like a fire

Our agent called me today with very discouraging news. Our buyer for our house just backed out. That means that the truck I just reserved, the change of address forms, and transfer of all those wonderful services was a bit premature. Maybe.

So we are actually still moving even though our house has not sold. We really have no other choice but to go ahead and rent a house in Birmingham. We have to start generating some income and it looks like we will need even more since we will possibly be paying rent and a mortgage.

So how is my faith? Well, it is certainly being stretched. I can’t imagine what God is doing and I have no clue as to what is next. But I believe something good is coming. I guess I just have to. After all, things could be much worse. Who knows, we should get the escrow from the buyer ($3000) and our house could still sell quickly. So this might actually be to our benefit.

One little plug to our agent. Cheri Hulke is the best agent I have worked with bar none. She has worked with us and helped us more than anyone could imagine through this. She has even babysat for us. She’s more than just an agent for us, she is also a great person.

Thanks Cheri and Coldwell-Banker Real Estate.

I am a big fan of being efficient and thrift. So when I saw this idea a while ago, I though I would give it a try. Basically there has been a back lash to the “PDA” trend, mostly with younger guys. I had a PDA for a while and just couldn’t make it work for my system. Plus, I hated having to either carry or front pocket a large bulky electronics device (known to some as a phoner).

So here’s the deal. I carry one of these and a pen and my iPod. I have my iPod synced to my calendar and contacts. If I need to make an appointment or just see what I am doing I look at the iPod and then write it down in my moleskin for later digital conversion. Same goes for contacts. That’s my GTD system on the basic end. There are many other ways to use a moleskin and you can see some of those here.

Ok, these have got to be the coolest pizza cutters I have ever seen.

ht: Make 

I was reminded last night about a great illustration for faith in the movie The Matrix. For a while this movie was the most over used movie in the church, but I was reminded why as I watched last night. There are some really great illustrations in there for the faith that many try to have. I did a retreat way back in the day using The Matrix as a metaphor for our lives. Just like the Matrix is used to make people slaves to the complacent, sin also hides this truth from us. Every sin is just something good that has been distorted. Lust is the lie of Love, Envy is the mask for Fear and Desire. There really is no end to it and many people have done a much better job at explaining it than I have, so I won’t try to go any further with that.
My favorite lines:

“You take the blue pill [and life goes back to normal]”

“You take the red pill and you see just how deep the rabbit hole goes”
“Being the One is like being in love. No one can tell you you are, you just know it.”

“There’s a difference between knowing the path and walking the path”

So all of this is to say that I see faith being reflected in so much of life just like the Matrix. We are told that our slavery is our true existence (truth) and that the most we can hope for in life is to be the king of slaves, or we can reject that lie and live beyond the slavery that hides our real purpose. Oh yeah, and every one who is still stuck in that lie (that means all of us, at times) can act as an agent for that lie.

Again, it comes down to either believing the lie or believing God.

I was also impressed by a message from this morning’s sermon. Faith is a fight. Eldredge would say we are at war. We have to fight for our faith and combat the lies of this world. We fight those lies with the truth. Jesus did it in the desert under his temptation there and Paul’s explains it in Ephesians 6. We use the belt of truth and the shield of faith. What good is truth without faith? What good is anything if you don’t believe it?

So here I am, in Orlando, FL about to move to Birmingham, AL without a job, without a source of income to feed my family, or pay my rent. I find myself here mostly because I believe that there is something so much more than where I was. I know it so thoroughly, that no one can convince me otherwise, not even my old pastor. As scary as that is, I believe it completely.

What I believe is that there is more to church than how comfortable it is, or how many people are there, or how well the leaders are liked. I think there is more to church than preaching, small groups, Bible studies, prayer meetings, pot luck dinners, youth ministries based on games and relationships and eating chocolate pudding out of a diaper.

I don’t know exactly what it is, but I know that it includes discipleship on a scale much larger than I have seen so far. It is worship that doesn’t consider style or media (our preference is the opposite of worship). It is helping each other fight the lies that would lead us back to slavery.

I feel much like Abraham when God tells him to go to the place I will show you. And like Jacob wrestling with God (which I am getting pretty familiar with), I am committed to holding on for the blessing.

So I posted here and here about some these ideas. To bring you up to speed, I have been thinking about a situation in ministry that is a common one that a friend has asked me about. That situation is where there are kids from different walks of life that are brought together by the church. In this specific case, it is the extreme rich and the extreme poor. I think this situation is so common though that it applies to many different specific situations in ministry. I have asked around and talked to people about this problem and have only come up with one solution.

Now, before you excuse this as a simple answer and blow off the idea, think about faith. I’m not talking about a one time decision to believe that there is a God. I am not talking about jumping through the hoops of the institutional church. I’m not talking about some abstract feeling that you get when you get chill bumps when something goes your way and you attribute it to God. What I am talking about here, is a faith that believes God over everything else. A faith that trusts God over what we see, what we are told to think and what Satan wants to distract us with.

I am beginning to see that my faith has very little to do with the things I was always taught in church. Faith is not about how often I go to church, how often I pray, how many Bible verses I can quote or how many people I can get to make the same decision, although some of those help my faith. Faith also isn’t about how good I can be, how little I can say bad words, or dance, or think evil thoughts. Faith is knowing that, no matter how bad life looks, that God is good and he is helping you. The Biblical reference is that some put their faith in chariots but I will put my faith in the Lord. Even the word “Lord” is a declaration of faith. How can you call someone Lord if you don’t abdicate responsibility for your life to that person?

Every teen out there, heck every person out there, is brought together in the  church by faith. Unfortunately, the church does a poor job is realizing this and doing something about it. Seth Godin, a marketing guru, says that there are always two problems:

“The two problems

The first problem is the problem.

The second problem is your inability to admit the problem, talk about the problem and ask for help in solving the problem.

The first problem is that your customer service is lousy, you are an alcoholic, your products are boring, you don’t treat your employees well.

None of those problems are going to go away.

None will go away, that is, if you don’t acknowledge them, clearly and loudly and often. And ask for help.

If you don’t measure the first problem, then you have a second problem.

If you don’t measure the first problem, it’s not going to go away, is it?”