Archive for April 12th, 2008

12
Apr

ahhhh…..!

By Chris 1 Comment
Categories: Faith

My daughter is 10 months (11 months if you ask Summer) and at the age when your child starts saying “NO” (or in Tatum cause Ahhhh) and it just makes you laugh.  I say no and she grunts back.  She knows what not to touch and does it assessing my response.  She gets mad at me. It’s hilarious.

It’s funny because it reminds me how I respond to God.  I don’t fully understand how He operates.  I was taught to submit to God (which I agree) but submitting does not mean accepting.  What I mean by accepting is not complaining.  I believe one can submit and still get angry.  Look at the world around us – poverty, pain, disease, injustice.  After college I had similar questions from unbelievers and had no answers (hard for a recent bible college graduate).  I read a book called “When God Doesn’t Make Sense” by James Dobson.  The book didn’t help me – but I’m sure it’s helped others.

I think one of the stories of scripture help me the most (1 Chr 13.5-13).  David has been crown king and desires to bring the ark of God back to Israel.  So they go to Judah, put the ark of God on a new ox cart, rejoiced before God with all their might on the journey home.  All is well until the oxen stumble and Uzzah put out his hand to brace the ark.  The most important symbol of God to Israel is about to role over into the mud, who wouldn’t reach out and hold the ark?  The alternative was to hold the ark as you washed it off and listen to your buddies make fun of you.  So God in His anger killed Uzzah.

So how does David respond?  Angry!  David was angry because the Lord had lashed out at Uzzah.  Then he became afraid of God to the point he decided not to return the ark to the city of David but took it to the house of Obed-edom.

There are a lot of lessons here.  You could teach about faith in God to prevent the ark from meeting the mud.  You could talk about not taking God lightly and how Uzzah’s death leads to a higher respect for God and the ark (2 Sam 6.9-13).  You could teach how blessing comes from sorrow (1Chr 13.14).  But the greatest lesson for me was that we can get angry at God.  We can stomp our feet, raise our fist in the air in protest, and God is big enough to handle it.  But this anger of ours shouldn’t lead us away from Him but toward a deeper respect for Him.  It causes you to say “God, I don’t agree with what you did, but accept your sovereignty over everything.”

How do you submit to God when He doesn’t make sense?

12
Apr

What’s Inside You?

By Chris 0 Comments
Categories: Faith

When I was in college I felt God clearly call me into church planting.  There was no second guessing, no “Did I miss God?”  I actually never saw myself as an entrepreneur type before being called.  This was before it was cool to plant churches.  So with single purpose and obedience I mapped out my pursuit of planting.

After three churches and eight years of support planting (bi-vocational staff pastor) we feel God calling us to lead plant a church.  Wisely many organizations have assessments, test, interviews, etc to determine if you got the stuff.  Do you have the church planter in you?  All these test and questions make me wonder if men in the Bible would have made the cut?

Moses (Ex.3) wasn’t a church planter – but he was a leader.  Often I feel like Moses.  I often pray God here I am please use me (3.4).  I hear the calling to go (3.10).  But when God gives a clear “go start this church” I question myself (3.11), ask for signs (3.12), want to know what to say (3.13), think of others objections and responses (4.1), make excuses for my gifts (4.10), and wonder if someone else should be doing this (4.13).  It’s very comical.  But Moses had something inside him.

The list is long, the characters different, but the stories the same.  Noah, Abraham, Jacob, Gideon, Samuel, David, Elisha, Daniel, Peter, Paul – all questioned themselves when God called on them.  However, each in spite of everything obeyed and went. Why – because there was something inside them. Something others couldn’t see but God did. 

What do you think God saw and others didn’t?