Love because He first loved US

Friends, as we seek justice, pursue God's Kingdom and love others, let's not forget: "We love because he first loved us." He is the reason.

It is because of His love that we are able to love others. It is because of His love that we have the hope of redemption and true life that we seek to spread. It is because of His love that we can do more than we could ever ask or imagine. We need His love. It is His love that shows us what true justice looks like and gives us the vision of how this world should be. It is His love that causes us to spread more of His Kingdom on this earth, that gives us the zeal to pray"your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven." And it is His love that gives us the hope that His will will be done.

With His love, more can be done than we could ever dream to help the hurting, love the broken, and lead the lost to new life. We need His love in us, running through us, and sustaining us to truly bring about lasting change in this world - and to help this world believe in the hope of what is to come.

He lives his life on his knees

I love this beautifully written blog from Ann Voskamp. It reminded me of my parents' relationship, especially my dad's example of this kind of true romance. He is a hero. I'm so thankful he showed me what it looks like for a husband to be a REAL romantic: to purposefully "die to himself a bit more everyday" for his spouse. He may not have gotten down on one knee when he proposed (he definitely didn't), but he "lives his life on his knees."

It is my dad's example that caused me to have such high standards, for which I am so thankful. And in his kindness God led me to a man who has already met all these standards - my husband is far from perfect, but proves himself everyday to be more and more of a true romantic: he is a man who goes to great lengths to guard his eyes from anyone but me, who purposes every day to lay down his life for me. And although he also did an amazing job on the proposal :) I'm more thankful that he pursues the TRUE romance Ann describes so well in her blog:

"...how a man proposes isn't what makes him romantic. It's how a man purposes to lay down his life that makes him romantic...It's not about how well you perform your proposal. It's about how well you let Christ perform your life."

http://www.aholyexperience.com/2013/11/the-real-truth-about-boring-men-and-the-women-who-live-with-them-redefining-boring/

How are we living?

Are we living like Christ is the answer?

Are we living like we believe God has saved this world and is working everyday to further His Kingdom, to spread His redemption, to bring more people to know His salvation and see His vision?

Do we believe that - and are we living like we believe that?

Or are we living like we trust our current political parties, institutions, finances, and other worldly comforts as the answer?

Because they're not. Our government, our freedom to express ourselves, work, politics, relationships, our money - they are all tools God has blessed us with to do the work of His Kingdom. And we have the opportunity to make an incredible impact in this world through all He has given us. But He has given these things to us in order that we may join with Him in furthering His vision in this world. It didn't end on the cross. No, that was the beginning. He rose from the dead and invites us to walk with him. He is the answer.

And through His Spirit in us, we are His hands and feet - in HIM, we are the world's answer. Do we believe that?

Are we as the Church living like we believe we are Christ's ambassadors, the answer to the brokenness in our culture, the poverty, the pain, the sin? Because we are.

We are not called to just accept things as they are, and pick the lesser of two evil political parties, live less worldly than our neighbors, be a little more kind to our co-workers or the homeless man on the street. No, we are called to MORE and to show the world that there is something Better.

We are called to choose CHRIST, to believe that He is the answer and that all we have and all the institutions around us are meant to be used as tools to further His Gospel purposes. There is so much more to God's plan than we can ever imagine, and we are called to believe and be EXCITED.

We are called to tell the world the answer. We are called to show the world a new way.

Ask God how He is calling you to be a part of His vision. Because we are ALL called to be a part. We are all called to believe for more and ask for more and live like there is MORE to God's purpose for our lives than choosing the "ok" options in this world.

So pray, ask God to show you how clearly what He has maybe been whispering to your heart for awhile. Ask Him to show you how to live as salt and light, joining with the rest of the Church to be an example of a new way, a better option.

For me, God has been growing my passion to unite the Church in my city around this vision of being the answer. Of living differently and uniting our passions and gifts together in a more strategic way, so that we can show the love of Christ to our city more powerfully and more effectively further Christ's redemptive purposes in this world.

So I'm praying about what it looks like to take the next step and believe that we as the Church are called to be MORE. Will you join?

Be Outraged

Amen. God asks us to be righteously angry about injustice, as He is. We are ALL called to be outraged by sin, by injustice, by things that are not the way God intended them. And we are ALL called to further God's justice in this world, in some way. Through the Gospel of Christ, we are called to care about every single person, to love others as ourselves, to seek the welfare of those around us. We are called to be outraged by injustice against our brothers and sisters, and then act as God asks each of us to act, letting our righteous anger turn to hope in His power to do more than we could ever ask or imagine.






https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=697402493605333&set=a.255575047788082.76072.166174666728121&type=1&theater

Son of God

I wanted to post a quick link to the website for the Son of God movie that will be coming out in February. I know some people might be hesitant about this movie and how Christ will be represented, but knowing the kind of people who are working on this movie, I have confidence that it will be done very well. I'm pumped to see it and I think you should be too - check it out:

http://www.sonofgodmovie.com

DC127

Here is the link to the post I wrote recently for DC127, the foster care initiative I'm a part of in DC. Give it a read and then peruse the DC127 site for a bit, it's a cool initiative  :)


"Many of us already work for the vulnerable – but I believe we are also called to know the vulnerable. It’s a daily process, learning how to love more like Christ – and there are a lot of days it’s hard. But it is what God asks of us – God desires that our hearts break and our whole lifestyles be affected because we are so personally invested in loving the vulnerable. And He has opened the door clearly for us in DC to start with the foster care system."

I easily forget

It is so easy to forget the power that comes from speaking the Gospel.  I was thankful to be reminded this past week through a couple intense conversations, in which I SAW that it would only be the supernatural power of Christ's truth that would break through the decades of numbness and denial before me.

I'm so thankful for these conversations and these relationships - though hard - to be reminded that we NEED the power of Christ to wake us up, to break us out of cycles of sin and pain. To be reminded that THIS is why it is CRUCIAL for the Church to be involved in our communities - why it's so important that ALL of us are investing around us. All the other programs and services we can offer people are good and important as well, but the supernatural power of Christ is what is essential to breaking through numbness and walls, to breaking the lost and hurting out of sin's entrapments. 

This is why it is crucial that we go outside of ourselves and our natural friend groups and invest in the hurting and vulnerable in the community in which God has placed us. Speaking the Gospel of Christ brings power, and through living in relationship with the hurting around us, the love of Christ will be seen as well. As we live in relationship, doing life with the lost, going outside our comfort zone and bridging divides, the fullness of life that comes through living in Christ will be seen. This is what will heal broken lifestyles and change broken cultures. Christ did not go out once a month, do a service project for the poor, then go back to His comfortable life. Christ invited the sick He healed, the lost He touched, the sinners He rebuked, into His life. He ate dinner with them, talked with them, hung out with them - ministered to them through doing life with them, showing them what it looks like to love God and live a life that is glorifying to Him. 

In the same way, we as His followers are called to change something about our very American lifestyles so that we are able to walk with the hurting and vulnerable. Not merely handing out food once a month and feeling we have done our part. No, Christ's example was radically, beautifully different. To live as He lived, to do justice, to walk humbly and worship our God looks different than the example we have often been given. Our broken world and dying culture NEEDS to experience the power of the Gospel of Christ. The world needs to see what it looks like to live in Christ's love. And we are the ones called to show them, through living in relationship and walking with them. This calling, our yoke, is heavy - but our burden is light. Because Christ has gone before, showing us how it is done. And His Spriit goes with us now, teaching us and equipping us.

We must go outside our comfort zones, outside our routines and our natural circles at times. We must be willing to be used as God calls us at different points in our lives. We must not be afraid to speak Truth and rely on the power of the Gospel. We must not be afraid to invite those who are different from us into our lives, to break bread and laugh and cry and do life with those who depserately need to see what it looks like to live in the fullness of Life.

We have the Light of the world in us and we are not to selfishly hide that Light. Christ asks that we follow His lead, startling the world with the fierceness of God's love. Let's walk after Him.

A very clear WRONG

While I do not agree with my brother Shane in all areas, I could not agree more with his words here. 

We should "refuse to settle for the country as it is and insist on dreaming of the country as it could be." Especially as God's people, called to "seek the welfare of the city into which He has placed us" (Jer. 29:7), we should join together and help change the unjust, illogical presence of and culture around guns in our country.

 I truly believe Christ desires to use our nation and all the blessings He has given us for His good purposes - and this reality is not a part of that vision. We are called to something better:

"The more I travel the world I am convinced it’s not the way the world is… it’s the way the U.S. is. ...In one year, guns murdered: 27 in Australia, 59 in England and Wales, 60 in Spain, 190 in Canada … and 10,177 in the U.S."

http://sojo.net/blogs/2013/10/22/bringing-america-back-life

Dr. King's dream, 50 years later - are we there?

Originally published on The Expectations Project blog

Last week I re-read Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” for a staff discussion here at The Expectations Project (isn’t that awesome?) It just happened to coincide perfectly with the 50^th Anniversary of the March on Washington. As I’ve been reflecting on Dr. King’s words and legacy, several things have stuck a chord with me.

First, though we have come far, racial and economic injustice are still very much alive in this country. But, like Dr. King, the Church gives me hope. As in Dr. King’s time, though, I think it is important to be aware of – and to challenge – the Church’s tendency to conform to cultural norms. Too often we choose what is comfortable over what is just.

As Dr. King said, “Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will.” I could not agree more. As people of faith, we should know better. And almost nothing is more frustrating when we – and I’m including myself here – sometimes act like we don’t.

God has a huge vision for this world, and we are invited to be a part of it – invited to recognize that this world is not yet as it should be. We are invited to help bring about something better. So when we decide to quietly accept the status quo because that’s easier than challenging those around us, we are turning into the people Dr. King referred to in his letter from the Birmingham jail. We become a people who choose to be more “cautious than courageous;” we remain silent “behind the anesthetizing security of stained glass windows.”


Looking at the life of Christ, it is clear we are to choose be courageous. Christ was an extremist of love and justice who turned the world upside down – and we are to do the same now. If we don’t, I fear that our generation will have to apologize not just for, as Dr. King wrote: “the hateful words and actions of the bad people, but for the silence of the good people.” I believe that it is not only a sin to do something unjust – it is also a sin to passively allow injustice to continue.

Nothing about Christ was passive. We are called to follow Christ’s example and storm into the face of injustice, helping to alleviate it to the best of the ability God has given us.

There are many, many injustices that still exist today – enough that we are clearly ALL called to action in some way. One of these areas of injustice that exists right before our eyes is our nation’s public schools:

One fifth of all U.S. children under five are poor. As if this statistic wasn’t horrifying enough, 40% of these children are African-American and 33% are Hispanic. These poor children attend the lowest performing public schools at a disproportionately high level. According to recent testing, 80% of minority students can’t perform at grade level in grades four, eight, and 12.  Many children of color aren’t getting an education that will give opportunities equal to their white peers.

Instead of empowering all students to reach their God-given potential, many schools inadvertently hold them back. Instead of being a place where Dr. King’s dream of freedom and justice is furthered, many of our schools prevent children from even grasping the hope that anything can be different. If we want to see Dr. King’s dream fulfilled, we can start by improving our public schools.

Despite the sobering statistics above, I don’t believe it will take a lot to realize Dr. King’s vision of justice in public schools. But what it will take is each of us actively doing our part. It will mean walking to the neighborhood school a couple times a week to tutor a child, or finding your local school’s biggest needs and getting your church involved, or one of the many, many other ways we can each do our part.

Let’s not be a people of “good will” with “shallow understanding.” Let’s never be devoted to “order over justice.” Instead let’s be a “colony of heaven” here on earth, challenging injustice around us and being “disturbers of the peace” by bringing the true Peace.


*All quotes of Dr. King’s in this post are taken from his “Letter from Birmingham Jail”

Pull apart the darkness while we can

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Originally published on The Urban Gospel Mission

A few weeks ago, my husband got back from bringing a group of his former students (and a couple other kids we’re close with) to an awesome camp in PA for inner-city youth called Citikidz.  At this camp the boys heard the Gospel multiple times a day, learned what it looks like to be a true man, how to compete for God's glory and with character…amongst many other things. Most importantly, at this camp almost all the boys gave their lives to Christ – and one of them was baptized at our church a couple weeks ago.

This was all possible because my husband and I seek daily to follow Christ with our whole lives. It’s not easy, and some days we fail, but that’s why we have to make a very intentional choice – and it is only by the grace of God and the Spirit in us that we are able to make this choice at all.  By His grace, we seek to deny our desire for what is comfortable, and explore what it truly looks like to love Him and His children as He has called us. Through investing in Stephen’s students outside the classroom, supporting single parents we’ve come into relationship with, and giving up evenings and weekends to invest in these relationships, pushing past cultural barriers to deal with some pretty intense stuff – Stephen and I prayerfully and intentionally seek to push past what is comfortable and live more like Christ in our world today.

I can say this next statement because I feel this struggle in myself personally: comfort is attractive to American Christians.  Everything around us tells us to live the comfortable lives that we deserve and have "worked hard for."  You know, because we've “earned it”.

And our Christian culture often implies that if we worship God during the "worship God" time we've boxed off during the week, don’t swear or drink, donate money to a good cause every once in a while, and do other good things, then we are living for Christ. And we believe it, because this is easier than actually living for Christ.  It’s easy to seek God in the comfortable places, to be satisfied with checking the box that we are anti-abortion, going to church, and giving a certain amount to charity.  And while none of these things are wrong in themselves, they make it easy for a lot of us Christians to live good lives without ever passionately following Christ.

In Isaiah 1:11-17, we see God’s anger as the Israelites go through the motion of worshipping – without actually worshipping. We see clearly in this passage the way God desires us to live, not going through the motions of a religion or conforming to the culture around us, but truly worshipping through loving God and others with our whole lives. In Christ, we see the ultimate example of the life God calls us to live: a life looking outside ourselves, loving radically, challenging the status quo. God hates it when we do what the culture around us does (even the Christian culture) just because it is the norm (again, see Isaiah 1; See also Romans 12:2) We are not to do good things with empty hearts, forfeiting true worship, love, sacrifice and intimacy with Christ simply because it is easier to say some words and go through some motions. Christ calls us to something more - “to pull apart the darkness while we can,” living lifestyles that challenge us and startle the world around us as it sees His love leaking through our lives. He calls us to walk the harder road to that narrow gate that Christ was talking about. So we must be intentional about living outside our comfort zones, letting God bring us to the challenging, heartbreaking, beautiful, full life where we love him more than anything and others more than ourselves.  Walking the narrow path of true worship will compel us to be in relationship with the hurting, investing in the vulnerable and the lowly so intentionally that it affects every part of our lives.

But it is easier to say I am “pro-life” and feel that I am doing my duty by voting for the "pro-life" candidate, rather than actually crossing over cultural and racial barriers and walking with the women who are considering abortion, to provide the support, guidance, and love they need. It is easier to say we are “pro-life,” advocate for abortion clinics to be shut down and walk away feeling we have done our duty, than to stay beside the women who are now going to have children most of them don’t want or cannot care for. Truly being pro-life is much, much harder. It’s harder to become involved in the lives of vulnerable children, ensuring they have the medical services they need and a good education and the home environment God desires for them. It is hard to give up plans with friends to spend time with these mothers and children after work, hard to become an advocate for our local schools to make sure these children receive the education they need to escape the poverty they were born into, hard to give our money to help start programs through our churches that will provide the counseling and education many of these mothers desperately need. It is easier to say we are against abortion and then forget about the lives we are supposedly “for. But unless we are willing to advocate the full life God desires for these women and children, not just for the life of the child while in the womb, then we cannot call ourselves pro-life.  It is a harder path, but the path of complete love to which Christ calls us.

Christ's radical love can so easily get lost in the comfort of our American traditions. But we are not called to choose the easy path. We are called to be holy, as He is holy. To love as He loved. Through His death on the cross Christ showed us that He is not safe – He is “not a tame lion.” (C.S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe)  He is on the move.  So we should be as well.

Are we letting Christ’s love flow passionately out of us in our lives? LOVE is an ACTION. It is not a phrase or an opinion. The life Christ lived is an example of the life God desires us to live - a life full of sacrificial love, a life that challenges the status quo and puts aside what is easy for the sake of loving the broken.

Here in the city of DC, the Church is without excuse. Broken relationships, children without fathers, generations of abuse, and all kinds of material and spiritual poverty surround us on every side.  We can’t help but see it. And not just those of us who live in the city – everywhere we live there is pain and brokenness, if we do not shut our eyes to what God is showing us. And we, equipped with the Holy Spirit are the answer; Christ calls us to dream for and do more than we could ever ask or imagine. He calls us to move with Him, to walk the harder path.

And it will be harder to walk out love than to live inside the box we've made for ourselves. But Christ calls us to this because it is what is best for us - it is the fullest life we could have to truly follow in His footsteps, to experience His grace in the deepest way, to see His glory and be overtaken by His love in ways we never would if we stayed in our safe little box (Jim Martin, Vice President for Church Mobilization at IJM, puts it well here.)

We are all called to pull apart the darkness while we can - for the sake of those around us, and for our own sakes as well.