That's Life

Life is so interesting in how it moves by us while we watch from behind these eyes. Somewhere it is all being recorded and stored away in the most amazing computer ever conceived, an organic web of cells that contains not only sights, but true 4D. It is not designed for access at will though, only certain events will easily coalesce in its lightrooms. Events written in emotion will often lay like a projection on water's surface, clearer images cast by the light of love and hate, lesser visions cast their recollections ever deeper below the surface. Our retrieval, like our lungs, has limitations. We can only go so deep.
This is one reason that I want to teach myself to feel things. I want to remember those things that should remain. This post will be a brief listings of just some of the things that I hope will stay with me:

- Friday morning we took some students to Tung Chung for a friendly basketball tourney organized by the police. The tourney was cool, but the ride back was amazing. We bused to Mui Wo and took a sampan across to Cheung Chau. Sampan rides are everyday for me now, but a night cruise is a rarity. A night cruise on a clear night even rarer. I sat on a chair on the bow and drank it in the whole way back. The stars above, and the city lights of Hong Kong in the background off our port side, beyond Hei Ling Chau's glowing prison lights. All it takes is remembering back to who I was, and where I was not even so many years ago. How did I ever get here! So sublime.

- Got the call late in the day early last week to go with one of the brother's as an escort to his mother's birthday dinner. English is not on the menu. He is Thai and Chinese. His family is wonderfully warm and inviting to this necessary stranger who must come with their son. As we sit in their little store with the aunts, one uncle, some cousins, and a genuinely gregarious grandfather I am fed some pre-dinner desserts of Ferrero Rocher© and a refreshingly sweet mango coconut dish. This eased what I anticipated to be an uncomfortable forty-five minute wait before we left for the restaurant. When we did sit down at the restaurant the uncle went after his young nephew with a merciless ribbing that entertained everyone at the table, especially the young cousins who gripped their sides as they laughed. I couldn't help but laugh even though I didn't understand a word. Grandpa kept making sure that my bowl was loaded up with abalone, prawns, crab (with egg and Chinese wine), and he wasn't even sitting next to me. It was an absolute blast.

- This morning I had to go into the city early to get some stuff for my son's birthday party, and while I was waiting for the fairy back I sat and ate a quick breakfast with a coffee at the Star Ferry pier in Central. Buddhist monks frequent this area, because just like sharks at the edge of a reef, they know there'll be food here. Food in the form of pasty white foreigners too travel giddy to know that this guy is just a religious scam artist without a cable show. He hands them some little trinket and then tells them that he needs money for his monastery, which they usually hand over. The guy I watched today didn't even try to fake humility, and clearly was agitated with how long it took for the gwai lo (鬼佬) to figure out that he wanted cash. The usual 100HKD (~$13CAD) was handed over and off the respective participants went. By his attitude I figured this guy needed the cash for his morning coffee fix. I wanted to yell,"You know the guy's a fake, right!?". Couldn't bring myself to do it though. Maybe next time.

- This one I did not witness, but my wife and daughter relayed it with such intensity that I had to include it here. When my daughter came to the dormitory to drop off some clothes for me she saw our elderly neighbor whacking a bamboo pit viper into Nirvana with a long stick; probably bamboo. These brilliantly fluorescent green visitors are venomous and aggressive, but no more so than our aged neighbor who stands right around four feet high when she can straighten up, and that last happened on her 80th birthday. My oldest ran back into the house to tell my wife, about the goings on outside and when they arrived back at the scene granny was still whacking the thing. Apparently the buddha had not yet confirmed the viper's arrival in bliss. When she was finally satisfied that the reptile was no more she picked it up and disposed of its carcass, which my daughter said was dripping blood from its crushed cranium. I'll have to remember to keep the hissing to a dull roar the next time I saunter by her house.

There are more that I could write, but I'm gonna save them for a different glass of wine and free time. Thanks for reading. Cheers!

God & A/C

We are truly blessed to live where we do. It comes with its challenges to be sure, but the sweet upsides cover a multitude of 'sins'. One of these is the fact that we live five minutes from Kwun Yam Wan beach.
It was on my journey there today that I had a really cool thought. The short cut to the beach takes us through the grounds of one of the numerous temples on our little island. I grew up in the bible belt, but we had nothing on this place where there are temples littered on every path and byway with hundreds of little shrines to boot. As I walked past the open doors I thought I heard the hum of an a/c unit busily chilling the interior of the building. The first thought that struck me was that these gods may need a/c, but my God does not. After this the next thought was about all the nicely air conditioned churches all around the world where Christians gather in comfort to meet their God. This actually caused me to laugh, because our God truly does not need a/c, but we do. The only reason we cool the building is for our comfort, yet for some reason we still think that we come to the building to meet with God. It got me thinking about how messed our thinking is regarding Sunday mornings, and how much detox we need to go through.
Now I don't think that anyone really thinks that we set the climate control to please God, but our view of the sacredness of these places that we meet in definitely hint at a subliminal doctrine that I believe is undermining our true foundations. The importance of the building and the Sunday morning program has in many ways taken the place of the importance of the people who are gathering in the building. I guess that my first thought when the a/c breaks down would not be about how many people in the building can't even afford a/c in their own homes, it would be a thought about my personal discomfort, and how it will distract me from the experience that I came to enjoy. I know this to be true, because it actually happened once.
God was with me when I climbed out of bed on Sunday morning. He was there with me in the shower. He heard all my conversations with my family. He saw the look on my face as I missed yet another green light. He knew my thoughts. None of this changed when I walked through the doors of my local church. The one thing that did change was that there were a whole bunch of other people who were (and are) known by God there at the same time. Why is it then that in my mind, whether consciously or subliminally, I felt that something changed? I may have even said something as silly as,"Wow, the Spirit is thick in here today!". Huh? Did I think He was contained in this little building? Did I? Do you? Not any more.
This is why people who come to a new church may feel ignored. The other people who are there came to meet God, not them. Meeting these folks is meant for the foyer if we have time, not during the service when they may distract me from my 'experience'. I have got to be kidding me! I say it that way because I discover this thinking in myself all the time. I see it at the school where I work when they have a morning worship service with the students and I kindly bow out because it is all in Cantonese. Our head staff member, who was a student once himself, will unfailingly invite me to join, and try to get someone to translate for me. He doesn't do it for any other reason than that he knows that the fellowship is what it is truly all about. I tend to forget that with my oh so western, churchified mindset. I need to detox so badly.
Church is not about comfort. At least not the kind that comes easily. It is about the comfort we receive as we give it out. It is the comfort of the nearness of God who draws near in the fellowship between broken people. Sure you may get a warm fuzzy when you shut everyone else out and go "into the worship zone", but that pales in comparison to the filling that happens when you embrace someone in need, or a stranger, or actually find someone who isn't afraid of really hearing how you are doing, because they have prioritized their Sunday lunch date in a Spirit led fashion. Think about it. Has any of those things happened to you? How long did it take for the glow of that to wear off? It may have been emotionally, and physically draining, but there is nothing like it. Maybe the reason that restaurant servers say that the church crowd is the worst part of their day is that we come out of church feeling smugly superior from our "personal encounter" with God. Think about it again; Jesus went off by Himself to spend that intimate time with the Father. The rest of His life was about engaging people, and it was exhausting not refreshing. So what am I doing? Why am I going to church to be refreshed? Why am I not refreshed when I walk in after being alone with the Father like Jesus, and ready to engage?
I have a long way to go.

Simple Thoughts From A Simple Mind

Just got home early in the morning from a very late night out that spurred a fury of activity in a recently dormant mind. Bought what is so far a phenomenal book from and Irish author and watched Inception which had an Irish born actor as a central character, which may explain the happy melancholic mood I seem to find myself in. This evening brought so many thought s to the surface like shoots from fresh seeds after a spring rain. Tonight I felt frsh earth between my toes as I went out to see the verdany green of the new growth. The intoxicating scent of wet soil taking hold of my mind like a drunken sailor offering a tour of the evening's highlights.

Though there is a lightheartedness about how I describe all of this there is a certain weight to it as well. The book is about a conversation between a man digging his own grave and the man who is appointed to see him fill the hole in the cold earth of a European winter. The movie also bears a weighty message of the power of our own memories upon the course of our souls. In the book there is a wonderful statement from the protagonist when the invading armies come into view of his home in the shape of a tank:

What a terrible sound, that rumble. My house was paper, my skin water, my life transparent all of a sudden. I thought, I am going to die.
pg. 18 "Schopenhauer's Telescope" by Gerard Donovan

When I read these words I knew that I had a small taste of what he meant. That tenuous grip on a frail mortality in the face of imminent extinction is a place I have come across on occasion, both in imaginings and reality. Many evenings as I have struggled to slip into natural unconsciousness these thoughts have played out in my mind, leaving their tangible touch in the beads of sweat dotting my brow. Many times I have replayed the evening when I saw my life's blood spilling relentlessly from a facial wound inflicted by the steering wheel of a totaled Ford Pinto as I crawled away beneath the lamplight of a deserted onramp in the wee hours of a morning many years ago. The fragility of my life, and the foolishness of how I treated it has sent numerous chills through me. At the end of these thoughts there is, thankfully, the grace that has lead me to the safe harbor of my Father, but the trip easily grips my thoughts, and arrests spurious speculations of other, darker, possibilities.
This lead me to pondering the sparse crowds that populated the wee morning hours of a return trip to Cheung Chau after the movie. Pondering where their paths are taking them. Pondering what they have done with the knowledge the Father says He has given to all of us. Pondering as I looked out the window of the fast ferry at the barely slumbering city rushing by. This city rolls fitfully in a shallow sleep as it dreams, lusts, and clutches for the spoils of the next day, never reaching the rem realm where the Spirit seeds revelations into passing souls. Perhaps this is why it is the poor in spirit that Jesus said are blessed, they have relaxed their grip on the insanity of a somnambulist's dream in the face of an unrelenting reality. These are the ones who lift their eyes and see the door of heaven swung open wide on blood stained hinges. These are the ones who surrender the illusions for a taste of the real. These are the ones who light up like beacon's at Christ's invitation to come and find the eternal quenching of their thirst in Him alone. The surrendered ones.
Oh to be more fully surrendered and forever leave the delusional meanderings of this world. To embrace the knowledge of the grave as Ecclesiastes 7:1-4 enjoins:

¹A good name is better than a good ointment,
And the day of one's death is better than the day of one's birth.
²It is better to go to a house of mourning
Than to go to a house of feasting,
Because that is the end of every man,
And the living takes it to heart.
³Sorrow is better than laughter,
For when a face is sad a heart may be happy.
⁴The mind of the wise is in the house of mourning,
While the mind of fools is in the house of pleasure.

Fearsome words in a slumbering age. Cold water to a parched soul.

The Starbuck view where I delved into "Schopenhauer's Telescope"

The Evolution Of My Thoughts

Evolution.....

Not even sure where to go with that initial thought. Not even sure why it is such a charged subject sometimes. I do understand why most of the time, but today is not one of them. I was reading a book called "Created from Animals: The Moral Implications of Darwinism" by James Rachels, which is an interesting enough read if you like scientific/philosophical books. I enjoyed it to a point. That point was when I could no longer stand the obvious bias in all the arguments the author presented both on his own and the arguments of Darwin's he regurgitated. The one that I found the most humorous was the argument of Darwin against the existence of God based upon the presence of evil. The argument goes that if there is an all-powerful, all-good God out there, and He is responsible for all of creation then why is there so much evil, and why is there so much perverse evil? This was a strong reasoning of his against the existence of a god, and particularly the God of the bible. It is understandable why this made sense to him. It is understandable why so many educated people will also buy this line of reasoning. The simple truth is that the implications of the presence of God in the universe are to overwhelming to consider. The loss of a personal godhood for these people is a horrific thought, tantamount to suicide in a physical, soul-ish, and intellectual sense of the word.
The argument of the presence of evil makes no sense whatsoever, because without the presence of God as a plumb line there is no true evil. Whatever is evil to you may not be evil to me. Pol Pot certainly didn't see himself as evil, and even if he did there was not enough power in this realization to stop him. There have been many people who have steeped themselves in what we would term heinous evil, but have not seen their actions as wrong. If evolution is true where is the plumb line? Mr. Rachels says that Darwin even felt that the evil suffered by nature was too much to accept that there could be a god allowing all of it. Of course if there is only evolution then where does the idea of suffering come from? Are we to weep about survival of the fittest? What about diseases and blights that wipe out populations thereby allowing another species to thrive? Is this evil? Is it suffering? How could it be? If the universe is as evolutionists say it is, then please don't tell me that there is real evil, or even real good. There is only existence, and what you can get out of it. If I am stronger, smarter and well armed I can take whatever I want from you, and evolution will not support me, or admonish me, because it is a simple process not an entity. There is nothing moral about the universe apart from God, so please don't explain away God by one of the very measures of His presence. Even if that measure happens to be the presence of evil.
I have always said that I don't mind someone saying that they want nothing to do with God. To me that is an honest assessment of their true position. What I have always hated are the ludicrous lines of reasoning people want me to swallow in their attempts to explain away the God who terrifies them. At least then they wouldn't have to sound so silly.

HEADS UP!!!

The title of this post is actually intended for me rather than anyone who may stumble across it. There is a need within me to wade out into some deeper waters than have run through here for quite some time, and I know there will be a ruffled feather or two. The key for me though is to try my best to avoid all political correctness and just let 'er rip. My only real political ties are to the Kingdom anyway, so I won't be betraying any allegiances or sneaking 'round under the cover of night.
You see, I just got through watching yet another video report about the plight of a homosexual youth who has experienced discrimination at the hands of someone in the faceless establishment. It was not a case of physical violence, thankfully, because that stuff is a crime against all of us. Rather this was a crime against someone's rights and their expectations of how their life should play out in a just society. The details are not truly important to what I am going to write, but if you want to check it out just click the link. The point of this post is not to try this case in a one man courtroom, but rather to look at the bigger mosaic of which this is just a piece. The place that homosexuality has won in our society and collective thinking continues to expand to the point where stories like this are not really about the valiant struggle of the downtrodden. They are stories about the twisted, conservative minds that will not yield to the onslaught. If you do click the link you will find it very difficult to miss the long panning shot of the street sign in a small town which I am certain is not the focal point of anyone else in the town but those who are visiting journalists looking for an angle. The street sign is 'Church Street'. Wow, not to hard to miss the bias in this story from that point on is it? I actually went on Google Earth and Google Maps to find this street and sure enough, there it is. The only problem I have with this is that the context is way off. The school that is in the law suit with the young woman is her former high school 340 kilometers north in Fulton, Mississippi, while the street sign is in the town of Wesson where she now lives. No mention of that as they pan by the sign, nor any panning across the street sign for Martin Luther King Drive which is actually in the same town as the school. I guess it pays to do your own "Digg"-ing instead of letting someone else blindly link it for you, eh?
I don't actually mind the dig at the church that much. In reality they should know that it is the church that stands against this rising tide. The church does stand against the tide of broken sexuality and homosexuality along with all the other hellish things that are devouring humanity. The real church that is. I'm not even going to go into all the politics circling around the North American church like toilet water. The bible is far more plain than we like, and leaves us no place to hide in the face of those who do not like what it says. Honestly this post is about those things we don't like. It is about the things I don't like. The word of God is a mirror, and anyone who takes a good long look will come away with a burning desire for a Merle Norman makeover. We are just downright ugly. Nobody likes that. I don't like that.
There are many things in my life that I would love to just paint over. It would be even better if I could get a whole bunch of people to agree with my point of view, people who would tell me that it is okay to be the way I am. People who had huge legal warchests like the ACLU wouldn't hurt either. It would have been great if I could have gone to them when those church folk confronted me on my addictions. I could have hung that church, that pastor, that truth out to dry, and even made a few bucks along the way. What right did they have to say that my addiction was wrong? What right did they have to say that it was destructive? What right did they have to say that I couldn't lead a simple little thing like an artist's group? What right did they have? They didn't have any right, except that which scripture gave them. It didn't matter whether they handled the whole thing correctly or not, scripture stood as the final authority on the matter. That meant my only option was to accept what it said, and deal with the excruciating work of letting the sword have its way, or slap a fig leaf on and run like hell the other way. There was no other way.
Of course I just had an addiction. Homosexuality is a genetic predisposition these days. Hmm. After a 43 year lifetime of dealing with a highly addictive nature I would beg to argue that addiction is also a genetic predisposition. Of course that all winds down a very slippery path, so I will leave that for you to ponder as you wish. The bedrock I want to set this on is the word of God. In the scripture I see no debates over what is sin and what is not. If there were such debates it would take a crane to lift the book for all the pages it would fill, kind of like what you would have if you had to move the ACLU's files to a new office. What I do is sin, and what you do is sin. Period. No one would tell me that it is ok to continue on in a lifestyle that will ultimately destroy me. I say ultimately because it may be possible to escape any kind of devastating ramifications in this life, but we are talking scripture here, and it makes it very clear that there will be a reckoning for all of us. It would be wrong of me to tell someone that they can deny God and go their way just because their urge to follow that path is so incredibly overwhelming, or even if there is no urge against a God they do not even know. It would be wrong of me to hide God from them simply because it will introduce them to a battle they didn't even know they were in in the first place.
Like I said early on, I don't like looking in that mirror. That is until I see the other face reflected back at me, the face of Jesus. The face of the one who died to stand at my side in this battle. The one who lives to see me redeemed from all that would devour me. How dare I rob someone of the presence of the God of all the universe standing at their side in the fight for their life? Just because I don't want them to be offended? Or perhaps just because I don't want to be offended? This is so much broader than just homosexuality. This is the battle we are in every day. Fighting our way through the fiery darts to make someone else aware of the deadly siege they are right in the middle of. Maybe we would be more effective if people saw our armor instead of just another person riddled with bloodied darts. Don't forget, Christ IS our armor!

The In Between Times

The title for this post is a suggestion of where I am right now in many ways. Physically I am in between trips to the commode as I and my wife struggle through a bout of Cheung Po Tsai's revenge. At my age I am pretty certain I am somewhere in the middle of my life if I make it past 80. Spiritually I am in the in between spaces as well. There is not a lot of flash and splash right now, and in many ways it feels like a bit of a lull before something happens, one way or the other. This is giving someone who spends a lot of time in contemplation a lot of time to contemplate. The place that I am in has also formed the materials for the framework of my ruminations. There has been a lot of searching about what all this is really about. Like a man on a journey I have reached a point where I am wondering if I really want to be carrying as much stuff around as I have been. This has certainly been true in a materialistic/financial sense, because our move to HK had very little to do with fiscal reasoning as do any of the future options we have considered possible (That is up to Dad of course!). It is also true in a spiritual sense. The baggage of things that I have hung on to need to fall away if they serve no needful purpose. I am not a man of many options in life, so everything needs to be considered from a very pragmatic view. When you feel yourself heading swiftly for the eye of the needle you really reconsider what you have a grip on, and what has a grip on you. Either way it will be ripped off when you go through, and if you are hanging on then part of you will be ripped off as well. Not fun.
Much of what is falling away is the stuff that has been flapping in the breeze anyway, but has remained attached because there was a lack of desire in doing away with it with such a finality. You know the things that we say we don't believe in and yet that lack of belief doesn't really manifest in any tangible way in our lives? These are the things that are flapping around like the tattered remnants of sails and rigging after a storm. Their substance was tested by the tempest and found wanting, but what if I just might need them for some reason in the future? What if I liked how my boat looked with all that beautiful canvas stretching in the wind? What if someone else said they liked those sails, and that they too had ones just like them? What do I do?
I haven't had any inclination to fix those particular sails. All they have been doing is hanging on and bashing against my ship. The noise has raised a few eyebrows, as have the dings, dents, and scrapes on the hull.
Time for a reality check. The sails and rigging I am referring to are my beliefs in the fabric of the church. The beliefs that I used to hold regarding big names and big events. This is a sacred cow in North America, as anyone who has raised a voice about it can attest. Right from the Emergent Church to the pulpits of the TV preachers there will be an immediate line of defense formed if someone confronts the dynamism of the dynamic one at the front, or on the cover of the book or CD, or the conference brochure, or website. There will be a deep loyalty and scriptural reasoning behind every rebuttal. There would have been from me as well not that long ago. I had my favorite preachers, and in fact the daughter of one of them is actually an acquaintance of my wife's here in HK (too weird). I had my favorite musicians who were just sooooo anointed. There were authors whom I felt were way ahead of all the others.
Not any more. I want to cut this off of me. I am tired of its useless bashing against my mind and spirit.
The realization I had today was that this is much of what has been hindering the body of Christ in the west. How on earth are we going to see an effective body rise to meet the challenges of the days we live in when we continually abdicate our place in the body to someone with "credentials" and fashion sense? What do they have on the guy down the aisle from me? What do they have over anyone else in your local body? Nothing really, but the position that we give them. Who questions what they are being taught. I see so many notebooks out, but when I have been able to peek at the contents it is just a shorthand of the message being given. Dictation basically. Where is the critical testing of these messages, and more importantly the lives behind them, that the church was commended for by the resurrected Lord? Many will say that we know these people because they have been recommended by other people, but who has really spent any time with them? The star culture we have nurtured puts up a near impenetrable wall around those who being allowed to speak to thousands, and if something goes wrong they run off and huddle away by themselves while the spokesperson tells you the latest filtered news. Filtered because,"YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH!!!" (read: Nicholson in A Few Good Men).
Where also is the testing of the people like me out in the pews, chairs, or bar stools? If I am too never leave the nursery, and always live in the shadow of these "greats" where is my sense of personal destiny and purpose? If I am meant to just sit and consume these pre-chewed meals, not cause any waves, definitely not ask any hard questions how will I find a path to a meaningful maturity? At best I may become a respected servant of a Sunday morning machine at some church down the street.
The funny thing is that most of these voices are telling us that we need to be the effective salt and light in our world, but not at the expense of their position, airmiles, or general thunder. Just ask yourself how easily one of those people will relinquish their death grip on that sacred conch called the microphone. This is when you see that they really don't trust you not to screw things up for themselves and everybody else. My question to that is why is it that if they are called to train and equip me, and I have been under their weekly tutelage, why can I not be trusted with what I might say? Anyone else out there asking that question??? I am not a dynamic speaker, nor do I covet the sacred conch, but the question remains. You may be trusted to speak to a small group in a cell church setting, but don't you think about striding up those stairs to the platform and give forth on a Sunday morning.
Enough ranting, now for the practical aspect of this for me. Cutting this stuff free in my life will look like honoring and respecting each member of the body equally. Considering whatever gift, message, etc. as equally worthy of consideration as anyone else. Testing each person by the Holy Spirit rather than just taking someone's word for it. Enjoy messages, music, fellowship and other things by His guidance as well. Encouraging every seed no matter where it has fallen. Finally, it will also include the possibility of more of these rants, because if I truly believe this stuff then what I would have to say by the guidance of the Spirit would be as beneficial as what Paul said when he spoke this same message to the Corinthians. Look it up for yourselves:

^{1 Cor 1: 12}What I mean is this: One of you says, "I follow Paul"; another, "I follow Apollos"; another, "I follow Cephas"; still another, "I follow Christ." ¹³Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Were you baptized into the name of Paul? ¹⁴I am thankful that I did not baptize any of you except Crispus and Gaius, ¹⁵so no one can say that you were baptized into my name.

and again (must be important, huh?)

^{1Cor 3: 1}Brothers, I could not address you as spiritual but as worldly—mere infants in Christ. ²I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it. Indeed, you are still not ready. ³You are still worldly. For since there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not worldly? Are you not acting like mere men? ⁴For when one says, "I follow Paul," and another, "I follow Apollos," are you not mere men?

⁵What, after all, is Apollos? And what is Paul? Only servants, through whom you came to believe—as the Lord has assigned to each his task. ⁶I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God made it grow. ⁷So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow. ⁸The man who plants and the man who waters have one purpose, and each will be rewarded according to his own labor. ⁹For we are God's fellow workers; you are God's field, God's building.

Frustrated Again

I don't know about you, but I get regular cycles of frustration. They are not at all predictable. They are not at all fun. They are the kind of thing that I think, in the good times, should be so easy to avoid, and yet here I am.....again. They are also not connected to being in ministry, because even when I was working 9 to 5 those cycles still appeared.

It becomes a time when I feel like I am tied to a dart board and the enemy can just hurl away with the darts. I feel like I am a million miles away from the Father. I feel like lifting my eyes to heaven is like lifting weights with my eyelids. I feel like I am failing.
There was a program on TV tonight, and it was an interview with Che Ahn. I have never seen him before, but I have heard the testimonies like his before. The power testimonies. You know the ones. They get you all charged up on God and then you end up wondering," Where is that power in my life?". The cycles I go through have a lot to do with exactly this phenomenon. After a while I will finally tell myself that the Father loves me. He is using my life for His glory as He sees fit. This brings on a long period of joy and overcoming, but after another season of seeing the sick unhealed, ineffectual preaching, no real prophetic insights, it begins to get a bit depressing. All it takes then is to hear one of these testimonies or even to remember them. he wheels begin to come off.
I talked to a fellow man of faith who is doing spectacular things for the kingdom in a difficult place. I would have thought that he would have "arrived" in the circles of those who go out to preach the kingdom. During a time of prayer for him and his wife he asked if we could pray for the power of the Spirit for him. He desired to see healing for people rather than just sending them to the hospitals. Of course they were supplying the funds and transport for the people to go, but he still felt that acute lack in his testimony. I know how he feels. I hold on to promises that have not yet seen their fulfillment. There are many more things I want to see by the hand of my Father than what I am seeing these days.
I guess that is all I have to say for now, except that the picture below reflects the fact that I still believe for more.

What Kind Of Power Do YOU Want?

They say that knowledge is power, and for once “they” and God agree. Knowledge of God is the power of life. The question is what kind of knowledge? This is a very important question too, because all of eternity rests on the answer. The kind of knowledge we bear into the eternal results of every decision we made while our vaporous existence quickly dissipated here will weigh upon every echo there. Will they reverberate with ever increasing joy or will they resonate with gnawing regret?

The knowledge I believe that will carry with it the most visceral sting is the empty knowledge of God; the demonic awareness of His presence without any of the sustaining power of intimacy that that awareness should produce. It is the knowledge that accedes to the existence of the One from whom the heart is withheld. To be simply blinded by the irrational desires of the sinful nature will carry with it the knowledge of a folly beyond words as the items we traded for fall from our failing grasp, but this cannot compare to the folly of intentionally withholding our heart from Christ. Knowledge for knowledge’s sake is death. So what kind of knowledge contains so infinite a power as to see wretches like us through to the presence of the Holy One of Israel? The knowledge that is born out of the tests and trials that inevitably come when one actually sets the soles of their will upon the unseen reality that the initial facts pointed to is endowed with such dynamism.

After the first footfall upon the Rock that is the person of our Lord Jesus Christ such joy reverberates through our being that we are drawn to take the next step and then the next, and so on ad infinitum. This wondrous journey may be punctuated by times of sinking into the roiling waves of life’s turmoil, but every step preceding it tells of the trustworthiness of the hand that is extended to lift us back into the way. The firm grip of that powerful hand has held us before. The voice calling through the din has unerringly drawn us to safety. The features of the face lit by flashes of revelation in the darkness has consumed our gaze and lit our hearts with an all-surpassing hope. The simplistic purity of the love offered has undone us. This love that is no small rock placed in a vast expanse of overwhelming adversity, but rather the eternal Rock stretching in every direction beyond these fleeting trials, has shown itself too many times to be doubted anymore. Folly may briefly take the eyes of one so captured, but the barest glance will never fail to retrieve the heart that has been truly handed over. And all the power rests not in the heart, nor the will of the one surrendered, but in the scarred hand of the One who unfailingly receives it, and unerringly preserves it unto eternity.

Yes, knowledge is power, but only when it is acted upon. Anything else will be but another volume of learning in the library of hell.

Cycling Through The Seasons

Ever since moving to Hong Kong I have missed cycling to work, or taking some time during a late summer evening to grab my camera, and my bike to head out for some clicks and clicks. Cycling was always an enjoyable way for me to unwind. The cycling that I am doing now is not that kind. I’m not meaning that I am riding a bike here on Cheung Chau, which would be tantamount to suicide for the uninitiated; this is a whole different kind of cycling all together. This is a cycle of a spiritual nature.
Working at Zheng Sheng College is all about sacrifice. Sacrificing time, comfort, expectations, and even personal space is the norm here. It is good spiritual disciplining. It is also something that I thought I desired more than I am finding in reality. Of course this is not unusual because we all find this truth when we go after the truest desires of our heart. We find that there is the dream which lights our eyes and sends our hearts soaring, and then there is the very real work of obtaining that goal. One pastor told me years ago, when he took me under his wing to disciple me, that there was an NFL football coach who told his players that he was going to make them do the things they didn’t want to do so that they could become the players they wanted to be. This is very much what many Hollywood movies are about, especially the true stories. They tell of that person who overcame all those obstacles that life, society, and particularly they themselves put in the way of obtaining the dream. This is also very much like Jesus. He is constantly pushing our buttons and boundaries so that He can release the things that we dream of in the spirit. I know for myself there is a constant stream of visions within me that portray the man I desire to be. I will see myself lovingly devoting myself to my family, passionately pursuing activities to better myself, and pouring myself out for the sake of the gospel at the school. This, though, is the stream of consciousness that flows side by side with the stream which is filled with the debris of a life spent serving myself. This is the analogy I will use in place of Paul’s analogy of being tied to a corpse.
I cycle through seasons when I am able to turn to God to find the power to do those things that will bring Him glory, and also, as happens in God’s economy, fulfill my deepest desires, and seasons when I cannot seem to pry my eyes out of my own navel. These last three days were like that for me. I spent much of my time bemoaning the lack of personal time I get these days, and then becoming upset with those around me who are also in a deficient place, feeling the lack of my presence due to my work schedule. It was a tug-o-war the whole time. The rationalizations didn’t change anything either. In fact, they became like a shovel to just dig the hole deeper. Nobody wanted to hear rationalizations from a grump, but they probably would have appreciated an apology.
None of my feelings are culturally unacceptable these days. We are told all the time that if we spend time on ourselves then we will be happy and healthy. Product advertizing keys into this all the time, whether it is the spa getaway or even just the humble dish soap that will degrease your dinnerware quicker so that you will have more time to yourself, they all tell you that more for you is better for everyone. The only ads I remember that were telling me something different were actually from the Mormon Church, which is really frightening. They may be sailing on a Titanic of doctrine, but their focus on family values is spot on.
The reality of scripture faces this down in no uncertain terms. Losing our lives is the only certain way of finding them. Giving up my “me time” to make sure that my kids know they are loved and valued will always pay a dividend to my emotional stocks. Acting on my wife’s requests for me to plug into some books on homeschooling and parenting will pay off on those date nights when we can really connect about things that are a daily part of her heart. Working past the cultural, and linguistic barriers between the brothers at Zheng Sheng College and I always brings the reward of relationship and trust.
The real key to all of this is trusting God at His word. Two verses come to mind right away when I consider these things. The first one is the one about saving and losing your life, the other one is Psalm 37:4,”Delight thyself also in the Lord; and He shall give thee all the desires of thine heart.” If I truly trust this then I will spend all my time to delight myself in God and trust in the surety of His reciprocity. This certainly sounds like a good thing, until I come home fried from a long shift, and then the burning smell of rubber on asphalt fills my olfactory orifice. This is where the real simple matters of trust come to bear on all my well intended platitudes spouted off about how much I trust God. Sure, I’ll take my whole family across the globe to serve Him, I’ll live and teach in some very rudimentary conditions, but will I serve the little ones at the end of the day. Will I serve my wife or wait for her to see my needs? Whom will I serve?

Dashan

Well, I gotta say this guys' post has been rattling around my brain for some time now. Not that I read his post a while ago, just that I have been trying to learn Chinese and what he says about Dashan (see link in the title) is so true. Chinese is an annoyingly difficult language to learn, and seeing someone, smug smile and all, spewing it out better than most mainlanders does nothing to assuage this. Top of the list of annoyances about learning Chinese is the underlying belief of Chinese people that white folk cannot really learn their language. If you do speak something to them that they understand their face lights up like you just did a magic trick. If I did that to someone learning English in Canada I would be roundly slapped in the head with a copy of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms wrapped in a bow of multiculturalism, and left to bleed out my biases on the sidewalk.
Whew, glad I got that out. Anyway, now that I feel better I should get back to finding some materials for learning this Putonghua.