The Art of Illustration aka. Why I'm Crazy...

So, in case you may not have realized yet, God is pretty much crazy.

That's not a flippant comment about the Lord of...well, everything. 

God does, and asks His people to do, things that are crazy.

Let's talk about Hosea... Hosea's whole life is just God saying, you are one giant sermon illustration. (Isn't that what we all want from our lives...) Marry a prostitute, that way people will see that your God cares for you even when you are whoring yourselves out to this world.

Name your kids; Jezereel, because the Jehu family is going to be destroyed. Lo-Ruhamah, because I'm done, I have no more mercy, no more love for this people. Lo-Ammi, because they are no longer my people.

Great... 

Then Paul comes along and sees Jesus, in everything. Why was Hosea told to do these crazy things? Because Jesus was going to show love and mercy to the unloved. Because Jesus was coming to make it possible that those who weren't a people might become the people of God. 

Paul says, that God acted through the person of Jesus to completely redefine what it meant to be the people of God. Now everyone is welcomed into a new kingdom, one where we can all be called the people of God.

Great!

But the medium is the message, and the medium that God chooses to give us this gift is crazy... Welcome to the cross. Welcome to foolishness. Welcome to a world that no longer makes sense. Welcome to childhood.

Remember when you were a kid and everything made sense. But at the same time, nothing made sense.

All the time we were asking the question, why?

We asked because it seemed our parents were completely insane. They were always telling us to do or not do things that seemed strange to us. So we asked, and the best reason they could come up with, the trump card for why, was, "because I said so." Maybe its just me, but that doesn't actually make sense.

I want better reasons than that for why I do things. I want to know what I'm getting into with what I'm doing or not doing. I want knowledge.

The thing about God interacting with humanity is that its insane. Totally crazy. God might actually laugh at our attempts to gain a knowledge of his reasoning. Think about Hosea, if God said, all these things are to set up a situation in which I will come as a human, die on a cross, resurrect and through that means I will redeem all of creation.

Great?

It doesn't make sense, it's crazy. Isn't there a better way? Couldn't you make this simpler God?

If we are going to be children of God, we might need to embrace what feels totally crazy. The things that don't make any sense to us will often be what we do, simply because we know God said so.

God probably isn't telling all of us to marry prostitutes. But if He did, would you? He's probably not telling us to name our children in a way that will indict the country we live in. But if He did, would you? For Jesus the core tenant of being a child of God was to take up a cross and follow and He did charge us to do the same...will we?

God might be saying to all of us, you are going to be one giant sermon illustration.

Because Jesus...

It sometimes still surprises me what people are willing to say on the internet, particularly on social media. I have had numerous conversation in which a party will "say" something completely outlandish and not realize how ridiculous it sounds. I don't know why this seems to happen more through this medium than it does in face to face interactions but I have a theory.

I'm sure you can remember a time (I'm thinking of a lot for myself) when you began saying something in a conversation and as the words were leaving your mouth you realized how dumb that thought actually was. Maybe you are a quick talker and slow thinker so you actually said the entire offending thought. Maybe you are lucky enough that you think faster than you talk and you caught yourself. personally I've had both experiences.

My point is this; I think the reason so many dumb things get "said" on social media is because no one is saying their thought out loud. No one has to hear how dumb their comment actually sounds. Something about typing makes it appear to be internal thought to our brains and we don't always catch internal stupidity. However, when we start to speak out loud we are simultaneously listening to what we are saying and so, sometimes, we catch ourselves before we say really dumb things.

I propose that, from now to whenever the internet disappears, we all read out loud, at least to ourselves, everything we post. This might prevent a small portion of the crazy from making it out there. And even a little dumb is worth stopping.

Why did I just rant about the dangers of unfiltered posting on social media? I'm glad you asked. I ranted because I wanted to "speak" to a social media situation which arose that has prompted this thought; I do what I do because of Jesus.

I do certain things because its what Jesus did or said.

I do certain things because they are what I think Jesus would do.

Before you get too lost let me explain. Sometime in 2012 I was perusing the ol' facebook, when I stumbled across a comment I found rather funny. A friend had posted that they had participated in a nationalistic activity, they stated certain difficulties they had faced to do so and then asked the question, "what's your excuse?" (for not doing said activity.)

There was nothing inherently wrong with my friend's participation in this activity, however, personally I have chosen to take no part in that particular nationalistic activity. I have made this decision because I see how participation, for some, has blurred the line between what is Kingdom of God and what is kingdom of man. So, of course, I had to reply. I'll have you know I chose my reply carefully. I typed several options and finally settled on just one word.

"Jesus"

My reply was not meant to be superior or snobbish. I simply wanted to answer this friend's question. What's my excuse? Ultimately it comes down to Jesus. I want to be a full participant in the Kingdom of God. Sometimes, that means I choose to abstain from the actions of earthly kingdoms. (Just to be clear, I pay my taxes.)

What blew me away was not the initial post, that was fine. Another friend replied to my comment saying, "Josh, please tell me you are not serious...because that is the absolute wooooorrrssseeee excuse I have ever heard".

This is going to sound mean but, no its not. (Follow me seems pretty legit.) Jesus, is the best reason I can think of to do or not do...well, everything.

There is a local restaurant here that has the most amazing bacon cheeseburgers. Seriously, they are delicious. My friend, Mike, and I have gone there often over the last few years of ministry. One because its delicious, and two because the owner/operator and her staff are very good people. We have made it our goal to do anything we can to show Jesus to this group of people.

It started out as just leaving good tips. We noticed that most of the other patrons would leave a couple bucks as a tip. Did I mention that what this restaurant charges is comparable to a fast food joint and its WAY better. Also, the staff is quite friendly and good. I don't think Mike and I have had to order our drinks more than once or twice in the last year and a half. We walk in, find a table and two Dr Peppers (in cups that are larger than anyone else's) magically appear on our table soon after. We decided that Jesus would tip well, probably anywhere he went, but especially here.

The next step in this process was tables. It's not a large establishment and they don't typically have more than three staff out front, sometimes there is only one. And this place is hoppin', there are days when it is hard to find a table at all. One of the things we noticed was that they occasionally fall behind on busing tables, because of the large number of customers as compared to the available staff. If you walk into a restaurant and half the tables still have the remnants of the last person's meal on them it doesn't look good. Mike and I decided we would help. We started by busing our own table every time we ate there. And that was good, but it could be better. We reached a point where we would walk in, bus one or two tables, sit down, eat, bus our table and maybe grab another at the same time. Why? Because we think Jesus would look for any opportunity to serve others and this is what we saw.

One of the great things about this is the conversation opportunities it has opened for us. We get to serve this group and hopefully show them a little Jesus in the process. We have overheard other customers asking, "who are those guys?" To which the owner answered, "just a couple guys from some church." "What are they doing?" "That's just what they do, being nice I guess." Someday, soon I hope, the answer will be,

"Jesus."

This part of my story ends with another friend, a new follower of Jesus, joining us at this restaurant. We did our normal routine, and as Mike was paying, the owner mentioned she had a headache. Mike asked if he could get her anything and she jokingly asked if he had any tylenol or anything on him. He offered to retrieve some and I think she thought he was kidding. Minutes later, having gone across the street to a convenience store we returned with the medicine. Our friend asked why we were doing all the things we were doing. I responded by saying,

"Jesus."

I followed with an explanation of how we want everyone to see Jesus in every action we take and every word we speak.

I am confident in saying that, "because Jesus..." is the best possible way I could began any explanation of my actions. I hope you feel the same.

I Think...

The older I get the more I seem to interact with people who only want "realism". Think "realistically" they say, "don't be silly" they say and my personal favorite, "that's just idealistic". As if idealism isn't worth striving for, if something is "ideal" shouldn't we want that? Isn't the "ideal" what we all are trying to live up to? Why is it that the "ideal" has become so worthless to us? Have we accepted a lie that says, "we can never be perfect so stop trying"? When did God say that we couldn't live perfectly? (here's a hint: he didn't.) And when did dreaming about making things better become a bad thing?

Let me give you some context.

I think that the youth in our churches can understand deep theological truths if we will take the time to teach them, and I don't think we have to play games during youth group to do it.

I think that Christians should take the words of Jesus seriously in the way they live their lives daily.

I think that God wants to change the world, not through the power of a well informed electorate but through the foolishness of people who trust him with everything they are.

These are overly simplified statements that on the surface don't usually bother many people. However, when I start to talk about the dreams I have for the church based on these ideas, I start to scare people. In their words, I become an "idealist", "unrealistic" and one friend has even called me crazy to my face.

I hear these sorts of comments most often when I begin talking about what I think the christian life should look like. Anytime I happen to mention that I think my God is opposed to people dying, that Christians should probably not be ok with killing people and especially when I say that it might be good for us to renounce all forms of violence (such as physical, verbal, emotional...), I consistently hear from others that I'm being "unrealistic". Well, maybe I am, but when did "realism" govern the God of...well, EVERYTHING. The same Christians who call me an "idealist" believe that God created the world from nothing and that Jesus resurrected from the dead. Like dead, dead. Oddly enough, I agree, but that is a pretty unreal situation right? I wonder what he could do with a group of people who completely surrender all personal control and rely on him to move; change the world? (There is something about that cross thing in here somewhere...)

If this is getting too confusing let me clarify; I'm not trying to tell you that I have all this figured out, I don't.

I think I'm trying to say that my God is big, and, I think, he has big dreams. My God is so creative, he chose weakness to display his power to save. (There's that cross thing again...)

I think, my God wants his kingdom to be full of "Idealists".

I think, my God wants us to dream so big we are afraid it might be a challenge for him just so he can succeed and be glorified all the more.

I think, my God wants us, his people, to love him and to love people more than we fear failure.

My God wants us to dream.

Now, if you've lost your ability to dream you need to watch this. I love this idea, its so ridiculous, so "unrealistic". What a crazy dream. But that's just a silly "youtuber" who thinks he is really popular, God doesn't work like that, does he? (I'd like to think that God wants to throw a giant pizza party for all of humanity...but I digress...)

A few months ago I preached a sermon from this chair:

This is my "dreaming chair". Well, its one of them. I have two of these chairs; one in my office and one in my room. Just like the nickname would suggest these are the chairs I sit in when things are too "real", when I need a break from reality and want to share some dream time with God. Mostly I use these chairs as a challenge, they remind me of some things.

They remind me that I shouldn't be satisfied with everything staying the same, that there are always things that can be moved forward and grown, and that's where dreaming comes in.

They also remind me that dreams don't need to be stressful, it doesn't matter how creative I get in my dreams, I guarantee that my God has already thought of it. If my dreams match with his heart for his kingdom then he will go before me. (That doesn't mean that its always easy) If they don't match there is nothing lost.

I don't want to dream up my own vision for the church, I'm dreaming in an attempt to find and understand God's heart for his people.

My chairs remind me that though dreaming might look and sound foolish, if it's God's foolishness I participate in I'll be just fine.

But, maybe I am an "unrealistic", "idealist" fool and dreaming isn't worth your time. I guess you have to decide what your God wants from you, and together we might just grasp some small part of what our God wants for us. Because, our dreams are worthless if they can't be shared by others.



For more videos from Olan Rogers check out: https://www.youtube.com/user/OlanRogers

...and that is why he has called the day, Today...

   A new year, go us right? We make our resolutions, and maybe we stick to them, but in the end is there anything different about today and yesterday that makes them better than Saturday? Why do we get so obsessed about days? Think about it, birthdays, holidays, Saturday, Sunday, we pick days and give them more significance than other days. What makes the day someone was born more important to us than every other day of our lives? Well that person of course. We care to make a day significant because of the importance of the person(s) we are remembering/recognizing. So, a day becomes is exciting to us based on who we are praising or paying homage to, well here is a cliche thought, what if we gave every day to God, to celebrate our savior. Maybe instead of making a single day of the year, month or week significant, every day is a day of remembrance and worship of our king. I challenge you to make a daily resolution, to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength, I challenge you to love your neighbor as yourself. I'm sure that yesterday mornings sermons sounded somewhat similar to this, and I know I'm not saying anything that you haven't thought of already. But what has changed? Come on, it's 2012, a new year, a clean slate, it's time to move. It's time to stand up and be a little barbaric in your faith. When I say love your neighbor as yourself I don't mean an intellectual assent to what that might mean. I mean for us to live that, if my actions aren't a gospel of love then I have failed. When I want to make a day special for someone I love, I don't spare any expense, I don't care how much it costs me or how much work it takes, I want the best for that person. When was the last time you threw a party for your "neighbor"? I'm sure that you have heard the story about how Tony Campolo once threw a party for a prostitute because it was her birthday. (If you haven't, here you go http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWlMV-UmueM) Man, that is what this is all about, people making people the center of our worship. By that I mean that if we want to claim to worship the Christ then we have to love people the way Christ would love them. Jesus didn't come to save you and have it end. He didn't come to give you righteousness, so you could ignore everyone else knowing that you are saved. Jesus came to show you how someone who is righteous lives. And that looks like a guy who throws parties for prostitutes at 3:30 in the morning, not for the recognition but so that at least one girl who has never had a birthday party in her life might feel the love of Jesus in her life. So, are you ready church? Are you ready to make a resolution to live a real life this year. Don't make it today, make it every day. When you wake up tomorrow resolve to listen to the prompting of the Lord and to show love to everyone you see. I'm ready to see this world knocked over by the waves of Christ's love coming from the people of God!
   May God grant you strength and mercy as you walk this year humbled before your Lord, may the King of all things draw you further in to His Kingdom and may you be ever mindful to make each day a celebration of His love, Jesus, my King, my Savior push me forward that I may crash into this world with your love, your joy and your peace. Amen.

The Cure

I have had an interesting summer. I spent the first five weeks of this summer traveling to different church camps. Since finishing that I have been living in and working at the church where I am a part-time youth minster. Sometimes late at night I catch myself wandering the halls singing to myself and my first thought is that I probably would look crazy to anyone else, and then I always think about how I'm practically a monk. But I have been so thankful to have a place to stay this summer. I think what has made my summer interesting has been the recurring thought that we try to "cure" people of all sorts of ridiculous things. We offer prescriptions to others on things as simple as the right way to dress, to as complicated as what it means to be a christian, from the right things to eat in your diet, to the right way to understand the theological significance of our favorite worship songs (or more likely for me, our least favorite), we prescribed the words that are appropriate for others to use, and the life habits that must be observed, all this in an attempt to help heal people. I mean we just want to give them a cure, right? What I've discovered this summer is this. We can't simply medicate Shaun and tell him to act like every one else around him. We can't tell him to be quiet and sit still, while we tell him about Jesus. It doesn't work for Shaun. Shaun's "hyperactive" mind, that is so troublesome for our regulated churchy activities, is so busy noticing and processing things I could only wish to notice, that he might fidget with excess energy, and maybe his "is this an appropriate time for this question" filter might be broken down. But man does Shaun love other people! And if Shaun applies himself to studying the scripture it won't be long before we all want to read his books to better understand what it really means to be a christian. But right now, Shaun doesn't fit in the seat we've designed for all christians to fit in, he's a little too weird for us, a little barbaric. What I've learned is this. It's all well and good to study and talk about wanting to live like Jesus, to truly live his words, that's great. But please when you come to specific thoughts about how that will look, just try to keep them to yourself. Because we don't know what to do with those words when they look at us and want to change us. The truth is we love verses that tell us things like "the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, able to divide between joint and marrow, soul and spirit." That is awesome until that two-edged sword is no longer in our hand pointed at others but we find it slicing us open to the core. That just isn't ok, it doesn't fit with our comfortable vanilla christianity, it hurts. It's a little barbaric. What I've learned is this. That it's even ok for us to speak a little crazy sometimes, I mean all we are trying to do is get people fired up about Jesus right? But when one of our students hears what we say and follows through we really don't know how to handle it. Our first thought is to run back to what we know is comfortable. But maybe, just maybe they have actually understood something fundamental about what we thought we understood. Maybe, it's time for people to not fit in the chair, to be a little weird. To be barbaric. Not to hurt those who don't understand barbarism. But to follow Jesus, to be real doctors. Instead of throwing out prescriptions to every one we thinks needs some medicine, maybe we need to just take them the cure. Jesus was barbaric. He didn't fit, he was weird. I mean he didn't have a nice clean building with nice chairs, and a comfortable office where he could answer the phone and write out prescription notes for people. Jesus was in the homes of the sick and dying (literally and metaphorically). When people tried to tell Jesus to sit down and listen, to keep his opinions to himself, to act like every one else, he simply said the healthy don't need a cure, the sick do. The sick need the cure, that is Jesus. They don't need a piece of paper that says "do this and don't do that." This world is searching for a cure, and we are manufacturing prescriptions. Maybe it's time for the church to stop looking like the waiting area in an airport, where we have TSA at the door preforming ridiculous life and background checks on those who come in the door. Maybe it's time for us to look like an emergency room, where we have people come in with drug addictions and missing limbs, I mean sure the carpet might get dirty from the blood and vomit, but I think I remember reading about a King who was gonna eat a meal with some people and after they sat down at the table he started cleaning their feet to prepare them for the feast of the kingdom. Maybe instead of standing outside the doors of our clean buildings with power washers, we sit on dirty floors with dirty people holding towels and bowls of water. So, it might be time to get weird, to feel uncomfortable. To love people so much that all their dirtiness ends up on the floors of the church where Christ is cleansing them. It's time to stop fitting in. It's time to stop prescribing and start curing. It's time to be barbaric.