Go find some dirt..!

A gardener does not look at the dirt and say, "you're ugly, I won't plant my flowers here." He plants the seed that grows the flowers that make what was once ugly, beautiful.

A farmer does not hope that her crop will grow. She prepares the soil, plants the seed, nourishes the land and tends the crop because she knows the laws of nature.

Jesus once prayed, "Your kingdom come, on earth as it is in heaven." I believe that God responded with, "You got it. I will give you the seed that will produce the crop of my kingdom- If you forgive any man his sins, he will be forgiven (John20:23)."

Forgiveness is a seed that brings a garden up from the dirt. This is the nature of God. Knowing this, I have to ask myself, 'When I have the right to be angry and seek vengeance, will I choose to exchange my right for a garden in the dirt which we've all gotten used to?'

If I want to see change in my family, love in my marriage, life in my children... I must plant the seed that will grow into such a tree.

P.S.
Working with Project: AK-47, I was able to witness this principle profoundly. From that I can say this- it is the most breath taking garden I have ever seen, and it only grows in hard soil.

The powerful traveler...

A tire is where the power of a car exists in relationship with the opportunity of the road. Our jobs, ministries, projects and circumstantial situations are nothing more than the tires of who we are. The things we do, are the opportunities for who we are to be powerful.

If we neglect who we are being in the midst of what we are doing, we are little more than a cart waiting to be pulled by the circumstances around us.

Regardless of the road that we find ourselves on or the job we find ourselves in, it is who we are being that is significant, powerful and lasting.

Who will I be today, in the opportunities that I am in right now?

Maybe it's time to put my insecurities down...

In Acts 10, an angel of God shows up in the living room of a man named Cornelius, who was a Gentile. If an angel of God shows up in my living room, I'm pretty sure it could tell me just about anything and I would believe it. God could've had this angel explain doctrine, theology, the answers to questions we'd all be asking for centuries to come... but He didn't.

The angel said, "Go find Peter, he has something to tell you."

There are two things that are really interesting for me in this story. The first is that though Cornelius was the one who was "converted", it was Peter who changed his culture so that another could respond to the truth of Jesus Christ. The other thing that I can not ignore is that in this moment when the Gentile church was born, God prioritized relationship over correct theology.

It was more important for the church to be born in relationship with the Jewish followers of Jesus than for the church to have all the answers right.

Sometimes I put aside the constant plea of God that we love each-other and decide that the correctness of my opinion is more important than relationship... but it wasn't to Him.

In the moments when I do this, it's driven by that same insecurity I mentioned in my last post. When I notice myself using doctrine to dismantle relationships it is because my head thinks the issue at hand is in fact true, but my heart is scared that it might not be. So, I puff-up my presentation of the doctrine so that no one can touch it, and I burn relationships.

I confess to you that when I chose doctrine over relationship, it is out of an insecurity in what I believe.

Jesus' last words over his disciples was a prayer that they would "love others like God loved me (Jesus)." He was speaking to his followers so that they would love those who weren't... so that others might know God. 

It is not through the correctness of our doctrine that others will know God, but through our love.

"Maybe it's ok to feel insecure..."

3 times in my life people have told me that I'm arrogant. 2 of those people have returned to me, apologized and said that now they've gotten to know me don't think that at all. While I'm still waiting for the 3rd ... I can either use their apology to dismiss what they once saw in me or I can realize that they saw something that I need to look at.

It's not hard to see that the times that they saw my arrogance were times when I felt insecure. My response to feeling insecure was to puff myself up and push others back so that they wouldn't discover what I knew, somewhere deep in me...

In those times it was more important to me that I appeared strong, than it was to become stronger. In those times I missed my opportunity to actually grow into the man was yet to become.

I'm left with a question I must ask myself every day, "Is it more important to appear strong or to become stronger?"

Everyday I chose to either be a fool or a wise man- When I get feedback and choose to explain why it isn't accurate, I am a fool that misses an opportunity. When I choose to find whatever small bit is accurate in what I'm being told, it is inevitable that I will become a wiser, a better man. The deliverer of the message may be 90% wrong, but they just helped me become 10% better.

Thank you, to all those who were 10% right. You helped me to become the man I am.

Poverty in leadership

I heard a man talk about a moment when he met U2 and got to talk with Bono and The Edge. The most profound thing about that meeting, he tells, was that "they seemed just like us, which made us believe that we could be just like them."

I was at a meeting yesterday, where I heard Colin Powell talk about leadership. The thing that affected me most about him was that he revealed the nearness of who I could be. I realize that the people who have brought change in my life are the ones who diminish the gap between my current condition and the man I might become.


That is the kind of leader... the kind of man that I want to be. I want to be a man whose life reveals to others what they are capable of. To do so I need to not be aware of the difference between me and others- that reveals only poverty (in both sides). I need to be a man who is aware of how near we all are, which reveals the nearness of abundance... the nearness of who each of us can be.


... we are better with, not better than.

Promotion.

I'm reading Luke 24 right now and something stood out that I had to work through. In verse 19 the disciples who'd walked with Jesus through so much began to call him a prophet, rather than the messiah that they'd believed him to be. Two verses later it says, "We'd hoped that he would have..."

The thing that I can't ignore is that because Jesus didn't do what they'd hoped he would, they demoted him.

In their discouragement they went back to their old life- they went back to fishing. After three years of walking with Jesus they went back to their old life, just because he hadn't done what they had thought he would... what they'd expected him to do.

What have I gone back to simply because God didn't do what I'd hoped He would?

Maybe it's time for me to promote Jesus back to his rightful place: worthy of my trust.

Hope in pruning.

It seems that the season of pruning continues...

Today I asked God, "What is it that you're pruning now?" I was hoping that the answer would help brace me for what ever impact came next.

He answered with, "Your ability to celebrate others." That surprised me.

He answered that he was pruning my "ability", not my in-ability. I was expecting that he would be cutting off what was bad. But what he is doing is developing, crafting and caring for what is good... so that what I do, I do better.


That made this season a little more exciting.

When my head needs to take the bench.

In a dream, I'm taking a walk with God. I don't care for a single moment what we're talking about, I just know that He's close. It's in His closeness that all the problems that He could fix by saying something, just don't matter.

He reaches down to pick a flower and gives it to me... I know His nearness.

Then I wake up. I look down and see that in my hand is the flower that He'd given me in my dream. My head races to figure out how this could be, but it's my heart that knows what to do with it. My heart just knows that He is near.

There are some things that my head doesn't know what to do with... but my heart does. In those moments I need to let my heart do what it is uniquely capable of doing.

The gospel of Jesus is like that for me. My head's not entirely sure what to do with God becoming man and that him being executed forgives me of my sins. My head isn't what I was given to deal with this reality. It was my heart that was given to me to rest, to trust... to believe.

In John 12 there's a woman who breaks an alabaster bottle of perfume over Jesus. Judas cries out that what she'd done was foolish. Jesus stands up for her and says that what she'd done was good and actually counted to her as faith. He then goes on to say that this faith has saved her.

This is really interesting to me because Jesus says that she had a "saving faith", but he hadn't died yet. When someone asks me if I believe in Jesus I assume that they're asking if I believe that he died on the cross, rose from the grave and paid for my sins. But none of this had happened yet and she was saved by her faith. So I have to ask, what did she have faith in? What did she believe?

My head responds with an answer that she believed the prophecies about the messiah and that the miracles that she'd seen have convinced her that Jesus was that savior. But my heart responds differently, and I think it was her heart that carried the faith that saved her. I think she just believed that he was worth it.

When I'm in a moment that gives me a choice to respond with a character of Jesus or the nature of this world I'm presented the question of, "is he worth it?" Is Jesus worth re-presenting in this moment... Do I believe in Jesus?

It is when we believe in Jesus that others will discover how near God is.

Before I was around.

The first post of my blog is dedicated to my grandmother, Lillian Snider. Before I was born, she planted a seed.

Whenever I am asked about the story of my life, my answer begins with her. She had a strong heart for missions and a love for her family. She prayed for those passions every day. She invested what was valuable to her in those two treasures for years. She invested beyond her own life, beyond her generation and beyond what she was aware of.

I believe that the fruit of my life is the fruit of hers.

What I learned from her is the principle of fruit. Fruit comes from seed. There is no fruit that is born outside of a seed being planted- If I see fruit, it came from seed; If I want fruit, a seed must be planted.

Thank you, Lillian.