A Ramble About The God of The Impossible

God does nothing small. Not when He sets out to glorify Himself, make Himself known, or set His seal on something. He makes it absolutely certain that it is Him, only Him, and that it is impossible for anyone else. I realized this today. My prayers went unanswered, not because they were too big, or because the general outcome wasn't what God wanted, but because my thinking and my prayers were too limited in scope.

My family's RV was towed back to an auto shop yesterday for the mechanics to begin work on it after we broke down in Kingman over two weeks ago. For the last two weeks, God has provided for us, and opened doors for us that we hadn't even realized existed when we set out two weeks ago. We set out to get training, experience, ideas, and advice for the disabled children's ranch we had dreamed of starting. God let us know it was time to get to work on it, and so by faith we followed where He led. After we broke down and were given what seemed to be horrible news on the state of our RV's engine, He led us to Kingman Christian Church (KCC), where we met some amazing, godly people.

We met people such as Pastor Brian Van Dyke, who very obviously lives what he preaches, and who allowed us to park our non-functional RV in the church parking lot and provided power and water hookups, and even a sewer drain for our waste-water tanks. We met people like Dotty and Bruce Bollinger who themselves run a tiny, four acre ranch and run a ministry teaching disabled kids to ride horses on nothing but Bruce's full time job and God's grace. The Bollingers brought us out to their ranch where we helped out with chores, and they let us do our laundry, and the kids were able to do a little riding. We also met people like Lottie and Anna, who own and run the H.A.L.T. animal rescue on nothing but faith and individual donations, and the volunteers who regularly help out there, through whom God provided by their allowing us to borrow their vehicles not knowing that we would need a separate vehicle until after they let us borrow them on two separate occasions. And through all of these encounters God helped us really begin to nail down the plan and logistics of the ministry we have set out to begin.

And now, it is time for us to be moving on in our journey, but to do this we must first repair the RV. After being told the engine block itself would need to be replaced at the first auto shop, we were towed to KCC. After that, we were told by four separate mechanics that it was the head gaskets, and the engine block was probably fine.

Today, after the mechanic was able to pull the heads off he showed me the reality of the situation, which the first mechanics hadn't done. There were scratches inside the block from where the O-rings had broken. He also showed me where two of the pistons had begun to melt.

I had been praying all of yesterday, and all of this morning that the repairs would be a lot less expensive than we were quoted (originally $8000, then $1500) because we only had a little over $700. I had been praying that God would make the situation manageable for my meager resources. God said no. It was in fact the engine block that would need to be replaced.

Then God did something else, the owner of the shop did a full estimate on sourcing a used engine block, and all of the work needed to get us back on the road. He found a block ready to go, and gave me the new estimate, $3500. Much less than the original, but still way beyond my means. After admitting this to the owner, Rigo Torres, he said, “Well, how much do you have right now?” I told him. He then said, “How much of a deposit can you put down?” After doing some quick and optimistic figuring on how much we would need for food and living expenses in the RV, I said “$600.” He then told me to go ahead come down to the office, fill out some paperwork, put down the $600 and they would get started on the work, and we could get him the rest of it as we got it in. He said, “We need to get you guys back on the road. That's my priority right now.”

God doesn't do prayers when they're focused on my meager abilities. “God, please make this mountain smaller so I can move it myself. Pretty please?” God doesn't do that. He is the One who moves mountains, minds, and hearts. Not me. He is God Almighty, All-Sovereign, and omnipotent through whom the entire created multiverse exists, moves, and has its being. When He acts, it is not to bring things down to my level, but to make it clear in no uncertain terms that He is the one acting, and He is the only One who is able to do it.

As my wife and I sat down to actually start drawing out plans for our mission, I also am coming to realize that either God brings it about, or it doesn't happen. What we are envisioning is huge. Almost a small town on eighty-one acres. And as I relate it back our broken down RV, either God is behind us and behind our mission, or He isn't. If we can't trust Him for something as small as $3500 (and I've seen Him do twice that in a single day, long story), then there's no way the mission will be built. Either He's behind us and we move on from here, or He's not, and we're stopped right here in our tracks. But there's no middle ground. There's no compromise. There's no, “bring this down to my level so I can do it myself.” There's only, “I AM God Almighty, walk before Me in fear and trembling. I AM and there is none like Me. I work, and who can reverse it? I move mountains. I calm the seas. I do this so you and everyone will see My wonders and know that I AM, and that I AM the one who moves you.”

I paid the $600 deposit. $2900 to go. At this point, all I can do is stand back, let people know what's happening, and wait to see God's wonders.

A Ramble About Winning and Losing

Some time ago I bought and watched the movie Facing the Giants with my family. It's one of those faith based, “Christian” movies along the same lines as Fireproof and Courageous. Truth is, it wouldn't have been my first choice among movies because it's a movie about football and a high school football team, and I'm not really a football (or most sports for that matter) kind of guy. The movie itself is about a football coach at a Christian High School whose life, at the beginning of the movie, seems to be stuck. His house needs repair. His car needs to be put out of his misery. He and his wife are struggling to conceive children. And he's in danger of losing his job because the school's football team has lost too many games. He then makes a change in his life deciding to follow the Lord regardless of what God gives him, and he reinvigorates his football team by using football as a means of discipleship.

In the last couple of days, one line from this movie has been standing out to me, “If we win, we praise Him. If we lose, we praise Him.” The coach told his team this after they had lost the game which would have led them to the playoffs after a remarkable winning streak. He wanted his life's focus, and the focus of the players on his team to be Jesus Christ, and not whether or not they won a football game. In the movie, as he's back at the school disappointed and cleaning things up for the rest of the season, he gets a phone call that the other team cheated and therefore forfeited their win, and his team goes to the playoffs, and ultimately wins the state championships.

My family and I left Bullhead City this past Monday morning in our RV, we did so believing that this was what God was calling us to do. We had given our truck to my sister because we couldn't take it with us. We knew the transmission problems on it would prevent it from doing any more traveling than around town errands. The Lord provided for us to repair the transmission on the RV so that it could be moved. And so we set out towards Mesa, AZ to begin our instruction and experience at a kids' home as the first part of a larger journey to prepare for setting up and running the mission for disabled kids that my wife and I had been praying about and planning for years.

We plan; God laughs. I saw this recently on Facebook and Morgan Freeman's character of God from Evan Almighty immediately came into my mind as he laughed hysterically at the title character's insistence that God's will for him was not a part of his plans.

About fifteen or twenty miles out of Bullhead City, in Golden Valley, our RV broke down. Specifically, it overheated on the eleven mile grade just out of Bullhead. Twice. The first time I shut it down and let it sit to cool down, and I thought we could make it a little farther. The second time, five miles or so later, it began losing power and died altogether as I pulled it to the side of the road. Steam was pouring from various places on the engine where even I (as automotively challenged as I am) knew steam should not be coming from. The coolant was boiling in the overflow container, and I learned an hour or two later when I was able to remove the radiator cap that there was no coolant left in the radiator or possibly the engine.

So, after two hours of letting it cool and attempting to start it again (to no avail), I begin walking to the nearest places I could find to see what can be done and to try to find some way to do it. After about two and a half miles of walking, the Lord brought along my path a generous gentleman and his wife who saw our need and went to bat for us giving me a ride and making phone calls to mechanics and tow trucks. His wife graciously brought my wife and kids to their home while her husband and I waited with the RV (and all ten animals in the RV) for the tow truck. The RV was then towed to Kingman, AZ where the mechanics there could look at it and see if there was any hope for it. The shop where it was towed to graciously allowed us to stay in the RV on their premises and even offered an electrical hook-up and water for our water tank while they diagnosed it. The new friends who had been so gracious to us continued to offer their assistance in helping us to go and get food for the time being.

Well, this morning we got the news that we really had been hoping to not hear. Our engine is fried and it will cost an exorbitant amount to replace it, more than our resources will allow. Fixing it is no longer an option. Right now we are sitting in the shop's lot trying to determine where we are to go and what we are to do next.

Golden Valley is one of the places which we have been looking at as far as starting the mission home. And the Lord has made His presence and His care for us very apparent in the generosity of total strangers. “If we win, we praise Him; and if we lose, we praise Him.”

For whatever reason, God decided we needed to stop in a big way and be towed to where we're at now in Kingman, AZ. When we set out, we thought we knew where we would be going at first. God had other plans. Right now we're calling around to see if there's an RV park or campground which will take us for the time being (yes, we will have to tow it there).

Following the will of God sometimes means going in the direction He points, not necessarily reaching the destination you think you're heading to when you think you're supposed to get there. We don't know why we're here for the moment, but God is still showing His faithfulness regardless.

A Ramble About Burying a Bomber

I was in the ER waiting room of a hospital when I saw the news on the Boston Marathon Bombing. We were there to get Aidan's hospital bills from his illness straightened out. The scenes were horrific, and resembled something out of a combat zone. What followed in the manhunt for the suspects added to the wartime resemblance as every law enforcement officer in the Northeast from every jurisdiction flooded into the Boston area in order to search for the two men they determined were responsible.

The two suspects were two brothers, one older one younger, both claiming to be Muslim. In the course of the manhunt, the older one, believed to be the mastermind behind it, died from gunshot wounds. The younger one eventually surrendered after he was found hiding in someone's boat, and was hospitalized from his own gunshot wounds. The younger one was arraigned by a judge in his hospital room. The older one lay in a mortuary waiting to be buried.

In all, as I understand it, eight people died from the bombings, and hundreds were wounded. Many lost their legs and will require prosthetics. Many, many lives were shattered, or at the very least disrupted by these events. More than this, these bombings shattered the feeling of security which this nation recently began to get back after the attacks of September 11^th, 2001. The injuries and deaths from the bombings were bad enough. The injury to the national psyche that another Muslim terrorist could successfully attack a target in the United States is what truly traumatized us. It did not matter that one of the bombers is a U.S. citizen. It did not matter that they both grew up in this country and considered it home. It was still an act of “Muslim terrorism,” and that was enough.

So, when the time came for the eldest to be buried according to Muslim custom (because Muslims don't cremate their dead), it was no wonder that there wasn't a cemetary in Massachusetts that would consent to take his body. There was no one more disgraced and disgusted by his actions than his family, but it was his family who was given the duty to properly care for his remains whether they wanted to or not. In their anger, and hurt, the refusal to allow him to be buried struck out and hurt, not the dead bomber, but his family who had nothing to do with it and had condemned his actions.

Finally, within the last couple of days, a Christian lady led an interfaith movement to find a cemetery which would inter his remains. After calling around, they finally found a Muslim cemetery in Virginia who graciously allowed him to be buried there.

I applaud this Christian lady, though I don't remember her name from the news articles. This is putting into practice what Jesus taught, “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who persecute you, and pray for those who abuse you and mistrust you.” And also, “Forgive, and you will be forgiven.”

There are many who don't see it that way. They consider what the bomber did as so horrible as to be unforgivable, even after he already died for it. What disturbs me most is the number of professing Christians who are refusing to follow what Jesus taught in this matter.

Refusing to forgive is the same as saying, “I'm not nearly as bad of a sinner as you are.” It's a deliberate forgetfulness of the fact that there lies the capacity within each one of us, given the right triggers, to do the same thing or worse. Our sin disorder manifests itself in different ways with different people. Some ways are considered more acceptable than others, but that doesn't make them any less a symptom or effect of that disorder. Pushed the wrong way too far, I know that there lies within me the capacity for greater evil than what happened in Boston. It's not pleasant to be honest about or to admit, but it is true.

This is the reason why we are all in need of God's mercy through Jesus Christ. If we are to say that this man deserves no mercy, then we must also declare the same for ourselves, because we are afflicted with the same disorder which drove him to kill, maim, and destroy. God shows mercy because we do not deserve it, and He teaches us and expects us to do the same. Just because someone else doesn't follow what Jesus taught doesn't then permit us who profess to follow Him to ignore Him. Loving our enemies and those who hurt us is where the rubber meets the road in following the path of Jesus Christ. Forgiving and beginning the healing process for all involved is not optional for those who profess Christ. It is commanded by Him.

Horrific damage has already been done. It is now time to heal and rebuild. Continuing the cycle of anger and vengeance will only perpetuate more hurt and damage to everyone and will prove to the world that those who profess to follow Christ are themselves hypocrites. It will give the world even more of a reason to look elsewhere for the Truth which should be right in front of them by way of Him through us.

A Ramble About Dieting

A few years ago, my family and I went on a gluten free, soy free, dairy free, corn free diet. After years of mystery seizures, stomach pains, and other illnesses, we discovered through various means that my wife in particular, but also my kids as well (and to a more limited extent myself), had food intolerances ad allergies that weren't being caught, and were causing all the health problems we had been having.

The first time we tried it, the food restrictions seemed so severe I thought I would starve to death. We would go to the grocery store and everything on the shelves seemed like it was off limits. The problem was that, while we knew what we couldn't eat, we didn't really know everything we could eat. and so we were eating mostly salads, rice, and a few other things that we knew wouldn't cause any reactions. But my job at the time required a lot of heavy lifting, and such a high calorie diet that what we were eating just wasn't providing. So, I started bringing some of the “forbidden” foods back into our diet thinking that this was all just too difficult, and didn't really need to be done anyway. After all, the “doctor” who first warned us about it was just a new-age quack right?

About a month or two after we started working those foods back in, we started getting sick. I came down with a bad lung infection that refused to go away for weeks. It got so bad that I was forced to resign from my job because I couldn't do the heavy physical labor any more. A few weeks after that, Heidi lost her ability to stand up or do anything for more than a few minutes a day. For weeks, all she could do was lay in bed and look at the ceiling. I took her to doctors and they had no idea what was causing it. After a couple of weeks of being unable to stand much less go to work, Heidi had to resign from her job as well because she couldn't return.

About six months later we were able to make the connection between what we were eating and Heidi's condition and the illnesses. Once we eliminated everything from our kitchen that contained something we couldn't have, everyone's health started improving. Fast forward a few years, and my wife is almost back to where she was, and the kids' and my chronic illnesses have all but disappeared. We know for certain when one of us has eaten something which contains either gluten, or corn, or dairy because that person immediately begins to react to it in some way. It really can't be hidden.

Looking back, when we first started the diet, it seemed completely impossible to do in this society. I mean, how do you eliminated corn or gluten when they put them in nearly everything you buy at the store. Further, what about all those foods like pizzas, and twinkies, and candy bars? What do you mean I can't have them? But now, after doing it for several years, when we go to the store it's second nature to almost not see all the foods we can't eat for fear of getting sick. The temptation is there still on occasion, but I also know what the cost will be of indulging and I know now it's a cost which we're no longer willing to pay.

When we tell others about our diet, people look at us as though we're from another planet, or act as though there's nothing at all we can eat. But the truth is that it's actually a lot easier than people think once you've been conditioned to do it. It becomes almost automatic.

Jesus said “Remain in Me, and I in you.” Someone once said this is the easiest command that Jesus gave to understand, and nearly impossible to carry out. I was thinking about this recently in the context of the diet we've been forced onto, and the truth is that they're really not that different in practice. Like the diet, in order to remain “spiritually healthy” we must remain in Christ. This involves at the very least directing our love and attention towards Him at all times. As St. Paul said, “pray without ceasing.” There are ways and practices of prayer and devotion that assist in this to make it easier or at least possible, but it requires a whole change of lifestyle and way of looking at things. At first it will seem impossible because you don't really know how to make it work. But as you stick with it, you begin to find new ways of doing things; new ways to spend your time, new ways of responding to temptations and thoughts that appear in your mind. And as you begin to become conditioned to the new way of living, the old way of living, while still a temptation, become less and less of one until you realize one day that remaining in Christ is far from impossible and something that you can't do without.

Jesus was explicit in what the effects of not remaining in Him were, “If anyone doesn't remain in Me, he dries up and is cast out as a branch. And they gather them up and they are burned.” In other words, like going off our diet, you will get very sick spiritually, and you will eventually die from it. This is the reason why so many churches, and so many Christians in so many churches seem powerless and ineffective. This is the reason why demonstrations of God's power within the churches seem so rare. They aren't remaining in Him. They aren't staying with the diet and lifestyle He told them to.

The problem with the churches today isn't that the Gospel doesn't work, or that it needs to be tweaked. It's that Christians need to believe and obey it. Diets don't work unless you follow them.

A Ramble About Thriving

Recently, I have been reading through Acts in the Greek, and one thing that has stood out to me about the Apostolic community in the earliest of days is how very different of a picture it presented from the churches today. Those who had walked with Jesus and been discipled by Him, after He ascended, renounced their own claim to possession of anything and held everything owned by any one of them as belonging to everyone. Think about that for just a few minutes. Often, we read through these passages quickly and never really stop to think about it. Those immediately taught by Christ Jesus renounced their own possession of anything, and they did it almost immediately. Those taught and discipled by the twelve Apostles followed suit. It also says that everyone within the community who owned any land sold it, and gave the money from the sale to the apostles to distribute to anyone within the community who needed it so that no one who was a part of that community went without the necessities of life. They didn't need to do this. They weren't asked to do it. They did it as a response to the teaching and discipleship of Jesus Christ Himself. They risked, and even embraced, total poverty in order to give so that others might not go without, with no thought for their own needs, devoting themselves to prayer and the Sacraments. This church community, operating in this way, grew from a hundred and twenty members to many thousands within months.

The same kind of thing can be seen in the lives of the Saints as well. St. Francis of Assisi's adoption of total poverty is well known, and any time St. Ignatius of Loyola was given something or earned something to meet his needs, he used only what he needed and then gave away the rest to those just as poor as he was. Evagrios the Solitary, one of the Fathers of the Philokalia writing around the fourth century, wrote about being careful to guard yourself against possessions or the desire to acquire things, considering even the desire to acquire money or possessions so that you could be hospitable and help people a serious temptation by the enemy. He believed it was the edge of a cliff or a tightrope that if you walked it, you could very easily fall off and find yourself immersed in avarice masquerading as good intentions. The Scripture itself says that avarice is the root of all kinds of evil.

But these kinds of stories aren't told much in the churches today. They're glossed over, or ignored outright. And if they are told, they're considered “congregation reduction sermons,” because Christians in the churches don't want to hear them. These kinds of stories, and this kind of teaching demand a response from us that is very different from an accepted middle class lifestyle. Many pastors do not want to go there, regardless of what Jesus and His Apostles taught, and the response they were given by those who listened to them.

Often within churches, it is expected that “once you get your life right with Christ” that everything should begin to fall into place for you socially and financially. You should be able to clean yourself up, find a good job that you will work hard at, and eventually begin to bring in a middle class income. And when this doesn't happen, people within the church then begin to question your faith or commitment to Christ. This kind of thinking is found more within the prosperity gospel type of churches, but it occasionally creeps, almost subconsciously, into the thinking of those congregations and churches that refuse to be associated with them.

In the Scriptures, a rich young ruler approached Jesus at one time and asked Him what he could do to gain eternal life. Jesus told him, “you know the commandments, don't kill, don't steal, etc.” The young man said, “I've done all of these since I was a kid.” Jesus then told him, “The last thing you need to do is to sell everything you own, give the money to the poor, and then come and follow Me.” The Scriptures then say that the young man went away sad because he was very rich, and Jesus begins lamenting on how difficult it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.

When Jesus told the parable of the sower, He talked about the seed that fell in among weeds. When the seed sprouted, the weeds grew up with the wheat, and eventually choked it to the point that it couldn't produce any grain because the weeds sucked all of the nourishment away from the plant and it was just trying to stay alive, much less produce any grain. He explicitly said this was the person who received the Gospel gladly, but the worries, riches, and possessions of this life crowded in and kept the person from producing any mature, usable spiritual fruit (unripened grain isn't usable for anything). He and those who have closely followed Him throughout history have warned time and again about the dangerous effect attachments to the things of this life like money and possessions have on our relationship with Christ Jesus and maturation in Him. They considered them so dangerous and so obstructive to our growth in Christ that they renounced them completely, got rid of what they had as soon as possible, and encouraged others to do the same. They treated money and possessions as toxic tools that were to be used and then disposed of as quickly as possible.

Today, most church members, like everyone else, just want to make enough money to be comfortable and have all of their needs and most of their wants met. They certainly don't want to live at or below the poverty line, even if they don't necessarily consider themselves to be, or want to be “rich”. Most probably feel like they still don't make enough money to consider themselves comfortable much less rich. The idea of voluntarily giving away everything and living in total poverty is abhorrent and deviant. Today also, most churches have their memberships in decline. Some are in quite steep decline, and many are closed or in bankruptcy. Consider that for a moment.

Consider also that the Church immediately following the ascension followed what Jesus taught them in both letter and Spirit and they grew by thousands within months. Within decades, Christian communities spanned the Near East, North Africa, and Europe. What was different between them and us? They got rid of their own weeds and stuck like glue to Jesus Christ, treating the Gospel as Gospel. Jesus Christ flowed through them because of it. The world took notice.

The reason why churches today are struggling or in decline is because they've chosen to shy away from the Gospel that Jesus taught in both word and action. In the ancient Church, the belief and practice of the Church was easily differentiated from everyone else. Today, people on the outside who observe the churches haven't any idea why they should bother with them because there's obviously nothing different between the churches and themselves. In the ancient Church, the charismata, the powers imbued by Grace, were flourishing because those followers of Christ stuck like glue to Him, and the power which they displayed was an indisputable proof of the validity of what they taught and practiced. Today, because of the weeds that are allowed to flourish, true charismata are rare, and all that most see are pale imitations and easily discerned charlatanism.

The question then arises, what do we do now? How do we, in this day and society, respond to this? The truth is that their society wasn't as different from ours as we like to think. Their society also had rules and regulations which had to be followed. They also had taxes, fees, and fines to pay. They also had authorities who had to be obeyed as much as they could be. Poverty then was looked down upon just as much as it is now and the poor could be treated far worse then than now. The truth is that what Jesus and His Apostles taught is just as applicable today as it was then, and the lives which they led were just as radical then as they would be considered today.

It doesn't mean that they didn't work. It doesn't mean that they didn't have jobs. It doesn't even mean that they didn't have families. And the truth is that there are still monastic communities today that order their lives according to these same principles where they will often either have jobs within the community or outside employment. They work in their outside employment and then donate their paychecks to the community to supply everyone's needs. Their time is split between work and devotion to prayer, fasting, and charity in a very similar way to the Apostolic Church.

The churches today tend to look more and more towards worldly models of successful business organizations and structures. Pastors tend more and more to emulate motivational speakers. More and more the ancient structures of the Church are ignored in favor of something new and fresh. All the while the churches are stagnating and weeds are growing up and choking the life out of their members. If the Church is to thrive, it must do so, not looking for something innovative and new, but it can only thrive by following the practices and manner of life with which it began. The Church can only thrive when it looks to Jesus Christ, allows Him to flow through it, and removes the weeds and obstructions which keep its fruit from maturing.