And We're Off!

Well, we’re off!

Tuesday was our first Young Leaders Gutsy Faith lunch discussion. It was fantastic. We’ve got a sharp group of young leaders. They are hungry for God, and they want to dig deep. I trust this next six weeks will begin taking them deeper in their journey with God.

This week we dug into the first three chapters of Gutsy Faith. The chapter synopsis are as follows:
Ch. 1 - Raising the question of what it means to have a gutsy faith.
Ch. 2 - It is never God’s desire to say no to His children. On the contrary, it is God’s desire to answer yes to our requests.
Ch. 3 - The Father always gave Jesus everything He asked for.

A couple of interesting thoughts that were brought up during our discussion:
- There was some skepticism over these two statements
*God always gave Jesus everything he asked for.
*God desires to be able to say yes to us all the time.
For the time, however, those members that were skeptical chose to put their doubts in the statements aside.
- One great statement that was made by Jennifer: “What’s so wrong with God telling us no? Why is it that we always think we have to have a yes?”
- Jesus knew God’s will all the time because He was God. Is it really possible to know God’s will all the time like Jesus did? It’s doubtful. But then near the end of His time with them, Jesus did say to His disciples that they’d be able to accomplish more than He was able to accomplish. How does that factor in?
- Some were really anxious to get to the crux of the book to begin seeing what God might have in store for them.

It was a fantastic foundation to move forward with.

In reading through Gutsy Faith, just because I wrote the book, I’m not exempting myself from going through it again myself. Some of the thought questions really challenged me.

Two in particular asked what five people during the course of my life do I consider to have a gutsy faith, and what characteristic do these people possess that I would like to see developed in my life? While I won’t identify all of the people, two people in particular that I named were my old boss, and pastor, Kerry Willis, and my dear friend, Susie Shellenberger. The one characteristic that I admire the most about these two mentors and colleagues is that despite how busy they get, they never lose track of their quiet times with God. They don’t miss a day.

I wish I could say the same always holds true for me. But the reality is that lately, I’ve been missing my quiet times too often. When I do I justified it because I’m busy, and I’m busy for the Kingdom. I have to re-face the reality that no matter how busy I am for the Kingdom, I’m not really working for the Kingdom if I haven’t had my daily connection with the Kingdom’s King. What good is a Kingdom worker if he doesn’t know what the King wants him to do? Without those quiet times I miss too much.

My question for my readers is, you’re probably every bit as busy as I am. So how do you make sure you carve out your time with the Father daily? It’s tough sometimes. How do you do it?

Join me in praying that God would help me make sure I carve out time for Him daily. And please pray that during those times, and especially over this next six weeks with this group, that God would open my eyes to what His next job is for me to tackle for the Kingdom.

If you’re interested in reading what some of our group has to say about this study, I’ve listed their blogs in the right-hand column. Many of them are on Myspace.com. If you’re not a member of it you will likely not be able to read those blogs. But since membership is free, do yourself a favor and get up an account. It’s worth it alone just to read what some of these brilliant young leaders have to say.

Grace and peace!

-jeff

Christian Cr*p!

Last week I had the opportunity to represent my company, Barefoot
Ministries, in Denver at the International Christian Retailers Show.
This is the conference where Christian bookstores come to look at the
new productions that are available to sell in their stores. While at
the conference, I knew I’d be rubbing shoulders with those in
the Christian gift industry as well. Christian bookstores, as you know,
have moved more into the Christian gift areas and away from the books.
But I was a little surprised, almost stunned, at some of the products
available that were marked as “Christian.”


For example: This booth was “Jesus Jewelry.” Their slogan was “Spreading the gospel one piece of jewelry at a time.” Sorry, but maybe I missed the day that sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ became dependant on wearing the right materialistic piece of jewelry.


Then there was the shoot-‘em-up video game based on the popular Left Behind book series. That’s right, in this
“Christian” video game it appears you choose your side and go kill a lot of people. Yep, no longer does the gospel mean take up your cross and follow Jesus. Now it means take up your electronic machine gun and blow the enemy’s brains out.


How about a little Christian Piracy? Yep, these sea worthy individuals not only were convinced that putting a Ichthus fish on the pirate hat of their mascot, and a Bible in his other hand somehow offset the fact that he was holding a deadly cutlass in his left hand and tossing you an insulting command. The skull and crossed sword Jolly Roger symbol (seen in the background) with the Ichthus bandana on its head was just disturbing. Somehow, I think these people just missed the fact that the words “Christian” and “Pirate” are almost polar opposites in their meaning.

Let’s not forget the “My Loving Jesus” doll. This smiling, stuffed version of Jesus comes complete with nail pierced hands. The scroll was a nice, authentic period touch. Everyone knows a Rabbi wasn’t worth his weight in gold if he didn’t have his own scroll to beat his disciples over the head with. This item was just ridiculous.

And these were only four of my favorite heretical items at the show. There was lots more where that all came from. Sorry for being such a cynic, but these kinds of things just get under my skin. These are the kinds of products that really send bad messages of what Christianity is about. In these four examples alone the companies they represent send a message that Christianity is about materialism, deadly violence, pillaging, while at the same time boiling the Savior down to a cute stuffed doll that little Jane can have a backyard tea party with.

What’s even more sad is some of this stuff will sell, and sell big. No wonder people have a hard time taking Christianity seriously. Too many mixed messages being sent out there.

Don’t get me wrong, though. Not everything at the show was bad. In fact, there some items there that really encouraged me. Some of the books the publishers are releasing this year were truly exciting. Can’t wait to devour them. There were some really cool kid products coming out for kids from publishers such as Zondervan that I really think are going to be winners. Unfortunately, I fear these great things will be dimmed by the eclipsing power of the truly ridiculous and wrong.

Gutsy Faith Small Group

Many of you know that my book, Gutsy Faith: Hard Conversations With God is pretty much done, printed, and is awaiting the release date which now has been bumped up to July 17 rather than August 30 as had previously been set. Yeah! It's been a long time coming.

It's exciting and frightening all at the same time. Especially in light of one opportunity I'll have starting July 18. I've been given the chance to lead a small group of 15 young leaders from the Kansas City area through Gutsy Faith over a six-week period. Each of these young leaders come from a range of work experience: accountants, artists, musicians, programmers, marketers, sales persons, editors, event coordinators... It should be interesting. It's one thing to lead a small group, but to lead a small group based on your own book is a little bit of a frightening prospect. It means my readers actually get the chance to dig into my brain, to put me on the spot, and to see if I actually live and believe what I wrote.

What makes this small group equally interesting is I've asked each of the young leaders to put their lives on display throughout the six weeks. We want to involve as many of you in our discussion and growth during this time as we can. To that end each of our young leaders will weekly be blogging their own perspective of our discussions and what they learn. What's frightening is we aren't putting any constraints on them and what they want to say. There's no holds barred. A "gutsy" experiment, if you will (sorry, couldn't resist the pun--groan if you must).

I will be no exception to the rule. I might have written the book, but I'll be reading through it again and putting my thoughts and questions out to you as well via this blog. I invite you to join me and our group for this six-week journey.

I will be posting links to all of the group's blogs within a week, as well as photos (I hope) and quick bios. So make sure you check back.

The Existence of the Evil One

I just love the wisdom of one of the ladies I co-lead our young adult Bible study with. Almost every week—after we’ve discussed each subject, gone around and around, sometimes drawing conclusions, sometimes not—inevitably, Marsha will make a very down-to-earth point that really pulls it all together. She’s one of the wisest ladies I know, and I respect her deeply.

Today, we discussed the idea that our great and loving God, whom we would never ascribe evil to, historically has acted in ways that seem to contradict his compassionate and forgiving nature. When we read the Old Testament specifically, there does seem to be a true dichotomy between that and the benevolent, Salvation-oriented manner in which He conducts Himself in the New Testament. We discussed the idea that until the Israelites were in captivity to Babylon, the Israelites had no word for, nor idea of Satan. Hence, inevitably they attributed calamity and misfortune to God in the same breath that they attributed compassion, grace, and Salvation.

We went back and forth on the issues, discussing both sides of the coin, so to speak. Then Marsha spoke up and said something to the effect of [and I’m paraphrasing what she said], “It really bothers me when people make the comment that ‘God caused this to happen.’ Humanity is so quick to blame God when most of what they face on a daily basis is a consequence of their own personal choices. There’s a lack of personal responsibility that our society refuses to recognize. If we did so, we would quickly start making wiser decisions and listening to the voice of the Holy Spirit in our lives moment by moment.”

Marsha, I couldn’t have said it better myself. You are a brilliant woman. You have a knack for boiling things down to the very core of the problem and just saying it. God has gifted you that way.

In many ways, our society is quickly becoming much like that of the ancient Hebrews, aren’t we? We almost refuse to recognize the work of Satan in our world. While we recognize mentally that there may by an evil one at work, there are times it seems that we just don’t really buy it. The charismatic movement has long appreciated the work of Satan in the world, yet those of us of more conservative movements almost shun the charismatics as being “too out there to be normal.” Shame on us. Because of our self-imposed blindness, we almost have forgotten that Satan exists. Instead, our society has turned to pointing the finger at God when bad things happen.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not advocating calling everything that goes bad the work of the enemy and demons. A flat tire, for example, can easily be the fault of improper care, poor inflation, and lack of rotation of one’s wheels on the car (again with the personal responsibility issue). However, I am curious how our society’s view of God might change if we truly recognized that Satan exists.

What say you?