isaiah’s ruin

I have a special place in my heart for Isaiah. When Greg Stier, president and founder of Dare2Share ministries told me and three thousand other people about Isaiah’s radical encounter with God in chapter 6, it won me to Christ. So I come back to this narrative all the time to remind myself “I’m ruined for Christ.”

But as I was reading it today something else occurred to me. Before now, I have always read Isaiah 6 as the prophet’s FIRST encounter with the living Spirit of God but that can’t be true. In ancient Israel, a prophet did not speak, he did not get up and address the crowd saying “thus saith the LORD thy God” without being anointed and already having an encounter. You see, according to the Law, a prophet MUST be tested and every prophecy weighed. If it is found lacking then the person who claims to have heard from the Lord is in all kinds of trouble. Which means no prophet would speak out unless he or she actually heard from the Lord and had at least some kind of encounter with him.

The Reason For the Hope I Have

My mentor, my pastor, and my good friend challenged me this week with two pieces of scripture.  Though whether he meant to challenge me or not is still in question, but he did it either way.  The first challenge was to hear God’s heart for the city we live in. My words from yesterday don’t answer that challenge, but they are a step on the journey.  The second challenge comes from 1 Peter 3:15 “And always be prepared to answer for the hope you have.”

Honestly I’m a little sad to live in the world in this season.  It seems like every time I turn around something horrible is going on.  The stock market is plummeting, unemployment is rocketing, poverty is rampant, all creation itself seems to lash out at humanity in violent rages.  Then, when you have Christians sharing the love of Christ, when you have men like Dan King, Andrew Marin, and Rob Morris building bridges and healing hearts, all you hear about are Fred Phelps and Pat Robertson (who I will NOT link to).  You hear about Christians prophesying the end of the world and how the deaths of hundreds of thousands if not millions are the result of a wrathful God.

And it makes me wonder how I can have a hope for anything beyond my little corner of the world.

“But I know the plans I have for you….plans to prosper and not to harm you, to give you a hope and a future.”

“Put your hope in God who richly provides”

“For in this hope we were saved”

It isn’t the hope of future salvation either.  It isn’t the hope that maybe someday, God will decide to make things better or the hope that Jesus is coming back some glorious day in the nebulous future.

It is the hope that comes from “Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all we can ask or think.”  It is the hope that comes from serving a faithful God who will not leave us or forsake us.  It is the hope that comes from knowing that we have been saved for such a time as this.

The hope that comes from knowing Jesus is better than we can imagine, is bigger than we could ever pray for, and more wonderful than we can ever explain.

 

Ostrich Defense!

I don’t watch TV.   I make a point of not listening to the news.  I tend to get my news from my twitterfeed and facebook and even then I RARELY get much info on the tragic events going on around the world.

I do this because I hate seeing people in pain.  Maybe it’s a tender heart, maybe it’s compassion but I personally hurt when I watch the news.

“Tonight a massive earthquake rocked the Indian Ocean and unleashed a tsunami on Bangladesh-”

“…a vicious double homicide in a suburban home.”

“…outrage over suicide bombings…”

“…as the death toll continues to rise…”

“…unprovoked attack on civilians…”

“…twelve year old girl found raped and murdered…”

Christian Identity

Confession: I live in a world of works.  No matter what else I may say or do, I can look at my actions of the past…well go back to the first post in this blog and from then until now, I can say that I have been living a works based faith.

Pine Ridge 2010 Video

Video Summary of some of the work we did while on Mission to Pine Ridge Reservation.