New York Moments

Ask

“What would happen, I thought, if we stopped asking how much we could spare and started asking how much it was going to take?”

 - Radical by David Platt

For me, personally, the difference between these two is massive. It is the difference between counting dollars and scrimping pennies. It is the difference between buying one product because it is easier and buying a different product because it is 43 cents cheaper and that money could go to x, y, or z (or buying a different product that is 72 cents more expensive but Fair Trade).

43 cents isn't much, but, when $30 could feed a child for a month and send them to school, 43 cents adds up quickly.

When I ask how much it is going to take, I keep better track of my finances, because I want to make sure that every last penny goes where it should.

When I ask how much it is going to take, I work harder at my job, because I want to give those kids, not what I can spare, but everything that I can possible give them as tools to succeed.

When I ask how much it is going to take, my thoughts stray less towards grumbling about the wind or the cold or the heat, because I start to realize what an amazingly wonderful thing it is just to be alive.

When I ask how much it is going to take, it becomes easier to say “no” or “later” to things that I want but don't need and giving, even $5 at a time, becomes a joy rather than a chore. Because, while giving what we can spare adds ones more thing to an already full schedule, working to give what it will take becomes a purpose and a reason for being.

As one of my friends would say, giving everything makes life epic. (And, life is meant to be epic.)

Content

“This passage begs the question, am I willing to live a life that is content with food and clothing, having the basic necessities of my life provided for?”

 - Radical by David Platt

Ministry trips seem to be a good place for experimenting with this one. We dip our toes into it in the woods or at church camps. We talk about how much “easier” it was to connect with God without the extra distractions of our daily lives. But, what if He actually asked us to live like this?

I like to think that I am a fairly low maintenance sort of a human being. It doesn't take much to keep me content or entertained. But, even that has its limits. The few times my computer has crashed I haven't known what to do with myself. There are moments where not having internet in my apartment – even though I have it on my phone – feels like it is going to strangle me.

And, I have to wonder if there are things that I would not be willing to give up. I've learned that I can give up jeans and shorts and survive in long skirts. I've learned that I can function without the internet and that a paper and pen write just as well as my computer screen and keyboard, but every time that I go through my stuff, I am amazed by how MUCH I have.

Am I willing to live off of less so that others can have more?

(As an aside, the 100 Thing project fascinates me, as does the Compact.)

Trust

“And this really is the core issue of it all. Do we trust him?”

 - Radical by David Platt

I lit a candle tonight instead of turning on a light bulb, for no particular reason other than that I could. It was humid in my apartment, with rain falling outside and clothes drying on the line in my bathroom. All of my appliances were off. My computer was running on battery power with no internet, and I could hear my neighbors talking.

In so many ways, it could have been a powerless night in Kenya.

Do I trust God? Do I trust Him to be the same no matter where I go? Do I trust that He shows Himself to others the way that He showed Himself to me?

Somehow, in the dark, with just that small light, it was a thousand times easier to say yes, a thousand times easier to ignore the distractions and the chaos of American life and remember that He is faithful. Sometimes it is easier to look back and remember His faithfulness in the past than it is to see it in the present.

Is that ridiculous? Yes. But, for a few hours at least, it was true.

Because, really, it all comes down to this. Do we trust Him enough to jump when He calls our name?

Running

“I hate running. I have never been one of those guys who gets delight out of running in circles and going nowhere. But as soon as Dr. Shaddix asked me to join him on a run, I was a full-fledged cross-country athlete. You see, whether running in circles around the seminary campus or sitting in his home talking about life and ministry, Jim was gracious enough to share his life with me and in the process to show me what it means to follow Christ. And I wanted that, even if it included sweating.”

 - Radical by David Platt

Each of us have a person (or persons) who we would suddenly become runners for, and each of us, when we live in the community that Christ intended, hold that position in the life of at least one other person.

God designed it that way.

We are intended to follow each other to Jesus.

Sometimes, though, I think that I need one of those shirts that says “Don't follow me. I walk into walls.” Because, quite honestly, I run into walls (spiritual and physical) all the time. I mess up. I drop things that I am supposed to be juggling. I get overwhelmed and react by simply curling up in a corner with my nose in a book or a web page, as if it will all simply go away. I get mad at God. I quit reading my Bible. I close myself off from prayer. I refuse to take in any more pain or to fight one more step forwards.

I hope beyond all hope that no one is following me in those moments.

Because, being followed is humbling.

I am convinced that there is nothing more humbling than seeing a child's eyes light up when you enter a room, and nothing that will put you in your place more quickly than watching them run to you.

Suddenly, it is worth everything to live like Jesus, no matter what it costs or how much effort it requires.

Look around you today. Who are you following? Who is following you? Where are you leading them?

As He Did

“All he wanted was a few men who would think as he did, see as he did, teach as he did, and serve as he did. All he needed was to revolutionize the hearts of a few, and they would impact the world.”

  - Radical by David Platt

This excites me. Can you imagine a group of people who thought, saw, taught, and served like Jesus? Can you imagine the crazy power that they would have to turn their community upside down?

Because one person changes one other life who turns around and changes one life who turns around and changes yet another life, all while the first person has set about changing a second life and then a third, one life at a time.

And, the changing never stops.

The Apostle Paul encouraged the churches to “imitate me as I imitate Christ.” What if we did the same? What if our lives reeked of love and justice and the faithfulness of an ever holy God? Can you imagine a group of people who woke up each morning with no plan other than, “God, what do you have for me today?”

Every once in a while I catch glimpses of it, and it sends thrills up and down my spine.

I feel like a kid in a candy store or Madame Blueberry in Stuff Mart. It's the sort of thing that you want to grab a hold of and never let go. It's a little bit of what I think heaven might be like.

And, it's so simple. Those are things that anyone can ask of God.

“Jesus, today, this hour, this moment, let me think like you, see like you, teach like you, and serve like you.”

or, as my youth pastor used to encourage us to pray:

“God, today, do things in me and through me that I don't understand and maybe don't even believe in.”

Small Group

“Don't misunderstand me – Jesus was anything but casual about his mission. He was initiating a revolution, but his revolution would not revolve around the masses or the multitudes. Instead it would revolve around a few men.”

 - Radical by David Platt

Hundreds of people followed Jesus. Thousands came to hear Him speak. But, when it came time to change the world, to push against all of the systems of the day, to send out filled with His Holy Spirit, it only involved enough people to fit into a room.

When it was time to go to the garden, He took eleven men.

He only brought three of them with Him to pray.

The Church was a family owned business before it was a corporation.

But it is so easy to forget that sometimes. It is so easy to think that we are not seeing numbers or measurable results or data that fits easily into a spreadsheet and so we must be doing something wrong. It is so easy to overlook conversations and interactions and the slow rubbing of one life against another. It is so easy to play the people game and try to network our way out of a problem.

It's not the solutions that are important, though. It's not the programs or the web design or the follow-up. It's the people.

Jesus spent His life watching and guiding as a few people were changed, a few people who then changed the world, by watching and guiding as more people were changed, one or two or a dozen at a time.

If we never work in or through small groups of people (even when those groups seem far to small to possibly accomplish the task at hand), we are probably headed in the wrong direction.

Obey

“What if a global, God-exalting, passionate idealism is exactly what is needed in the lives of individual Christians today? What if these radical Christians joined together in communities of faith called churches that were surrendered to the purpose for God's people that has been primary since the beginning of time?”

 - Radical by David Platt

I'm sitting in my apartment as I write this, listening to the rain lash against the corrugated metal roof (Why is there not a single word for that in English? Swahili is so much easier sometimes!) of the car parks outside (which have currently been rendered all but useless by the weather) and remembering that same sound against my roof in Kenya, glad to know that, despite the weather, I will not be wading through calf deep puddles of water and sewage and trash to get to church in the morning, and none of my teammates will be waking up in the middle of the night to find their entire compound flooded and several inches of water inside their house.

No one's home will have been washed away. No women will come knocking on my door looking for food and clothes to replace what the waters took with them. All of the roads will be drivable and the trash filled gullies will not have been swept clean to pile up elsewhere downriver.

No walls will have been knocked down and no dormitories will be filled with mud. There will be no malaria outbreak, because there will be few puddles and none of them will breed mosquitoes.

When I do get to church in the morning, there will be no donkeys braying outside the window, no herds of goats to pass along the way, and a UNICEF lori rumbling up the dirt road won't drown out the voice of the pastor.

I realize that I miss certain phrases of the liturgy and the awkward sound of the off key hymns and the polka beat that always seems to come out of keyboard.

And then, I wonder. What does a “global, God-exalting, passionate idealism” look like? Does it look the same here as it did in Kenya? Will it look the same in Haiti this summer?

I don't have an answer for that, but I think that, maybe, it is one of those questions that never has an answer, because the answer always changes.

Maybe, “global, God-exalting, passionate idealism” simply looks like obedience. Wherever we are and in whatever circumstances we find ourselves, maybe it is enough to simply, moment by moment, obey.

Maybe that will change the world.

Impact

“It sounds idealistic, I know. Impact the world. But doesn't it also sound biblical? God has created us to accomplish a radically global, supremely God-exalting purpose with our lives. The formal definition of impact is “a forcible contact between two things,” and God has designed our lives for a collision course with the world.”

 - Radical by David Platt

Impact the world.

Honestly, this terrifies me. When I stand before God someday and give account for my time-bound life, I would quite frankly rather not be asked about the entire world. Give me one or two well behaved humans to be responsible for, and we'll call it good.

But, then, I start adding up the lives that have already intersected with mine, and, as the list stretches longer and longer, a small voice whispers that maybe it wouldn't be that much crazier to try to impact the world.

I mean, why not? What have I got to lose?

It isn't as if I have a perfect record I am trying to protect, and there are no practice rounds. This is it. I have one life. I might as well make as much of it as I possibly can, right?

If that means crashing into the world at high speed, then I'll crash away. I'm a klutz. I'm good at crashing. I impact doorways and table edges and staircases all the time; what are a few humans added to the mix?

Of course, then I cycle back into the fear, then to the boldness, then to fear, then back into the boldness again. Repeat ad nauseum.

I protest that I want to focus on the people that He has given me here and now, that I don't want to let them suffer while I chase these planet sized dreams, as if, perhaps, God will lose track of a few hundred humans the moment I cease to be in physical or mental proximity to them. As if He didn't have a plan for them at the same time that He had a plan for me.

And then, I realize that I am being ridiculous.

And, the cycle starts again.

Impact the world.

What if?

Beg

“Think about it. Would you say that your life right now is marked by a desperation for the Spirit of God? Would you say that the church you are part of is characterized by this sense of desperation?”

 - Radical by David Platt

Are we desperate?

So often, in America at least, desperation is something to be avoided. We don't like to need anything. We don't like to think of ourselves as being on the receiving end.

Children are desperate. Their sense of time is not the same as that of an adult, so they beg for things. They throw themselves on the ground or they pout or they beat their fists against a leg or a cart or a wall until something happens.

Children of God ought to be desperate too. Our sense of time is different, because we are constantly comparing our lives to eternity, so we beg for things. We pray and we fast; we weep and we worship; we make spiritual noise, until something happens.

We are desperate for the lives of our friends and our neighbors, desperate for the lives of humans we have never met. We are desperate for God's greatness, desperate for His justice, desperate to see Him move in our midst.

Or, we ought to be.

Because, one of the marks of a spiritual grown-up is the ability to be desperate like a child.

Dream

“A scene where we no longer settle for what we can do in our own power. A scene where the church radically trusts in God's great power to provide unlikely people with unlimited, unforeseen, uninhibited resources to make his name known as great. I want to be part of that dream.”

 - Radical by David Platt

Yes, please, and thank you.

P.S. (click the picture, and join us for one step towards that dream)

To My Sunday School Kids: Part Four

H*nn*h: Oh the stories that you carry around in those dark pixie eyes of yours. I only wish that you were around more often, so that, a detail or an event at a time, we could draw them out. Stick around long enough and we'll manage it. You've already discovered that it's more than legal to tell Jessica a story at the same time that three other people are telling stories. Take advantage of that. I have enough ears to share, but they like to be kept busy. We miss you when you're not here, and your quiet watching gives some of the boys permission to watch quietly as well. We laugh a lot and we run a lot, but this is also a place where it's okay to be broken and hurt and scared.


*ddi: I'm pretty sure that you managed to tell me stories for an hour and a half at the 4th and 5th grade sleepover without ever stopping to pause for breath. We've got some talkers in our group, but you could win prizes. Your imagination and memory when you're telling stories are amazing, and there are moments when you remind me of the little girl from, "Bridge to Terabithia," creating entire worlds inside of your head that are so real that we almost feel like we could touch them too. When you write your first book, let me know. I'll buy it.

Em*ly: You, child, win prizes for the most flirtatious comments directed towards M*teo. I might just help your mama build a tower to keep you in when you get older, so that you're well away from the temptations of any boys! Every once in a while, you forget yourself, and those dancing, dark eyes of yours get serious as you let down your mask for a few seconds. You can't see it, but those are the moments when those boys who you chase so loudly actually want to be around you. They like the reminder that you're human, that you're part of this crazy, confused, desperate for love family, just like the rest of us.

Greatness

“This is how God works. He puts his people in positions where they are desperate for his power, and then he shows his provision in ways that display his greatness.”

 - Radical by David Platt

The moment that I read this quote, my brain was working overtime, trying to decide which story to share, trying to come up with the most amazing, fishes and loaves type experience to describe, but, instead, I came back, over and over again, to my eighth grade ministry trip.

We didn't go anywhere special. Literally, I spent most of the trip in my hometown. When we weren't there, we were the next city over.

I can't say that anything hugely impressive happened.

We were just there.

But, looking back, there is the same sense of God being on that trip that there was while we were actually on that trip, and I'm not sure why. Maybe it's because, when you're desperate for his power, ALL provision displays His greatness.

He provided the ability to interact like a (giant) family, and we saw that He was great.

He provided wind (literal and spiritual) that tested what we had built our foundation on, and we saw that He was great.

We noticed His greatness when the weather held for just long enough to pack up a block party and while we were painting buildings and cleaning out freezers and holding free car washes.

He was great when we only flushed toilets after number two and when we took turns sitting at the nursery sized table during meals because there weren't enough folding chairs or full-sized table space for all of us.

We wanted to see Him move, with every ounce of passion that a middle schooler can muster (which is quite a stinking bit), and so, every new breath that He provided proved His greatness.

Need

“...God actually delights in exalting our inability. He intentionally puts his people in situations where they come face to face with their need for him.”

 - Radical by David Platt

In some strange way, this is comforting. It means that God knows when I am BSing wildly, which is about 98% of my life, and when I am so lost that I don't even know where to start BSing my way through, which takes care of the remaining 2%.

If someone were to examine my twenty-one years on the planet and distill them down into one simple phrase, it would probably sound something like, “Make it up as you go.”

But, God delights in that. He delights in placing me in situations on a minute by minute basis where I can do nothing but trust Him and move forwards one step at a time.

At the beginning of the school year, I signed up to work with a small group of fourth and fifth graders on Sunday mornings, and, like a good Sunday School teacher, I started asking God what our focus for the year should be, how I should go about interacting with these kids.

“Love them.”

“Okay. But, what should we focus on during our small group time?” (I'm a teacher. I'm looking for a lesson plan here. Something that I can make sure they leave the school year knowing.)

“Love them. Do life together, and love them.”

“That's it?”

“Love them. They need to be loved.”

I'll be the first to admit that it sounds like a great MO. Of course these kids need to be loved. They're humans. All humans need to be loved. But, seriously? That's my lesson plan?

And, it has been. If I were to write down my next week's plan for a sub, it would look like, “Do life. Love them like Jesus.” And, the week after that would look the same, as would the next week and the next and the next.

Perhaps more than any group I have ever taught before, it has looked like chaos.

With my last group of fourth and fifth graders we focused on understanding the bigness of God. With my kindergarteners our goal was to know the memory verse and the Bible story. With my third graders we worked on applying the lessons directly to our lives.

With this group we have sword fights and donut fights. We play tag and we go exploring. We scrape our knees and cut our fingers and all know exactly where the bandaids are kept. We spy on big church and the middle schoolers. We love and we talk and we do life.

I will be the first to admit that I am in over my head.

But, God delights in that.

He delights in the fact that every moment of Sunday mornings are an exercise in dependance on Him, because it means that His power is given a chance to be made perfect in my weakness.

(And, it has been made perfect. I know that there are days and moments where I jack it up, but He has done things in that group that I never thought that I would see. He had a plan, and, for these kids and for this year, it has been the right plan. Next year...will be a totally different story, because it will be a totally different group of kids.)

Boldness

“So the challenge is for us to live in such a way that we are radically dependent on and desperate for the power that only God can provide.”

 - Radical by David Platt

I've mentioned the boldness that I have seen in the lives of the kids that I work with, the absolute willingness to do the things that they here God asking them to do.

I flip through the New Testament, and I see statement after statement referring to the boldness of the young Church.

Some of them jump out at me because they are underlined. As a shy high school student, I was fascinated by the boldness that I saw in Paul's letters and in the book of Acts. These were people who ought to have been afraid but weren't.

The more that I see Christ followers here move towards justice, towards giving God the parts of their lives that they thought were safely theirs to keep, the more that I see that same boldness here.

The boldness of kids committing to something that they don't know if anyone else has committed to, of adults doing things that are hard for them, and the boldness of people willing to seek community among humans not of their own age or race or generation. The boldness of a group getting together and stubbornly deciding to do something about human trafficking. The boldness that spans generations who see and understand and wait impatiently to be called to action.

The boldness of a people who are not afraid to be marked by God.

Because, bold can be just another word for radical.

Are we boldly willing to depend on and be desperate for the power that only God can give? Are we willing to do things so out there that the only response is, “Well, that was bold”?

Do we trust enough to be that brave?

Revelation

“I pray that God will awaken in your heart and mind a deep and abiding passion for the gospel as the revelation of God.”

 - Radical by David Platt

No thoughts today. Just a quote.

Peanut

“I pray that we will be a people who refuse to gorge our spiritual stomachs on the entertaining pleasures of this world, because we have found our satisfaction in the eternal treasure of his word.”

- Radical by David Platt

Refuse. “Refuse to gorge our spiritual stomachs.” Not, “eat less of what the world has to offer,” not “keep a healthy balance between the good and the bad,” but “refuse.”

My first thought is, “Really? Doesn't that sound a little extreme?” Then, I remember that we aren't talking about the difference between candy and vegetables here. This isn't a case of one is good for you and the other one should be eaten in moderation. This is the spiritual equivalent of a peanut allergy.

No matter how carefully you nibble at them, the one will kill you and the other won't.

The problem is that, instead of running a Google image search on “peanut” to learn to recognize the things we should avoid, we tend to go at it by trail and error. “I'll just nibble on this until I have a reaction, then I'll know whether it has peanuts in it or not,” we think, knowing that we have an Epipen in our pocket and the ER is just down the street.

And, off we go, nibbling on this pleasure or that entertainment until we realize that our spiritual oxygen is being cut off and that it's getting harder to see or think or breathe. We panic for a few seconds while fumble with the cap of our Epipen, but, within a few days, the incident is forgotten. We've been to the ER, had someone pray a confession over us, read our Bible enough times to feel like we've done penance, showed up at small group or on Sunday morning and made a farce of participating.

All is well, so we move on to the next treat and begin nibbling on it in turn.

Or, we turn around and beginning labeling everything, “PEANUT,” “PEANUT FREE.” But we never actually run that Google search, so we're not sure exactly what a peanut looks like. (Which, quite frankly, is a terrible plan.)

As ridiculous as it sounds, we do it every day. We dabble our toes in things, figuring that, “It hasn't hurt my walk yet, so there must not be any harm in it;” or we run around with our mental shopping cart, finding things that look “Christian” to listen to and look at and hang on our walls and avoid anything “secular,” without ever taking the time to find out if Christ is in any of it.

If we want to become a people who reflect the glory of God on earth, we have to learn what a peanut looks like.

If we are going to refuse to fill ourselves with things that are not of God, then we have to know God well enough to recognize him, both when he's dressed up as a mega church and when he looks like the homeless man on the street. We have to see him in music and art and literature and relationships. We have to find him in a sunrise and a bird song and a crying child.

To do justly, we have to know God.

Bold

I don't know if I've said it lately, but I'm pretty sure that I get to hang out with some of the boldest, bravest kids on the face of the planet. (Although, I might be a little biased, since I tend to think that all of my kids are awesome.)

Seriously, though, we are getting closer and closer to the Focus Month, and the guts of some of these kids blow my mind.

Signing up for something like this is the farthest thing from easy. I got the simple end of the deal. All that I have to do is ask people to come. They have to be the crazy ones and actually say yes.

Two middle school guys told me that, yes, they want to do this, and committed to coming for at least a week.

Crazy bold.

Like, if-I-had-half-their-guts-I-could-have-changed-the-world-by-now kind of bold.

We are inching up on a dozen teenagers who have to work this summer, but are willing to come whenever they can, basically giving up their lives for a month to do this thing.

Several girls are talking with their parents about coming.

There are kids who are still thinking about it – which is, in and of itself, an incredible act of bravery.

These kids leave me with my jaw on the floor constantly, often for reasons that I don't have permission to share. This one, though, deserves a shout out.

These kids are brave, and I am PROUD of them.

MAP

I just had some kids work their butts off for me this morning!

The building I work in has been MAP testing their third graders all week, so they have put the paras to work making sure that the kids go slowly enough to actually understand the questions before they answer them. They're third graders. This is boring. They just want to be done with it. We bribe them with fruit snacks.

Jessica is less than a fan of the entire situation.

But...all week, they've worked hard and carefully and gotten the scores to prove it. Today was above an beyond even that.

A) I had a boy who was doing well enough on the math that he was finding himself staring at computer screen after computer screen of problems that were more letter than number. This is a third grader. He has never seen a radical in his life, much less a function table. This is a kid who freaks out when he doesn't know if he is doing what is expected of him or doesn't know what is going on.

He buckled down, and experimented a little, and legitly got to the right answers on several of them.

Impressed.

B) I had another boy who was working on his reading test. There is nothing to say about that one except that the kid WORKED HIS BUTT OFF. If you could do battle with a test, he did battle with this one.

He decoded (and remembered!) dozens of words that were HARD for him, even though there were times that you could tell he just wanted to get up and walk away.

He read, and re-read, and re-read again for me for two straight hours. We ran out of fruit snacks in his baggie there were so many questions. We kept a running count of how many questions left. We read every single word that it was possible to sound out. We went s. l. o. w. l. y.

And then, we both rejoiced a little bit when he got an awesome score.

I'm pretty sure that kid had wings on his feet when he went back upstairs to tell his teacher that he had finally finished.

And, just to make the day that much better, God decided to send the sunshine and warm weather back to visit again. Definitely a fan of that one.

Glory

“This is why men and women around the world risk their lives to know more about Him. This is why we must avoid cheap caricatures of Christianity that fail to exalt the revelation of God in his Word. This is why you and I can not settle for anything less than a God-centered, Christ-exalting, self-denying gospel.”

 - Radical by David Platt

“This” is His GLORY, His GLORY that is made manifest when JUSTICE is lived out in the lives of His people (Isaiah 58).

Not equality of status and goods.

Not charity that flows in one direction.

Not a check once a month to sooth our consciences.

But, JUSTICE.

We don't wrestle with these things because they feel good. We don't clean out dresser drawers or pile up food for our hungry neighbors because our human nature tells us to. We don't carve out time in our busy lives because we have it to spare.

We do it because our entire purpose in being is to “glorify God and enjoy Him forever.”

We do it because He comes in His glory when His justice is made manifest through human lives.

When was the last time you saw His glory? When was the last time you lived out His justice?

Gospel

“The gospel reveals the glory of God.”

 - Radical by David Platt

The gospel, the good news of Christ's redemption for all of creation, reveals, shows, displays, makes manifest, the glory, the awesome wonder, of God, the Creator and Sustainer.

The gospel does not stop at revealing sin. It is not merely a five step plan to a better life. It is not simply a promise of heaven or a condemnation to hell.

The gospel reveals the glory of God.

Your life and my life, as walking, breathing demonstrations of that gospel, reveal the glory of God.

But, do they?

Today, this hour, this moment, are we living out the gospel?

Do we reek with the glory of God?

Not For Sale

Monday, after much work from a woman who was actually my “mom” for the weekend during my first Oireachtas (Irish Dance regionals) back in high school, the person in charge of the Washington State branch of Not for Sale came down to the “ugly side of the state” for the day.

Not for Sale is an abolitionist group working to end modern day slavery, so she came, first of all, to talk with our very baby coalition and give us some pointers on how to get started. Then, in the evening, she spoke to a group of eighty-seven people from across Tri-town, to tell her story and hopefully inspire some networking and direct action.

Watching any sort of creation can be almost (or actually) painful at times, but exhilarating too, and I am beyond excited for the things that God can and will do through this too-new-to-have-a-name coalition of people who are letting Him stir up dreams and passions in their hearts and unsettle the comfortableness of their lives.

Pictures

“[W]e will determine not to waste on anything but uncompromising, unconditional abandonment to a gracious, loving Savior who invites us to take a radical risk and promises us radical rewards.”

 - Radical by David Platt

Oh, the word pictures that this phrase brings up in my mind.

I hear “uncompromising” and I think of a Denver ministry trip where we spent a week crammed body to body in spaces so tiny that there was barely room for our entire team to stand or sit. But, more than the tight space, I think of the way that we watched each other grow and be pushed. I remember sitting knee to knee and waiting as, night after night, teenaged guys broke down in tears. I hear our worship and the surrender that it contained. And, I see the laughter that encompassed it all.

I hear “unconditional” and I think of an overnight Bridgetown trip where the kids didn't care if they didn't have a sleeping bag or a pillow or a change of clothes. But, more than that, I think of watching them love people in their present, rather than in spite of their past. I remember the unflinching way that they watched as we flicked hundreds of ants off of their breakfast and then handed it to them to eat. I hear them laughing and smiling as they sat in front of the church we were locked out of. And, I see them stopping to just soak in the wonder of a waterfall.

I hear “abandonment” and I am back on Winter Retreat my freshman year of high school, sitting for hours as teenager after teenager shares the things that God is doing in our lives. I can still feel the cold edges of the chair and hear the low whine of the box fans, see the light glinting off of the rafters and the cross. More than that, though, I remember the sense of the Holy Spirit, the feeling that we could stay here forever and barely notice the difference when earth finally faded into heaven.

“Gracious” is the absolute joy that courses through my body when I see the name of a classmate from high school listed as a men's small group leader.

“Loving” is a camp for foster kids, standing beneath a giant climbing wall, watching as one of my Sunday school kids slowly works his way up, too petrified to look down or hear what his counselor is saying. I hear myself call out to him, and I see him look down at me and smile and suddenly keep moving. I remember that this is the child who lied to me, stole from our box every chance he got, started fights with other kids, wrestled his sister to the floor, and I hear the wonder in his counselor's voice as he says, “He trusts you.”

I hear “Savior” and I remember sitting in a hard wooden chair in Kenya, trying to share my story with a woman who has, just days before, accepted Christ and now wants, desperately, to know how to live. I remember the heat and the way that my long black skirt sticks to my legs. I hear the kids in their classrooms across the sandy play-field. And, I see her smile.

This “loving,” “gracious” “Savior” asks that we “abandon” ourselves in “unconditional,” “uncompromising” devotion to Him.

Somehow, in light of the word pictures, that phrase becomes a little less radical and a little more, “well, duh,” like, maybe, the more radical response would be to not live that way. (In which case, I choose to be radical on a nearly hourly basis.)

What about you? What have you seen and heard? What do you remember?

Bigger

We will see a purpose for our lives that transcends the country and culture we live in, and we will see our desperate need for his presence to fulfill that purpose in us. We will discover that our meaning is found in community and our life is found in giving ourselves for the sake of others in the church, among the lost, and among the poor.”

 - Radical by David Platt

Going into my junior year of high school, I worked as kitchen crew for a summer camp full of soon to be 7^th, 8^th, and 9^th graders. Part of our “job” was to stay in a cabin full of campers to join in with their discussion times and just do life together for a week.

That week was the first time that I ran into the quote that says, “the more you loose yourself in something bigger than yourself, the more energy you will have.”

Over five or six days, we literally learned the names, grades, cabins, and churches of two hundred campers and staff, while we prepped food, served food, washed dishes, ran games, prepped games, sat in cabins that weren't “our own,” supervised free time, joined in on chapel services, loved on kids who were not so much younger than us, and got far far too little sleep.

We lost ourselves in something that was bigger than us, bigger than a group of sixteen-year-olds and bigger than the youth group that we represented. And, it was good. Pictures from that week are still imprinted in my memory, almost six years later, just as clearly as they were that summer, because life works that way.

Life has a purpose and an energy that we only discover when we bury ourselves so deeply in something that it becomes an irremovable part of us.

Life. Happens. When. We. Do. Crazy. Things.

Crazy like trying to learn 200 names...crazy like cutting $20 of off your grocery bill and using that money to buy things for the food bank instead of your table...crazy like setting aside twelve hours to see what God has for you...crazy like setting aside a month to do the same...crazy like reading Radical or Irresistible Revolution or Freeze Frame...crazy like letting what you read change you and change the way you live.

What crazy thing is He asking you to do?

Lazy

“For the sake of my life, my family, and the people who surround me, I want to risk it all.”

 - Radical by David Platt

Inherently, I am lazy.

I will BS my way through anything that I can rather than actually do the work.

I will sit back and wait for someone else to do the dirty job.

I leave dishes in the sink until I am forced to wash them because I have nothing left to eat off of or cook with.

I have been known to consider pulling a Walden Pond and settling into some off the grid, tiny house with my computer and a stack of notebooks, just because it would be “easier.”

But, I will leave for church early and balance boxes of donuts on the handle bars of my bike because some (all) of my fourth and fifth graders need to see human love and faithfulness before they are willing to see the love and faithfulness of an invisible God.

I will keep pushing at impossible things like the Focus Month because I know that some of my teenagers need just that. And then, I will all but jump up and down and do a happy dance when some of those same teenagers start to sign up, as if, maybe, I wasn't sure that God meant it when He first said that they needed to come.

This, I am convinced, is part of the reason that God places in each of us in community. He knows that we will do things for the sake of other humans that we would rarely do otherwise. He knows that our love, flawed and fallen as it is, motivates more powerfully than any reward.

But, we have to be in community for it to work that way.

Outside of an “us” we have no reason to risk the things that God is asking.

Today, go and bury yourself in your community, your tribe, your group of people who push you to be who you should be. Find them in real life, on the internet, or through your phone, but find them.

Rich

Sunday morning we were huddled up with perhaps the smallest group I have had all year, half a dozen fourth and fifth graders sitting cross legged, squatting, or kneeling, all with their heads leaned in close for our final “talking time” before they ran off to meet their parents. The story had been about Zacchaeus, and several heads had flicked towards me at the presenter's statement that Jesus (because He was God) was the richest man on earth, so we started there.

“Alright, guys, was Jesus the richest man on earth?”

“Yes...” They all answer dutifully, but with a thousand extra words hiding in that pause, just waiting to be pulled out and brought to the light.

“God owns everything,” one of the boys jumps in to explain.

“How about when He lived here as a man, was He rich then?”

An emphatic, “No!” from the only girl of the week, but everyone else is still waiting, so I keep pushing.

“Did He have a big house?”

“No,” comes from a couple places around the circle, and I see my new kid glance up in almost surprise.

“Jesus was homeless.” My here-every-week-with-a-thousand-stories-pouring-from-his-lips kid expounds on his answer a little bit, but the ever short attention span of my group has wandered, so I try to reel them back in.

“Guys, did you hear that? Jesus was homeless.”

They nod, and their eyes soften, thinking.

“Why would He do that?” I probe a little bit more, half wondering if I'd used up my quota of deep answers earlier, when we were talking about forgiveness.

Then, one of my boys, who hasn't been there for months, looks me straight in the eyes and shrugs a little, “Because he wanted to go around and talk to as many people as He could.”

Jackpot.

Whatever the other kids were waiting to say has finally been vocalized, and we are deep in conversation, talking about things, and what we do with our things, and how we use our things (or lack of things) to connect to people and connect people to God.

This part is stereotypically our group, with a half dozen voices jumping all over each other and active fingers reaching out to draw emphasis lines on the carpet. But, somehow, they are all hearing and being heard.

One of the boys wants to be an artist and have the “cool house” where people like to come and hang out. The boy next to him wants to be an eye doctor, but I can see him rethinking his “stuff,” my name coming out as a half question, “Jessica?” before he figures it out for himself, “Never mind!” Our only girl wants to be a missionary, and one of the boys is about to jump on that subject when the main service lets out and we are passing around papers as they stream out of the room.

We broke a beanbag, ate cookies, played tag, picked up split peas (from the beanbag) off of the floor, had an ongoing conversation about choices, sang with the large group, listened to a story/lesson, examined the way that the Old Testament was broken up, and ran the discussion gamut from, “I have to forgive my dad when he calls me cuss words instead of my name,” to what they're going to do with their houses when they grow up.

Welcome to our small group.

Tribe

“And I want to be part of a people who are risking it all for Him.”

 - Radical by David Platt

People my age and just a little bit older than me call this “tribe.” I hear younger people batting around words like “community” and “relationship.”

Basically, we all want to belong.

We want someone to be there who will be proud of us when we do something in the name of justice.

We want someone to challenge us and to push us just a little bit farther.

We want someone who needs us to teach them.

We want to be not alone in this thing we call life and this thing that we call religion.

But, it gets hard. We get sucked into the cycle of life that involves running from place to place and talking only to the people we have to talk with, and we try to avoid talking to even them if we can help it. (Self checkout line, anyone?)

Sometimes, we have to be a little bit more intentional about it all.

May 21^st, we are setting aside twelve hours to connect, to connect with justice issues, but, more importantly, to connect with one another. All generations. All types. All levels of involvement.

Come join us.

If it goes well, we might just make a habit of this sort of community.

Gain

“You know that in the end you are not really giving away anything at all. Instead you are gaining. Yes, you are abandoning everything you have, but you are also gaining more than you could have in any other way.”

 - Radical by David Platt

A year ago, almost exactly, I came back from Kenya with a single suitcase that was mainly filled with souvenirs for friends and family in the States. Sixteen months before that I had left the Tri-Cities with that same single suitcase, that time mainly filled with American foods and snacks.

Both times, I was leaving things behind, leaving behind belongings and people and a lifestyle that couldn't fit in a suitcase.

Both times I wasn't quite sure what came next, what life would look like when I stepped off of the plane.

Both times, I knew that God was bigger and in control and that He didn't need to be reduced down to the size of my suitcase.

Both times, there were panic moments where it didn't seem like that could possibly be true.

Abandoning everything is a strange feeling.

Gaining everything feels just as strange.

Culture shock is weird no matter which direction you take it.

What would be stranger, though, would be imagining a life where none of that took place.

I can't imagine a life without my American kids now, just like I couldn't imagine a life without my Kenyan kids a year ago, and I can't imagine not being involved in the things that I am involved in now, just like I couldn't imagine not being involved in the things that I was involved in then.

When Christ said that we would gain things every time that we gave something up, He was serious. And, He didn't mean just that we will gain all of those things someday in heaven.

Ask my suitcase. He meant that those things were real, and He meant that those things were now.

Haiti Training

Just for the record, Haiti meetings may be two hours of “I-swear-I-got-the-degree-that-says-that-I-took-this-class-already...threeorfourorsixdozentimes,” but I love the fact that people in leadership care enough to make sure that the teams going out understand the basics of intercultural ministry and the role that they play in that bigger picture.

It is a good thing, although cringe inducing at certain moments, to watch these summer teams wrestle with ideas long before they will ever need them and build a worldview that is hopefully a little more grounded in reality.

These people rock my socks off – or my flip flops, as the case may be.

As Intended

“Jesus was saying, 'It will be better, not just for the poor, but for you too, when you abandon the stuff you are holding on to.”

 - Radical by David Platt

I could talk (type) for hours about the truth of this statement, but then I could look around my apartment at the stuff strewn across the floor and turn around and call myself a hypocrite.

Regardless of all of that, this. is. true.

True justice for “the poor” means true justice for “the rich” as well.

Try it. Look around your house, or your room, or the nearest drawer or bag or box full of your belongings. Now, grab a piece of paper and number it one through twenty-five.

These are the twenty- things that you are going to get rid of today, the things that you are going to throw out or donate or sell (and then use the money for a just cause.) The first thing might be hard. Honestly, the twenty-fifth thing might be hard as well.

It feels better when you're done, though. It feel better to know that those things, even if they were scraps of paper and a pile of broken rubber bands, don't have any claim on you any more. Because, our stuff often owns us just as much as we own our stuff.

Giving things away might be justice for the people on the other end of the receiving, but it is justice for you as well. Because, it frees you to get a little closer to life as it ought to be.

And, that is all that justice is.

It is life as God intended it.

So Proud of Them!

Two of my cluster girls were baptized this afternoon – as were two of my neighbors.

I spent several hours in the sun that, for today at least, remembered what May in Tri-Town is supposed to look like, and watched baptisms, sitting on warm pavement, being sat on, leaned into and lain on by my neighbor kids and a fourth grader who I have known since she was born, with a potentially new cluster girl using my knee as a pillow.

It was good and right and beautiful.

The faces were more colorful than most Bethel gatherings, and no one seemed to mind the unplanned reminders that cropped up every five minutes or so that we were all family. There were grandparents with walkers and oxygen tanks, and there were kids small enough to not realize they shouldn't drop cookies into the pool – and kids just old enough to wonder why the cookie was getting baptized.

There was food and laughter and the type of connection that doesn't always happen in a church that, on Easter Sunday, hit almost 5,000 in all-there-on-the-same-day attendance.

I've been at the same church since back in the days when it was only a couple hundred people and everyone knew everyone. Now, you meet “new” faces who have been going to the church for five years. Either way, I love this church because I love these people, and I love the fact that, when you get right down to it, we all know that we're family. A ridiculously huge family, but a family nonetheless.

Coming Soon

I talked to a man at church today who has been having conversations with people in his outside-of-the-church-building life about clean water issues, and had conversations about “Irresistible Revolution,” human trafficking, rethinking wedding rings, “Radical,” the Focus Month, a Biblical response to Osama's death, and organizations that provide beauty supplies for sex trafficking victims.
The passion for justice is here. It's just a matter of funneling it into the right places, getting the right people together at the right time, so that it can grow stronger and burn more brightly.
Keep an eye out over the next several days for information on a multi generational event designed to stoke a few of those passions. For now, mark your calendars for May 21^st, from noon to midnight.