Weddings and Kidnappings

So I'm in seminary now. Very cool. Not cool on the free time front.

This blog will basically be a recap of the summer and to put me in the right frame of mind, Dave Matthews Band's "Big Whiskey and the Groo Grux King" is playing through the earbuds. *Side note, my amazing and beautiful lady friend Reagan Elaine Faught got this album for me on vinyl for my birthday last week. I've been telling people for months, I WAY out-punted my coverage on this deal. Girl is incredible. Side note over* It's a great album. Fun summer listening.

This was a summer absolutely filled with bittersweet beauty. Two of my very best friends got married (not to each other, that would have really changed the dynamic of our friendship). Both were great ceremonies and prayers and blessings go to Kevin and Kelly and Matt and Dana. You fellas did well.

I loved seeing these couples enter into covenant with each other and God, but I must be transparent and say that selfishly I'm glad they were wed because it brought friends back from all over the country. One of my favorite things to do in life is to sit back with friends and reflect on what God did in our lives together and to see what God is doing now. Some of the situations aren't easy, some are joyful new experiences but it is so very encouraging to see how God is working in the lives of the men that God put in my life as a 19 year old kid. I pray for these men often and Paul's words in Philippians 1 reverberate often. I look forward to sitting around at 70 and acknowledging our Father and His blessings.

In the midst of all the nuptials, my favorite couple of all time, The Bullards, moved across the pond to Cambridge, England. Meet these people. Do what it takes. Go to Cambridge. They will probably let you stay with them. I grew up in a house of hospitality, but these two take it to the next level. These next few years will be an adventure, but I'm kind of ready to do life together. Growing up is tough, but worth it I'm sure.

The summer ended with me getting tazed. Several times. My girl planned a surprise birthday/going away party and left it up to my brother Garrett, David Thompson and Kyle Forgety to get me there. They chose kidnapping. Or as Kyle called it, oldmannapping. It seemed a fitting end to a great summer, being dragged kicking and screaming to get there, but loving the end result.

How the Mighty Fall

I was just listening to the Hillsong album This Is Our God, and came to the song "Healer." It's a great song of the power of the Holy Spirit and of how our God still heals today. Then I went to YouTube to check out if anyone had covered it or if there were any good videos of Hillsong playing it. What I came across was a video with the tag "Healer (Cancer Faked) Mike Gugliemucci." Naturally, I had to check it out.

It seems that Mike G had written this song as a prayer to God to heal him of the cancer that was ravaging his body. Only, he didn't have cancer. He was addicted to porn and the effects of this secret sin were so strong that they had wrecked havoc on his body.

I must confess here, publicly, that my first response was self-righteous judgment. I immediately decided that I would never use this song in a corporate setting because how could God use a song that was bred out of a sinful mind. Then I thought about myself. See, we never think about ourselves when self-righteousness creeps up. (Never honestly think about ourselves, I should say.)

Hearing this man's story makes the song even more powerful. God is our healer. I absolutely think that He still heals our physical bodies, but what is even more miraculous is that He heals our diseased souls. How beautiful is this! He has taken ugly, horrific memories of ugly, horrific sin in my life and driven them out. This comes from years of begging and pleading that He restore my mind and He has. He still does.

I also want to say that all of us are capable of doing the very thing that Mike G did. None of us are above this. If you think you are, may God have mercy on you, and I pray that your fall from grace is swift. I have seen this happen to friends and acquaintances in ministry and I am not too naive to think that it won't happen again. My prayer in my life is that I continue to surround myself with godly men that will point out the filth in my life. (A stronger word goes there, but we'll keep this PG rated.) I also set up very practical boundaries to protect my character. I am an outspoken advocate for Covenant Eyes and will never have a computer that isn't equipped with this software.

May humility reign in our hearts.

"For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.” Luke 18.14

Here is the link to Mike's story.



UPDATE
According to this website, the song was actually written as a prayer to heal Mike from His addiction. The way God heals is not always comfortable, but He is faithful to hear our prayers from heaven.

Rich Rulers

"Though the fig tree should not blossom,
nor fruit be on the vines,
the produce of the olive fail
and the fields yield no food,
the flock be cut off from the fold
and there be no herd in the stalls,
yet I will rejoice in the Lord;
I will take joy in the God of my salvation."

These words come from Habakkuk, a prophet from the people of Israel around the year 600 BCE. This book is absolutely fascinating and I would encourage anyone to really put some time into studying this arrogant, angry man whose heart is softened by some stern rebuking. (I must admit, I often see Habakkuk when I look in the mirror.)

This passage intrigues and concerns me at the same time. It's the passion and response that I want, but is it the response I have? See, the church in America is rife with the so-called "Prosperity Gospel," even in corners that often don't claim to hold that particular doctrine. How many times are we going to say or sing "God Bless America" before we realize that He has? Maybe we should instead be saying "God let us turn our blessings back to you by giving ourselves away." I know this probably won't make a great, catchy tune or fit nicely on a bumper sticker, but I think we've got enough bumper stickers.

My fear for the church in America is that we, much like the rich ruler, are doing a decent job of keeping up our morality, but we're losing our souls to our stuff.

22 When Jesus heard this, he said to him, “One thing you still lack. Sell all that you have and distribute to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.” 23 But when he heard these things, he became very sad, for he was extremely rich. 24 Jesus, seeing that he had become sad, said, “How difficult it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God! 25 For it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.” Luke 18.22-25

This young ruler kept the law. He did a great job of keeping the law. But he was losing his soul. I've heard this taught by pastors that leave the story right here. Give everything you own away and God will love you for it. But that leads us into another danger, that if we do enough good deeds and give enough to the poor or stand up for the marginalized that we will be saved.

Those who heard it said, “Then who can be saved?” 27 But he said, “What is impossible with men is possible with God.” 28 And Peter said, “See, we have left our homes and followed you.” 29 And he said to them, “Truly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or wife or brothers or parents or children, for the sake of the kingdom of God, 30 who will not receive many times more in this time, and in the age to come eternal life.” 18.26-29

The point of this story is that it is God who saves us. He reaches out and woos us in such a way that everything becomes a shadow to Him. When Jesus and his disciples walk away from this incident, he tells them that he will die. THIS is what saves us. THIS is the crux of the gospel. That neither our stuff, nor our good deeds will save us. Only the blood of Christ. Christ is our salvation.

"I will take joy in the God of my salvation."

Revolution

I just read David Brooks, an op-ed writer for the New York Times quote Michael McFaul, a democracy expert on the National Security Council. "In retrospect, all revolutions seem inevitable. Beforehand, all revolutions seem impossible."

We are witnessing what I believe to be the collapse of an autocratic government in Iran. I don't know that this will happen in the next few days, for that matter in the next few weeks or even months, but I do see this government collapsing sometime soon. Watching this has intrigued me to no end, but at the same time has brought much sorrow as the death toll continues to climb. Revolution is a very violent creature.

Seeing this quote brought to mind the Gospel. This is what the Gospel is. A revolution of the heart. A violent upheaval of the soul. It is complete selfishness given over to the death of self. For many, this seems impossible. For the disciple of Jesus, it is inevitable. "And I am sure of this, that He Who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ." Philippians 1.6

Brilliance

I'm reading the book Evil and the Justice of God by one of my favorite authors, N. T. Wright. It's a very weighty book, and to be quite honest, I need a full pot of coffee nearby when I crack it open. I love to read books like this. I don't understand everything in it, especially on the first pass, but the more I read, the easier it gets to comprehend. And the stuff I do comprehend, brilliant.

Here is a snippet that I could understand. To set the stage, Wright is discussing the necessity of the cross for the atonement of sin. He discusses the inherent depravity of man and how Post-Modernism goes against Modernism and it's high view of man's inherant goodness. Which leads me to his explanation of God's response to our depravity.

"What the Gospels offer is not a philosophical explanation of evil, what it is or why it's there, not a set of suggestions for how we might adjust our lifestyles so that evil will mysteriously disappear from the world, but the story of an event in which the living God deals with it. This raises for us all the echoes of the ancient stories of the exodus from Egypt and the return from the exile in Babylon, and it is no surprise that the earliest Christians, both the New Testament writers and others on into the liturgical traditions of the second, third and fourth centuries, reached for imagery from both these events to explain what had happened on the cross. This, they are saying, is how God rescues his people from the evil in which they are trapped; and he does so through the suffering of Israel's representative, just as with the martyrs, only so much more so. This is what it looks like when YHWH says, as in Exodus 3.7-8, "I have heard the cry of my people, and I have come down to set them free." This is what it looks like when YHWH says, "Behold, my servant." As Isaiah says later (Isaiah 59), it was no messenger, no angel, but his own presence that saved them; in all their affliction he was afflicted. And the result of it all is that the covenant is renewed; sins are forgiven; the long night of sorrow, exile and death is over and the new day has dawned.

"The Gospels thus tell the story, centrally and crucially, which stands unique in the world's great literature, the world's religious theories and visions: the story of the Creator God taking responsibility for what has happened to creation, bearing the weight of its problems on his own shoulders. As Sydney Carter put it in one of his finest songs, "It's God they ought to crucify, instead of you and me." Or, as one old evangelistic tract put it, the nations of the world got together to pronounce judgment on God for all the evils in the world, only to realize with a shock that God had already served his sentence."

This is the Gospel, the Good News. God saw that what He had created went wrong. The law was a shadow of the form of salvation, but our loving Father knew the only real remedy. So He sent Christ. We cannot defeat evil. We war against it, physically and spiritually, but we cannot defeat it. That job has been done. This leads us to what can be our only response, worship. And this is why I love my job, to lead people in our response to the death of evil through the death of our Creator.

My Prayer Lately

So I've been studying in the OT a bit lately. I must be honest, it's because of the tv show "Kings." The show is great and is loosely based on the life of David, of David and Goliath fame. I was watching the show and thinking that I had no idea who most of these characters were and feeling like a complete moron for being Biblically illiterate.

I jumped into 2 Samuel to study the life of David as king and quickly discovered that I should have started a bit earlier to understand this deeply complicated figure. It was like picking up a novel in chapter 12. Never start a book on chapter 12. Start with chapter one. (I believe many Bible readers are guilty of this, myself leading the way, but this is another post for another time.) I jumped back to 1 Samuel and began my journey.

I read about Eli and his wicked sons Hophni and Phinehas (great names) who were noted as wicked chiefly because they basically stole from the members of the congregation and made the people sick of giving. (Should be a dire warning to those in ministry.) God tells Eli that his sons will die in battle because of their sin. And they do.

But this is where the story gets interesting. Eli hears of the death of his sons but immediately asks about the ark. The ark was taken by the Philistines and upon hearing this, Eli fell from where he was sitting and broke his neck. Phinehas' wife heard the news of her husband's death and immediately asks about the ark. Upon hearing that it was taken, she prematurely gives birth to her child.

This blows my mind because it shows just how seriously the people of Israel took the presence of God and the serious nature of the sin in their lives. Do I do this? Never. The prayer that God would reveal the ugliness of my sin is not to wallow in self-loathing, it's to see the beauty of the atonement of the cross. Charles Spurgeon once said, "If your sin is small, your Savior will be small, but if your sin is great, then your Savior will be great." I want my Savior to be great. I don't want to see the cross just as a bloody mess. I want to see the cross as my payment of sin, which is great.


"My sin, o the bliss of this glorious thought
My sin, not in part, but the whole
Was nailed to the cross and I bare it no more
Praise the Lord
Praise the Lord, o my soul!"

June 2, 2009

I haven't had much to say in a while, so I've turned into "that guy" whose blog sits at the bottom of the "followed blogs" list on some pages. I feel this must change. So......

The Dave Matthews Band will release their seventh studio album, "Big Whiskey and the Groogrux King," a name inspired by the late LeRoi Moore, long-time sax player for DMB. I am incredibly excited about this album, having heard just a couple of snippets. That being said, I'm incredibly nervous and sad about this release.

This is the last studio album to feature LeRoi. The band had been recording the album for the last few years so they were able to use some of that to build into songs.

Rob Cavallo is the producer of the album and this is where I get nervous. You see, Cavallo is the mastermind behind behind pretty much all of Green Day's albums. Awesome. The guy who produced "Shenanigans" will be producing this album.

But I have faith. DMB will always be one of my favorite groups so my hope sustains that this will be an album full of heartache and joy.