I am so blessed

At this Christmastime and nearing the end of 2011, I am reflecting back on some of the growth I have experienced in my life this year. I have come to realize I am such a blessed man!

I have a gorgeous wife who is a wonderful mother, cook, nurse, friend, taxi driver, and on and on… I have four children who I am proud to have been their dad so far. They have shown me life through their eyes and helped to expand my world by allowing me to see a little of the love our Father must have for us. I have a great business that my wife and I own, a beautiful home, a great church family, a great family family, and more friends on Facebook than I thought I would ever have when I started my account years ago.

Life is pretty good…I am a blessed man. I fit the bill that all the pastors who preach the prosperity gospel are talking about. I live a cush American Christian life in a cush economically free and politically free country. What more could I want? What else could there possibly be?

People pray and ask God what is their purpose in life. People ask why is there pain and suffering in the world and why doesn’t He do something about it?

I don’t have it all figured out but I do know why I am blessed. I am blessed for one reason. I am blessed to be a blessing to those around me. I am not blessed to consume all my resources on myself and my family. I am blessed to BE a blessing. The question isn’t WHY does God allow suffering in this world – the question is WHY aren’t we doing more about it ourselves? I mean we are Christians right? Jehovah did call on us to show Him to the world. How can we do that if we ignore the poor, the widows, the orphans, and the single mothers? Why do we American Christians have so much if we don’t share what we have with those less fortunate?

We shouldn’t consume it all on ourselves. We shouldn’t consume it all on our church. We need to re-read our Bibles and figure out what this thing called Christianity is supposed to be about. Are you blessed? If so, why…and what are you going to do about it?

Let my heart be broken by the things that break the heart of God.

“Let my heart be broken by the things that break the heart of God.”

—Bob Pierce, World Vision founder

Many of us have heard this quote as a phrase or as a lyric to a song. I recently read the quote in a book by Rich Stearns who is the current President of World Vision and author of the book, The Hole In Our Gospel.

My heart is currently broken and I am asking everyone who reads this to pray. A few months ago as I was leaving the bank I saw a man standing on the side of the road who to me looked homeless. I had never seen him before and this is the same bank I have used for the 8 years we have lived here. I stopped and gave him a few dollars and drove on home. The next time I saw him I stopped again. As I stopped more and more I began to ask him questions and he slowly began to open up to me. It turns out he has lived here and been standing around on the street corners in Inman for as long as I have lived up here. AND I HAVE NEVER SEEN HIM! (God has forgiven me for that because trust me I cried after he told me that one.)

So anyway…I have stopped more and more over the summer and as a family we have bought him some food and clothing. I have taken my kids by there to meet him as they have helped us over this past year when we have worked with various homeless populations in the Greenville/Spartanburg area. When he showed me his “home” I was devastated. He lives in an alley behind an abandoned building and he slept on a cot with an old rotting sleeping bag as his only cover.

We decided we had to help him out of the elements the best we could so we purchased a tent and some supplies and our church group set it all up for him. Everyone in our group pitched in (and even some others who aren’t a part of our specific church group but who are a part of THE church have helped.) We set up a tent with a tarp over it to shed the rain off, we got him a new bed with sheets and a pillow, we got a rubbermaid tote to keep his new “supplies” in, a beard trimmer, etc… We didn’t get him off the streets but we tried to make his current life and situation as comfortable as it could be. He said he was a veteran so we’re working with a veteran’s group to get together his papers in an attempt to get him into a vets home in Greenville but the paperwork is slow and daunting when dealing with the government.

He suffers from a bad foot infection that has sent him to the hospital twice (in addition to the time he had a heat stroke in the summer and went in). He won’t finish taking his medication because it upsets his stomach really bad and he has no where to “run” to the bathroom when he gets an upset stomach. So we have a Catch 22 there.

Now this brings us to the point of my request for prayer. I talked with Wayne last Wednesday morning on my way into work but then I didn’t see him anymore for the rest of the week. I checked both hospitals and the jail but he wasn’t there. We planned to stop by the Inman police station today and see if they knew anything but when we went out this morning we saw him back on the sidewalk where he stands and panhandles. Excited I stopped to talk with him. Then crushed I found out he had been “evicted” from his alley. If anyone wants to see his “home” then go to my photo album on Facebook titled “Homeless Ministry” and scroll down to the last two pictures. This is a before and after of his alley home.

After finding out he couldn’t stay there anymore we called the realtor trying to sell the building he stays behind to ask if they knew why. The realtor didn’t know anything but appreciated what we were doing for him and said he would talk to the owner for us. Then we went to the police station to find out any details from them and to ask what to do. Basically he’s a nuisance to people because he’s dirty and stands around hoping for a handout from people. The police confirmed that he couldn’t go back to the tent and they told us we could pick up the tent and the supplies. The problem is – now he has nowhere to go. He needs prayer and he needs help.

I don’t know what else to do for him. In scriptures (Zechariah 7:9,10) we get a glimpse of the heart of God. The thread in scripture is clear throughout the OT/NT about the heart of God for the poor and the oppressed. My heart is broken for Wayne and I can’t do anything right now but pray. If that’s all you can do as well then will you please pray with me? If you know of any resources or solutions then please message me.

- Michael

God’s Blessings

I’ve always heard of “prophecies” proclaiming the provision of God is coming through unlocked windows of Heaven. Why do we always seem to wait in eager anticipation like dogs waiting on scraps of food from the table for God’s blessings?

I put the quotes around the word prophecies not to mock the prophetic but to cast my own doubts on the legitimacy of most prophecies I’ve heard about this. Since I was a boy growing up in the evangelical Christian movement I have heard this same generic and vanilla prophecy come from so many different people at so many different times (a lot of times it’s concentrated around the new year and all the “glorious” things God is going to do THIS year that he didn’t do LAST year). I honestly think this is a whip the people up into a frenzy kind of prophecy. I’ll say it here – I don’t think God said that. I really don’t. At least not here and now in a prophecy.

Let’s analyze this – God is going to open the windows of heaven and pour out a blessing on us. Stop for a moment and think about what does that particular passage of scripture (Malachi) mean to you? Go ahead…stop…don’t keep reading stop and think.

We Americans tend to think in a very isolationist view. We think God is of course only concerned with us. We tend to think he has blessed us and not the rest of the world because we’ve obeyed him better than everyone else. We also don’t tend to really put a whole lot of thought into the “everybody else” because again – we tend to only think of America.

So let me paint a picture for you. Do you think God really said in that very generic very vanilla prophecy that he was going to give a fat man a cake?

America is already blessed. Blessed beyond measure. We already live in a highly industrialized country full of technology that makes our lives easier. We live in a country where our poor have cable/satellite, where our poor have cell phones, where out poor have access to clean drinking water, where our poor go to school for free, where our poor drive cars, and on and on. We live in a country where us white middle class politically conservative Christians think our poor are leeches on society sucking the life out of what we earned and deserved. God forgive us for our arrogance.

We proclaim from the pulpit week after week and year after year of God’s desire to bless us and increase us and multiply us and all the other frothy words that people love to hear and claim for themselves. So tell me the answer to my previous question. Do you think God wants to give a fat man a cake? Because that’s what this prophetic word is saying; our blessed country is somehow deficient and God wants to “kick it up a notch” and “BAM” here’s MORE!!!

It doesn’t take a theology degree to study scriptures. It only takes a willing and an open heart and mind. Let’s take off our spiritual glasses that we see the world and scriptures through (we all have them on…me included) and try to see things from God’s perspective. God has called us to care for those less fortunate and those without. He called Israel to show the world who he is/was. When Christianity was born and we became graphed into the vine of Judaism then it became for us, the Gentiles, the same mandate. We are to show the world the love of God. That’s how the world is to know we are his disciples. The love we have for others is what we show the world, not by what we spend on ourselves – but what we share with others.

We get excited because God is going to “bless us” but he already has! Why would he give us more when we haven’t even been good stewards of what he already has given us? Again, we tend to think in isolationist terms. We tend to think our lives aren’t that much. We don’t have all that much – because we’re comparing ourselves to other wealthier Americans – not comparing ourselves against the world. If God would just give me more THEN I could give more, etc…but he has already opened the windows. Once they are open they can’t get “more open”. Open is open. The only place they can go is shut from here. Is that what we want to risk?

When the Messiah came to earth he talked about the Kingdom of God relentlessly. Do we Americans think the Kingdom is about a bigger house, a newer model car, a bigger TV, a nicer meal to eat? Is that what we are preaching from our pulpits? A “ME” Christianity?

NEWS FLASH: It’s about others.

Let’s ditch the cheap prophecy about blessings and lets start being a blessing to others. Let’s take this thing called Christianity and do something with it. Let’s actually love the world by giving directly to them and by helping them directly. Let’s get our hands dirty and let’s touch the untouchables. Thus saith God…

Heaven and the Rapture

Not to mock Mr. Camping and his bungled prediction of the rapture, but I, like others, have thought recently about heaven and the point to this thing we call life. Add in Rob Bell’s book about hell and my mind has had a lot to process lately.

This morning after having breakfast in bed (why i don’t know, its not Father’s day or my birthday) I am laying here in the bed on this Sunday morning looking out over our back yard I have to ponder. Why do we feel we have to “go” somewhere to heaven? I’m looking out at the majestic specimen oak trees in my yard, I’m overlooking a small 2 acre pond, and I’m listening to the songbirds singing to the skies with our back door open. I can’t help but wonder why we want to leave earth to “go” to heaven. This is pretty nice here.

I understand how people want mansions, they want to walk on gold streets, they want to see water like glass, gates made of precious stones, etc…but what if we’re missing something. What if God isn’t wanting us to come to him but instead he is wanting to come to us?

The guy who started the ministry Answers In Genesis says that even if the answers to everything aren’t in Genesis then at least the root of the answer is in Genesis. So I have to ask what is the answer? What is the root? What is the point to this thing we call life and more specifically what is the end?

You see God created the earth perfect. It was Eden. It lacked nothing. It needed nothing. Every day in the cool of the evening the scriptures tell us God came to the garden and walked with man. He made it perfect and he came here to spend time with us. He didn’t have to take Adam away to him. God came to earth – you know Emmanuel – God with us. Sounds like what Yeshua was trying to tell us too with all his talk of the Kingdom of Heaven.

God with us, here, on earth, every day.

So our mandate is to make sure we bring heaven to earth, not the other way around. We need to create life, we need to remove sin, we need to bring creation and Eden to our world. We need to walk with Adonai every day here and now.

My favorite part of the Resurrection Story

As everyone is posting stories, scriptures, and wishing everyone well this weekend on social networking sites, I was reflecting on my favorite part of the Resurrection story. As the highest of holy days for Christians, this time of celebration of the death, burial, and resurrection of Yeshua is the pinnacle of our faith. Christmas maybe the time God came to earth in human form but this is the season of salvation and redemption!

My favorite part of the story is immediately at the death of Yeshua. Matthew 27:51, Mark 15:38, and Luke 23:45 all describe the curtain of the sanctuary being split in two from top to bottom! This curtain was the veil that separated the inner room of the temple from the outer areas. This significance lies in the very reason God came to earth.

You see up until this point in Jewish history man had to have a mediator between him and God. The priests were established in the “Old Testament” to be that go between. We wrongly assume that is the way it should be now with the systems and practices we have in place even to this day. I encourage you to read the scriptures in a different way. Read the very beginning and the very end of the Bible. What does is say? What picture does it paint?

In the very beginning before the fall of mankind God himself walked with Adam each afternoon in the cool of the evening. Imagine that…God coming to your house to walk around your back yard with you EVERY DAY and talk. That was life in the Garden. That was the original intention of Yahweh Elohim. He wanted humans to live with and interact with. But, our humanity got in the way and we messed up. Sin can’t exist in the presence of God so the rules changed. We needed that go between. We needed that person to stand in the gap for us with God. But that wasn’t what he wanted.

So he changed the rules back again. He sent his Shekhinah glory to live among us and to be the final sacrifice for our sins. That is why the veil (curtain) was torn in two at his death. And it was torn in two from the top down to the bottom. That shows us who did the tearing!

At the end of scriptures we see life in the new heavens. We see life again being lived in the constant presence of God himself. We live then with the veil torn the way we should live now. We can come before him without a mediator. He wants to spend time with us. He wants to spend time with you! He wants fellowship and life with you – today. Now.

You don’t have to “go” to church to experience God. We are the church. He lives and breaths in us all. Fellowship among believers shows the body of the Messiah to the world. We can change the world. We can change our world if we will just accept his desire to live in and among us all.

So as you go about your celebrations this weekend keep all this in mind. God tore the veil in two so he could be with you. End of story!

Heaven on Earth

You know I’ve seen a lot of posts on Facebook and Twitter lately about how beautiful this Spring is. Several people…including myself…have commented on how if Heaven is like this day (sunny with a few passing clouds, a slight breeze, and 72 degrees for me) then they will be happy. It’s all about the Springtime, the birds, the flowering plants, the budding trees – it’s all about the “things” of Spring.

Of course there has also been a lot of talk lately about Hell. (Thanks to Rob Bell) So this past week when our church got together we discussed the merits of Hell and what we believe about it and what we’ve all been taught – or caught – by our religion. (For a full disclosure I have just started reading ‘Love Wins’).

When it came my turn to discuss what I knew (or thought) about Hell I wanted to make sure to start with the beginning. In Genesis we have to start with why God even created mankind. He made man to have fellowship with us. So let’s all start with that. He didn’t create us to destroy us – He’s not that crazy kid Sid in Toy Story who just takes pleasure in what and how He can destroy us.

Now don’t go ahead and start tearing up my argument. I know all about the judgment of God and I’m not even attempting to diminish that aspect of His character. I’m just saying that I have been surprised lately by how many people seem to want so many other people to go to Hell. They deny it, they say they aren’t being mean, they say they are just teaching what the Bible says, but the reality is they aren’t trying to show anyone Gods love.

But back to my original point. What is Heaven like and I guess also the flip side would be what is Hell like? Is Heaven just sunny skies, soft breezes, and birds chirping? And is Hell hot flames, sulphur smells, and eternal darkness? After our church discussion I thought some more about it. Heaven is the presence of God and Hell is the absence of Him. Now I don’t know the particulars of how any of it works. I don’t know who all gets into Heaven and I don’t know who is going to Hell but I know that in the here and now what is important is what we should be doing now. We should honor God and not put anything before Him. We should fight for social justice and help and defend those who can’t do for themselves. Wait…didn’t Yeshua say that in Matthew 22?

Bradford pears and the church. New blog

Bradford pears and the church. New blog post. http://ow.ly/4vFFi

Why I had my tree cut down.

Monday when driving up the driveway the Asplundh truck was at the top of the driveway with a sign saying “Work Ahead”. I realized they were there to top my Bradford Pear tree because it was growing into the power lines. I had just told my wife a few days ago that if they ever came around I would just tell them to cut it down instead. Thankfully they did for me and they took it down instead of pruning it by cutting the top off. Personally I think those hacked trees with half the side cut off, the top cut off, or the dreaded ‘v’ cut into them – ugh – they look ugly. Bradford pear trees have no defined main trunk up into the branches, the wood is soft, and they split and break by their own weight. So knowing what I know now about the species of tree and where this one was planted – the question then becomes would I plant that same tree in the same place all over again knowing what I know now? (Oh yeah, that same tree had roots that grew into my water lines last year and cost me money to have the lines replaced). So the answer becomes easy for me – no, I would not plant that tree in the same place with today’s knowledge.

So what happens is we leave trees (and plants, flowers, and shrubs) in places where they don’t get the right amount of sunlight, where the soil isn’t the right condition, where they grow into power lines, where they don’t thrive because it’s just easier to leave it where we planted it earlier or where someone else planted it. But that’s insane. It’s not the right mix.

This is the reason I left the Machine (Institutional Church) last year. You see once you have knowledge of something, it’s hard to ignore it. You can’t open a can of worms and then think you can get it back in again. You can’t conveniently forget something you have a new understanding of. You can’t just pretend and go on. The institutional church model is a broken system. It’s really not broken but rather ill-designed.

I can’t sit and listen to the oracle tell me week after week what I don’t know. I can’t sit and let one person be the voice of God. I can’t sit and listen to the mouth when the “body of Christ” has a lot more parts to it. I can’t sit and listen to the personal religion of America when the community of religion is what God designed. I can’t watch the wealth of the blessed be spent on blessing themselves instead of blessing the poor of the world. I can’t listen to interviews, read blogs, and see tweets defending a long held church belief then when I ask a senior pastor, a youth pastor and a seminary student to prove that belief to me then all I hear is crickets chirping.

If you are still in the institutional church then I’m not mad at you and I hope you aren’t mad at me. The only people I seem to get mad at these days are the religious elites who haughtily defend the(ir) system because it’s what pays their salary. I can understand that of course because I would defend my industry to protect my job too. However don’t tell me your church does everything by the Book and only what’s in the Book. Please, none of us do that so don’t lie about it.

P.S. For all you tree huggers out there mad because I had the one tree cut down I am planning to plant three trees up at the top of the road to replace that one tree – but I’m not planting it under that power line!

Great quote of what “real” Christianity is.

About 125 AD. The Christian philosopher Aristides.

They walk in all humility and kindness, and falsehood is not found among them, and they love one another. They realized not the widow, and grieve not the orphan. He that has, distributes liberally to him that does not have. If they see a stranger, they bring him under their roof, and rejoice over him, as if he were their own brother: for they call themselves brothers, not after flesh, but after the Spirit and in God; but when one of their poor passes away from the world, and any of them see him, then he provides for his burial according to his ability ; and if they hear that any of their number is imprisoned or oppressed for the name of their Messiah, all of them provide for his needs, and if possible that he may be delivered, they deliver him. And if there is among them a man that is poor and needy, and they have not an abundance of necessities, they fast two of three days that they may supply the needy with necessary food.

Country Club Christianity

It’s been a while since I’ve blogged and now that the holidays are over I plan to get back to a little more regular blogging this year. (No, it’s not a New Year’s resolution – LOL).

It’s been around a month now since my first visit of getting my hands dirty with Jesus. As several of you know and most of you probably do not, my family and I began a journey with an organic church experience last September. This post is not about the specifics of organic church but if you need or want a deeper explanation of that then Google: Frank Viola organic church.

We began our journey outside the institutional church in September 2010. Since that time, we have discussed as a group the desire to “live” the life that Jesus talks about in the scriptures. No offense to the churches I grew up in, the people in those congregations, the ministers at those same churches, and my family who raised me in a loving and Christian home…but what I grew up knowing isn’t the Way.

As a matter of fact, what the vast majority of institutional churches experience every single week isn’t the Way. It’s not backed up by scriptures and it’s a pale attempt at a life changing experience.

What I’ve grown up with can best be described as Country Club Christianity. We spend money on our buildings, on our programs, on our lifestyle, on ourselves. We focus on what we want, we focus on what makes our congregations grow in size, and we focus on what makes us comfortable.

While pastors back up what they say from the pulpit from the Word, I think I’ve been duped by some serious cherry-picking. I never realized the importance of context and I’ve fallen victim (you have too) to a serious distortion of the Word of God to fit into our comfortable little box. I don’t know why ministers all across America do this. I’m sure it’s a vicious cycle that we as a religion have fallen into – but it’s a cycle that needs to be broken.

Before Christmas this past year my family and I had an opportunity to begin to work with a group called Bikers Against Hunger as they ministered to the mostly homeless in our communities. Our first visit was to a bridge in Greenville, SC where a community has sprung up living literally under a bridge. Outside. In the cold. With no roof. With no refrigerator. With no bathroom. Did I mention they don’t have a home? Real people, real problems, real needs.

Now I’ve grown up in church. My family has taken me to church since I was a baby. I made a decision to follow Jesus as a child and reiterated that decision as a teenager. I’ve been a part of “good” churches and they had their hands in all sorts of ministeries. They had groups that did the homeless thing. They had groups that did the foreign missions thing. They had groups that did the addict thing. I’ve seen all the special interest groups there were to have inside the institutional church. The problem (with me at least) is I always thought of “those groups” as just that…”those groups”. Even now when my wife and I talk to someone about what we’re doing they almost always say (with a smile on their face) “Oh yeah, we do that. Our church buys backpacks for needy school children, and we buy shoe boxes for needy countries, we do this, we do that.” The problem to me seems that most people don’t really do that.

My family has bought the Christmas Angels off the tree at Christmastime for needy kids. We felt good doing that. We felt all warm and fuzzy. We felt like we did something. But that mentality is we did something but we didn’t “do something”. I’m going to be blunt. It’s real easy to go to Wal-Mart and buy a toy for a kid you’ll never see and put it in a box in a corner at a church building then pat yourself on the back and tell all your other country club buddies…excuse me…I mean Christian friends how much you did for God!

I never got my hands dirty.

I don’t see that model in the New Testament. At the bottom of this blog is a part for responses. I would LOVE to hear a response from anyone who can show me those verses where that model of “Christianity” was lived out in scriptures. Anyone, anyone?

On the way home from our first visit to the bridge I was driving down the interstate and I was almost in tears. I knew it would be like that. I gave my phone to my 13 year old and had him post a Twitter message for me. I dictated, “I am so done with Country Club Christianity” – December 12th. I saw real people in real problems and I got my hands dirty.

I read in the Gospels about the people Jesus hung around with. Mosty the same kind of people I’ve started hangin out with. Not a lot of the country club set in those scriptures. Jesus didn’t care much for the religious sect of Pharasees who liked to control people with religion. He didn’t care much for the way the poor were overlooked and scorned opon. The Jewish society has always cared for the poor. It’s a mandate they believe in and have since the Torah commanded it. The sociey Jesus lived in and walked in believed in helping the poor but they STILL couldn’t accept Jesus having dinner with sinners, prostitutes, tax collectors…the fringe of society.

I started a journey two years ago that has brought me to this point in my life. This is just a point in my life. Where I am today is not the destination. This is only part of the journey. This past weekend we went to downtown Spartanburg – in MY hometown and fed 221 adults and children who were hungry. That has blown my mind. I was leary there would be people who maybe didn’t really deserve a free meal. Maybe there were people just looking for a free meal. But what I saw this weekend was real. Painfully real. What I saw was Jesus and he was hungry. This weekend me and my family fed Jesus. He liked the meal