ericwreaves.com

Burning Memories

My mother has finally sold her house in Albertville and is moving to a smaller home on Alabama Ave.  It's been a long process and moving all the stuff that has accumulated over the years is quite a task.  It's not just moving furniture, its a question of what to do with the "relics" of the years.

My older brother and I finally set in to the task of cleaning out the attic.  It was full of "stuff" that really had no value other than the memories attached to each insignificant item.  For instance: notebooks from school, old record albums, sun-britches, my viking helmet, old stereos, tax forms, canning jars, stuffed animals, and various things that had baked at 180 degrees for 20+ years in a hot attic. 

I'm sure we all have stuff we keep for sentimental reasons.  I sorted through the things as best I could and kept a few souveniers.  My boys and the rest of our family had gone through the stuff and got what they wanted and all that was left looked like a pile of trash.  What do you do with trash?  Burn It!

"Anything will burn if the fire is hot enough" my brother said.  He was right.  In a theraputic spell of violence, Mother's attic was transformed into a big empty room. 

I stood and watched the fire burn with mixed emotions.  I caught a final glimpse of my "A-team" notebook and sighed deeply.  Here's what I learned, "You'll never remember some memories unless you have something to remind you of it."   I didn't want to remember 10th grade anyway. 

Getting Back to the Blog

I'm resolved to get back to the blog.  It's theraputic for me and maybe a little entertaining for you.  Stay tuned.

Preaching in Under Wear / Wire

I have no arguement against beauty pagents and the such.  Nor do I wish to cast any negative light on Miss Prejean merely for the sake of sport.  I just thought it was kind of funny at how we all became so goo-gooed over a woman's answer on gay marriage after she had paraded around a stage, 90% naked, tempting thousands of men to lust after her (except for the judge of course). 

I know, that's what men do, right?  It's just part of the pagent's demands.  She can't help it. 

Thanks Carrie for your unwavering stand for the kingdom.  Who knows what I'll wear Sunday morning. 

Checking My Tags

I can't stand seeing guys wear "chick pants".  You know... those low-waisted, skin tight, peg-legged, trousers usually accompanied by a white belt and a strained stride.  Fashion may be screaming, "You go girl.", but I think guys need to stick to what brought them to the dance...men's jeans.

I like buying used clothes.  I often pick up shirts and stuff at thrift stores and such.  I've ordered Carhartt and Mossy Oak clothes off Ebay and felt very secure in my manly attire.  My sister-in-law sent me some Tommy Hilfiger jeans that she had purchased for .50 cents.  They looked okay so I wore them to work and around feeling like they were worth the bargain.  Here I come in my "Tommy Boys".  (I usually stick to Levi's, Carhartt, and sometimes Chaps for blue jeans.  What was I thinking.)

I wore the jeans a few times and finally set them aside admitting to myself that they just were not comfortable.  I had a hard time keeping the legs down over my work boots, and needless to say, my circulation while sitting down was noteably struggling.  They would make most plumbers proud in the fact that they were hard to keep up in the back.  (Surely Tommy knew what he was doing.)

Last week I came home and Angie had on a differnt pair of jeans.  She said she picked them up out of my old clothes pile and then began laughing as she showed me the tag that said, "Tommy Hilfiger for Women".  They were way too big for her, but she couldn't resist modeling my former feminin fashion.  I had worn "chick pants" and didn't even know it.  No!  Correction! They were "women's" pants...not "chick pants". 

Moral:  When buying clothes at second-hand stores, check the tags.  If you discover you have been wearing cross-gender clothing, don't tell anyone.  (I think I'm going to check my underwear drawer just in case.) 

Can you handle the truth?

I read some devotional thoughts from Ray Comfort this morning I am passing them along to you.  He is the author of Hell's Best Kept Secret and The Way of the Master.  (Something like that.)  You may have seen him on t.v. with Kirk Cameron.  (shrimp?)  Ray cuts to the chase and knocks out the dominant view of most men's approach to dealing with lust and pornography.  See what you think.

A Sobering Thought on Porn
Every red-blooded Christian male has a battle with lust. He is incessantly bombarded from every side with explicit imagery. But when a man surrenders to the sin, we often hear a phrase like "He has an addiction to pornography." However, his addiction isn't to pornography. It's to "adultery." That's what we do every time we look with lust (see Matthew 5:27-28), and the root cause of someone who keeps going back to adultery is "idolatry." There is a concept of God in his mind that doesn't produce the fear of the Lord. So, make sure you flee from idolatry, and you will fortify yourself against sexual infidelity. Make the God who revealed Himself in Scripture your "accountability Partner." Do that, and you won't have an addiction to adultery.

Measuring the Missional Mindset

I'm trying to stay focused at Harvestfield on bringing out the importance of missional living in the most insignificant opportunities.  I believe that many Christians feel so "out of the loop" with Christ's mission because the traditional church has led them to believe that if they don't prescribe to traditional measurements of following Christ, they don't measure up.  God has laid it on my heart to try and change that. 

In doing so, I am trying to cultivate a new mindset in my own life.  I have been pouring over the gospels each week and asking the Holy Spirit to stir my imagination to see what was important to Jesus and what wasn't.  How did he reveal the kingdom of God to those whom His life touched? 

I have experienced the guilt of feeling ineffective for the kingdom because I was handed a faulty measuring rod.  Programs and check marks can be useful at times, but the majority of what we do for the sake of Christ is done without notice, measurement, or acclaim.  We have a handful of stories about what Jesus said and did, and as important and sufficient as those events are, he did more much more interacting with people that we don't know about than what we know about.  (That is not to say that the New Testament is lacking in any way to reveal the record of God's mission.)  Even the disciple John speculated that all the whole world would not have enough room to hold the books containing all of the details of Christ's ministry. 

So, how I interact on a daily basis with the activity of God around me, is huge in the kingdom-revealing mission to which each Christ-follower is called.  This mission is seized the same way Christ moved in and out among people.  From the most insignificant extensions of kindness, to the most profound displays of gospel, the fluidity of following Christ takes on many forms that are outside of traditional systematic Christianity. 

Life with Christ is too supernatural to describe only with human categories of piety.  Although useful to certain degrees, each Christ-follower must come to grips with the fact that walking just as Jesus walked cannot always be categorized in columns, but must experienced through cognitive obedience to His Word.  Then the community of Christ can focus on missional experiences that trust the sovereign orchestration of God, over the linear measure of typical religious indicators.  Stories of God prevail over statistical measurements.  (I'm retraining my thinking!)

What things are you doing as Jesus did that know one will ever know about or record?  Sometimes your name might get mentioned as a tool of God's activity, but more often than not, we impact other people's lives in ways that they personally experience, but that they may not notice. Hmm. 

Missional Steps

What if we could change our thinking to see that the 110 waking hours we have away from "church services" is our personal harvest field  (168 - 56 - 2 = 110)?  What if what we did during the 110 hours away from sitting in worship chairs was more important than what we did during the 2 hours of "church" gathered in large groups?  We think about church so strangely.

What if we could stop measuring the success of "church" by attendance, budgets, and buildings and start evaluating community on how effective we are outside of our own interests?  (I know that is statistically impossible in Etowah County, Alabama but I'm just thinking out loud.)  I guess attendance, budgets, and buildings have their place, but what if they were not the primary indicators that a group of believers were walking just as Jesus walked? 

I was talking with someone who is trying to start a "new" church and their primary measure for their success was: attendance, budgets, and the obsession with buildings.  (I know that I pastor a church who has just built a new facility and its easy for me to say you don't need one, but I can see how a "new" church might go in a different direction.) 

Keep thinking missionally.  You'll be surprised at how much you can change. 

Peripheral Importance

In trying to walk "just as" Jesus walked, you must come to grips with a great deal of inconvenience.  Most of the time, your plans will need to be interupted with opportunities that God is orchestrating for his emerging kingdom.  Sure there are times you know that God is working around you; but for me, I tend to stumble upon those divine appointments with no advanced warning other than to be "ready".

A quick read of the gospels will give you a sense of Jesus' own perception as to how God was orchestrating events around his obedience.  How many accounts of Jesus' daily activities start out something like, "Jesus was going somewhere when someone came to him and said..."  Or, "Jesus was eating and some men asked him...".  Even as Christ was literally walking to Jerusalem to die on a cross, people still interupted him. 

If you feel like you are spinning your spiritual wheels in your mundane daily agenda, try looking around to the periphery of your life's experiences.  Start noticing what people are interupting you, who is trying to get your attention, and who are the unusual characters in your life-drama.  Ask youself every day, "What can I do to reveal the kingdom of God to the people who surround my life?" 

John 5:26 says that God showed Jesus everything he was doing.  I believe he will show us too, if we want to see

FOCA

Most of you know how I feel about abortion.  I don't believe a woman has the right to kill her baby whether it is born or unborn.  Through the lens of prudence, I can see the difference between a medical necessity and birth control. These are two totally seperate issues. 

The Freedom of Choice Act is (in my opinion) another attempt of government to restrict free speech and push an agenda of infanticide.  President Obama, along with his party's platform, claims that a woman should be able to decide the fate of her children with no outside counsel, restrictions, moral alternatives, or state guidelines regarding the magnimous decision to end a life.  

It's a strange debate.  The abortionist says they have the woman's best interests at heart.  What about the baby?  Who speaks for him?  I think a person who is considering an abortion should have all the facts and hear about alternatives and consequences.  I believe these expectant mothers should be afforded counsel on all sides of the issue.  As I understand FOCA, this legislation is very intolerant of holistic counsel for the expectant mother. 

I serve on the Board of Directors for Etowah County Pregnancy Testing Center.  We provide testing and counseling for those who find themselves with an unplanned pregnancy.  Many times, the crises of the situation overshadows the mother's comprehension that we are talking about a real baby.  Something about us wants to dehumanize unborn children and reduce them to a "choice".  At EPTC, abortion-minded mothers are counseled as to the reality of abortion and are then pointed to the alternatives of choosing to let their baby live.  I think that FOCA is another huge step in silencing the right to life. 

Please pray for discernment over this issue and do something.   

Dude...you cuss like a lady.

I visited a local high school yesterday to attend a ceremony on behalf of a friend.  I found a seat among the parents and the student body filled the rest of the auditorium.  I knew from the onset that this was going to be one of those "challenging" situations.

The program began, and with it came the eruption of a certain young man's commentary who was seated directly behind me.  I tried to focus on the stage but he was speaking out in a way that was oblivious to the reason for the assembly and totally defiant of any consideration of others what so ever. 

I was seated next to a parent of one of the students participating on stage and as the young man and his friends continued to laugh, curse, degrade, and downgrade every student that walked on the stage, my mind was at war as to what I should do.  I kept telling myself that it was none of my business.  "Why should I be the "bad guy" and take up the cause?"  No one else seemed to care. 

I can take some childish foolishness.  I have a very dry sense of humor that can sometimes take me down the road of criticism too.  However, I have never heard such evil words coming from guys and girls in my life.  This girl next to him cursed (cussed) like no human I have ever heard.  Cussing girls make me very nervous.  They were calling the girls on stage: whores, stuck up, snobby...  They were using f-bombs, a-bombs, s-bombs, and any-bomb that fit into their spew of hatred.  They were speaking loudly and many of the parents and grandparents were turning around to look but each backward glance brought another wave of insolent jokes, jeers, and a queering defiance. 

The main guy was a bit sassy and that made it humorously more painful.  Part of me wanted to turn around and silence him with physical assault, but then I would have been led away in cuffs.  I prayed as to what to do as I feared their comments concerning my own personal friends on stage.  (My own friends?  I was already deeply troubled over the insults toward the students that I did not know personally.  Breath Eric...breath slowly.  What did Jesus do in situations like this?)

Finally it was over.  The parents were smiling.  The principal was smiling.  Everybody was happy except the 10-20 people who had been taken hostage by 6 students.  I was exhausted.  I stood up and turned to the young man.  I stuck my hand out and introduced myself.  I asked him his name and was met with great apprehension.  His friends began to laugh and tell me his name but he finally looked at me and told me. 

I was kind to all of them and told them how "sorry" I felt for them.  They did listen as I encouraged them to think about what had taken place.  I recounted their remarks and their personal resentment towards 90% of those students who received an award. The "cussing girl" sat back down as I held her arm and told her that she could do "better" than this.  I looked at them for a moment and walked away. 

I didn't do anything profound.  The sky didn't break open.  None of them apologized.  A few of the "fringe girls" denied any wrongdoing.  I suspect they probably shared some humor at my expense.  So what. 

I have committed to pray for this young man by name.  I pray that he has a father who will beat his butt from time to time and help him walk a better path.   I'm afraid that the paternal guidance that this boy needs is too late.  However, Jesus always has a plan. 

You and I are a lot like the sassy boy, cussing girl, and fringe girls.  We can all be tempted to express our defiance, cover up our own inadequacies, and hide our pain at the expense of others.  Something about making fun of others in a destructive way makes ourselves feel more important.  Curse words are an attempt to make our statements shockingly important.  "Notice me." "I am somebody."  "I don't care about what's important to you.  It's stupid". 

I may turn this event into a screenplay.  A Monday night movie about Sassy Boy, Cussing Girl, and Fringe Girls.  We could introduce new characters such as: Pony Boy, Angry Old Man, and Maverick.  Starring: Adam Sandler, Rozanne Barr, and the Olsen Twins.  It could be great.