to counteract any appearances of flesh within us. Fill us with your Spirit! Destroy the flesh within us daily!

Lord, kill me if I don't preach the Gospel!

Two days ago, I moved into the heart of Over The Rhine.

This post relies heavily on the one before it, so you will probably need to be familiar. God is moving in this body of believers, and changes are happening. The plan is to move into OTR with my good friend and fellow body member Dave, who works with the kids of OTR in an after school program which I also volunteer with. Eventually, I plan to move on to a house of men in Bellevue or Ft. Thomas designed to foster growth and hopefully provide a center for artistic worship.

Making this move was really scary for me. Not in a way so that I was actually scared, but in a "can't think straight, feeling short of breath all day" kind of way. I have real issues when it comes to trusting God with monetary commitments and committing to something for a long term amount of time. So obviously, signing a lease on a house in Bellevue would be a huge commitment for me. This is only made all the more stressful for me by the fact that I have no consistent job and am simply waiting for the day when the cash pool dries up.

This is all stuff that will need to be addressed of course, but I should not be reacting in such a flesh inspired way! We seek the Lord. He provides insight. Then we have the audacity to worry about means of completing His will?!?!

I'm ridiculous...

So God, we ask that we would be continuously seeking Your will, and that we would be weak enough to allow your strength to work through us in completion of the tasks at hand. God blessed me with the strength to pray through this all with Dave and continue on in starting this journey. So I moved. And God is doing amazing things already in confirmation. From the moment I moved in, God began to work between us and in our roommate relationship. Its happening, and I'm not ready! God is, so break me and fill me with your strength instead!

A synopsis of general life.


God is moving greatly at this time. All the ones I trust the mostly greatly when understanding Him are feeling it. I don't know if I have mentioned much of what has been going on with myself as of late, but I very much doubt I have when I see just how much time I have allowed to loom up between myself and my last posts.

Over that past months, God has been solidifying new works with a snowballing effect. Around the time I moved back, He was doing big things. While I was away, those whom I was spiritually close to at home, most of whom were single ladies, joins officially with a local body of believers, partaking in a communally supportive network and fellowshipping closely with those others involved. I have since also come into this group, and I am amazed to see God more clearly speaking in lives in this group than I had ever seen with more than just individuals.

So as I returned, this body was made up of its parts from before, mostly relatively younger couples at this point, and of these newer others to whom I was previously close. But surrounding the time I returned, God began to bring other single guys into commitment here.

So now there are more guys around, and I am seeing just how great the spiritual insight and leadership is in these women I know. And so as I have come together with these other men, I believe I can speak for them, or at least for the sum whole of combined minds, that our passion is to see these men living in community and growing together in similar fashion to these girls, hopefully becoming more so of leaders than they themselves are.

We are looking to become more solidified and purposeful in our pursuit of Christ and our strengthening of one another. My vision is to see young men stepping up and becoming fully committed to God, allowing to have total and complete control of all aspects of their lives. Men who are seeking and actively making choices that are furthering their personal character growth, and men who are investing in the lives of others and ministering where the Lord places them. This is the greatest part of what God is doing in my life right now.

That being said, we all need to become closer in a literal sense, since at this time we all live in scattered places. So the ideal future looks something like this. Most of us moving in to a house together, with the purpose of creating a central location for male fellowship within this group.

God has greatly blessed this body with an immense number of artistically inclined members, and with so many of this sort, it is a wonder that no more has been done already along the lines of creative worship. This new house would also ideally be designed to house a location for creative expression and worship for all body members.

Perhaps even others as well!

As of late, I have been very devoted to reading The Chronicles of Narnia. While J.R.R.Tolkien, of Lord of the Rings and Hobbit fame, was not a great fan of his dear friend Lewis' authorship in this material, I cannot help but be amazed and inspired in spiritually epic realms. I'm reading them at almost a book a day. This is unheard of for my character, but none know that without being told so by myself.

Lewis is inspiring. He knows just how to capture a thought in perfect word imagery. He is able to explain magical experiences of which no one has ever partaken with such natural and familial language, often utilizing a normal activity to explain similar feelings in supernatural events. While everything is continually magical, it always seems completely real and physical, which is hard enough to explain with images, let alone with the choicest words. He succeeds and excels.

As a lover of nature, I am also easily seduced by his elegant explanations of such natural beauty as one can only imagine in this world. The lands and nature he explains almost constantly are almost as unrealistic to this existence as the magic that exudes within Narnian living.

But the far greatest element of C.S. Lewis work here is seen in the spiritual imagery seen within everything Aslan touches. Although his interaction is at some points non-existent for great lengths, it is always felt that all which takes place is by his hand or allowance, and all ultimately ends in his will and by his working. I do not think it is irregular for a theologian to be somewhat confused by Lewis' personal theology, but when it is played out in a narrative such as this, it is just as the old phrase, "a picture says a thousand words." Endless volumes of theological rhetoric could never sum up Lewis work in even some single chapters of Narnian happenings.

Aslan's relationship to the children and those whom are willingly in his service is some of the nearest inspiration to the Bible my heart has known, in its own category alongside the rhetoric of Tozer and the logic of Schaeffer. His character is almost surprising every time it acts, for it is so similar to Christ that it is hard for the human mind to know what to expect. I literally consider myself blessed to even be able to recognize that this is a very exact image of Christ. Many a most religious and well read person would overlook the striking similarity.

I would say it is by no means a stretch to say that The Chronicles of Narnia show a very true physical representation of how God would (in a few does cases does) work in the spiritual life of those willing to devote themselves in wholeness to Himself and His pursuits.

God is moving in my life through these books!

I just started another Tozer book, "Man, The Dwelling Place of God." Already, insights abound.

After talking about how much greater being honored before God is in comparison to all the honor of this world, Tozer says. . .

This being true and being known to the heavenly intelligences, the methods we use to persuade men to follow Christ must seem to them extremely illogical if not downright wrong.
Evangelical Christians commonly offer Christ to mankind as a nostrum to cure their ills, a way out of their troubles, a quick and easy means to the achievement of personal ends. They use the right words, but their emphasis is awry. The message is so presented as to leave the hearer with the impression that he is being asked to give up much to gain more. And that is not good, however well intentioned it may be.
What we do is precisely what a good salesman does when he presents the excellence of his product as compared with that of his closest competitor. The customer chooses the better of the two, as who would not? But the weakness of the whole salesmanship technique is apparent: the idea of selfish gain is present in the whole transaction.

The last line is the most potent to me. It is so true, that the most often explanation given in Sunday schools and evangelistic outreach is that Hell will be no good, and we can plan something better. It sounds like some deal that should include a casket, grave plot, and funeral plan package. I think the selfishness element is dependant upon this lack of perspective. How can salvation be worth much to one who needs so little?

The truth is that our salvation is always continually dependant upon our brokenness. Duh. We're obviously saved from something. But its never sold that way. How infrequently do we hear the Gospel from the beginning in this modern Christianity?

I think this falsely presented message is a mix of issues. The saddest of which is simply that those who do not understand the Good News fully are the ones trying to convince others of its worth. It can also be those most acquainted with the full message who become the most desperate. Observation provides insight into the fact that those most passionate about the Gospel are so greatly zealous that they fall quickly into a very deeply pensive state when pursuing the lost. We take on too much responsibility in the process. We love those souls with Christ's love, but find it discouraging and disheartening when we are unable to personally enact Christ's movement on their hearts.

Be encouraged little ones! It should be our greatest joy to allow God to take responsibility for changing the sinner's hearts! Our brokenness for the soul's of these should be comforted in the camaraderie found in God's same and greater heartbreak!

In the Bible we find the commission to spread the Word and make disciples. If you observe the processes in question, there is a middle step we seem to be excluded from. Perhaps we aren't meant to be a third party in the creation of this relationship! Our responsibility lies only in making Christ's glory known to the hearts of man, and in building up the lives of the children of the Burning Heart!

May your joy be multiplied in your reliance upon Christ to reach those on your hearts!

I do wonder though, to what extent should the Gospel be contextualized? It is obvious that Paul became all things to all men, and spoke in a way condusive to further connection with his audiences. But the message was unfaultering in remaining the identical core. It seems that more often we have flipped this, contextualizing the Gospel to its detriment and giving no thought in how to approach our target audience graciously.

Any thoughts on this?

I think there is truly a balance in every issue in life.
At simple face value, this may sound really obvious to some while striking others as very simplistic or coping out. Let me dig a bit.

I have lots of friends who are very passionate. This is just something Christ does in people. And it is good. I have worked in many a factory surrounded by people content to simply work, watch TV, and sleep, with occasional weekend partying. I am heartbroken over this lack of desire for any purpose in life. I wish there was some way to get into some one's heart and cause them to desire or have hope for more.
But I think that passionate people carry their own list of issues, some of which are often in desiring clarity in thinking. I'm not really talking about the obvious issues of people who always speak their mind without concern, arguing to prove their point's validity to no end. I'm talking about something deeper.
I see that in many very deeply concerned issues of the Christian life, there is always a tense balance between two extremes. Much of the Bible is written this way.

Two Words. Grace and Works.
But seriously, I would venture to say that almost every single point that one could make from Scripture could be responded to with a valid counter statement which balances it out. While God deals in absolutes when it comes to morality and His own standards, much of Scripture, when weighed as a whole, comes out somewhere in the middle between two counter balancing truths. Often the best way to follow God in a situation is totally circumstantial. In the end, the only constant solution is obedience and faith.

I've been burnt pretty badly in my time here thus far.
I've been an arguer and debater my entire life, its just always been surrounding me, and I became good at it. But the intensity of failure of relationships in the past leaves me scared. Perhaps the greatest factors in these tremendous loses are these attitudes which where already leaving a bad taste in my mouth. I hate that I have lost important people because of my own desire to be right about stupid things, compounded over a span of years, which turned great and encouraging intimate friendships into meaningless hollow memories. This leaves me at a point where philosophical and theological debate leave me drained from the first word of rebuttal. I can't handle this anymore.
I think we get pretty ridiculous about this. People may be completely led by the Spirit to intensely study a certain topic, find immense truth, and then from this make leaping, overarching statements that they deem all-inclusive. Others have been restored from horrible trauma in their past, but even so come to completely one-sided conclusions about what God's truth is about the general issues involved.
I guess I have come to a point where I can't stand the ways in which we think we figure things out. Wasn't the purpose of salvation that we couldn't get things right? So we continue to study and develop our love relationships with Christ, but by no means should we be eagerly seeking a bottom line.
Are we really supposed to have a theses statement for life?
Isn't it a bit above our heads?
I mean, where is faith when your just seeking to find all the answers?