Shooters

I was hanging out with a few friends the other night at a place called Shooters.  I have been hitting the late night scene doing some faith-sharing and passing out my Embrace cards.  In walks in one of my buddies, Kegan, who has been doing the same thing when he goes out, faith-sharing.  He was with a group shooting pool and throwing darts.  I think Kegan has the gifts/graces for ministry to someday plant a church.  Kegan has a heart for church-abstainers because he was once one of them until he came to faith through Alpha at Centenary UMC.  He came over to me during the course of the night and said a guy got right in his face and told him how bad he was at pool.  Kegan just looked at him and agreed in a non-confrontational way.  However, the gentleman, who was 58 years old and was not intoxicated, kept saying it over and over again.  He told Kegan he wanted to fight him and of course Kegan said no and kept saying it again.  The guy eventually walked away from him and Kegan came and told me what had happened.  About twenty minutes later the guy came up to both of us and got in my face, I mean right in my face.  He kept calling me some nasty things and at one point I thought he was going to hit me.  I told him I did not want to fight him.  I was getting really annoyed but the Holy Spirit began to tell me that there was something seriously wrong.  I started praying out loud and as I prayed Kegan started praying… I knew the guy was battling some inner demons.  I don't know a whole lot about spiritual warfare and nor do I claim to know but I knew this guy was in bondage to Satan.  As we started praying he got quiet and there was a conflict going on inside of him but once we quieted down he would start again.  I have experienced something similar to this before at a prayer meeting Embrace held in it's beginning stages at Woodland Park.  When "Hillbilly" came around bringing his ruckus before we started praying.  I knew something was wrong and I began to pray.  When I was praying he would back off and leave but as soon as I stopped and someone tried to talk with me Hillbilly would come back with his craziness.  I told Kegan that I didn't think it was a coincidence that he picked the two guys he picked to mess with out of a place filled with at least 100-125 people.

Redeeming The Time

I wasn't planning on going to New York for Christmas.  I have several reasons and my parents understood.  Needless to say I ended up coming home because my father is ill.  We believe he has Alzheimer's/dementia. He is not himself and is doing a number of unorthodox things.  My sister Joanne called me frantically and told me I needed to come home before dad forgot who I was if I would have waited months later to come home.  Her phone call is all I needed to motivate me to order my plane ticket.  I have mixed emotions seeing my dad and witnessing a strong man become angry with himself for not remembering small details.  I did not know that on my dad's side of the family there is a history of such illness.  I have soaked up a lot of time with him just sitting around and hanging out.  At times I feel like I'm humoring him when he asks the same question over and over again or is having conversations with me in the wee hours of the morning (like 4-5am) while I'm still sleeping.  All of this has been a wake up call for me in several respects.  The first is I need to cherish the time I get to spend with my dad and other family in the present.  Secondly, I need to recall the things my father has taught me in the past.  Thirdly, I must make the most of my time on this side of heaven/Christ's return.  My third revelation has been on my mind for the past few weeks.  How do I make the most of my time for the Lord by continuing to bring His Kingdom on earth? Maybe I'm over-exaggerating but what if I have 35-45 years left?  I do not want to waste my time but make every minute count.  I believe God has called me to plant Embrace and I do not know what the future holds but I know it doesn't stop at Embrace.  I was reminded of the Apostle Paul's words when he said "…make the most of every opportunity in these evil days."  The KJV translates it as "redeeming the time…" Wesley wrote a sermon, sermon 91, "On Redeeming The Time," and essentially makes the point that a Christian can redeem the time by not oversleeping.  Regardless what spin you take on Ephesians 5:16, it is clear that time is valuable and given to us by God.  We can both pray and wait for change to happen in our churches or we can rise up, pray, and make change happen.

Homecoming

Being at home always brings back memories for me that I would want to forget.  I rarely went down the straight and narrow path growing up.  The reason I don't like going home is because people do not let you change even though I have changed or better yet how Christ has changed me.  My partner in crime, Dave, who is my best friend from high school, has been there with me through thick and thin.  We often reminisce about some of our wild times and how others doubted us that we would amount to anything.  The great thing about coming home this week is that Dave and I met up.  It's really funny when we went out this afternoon, especially seeing people that knew us in high school because we are totally different people.  In Dave's case he as earned a PHD in biochemical pharmacology and is doing his post doctorate at Yale in the neurology department.  And I'm a Methodist pastor!  I have learned not to give up on anybody because a few people in my life didn't give up on me, more importantly God.  As pastor of Embrace, I'm not just looking forward to our launch service but post-launch, specifically, whom I can identify as our next church planters…it may be surprising who God raises up for such a time as this.

What A Mess

The other day I was going into my office and I wasn't dreading it because my office is Starbucks.  As I was getting out of the car a man who asked me to buy him a cup of coffee approached me.  It seemed like he had been out there trying for a while before he met me.  When I said yes it caught him off guard.  He asked me if I was kidding.  He said, "you know coffee is like $4 in there!"  I told him I didn't care and that he needed to get out of the cold.  When I was in line I could tell people were looking at us strange because they saw him outside asking for assistance earlier in the day.  After we got our coffee we sat down and talked for a while.  Mark told me about some of the difficulties he had been through in his life.  He had some questions about God that we went through and then we got down to business.  Mark was in need of some clothes so we went down to the Rock where I knew they were having "food and clothing" hours.  We went there and had a good talk on the way there and back.  In our conversations Mark kept asking me for $2.  I told him I was not going to give him any money but would buy him either food or give him a ride anywhere.  I stuck to that even though it was hard.  I could tell he was surprised that I had spent 2 hours with him out of my day.  I invited Mark to church and Friday night dinner.  After my encounter with Mark I remembered how Jesus has come into my life before I got things straightened out.  Jesus came in the messiest and nastiest parts of my life in order to restore it.  Because Jesus came into my mess he is calling me to go into the messiest parts of people's lives.

Reminder For Prayer

Friday's tend to get busy when we are planning for the evening dinner at the house.  As I was driving to Kroger to pick up some last minute fixings for Andrew's chili the Lord reminded me to pray.  Specifically he reminded me to pray for new people to come and not just new people but new people who are not in a relationship with him or maybe close to it.  We had a small crowd that evening which makes for more intimate conversation.  Aaron Renfroe brought two of his friends from school and Andrew brought a coworker who was new to Lexington.  When Andrew and I were talking about faith sharing at his work he acknowledges how it just takes time to build a rapport with people before they will listen.  Andrew told his coworker that we were starting a church and wanted to be straight up about it.  Despite having a smaller crowd we all had a great time and it was one of the better dinners we have had.  At the end of the night I remembered the prayer I prayed earlier and how the Lord answered it.

Cleaning House

Before Andrew and I moved in our house on Columbia Avenue it was a complete wreck.  Our neighbor Jimmy is also our maintanance man who is hired by our landlord, Mr. Miginis to take care of the properties.  Not only did Jimmy bring a team in to redo our kitchen, dining room, bathroom, and put a new roof on, but they also had to clean and get rid of all the trash.    This place had been vacant for about 6 months before we moved in.  The previous tenants were evicted and instead of taking the things they didn't want they just left them in the house and backyard.  No one in his or her right mind would have moved in the house based on its previous condition.  It was not only dirty but had a nasty odor as well.  We waited till everything was spick and span before we moved in.  Many times our life is nasty and dingy and instead of waiting for everything to be straightened out Jesus wants to make his way into the dirtiest parts of our life. And we see this even with his birth in a smelly, nasty feeding trough for animals.

My experience on a farm is limited but a few summers ago I hung out a few times a week on a farm and witnessed what a feed trough looked like.  I helped unload the feed into the trough and as soon as the feed hit the trough the cattle would start running toward it because they knew it was mealtime.  That summer I learned to watch my step because I didn't want to step into anything and to not get between the cattle and the feeding trough.  I was amazed that Christ was born in one of the smelliest and nastiest places, a place where animals slobbered and ate. This was not an ideal birthplace for a king, the long awaited Messiah.

A couple of weeks ago I went out with a few friends to the Pub on Nicholasville Rd. and above the bar they have a countdown to the Kentucky Equestrian games that doesn't take place till 2010 and downtown has a countdown meter as well.  The city of Lexington is spending millions of dollars getting ready for this world-renowned event in anticipation of many travelers and visitors coming.  Think about it we are spending millions of dollars for a onetime event.  And 2,000 years ago when Jesus was born there was no place for him to stay, no welcoming committee, the only place was a feeding trough for animals.

Christ not only wants to live among us, and be with us but he desires to be inside of us.  He wants to make his dwelling in our hearts if we let him.    We all have our struggles and I have said it before that we are all addicts or recovering addicts because we are all addicted to sin.  And sin takes many shapes and sizes.  We all have nasty parts in our life that are messy.  Christ desires to come in and clean house if we will let him.

Christ-Dwelling Lives

When God called me to plant Embrace it seemed like such a distant idea.  Once I responded to the call I had a logical follow up question of where was it going to be?  As my team and I started praying God led us to the Woodland Park area.  This was ironic because Jason and Tawndee Dillard already were living close by. My first choice was to live on Columbia Avenue (the street I know live on) but it didn't happen right away.  Instead I took the only place available to me off Richmond Rd., which was a one-bedroom basement apartment.  It was there that we started are Friday dinners in a crammed space with a wild puppy boxer jumping on everybody's lap!  It was in that crammed place that Embrace was born. So when we had a storm and my basement was flooded the Lord worked through another Flood and this time it was to deliver me from that little apartment to a house on Columbia Avenue in the neighborhood I felt called to be in.  Andrew took a risk on me by moving in and since we have become better friends as we have gotten to know our neighborhood.  It was one thing driving by my neighborhood before I moved in and another thing actually living there now, walking the streets, and getting to know some of the people.  My team has become involved with others by "moving into" their lives. This is no different than 2,000 years ago in the fullness of time when God sent his son Jesus Christ to live among us and to move into our neighborhoods. John 1:14 as Eugene Peterson paraphrases it says, "The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood. We saw the glory with our own eyes. the one-of-a-kind glory, like Father, like Son, Generous inside and out, true from start to finish."

If we have received Jesus into are lives we are to live incarnationally.  As we say in our mission statement at Embrace, "We are Christian faith community called together by God to live Christ-dwelling lives..."  We are simply to be Jesus to one another.  We are to move into people's neighborhoods or better yet their lives.  However this isn't always an easy task and it's sometimes messy but that's the nature of our calling as Christ-followers to be Christ-dwellers, to be Jesus to the people around us.