The season is not the only thing that's changing

When I started in ministry in 1968 it was a completely different world, but even then people were struggling with the institutional side of Christianity. Some great ministries came out of those struggles. On my college campus the “anti-church” crowd met in a near by park. As attendance swelled into the hundreds and the Southern California winter rains began to fall they had to move indoors. Which meant they had to gather funds, rent a building and organize who did what so they could continue their “anti-church” sentiment….in a building! Another group used a drive in theater to hold services without getting out of your car and another catered to the barefoot beach crowd! Today those groups of change ARE the institutional church and the barefoot beach boys are a huge denomination. (Calvary Chapel if you’re wondering). Anyway the winds of change are beginning to howl again, but this time it is NOT anti institutional church. It is more fundamental than that. It is anti-Christian-life-style-as-commonly-practiced-today. The Christian life style as painted in the scriptures is not the loosey-goosey anything goes radical grace NOR is it the Lethal-Legal tow the line painted on Mask either. Jesus saw his followers as flawed people who lived in relationship, first with Him and then with each other. His single command was to Love one another as HE loved us. That’s what this new wind of change is trying to accomplish. There is a million ways to do it, inside of a church, alongside of a church and even outside of a church. The ways are so varied they cannot be (and really should not be) defined or copied but to some degree they can be described. At least we can get an idea of what it would FEEL LIKE if as we approach this new kind of Christian Life style that actually delivers what Jesus promised. That’s what I like about the new book, Bo’s Café. It is not a recipe for a new kind of church, it is a description of how the Christian live can be lived. ANYONE can do it, within or without a local church. I think it is a great step in the right direction. The Shack woke millions of people up to the fact that God really loves them. Bo’s Café creates the setting for how we can/should/must live together in that love. You can pick up a copy at Walmart or Barns and Nobel or get it on line. Just click here> www.boscafe.com and I will take you there myself. (and in the intrest of the new internet rules imposed by congress, NO I am not being paid in any way, shape or form for this referal, it is from my heart. It seems to me after 40+ years of ministery, this is the movement of the winds of the Spirit)

Bo's Cafe, The shack study guide

Why is god always mad?

Katrina

From the less than prayerful oaths that are frequently heard in men's requests to some god to condemn something to the average concept that god gets really upset when we sin, I wonder why a god like that would ever condescend to create anything, much less people. Unless of course the popular opinion of God damning and condemning is just plain wrong. Jacobe Boheme observed:

"And therefore the eternal Unity brings itself by its effluence and
separation into nature, that it may have an object, in which it may
manifest itself, and that it may love something, and be again be loved
by something, that so there may be a perceiving, or sensible working and will. "

The Key or Clavis of Jacobe Boheme (1620's)

Boheme argues that because God is LOVE had he not created anything there would be NOTHING for him to love, so he created things to love. . He could have stopped creating before he created people, but he wanted something that was not himself to LOVE him back. The whole story of Jesus dying to redeem all God's creation is not a story of anger but LOVE. I really think the popular opinion has it totally wrong. That's what Jesus' buddy John thought to. He said God sent Jesus to the world NOT to condemn the world but to restore it. That does not sound like a mad god to me....unless they are invoking the god of this world in their epitaphs and attitudes. The current god of this world is really ticked of at everything and everyone ever since he got kicked out of heaven...ya that's the answer. They don't know MY God. He would never in all eternity act like that. My God is more like Papa in The Shack. He really loves me and has made total provision for all my shortcomings. He doesn't condemn, He Blesses!

Jodi and Ryker (pulling an earring)

My dogs ran out of dog food the other day and I forgot to go to Wal-Mart until after our Shack study. I really didn't want to go late at night but felt to guilty not to. By "coincidence" I bumped into my daughter in law Jodi's mother and sister. Her sister looked at me and literally fell into my arms sobbing. Explanations were unnecessary. Julies 1 year old boy...a few days apart from Jodi's Ryker...fell against a searing hot wood stove and burned the palms of his hands to the degree that they flew him to the Maricopa County burn center. Thursday they got the news he would require multiple surgeries, scrapings, skin grafts and the like. Julie must remain in the hospital with him 24/7 for the next month or more. Julie's husband flew down from his job in Washington but had to return. Julie is/was in the process of moving to Washington to join her husband. Julie's 4 beautiful blond daughters have to be farmed out to her sisters for basically the rest of the school year. Julie has to sit day in and day out trying to comfort a baby who cannot possibly understand the depth of the pain he feels. Thus the puddle in my arms...and eyes. I would ask you to pray, but I know you already did...and will. Julies grief, her pain, her sorrow is so understandable. A mother's love meter pegs out when her child is hurting in any way. Grief and puddles are her constant companions. It can be no other way right now. It is the natural response of the depth of love she know for her infant son. We do not know the outcome and it is scary. The baby has no idea of the potential for infections and complications. He just wants to go on with life as he knew it before...but cannot or is not allowed. In many ways Julie has the larger share of the pain. The more he hurts, the more she hurts...and feels love and compassion for her child. That reminds me of a question I was asked the other day. I was asked what it means to Grieve the Holy Spirit of God. (Eph 4:30). Doesn't God get mad at us when we disobey? NOPE, but he does grieve or as we would understand and express it, feel pain and sorrow. But it does not effect Hislove for us. If anything, Hisgrief manifests the depth of Hislove. Our sin literally pains the Holy Spirit more than it does us because, like Julie, the Spirit knows the depth of problems it could and does lead to. Every parent can identify with this mix of love and grief. The pain of our children, self inflicted or not, really hurts deeply...but it never effects our love. If we can do that with all our imperfections, imagine how much God can love us...even in our sin. Live LOVED. the shack discussion guide