Unfulfilled Promises?

Unfulfilled Promises?

I cross paths with a lot of Christian believers these days who seem to be fighting off disappointment while desperately waiting for some perceived Divine promise to be fulfilled. Many of these people are even at a point of beginning to believe that maybe God has failed them. A quick glance at a televised worship service on one of the religious television broadcast will show a display of emotional outbursts from people who are hoping that the preacher is right and that the “thing” that they believe God has promised them is “on the way.” “Your breakthrough coming,” is echoed over and over again in many of these worship gatherings.

I certainly believe in Divine promises. And if God said it, you can count on it. But it is also true that too many believers are “stuck” on some personal, selfish desire that they have projected as a promise from God. Unfortunately, these believers have been taught that, to some degree, God’s “business” is to tend to their self-fulfillment. They believe, in some way, that God is all about helping them get the things they want. In fact, that’s the essence of their walk of faith – God providing the next item on their personal attainment or accomplishment list.

I won’t question anybody’s discernment of God’s promises, but I do challenge the assumption by anyone that your personal wish list is worthy of being at the center of a Divine plan for your life, not to mention the Kingdom of God. And you will be forever disappointed if you have taken the Gospel of the Kingdom to be about getting Divine help to complete your personal wish list.

Jesus did come that we might have abundant life. The first step towards having that life is to “lose” the one we have.

So, are you REALLY ready to live?

The Tragedy of Violence

The Tragedy of Violence

Like many of you, I find myself grieving, today, over the recent tragedy that took place on the campus of Virginia Tech University. I am hurting for the students, the victims, and the victims’ families. It’s all so senseless and twisted.

We can’t change what has happened, but we can do something about how we participate in violence. No, we don’t all use guns, but we do “kill”, destroy hope, and dismantle dreams with our words, our gossip, our dishonesty, our manipulation, and all of the other tools at our disposal that are so often used against others.

A young woman recently wrote me a note describing how she had been hurt… by church people… by their gossip, their mean looks, their suspicious gazes, and rejecting glances. The weight of all of this had finally taken its toll. On a Monday, in the middle of the day, she was still in the bed… crying and broken with depression. On the same day that an “insane” sniper took the lives of over 30 people through an act of senseless, random violence, church folk had taken the hope and joy of this woman through senseless, silent acts of spiritual violence. Both break the heart of God.

As I pray for the Virginia Tech family, I also pray for the people of God, that we will not be spiritual snipers, but that we will practice being catalysts of hope, life, and joy!

“He who testifies about these things says, ‘Yes, I am coming quickly’. Amen! Come, Lord Jesus” (Rev. 22:20)

Where to Talk about God

A friend of mine recently told me that on occasion he was having a conversation with a Muslim about God and when they both had to go to the restroom, the Muslim ordered him to stop talking about God in the restroom, because the restroom was too unholy a place to even mention God’s name!

Now, I certainly understand the need to honor and respect the holiness and sacredness of God and Divine things, but I suggest to you that the most unholy of places are exactly the places where we should talk about God the most. No, I’m not referring to restrooms, but places where people are suffering, broken, poor, deserted, dejected, and dismissed. Maybe the problem with our world is that God’s people keep God’s name and God’s witness in the “clean” places and we end up leaving so much of humanity starving for signs of Divine love.

We don’t need to protect God. God can handle that job! Furthermore, if God needed to protect God’s holiness from the “stains” of human vulgarity, God would have never come to earth – as Jesus of Nazareth – in the first place! In fact, God came in the flesh just to “touch” our humanity… all of it!

Make an intentional effort, everyday, to look for God everywhere, and wherever you go, no matter how broken or “unholy”, be sure to talk about God!

See Through the Fog!

I am seriously irritated about the all of the attention that's being given to the matter of radio host Don Imus calling black women of the Rutgers' basketball team "nappy-headed hos." Of course, this is a downright ignorant, offensive, and unacceptable comment and Imus should be held accountable for his comments. But let's be clear about this… the overwhelming damage to the psyches, self-esteems, and self-concepts of young black women has not been done by Imus or other "twisted" white radio hosts. Most of the damage and danger comes from the culture that's created by certain music forms that arise out of black community. This music - when it denigrates and dehumanizes black women - should be denounced and defeated with the same fervor that we denounced and defeated Don Imus. If we don't do this, then by act of silence, we're all just as guilty as Don Imus of engaging in the dehumanization of black women! Be not deceived!

Where's The Place Where God Is Not?

There is no place where God is not. Okay, that's a quirky, "jumbled-up" way of saying, God is everywhere? Yes. Everywhere. In fact, there is no "place" that could exist without God because, according to the Bible, all things exist in, by, and through God! And if I really take this wisdom seriously, then as a "missionary" for the Kingdom of God, my job is not to bring God to people, but to point to the signs of God's presence that's all around them!

In the gospels, when Jesus sent out the missionaries, two-by-two, he told them that whenever they enetered a house, they should announce, "The Kingdom of God is here!" But the Kingdom didn't arrive just when they got to a place. It was already there. What changed was that in their arrival to the scence, witnesses had come who could help people recognize the presence and power of God.

As we share our faith with others, we must remember that we are not pioneer of God's presence. We are more like a tour-guides. We don't have to "create" Divine prsence, rather, we simply have to do as Jesus did: announce that "God's Rule is here", and then help people to see, respond, and celebrate the new life that's possible.

The Kingdom of God is here. Give me a moment, and I'll show it to you!

Middle Moments

Middle Moments
Never forget that Jesus was just as much “Jesus” - our Savior and our Deliverer - on the 2nd of those three days as he was on the first and the last. In the “middle” of doing his destiny-changing work of redemption, he did not lose his identity, significance, status, or anointing.

Furthermore, Jesus didn’t go straight from Deliverer (Good Friday) to Victor and Conqueror (Resurrection). The “middle day” happened, and it’s just as important as the first day and the third!

Too much of the modern Christian teaching and preaching focuses only on celebrating our final victories. But, if we only see value in the “high” moments, we start to believe that God is missing or careless during the “middle” of our journeys. If we feel “alive” only on the “first” and “third” days of our trials, then we’ll start believing that we are less than conquerors on the “second” days. We tend to despise the processes of our deliverances, and often fall into the trap of feeling and thinking that during the processes we are all alone and that our lives are void of meaning, purpose, and power.

God was God all three days of Jesus’ trial from crucifixion to Resurrection, and because God was still God, even during that cold, vague, non-eventful day in the grave, Jesus – not even for a moment – was never anything less than God’s Son, our Savior, our Redeemer, and our Lord!

…In a “middle moment”? See and celebrate the power, meaning, mystery, and purpose of where you are, now!

Good Friday

God allowed, in fact He ordered from the foundations of the world, the crucifixion of Jesus! That's good news, which is why it's good that we celebrate the memory of that event every year as Good Friday.


Most Christians celebrate Good Friday because in the crucifixion of Jesus, God was redeeming the world, defeating sin and slavery to sin, and "reconciling the world back to Himself" (in the words of Paul). I agree that these are reasons to rejoice, but this time, I rejoice for another reason.


This time around, I celebrate the crucifixion because I like the fact that God allowed it to happen, period. A lot of "stuff" happens in this world and in our lives that defy explanation and contradict our childhood Sunday School belief that life is a simple line of cause-and-effect; suffering is due to sin and people who suffer are paying the penalty of disobedience. This explanation works sometimes, but so many followers of Christ cling to this simple reasoning even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. The assumption is that all suffering is "bad", and that if we would just do the things that the Bible commands our suffering would be eliminated!


Six months ago, I suffered three strokes! One of my sisters is waiting for a lung transplant and has to use a breathing machine to survive as she waits! My father was just diagnosed with prostate cancer! I'm sure that there are some "believers" who would hear this and want to call our family together for a session of confession of sin and repentance… arguing that "surely our suffering is due to disobedience and rebellion against God!" One reason why some people force this reasoning is that they think that if the suffering isn't deserved then God is unfair, and worst, not trustworthy.


On the contrary, I rejoice in knowing that Good Friday happened. I don't need to explain it or understand it. "Good Fridays" are not contradictions to the goodness and trustworthiness of God, and I am convinced that "nothing shall separate me from the love of God, not even my failures. So, I embrace the mystery. I live confidently through my "grave" experiences. I wait for a resurrection!


Dad and sis, breathe peace. Live well. Rejoice in the God who is Lord even on Good Friday!

Divine Polarity - Sacred and Secular

This morning, during my six-mile run at about 5:00 a.m., I had an experience of God's "polarity" - that is - His capacity to contain or be expressed through things that we tend of think of as polar opposites. In this experience, His polarity was expressed as His capacity to express Himself through what WE refer to as sacred and through what WE refer to as secular. This is how it happened.

As I was running, I was listening to my ipod, as I always do. Two songs played, back-to-back and they brought me that moment during my run that I'm always waiting for... when the voice of the Lord speaks to my spirit and gives me my encouragement and direction for the day ahead.

The first song was a "church" song, "Our God Is An Awesome God". It's one of the great praise songs of the last decade or so, and as I listened, it lifted my spirit, and I was reminded, in the deepest reservoirs of my being, that God is beyond all of my challenges, problems, agendas, ambitions, and even fears. Although I was running, in my spirit, I knelt down in humble adoration before my God who "was, is, and is to come"... the Alpha and Omega... the God who - as the old folks used to say in my childhood, "sits high and looks low".

When the first song finished, the second song broke my moment of meditation...at least that what's I thought at first. It was a secular song...downloaded simply for the burst of energy that I hoped it would give me during my moments of extreme fatigue. But I waited, because I heard these words: "hold on, I'm coming"! Wow! My spirit seemed to explode out of my very body to the heights of Divine joy! I can't justify this to my "holy" Christian friends; you must forgive me; but when I heard those words, "hold on, I'm coming", I knew it was God speaking to me, giving me my encouragement for the day.

Yea! God first came to me as the sacred God... Holy, Awesome,...Transcendent! But He also spoke to me through a secular song, written by people who probably didn't even have God in mind when they wrote the song. First, he overwhelmed me with His glory, and I humbly surrendered, and when I surrendered, He used an "earthen vessel" (as the Apostle Paul would put it) to thrust me forward into my day with a WORD of power, peace, and passion. "Hold on," He said. "I'm coming"

By the way, he also gave me my direction for the day... He told me to tell you that He says to you, too, "Hold on, I'm coming."

"Amen. Come, Lord Jesus" (Revelation 22:20)

*(If you want to hear the song, check it out on itunes. There's a good version by Dave & Sam, and I particularly like Michael Bolton's version.)

Is God sacred or secular?

God is so "secular", present, tangible, and immanent, that "the whole earth is full of His glory" (That's the vision that's given to the prophet Isaiah when he makes a visit to the temple one day to ponder the lost of Israel's last king). And if this is so, then every morning when I awake, from the moment that I take my first conscious breath, I can inhale with as much of a sense of the sacredness of God as if I were kneeling before the altar of some great cathedral. And when get up out of the bed and take my first step, as with the ground that Moses stood on in the shadow of the burning bush, I, too, am standing on Holy Ground.

As I move through my day, I can choose to remain conscious of God's "everywhere-ness" and "everyplace-ness", and even in the places, people, and problems, and things that seem to be the ugliest, most defiled, most unholy, and most hopeless, some how and some way, God is "around" working His plan to redeem, deliver, and transform. And if I watch closey, and patiently, I just might catch a glimpse of the Mystery.

Is God sacred or secular?

I believe that the whole earth is full of the glory of God. I rejoice in God loving the world so much that He gave His Son for it. I am amazed that the eternal Divine became human flesh and lived among us as one of us. So, while I know that God is NOT US, is beyond us, transcends us... I also embrace that God is making His home in me and you. I know that I can't seperate God-filled stuff from God-less stuff because God sustains everything. The distinctions between sacred and secular are most often too far beyond my understanding, so I embrace the whole world, and with a Biblical perspective and a heart surrendered to Christ, I relentlessly pursue moments that reveal the loving, revolutionary presence of God.

Does the Holy God live in you?