Faith That Cuts Deeply

A pastor came and spoke at our church on Wednesday night from Honduras. His name is Pastor Israel and he trains pastors in the mountains of Honduras. The Cove has sent quite a number of people from the church to work with him there and every one that comes back says the same thing. Pastor Israel is widely known for being the man. He has influence. He has pull. The kind of quiet and unspoken pull of a Don Corleone. But not in a menacing way. Either way, his nicknames are “El Heffe” and “The Godfather”. He speaks very little English and used a translator during the message that sounded like he was straight out of the mountains of North Carolina. But, even in Spanish there was power in what he was saying. His message was simple, but filled with the Spirit.

When speaking about turning the other cheek and how only a true worshipper of Christ could conceive of this, the translator asked Pastor Israel for a moment to speak to the congregation. He told of helping the Pastor and his family pack their bags and move from a place they had lived and ministered for quite some time. Everyone in the family wept over how they had been hurt by a member of the congregation. Pastor Israel had been severely wounded by this person. The next day when the Pastor was at the grocery store he saw this same person. He hugged the man and invited him to dinner without ever letting on that the man had done anything. The man never knew how much he had hurt Israel by how strongly he had been shown love in return.

Another man in this same vein is Pastor Jackson from Kenya that’s in partnership with Port City. When you hear these guys pray or speak there is always a richness of the Spirit in their words. It was the same thing with pastors and missionaries that spoke at both of the Urbana conventions I attended. It always leaves me with a sense that the power of God is tangible with them. You get a genuine sense that there’s very little disconnect between their words and their experience. Between what they are calling people to and what they are actually living.

It also leaves me with a sense that in the Western Church, something is missing. Something has gone awry. I wholly believe that there are massive saints of the faith in many of our churches. But, with many, many believers in our churches I find a disconnect in all of the spiritual information we fill our minds with and the fruit of our lives. If you’ve read much of my blog, you can see that is evident within my own life. Many words, few actions.

When I listen to these men speak their few words something in my chest screams out to be, do and live something genuinely and passionately like Jesus.

Relevance is a great tool, but I think it may take center stage too often in the churches most of us attend. It brings people in who would otherwise feel alienated by some of the old styles of worship, but it takes a lot of work to create that environment and easily becomes the end rather than the means! Once they are there, everything else must be Christ.

Once the Spirit does all of the work to get me to this point of reflection, everything else must be Christ from here on. It’s what He calls me to. Pastor Israel said, “What if your physical heart took a vacation? You would die. It is the same with our hearts following Christ. No vacations. Ever again. Every day. Every minute. Until meet Him.”

Pastor Jackson at Port City’s 10th birthday.

Pastor Israel at The Cove Wednesday night.

“This year, or this month, or, more likely, this very day, we have failed to practise ourselves the kind of behaviour we expect from other people.”

-C.S. Lewis

Donald Miller

What I’m saying is I think life is staggering and we’re just used to it. We all are like spoiled children no longer impressed with the gifts we’re given- it’s just another sunset, just another rainstorm moving in over the mountain, just another child being born, just another funeral.

-Donald Miller, “A Million Miles In A Thousand Years”

Low-light, My Old Friend

I always know it’s going to eventually hit me. It’s only a matter of time. You can’t tell by just hanging out a little with me. I can cover it up pretty well. Like talking to an Alzheimer’s sufferer on the phone. You have to spend a lot of time to actually notice. It’s even hard for me to pick up on it at times.

I realized it had arrived today when I was writing a little one-page literary masterwork for myself. When I re-read it, I almost offed myself. It was bleak, man!

The weird thing is, I actually kind of enjoy it. Most people won’t get that, but some will. I know for a fact some will. I’ve always known that about myself. After a girl and I broke up back in the day I was hurt for quite some time. I finally moved on from missing her and found that I missed the hurt more than her. Like it was my pal or something. Same thing with this.

I’m definitely most creative “feeling” in the midst of that foulness, though I may not actually be anymore creative. I’m definitely more observant and introspective.

So, welcome autumn! I greet you with open arms.

Quotes

“He heals their swollen pride and nourishes their love, that they may not wander even farther away through self-confidence, but rather weaken as they they see the Godhead grown weak by sharing our garments of skin, and wearily fling themselves down upon him, so that he may arise and lift them up.” — ‘He realizes the need for Christ the Mediator’, “The Confessions” by St. Augustine

“No culture can rise above it’s concept of God.” — “Trinity: God Is”, a sermon by Mark Driscoll

“…the first step towards deliverance is to treat the flesh according to God’s viewpoint. And what is that? It is not in trying to crucify the flesh but in acknowledging that it has been crucified, not in walking according to our sight but according to our faith in the Word of God.” — ‘The Deliverance of the Cross’, “The Spiritual Man” by Watchman Nee

Don’t let your heart get heavy…..there’s a strength that lies & hides

One of the hard things in life is that life is, in fact, hard for everyone. It’s not as if someone out there has figured it all out and has the quick fix for every situation. Like if we’d replicate the way they do it, things would suddenly be easier. Every day. All the time.

Jesus lived life out spotlessly and life was just as hard, if not much harder. He was killed. He was ridiculed. Publicly called a liar and had people begging for him to be gotten rid of.

And yet, this same thing that could suffocate us from living at all can be the very same thing that encourages us and helps us navigate through life.

Jo and I had a conversation with a friend that is having marriage troubles and feeling beaten down. Few things can make you feel defeated faster than a marriage under fire! We both said, “This is not easy! This has no quick fix. But, believe us when we tell you, this is possible”.

Knowing that there is someone by your side that can walk with you as you navigate through the tough stuff and tell you what is unnecessary and what just needs some work can be the little bit helps you accomplish it.

Our culture has permeated the church, if in no other way, by telling us that if something requires work it isn’t worth our time. Things should come easy! But that isn’t what scripture tells us at all. Things do require work! Often times the best things require the most work. God told Adam he would toil. And we do. We go through things that make no sense. We come up against things that we have no idea how to do or how we can make them work. And that is the great thing about life being hard for everyone! There is someone out there that has been through that same ordeal and though they may not have the perfect answer or even the answer you want to hear they know enough to help you get through it.

I think about one of my favorite episodes of The West Wing called “Noel”. Josh is dealing with post-traumatic stress and his boss Leo, who dealt with alcoholism, throws him a little tale of wisdom.

“A guy falls into a hole and can’t get out. He screams for help! A doctor walks by, writes out a prescription, throws it down the hole and tells him good luck. Still screaming for help, a priest comes by. He writes out a prayer, throws it down the hole and tells him good luck. While feeling like he’ll never get out, his friend comes by. He says, ‘hey man, can you help me out?!’ So his friend jumps in the hole. Our guy says, ‘what are you doing? Now we’re both stuck!’ His friend says, ‘but we’re not. I’ve been down here before and I know the way out’.”

I look at our friend and say, “We know the way out. Just trust us! You’re not alone anymore.”

Lyrics

I can honestly say that over the past few months I’ve been in a dry place not only of writing, but also of music. I heard someone say a few years ago that music speaks to us most strongly while we’re young and our hormones are wreaking havoc. We attach things to music in a much more emotional way than when we’re older.

I can definitely say that I see that! Don’t get me wrong…..it’s not that I don’t have hormones and it’s definitely not that music doesn’t affect me anymore. But the people that were really close to me when I was between 16-25 could tell you that the affect of music over me then was a completely different animal to what it is now.

I still can’t stand still when I’m playing worship. I still have to contain myself with a guitar in my hand. But, I don’t hear a random song for the second time and it almost bring me to tears or bring me out of my skin like it once did. I don’t attach every song I hear to a person or event. I still do it with a song once in a while, but probably only one out of every 20 or 30 times.

But lately I’ve been really affected by songs that I already knew and didn’t do anything for me the first 50 or so times that I heard them. And it’s been by artists that I normally wouldn’t listen to. For instance, I loathe Nickelback with nearly all that I am. But the past couple of times I’ve heard “Far Away” it’s moved me almost to the point to where I would say, “I freaking love that song”.

Another much less embarassing one would be Sara Groves’ “Conversations”. That chick can write a song. It’s not really my style of music, but she’s still great.

‘CONVERSATIONS’

“I don’t know how to say this, I don’t know how to stand, I don’t know where to put my feet, or where to put my hands.
I’ve got them in my pockets, my fingers are freezing cold, they’re wrapped around a ticket stub that’s four weeks old, and I don’t know how to say this.

I think we’ve figured out this world is bigger than you and I.
We’ve exhausted our wealth of knowledge and have no more answers for mankind.

CHORUS:
We’ve had every conversation in the world about what is right and what has all gone bad, but have I mentioned to you that this is all I am, this is all that I have?

I’m not trying to judge you. That’s not my job. I am just a seeker too, in search of God.

Somewhere somehow this subject became taboo. I have no other way to communicate to you. This is all that I am. This is all that I have.

repeat CHORUS

I would like to share with you what makes me complete. I don’t claim to have found the Truth, but I know it has found me.

The only thing that isn’t meaningless to me is Jesus Christ and and way he set me free. This is all that I have. This is all that I am.

The only thing that isn’t meaningless to
me is Jesus Christ and and way he set me free. This is all that I have. This is all that I am.

I don’t how to say this, I don’t know where to start. I just know that I care for you and I’m speaking from my heart…”

And while I write this another Sara Groves song comes on. One that Jo sent the lyrics of to our small group when one of the guys’ mom died. Check it out if you get a chance. “What Do I Know?”

I am being moved.

24 + 10

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about my age and where I am mentally, spiritually and also how my personality changed. So I decided to compare myself to a younger brand of me. Of course, 18-year old Keith came to mind first, but everyone’s an idiot at 18.

So, I thought about me a decade ago. I was already on my own and exposed to the world, or at least moreso than Davidson had previously offered. I had been in school for 2 & 1/2 years and was living beside of campus in the Quad. I had just as little figured out then as I do now about a career, so I won’t delve into that. I’ll just stick to the basics here for time’s sake.

Mentally, I challenge myself far more than I did then. And yet, I know for a fact that my mind is not as sharp! Not in a major way though, like I can’t remember anything or I’m slow-cousin Jimmy with my humor. But things are slightly foggier at times. Things I wasn’t good at when I was a kid are ever so slightly worse now. I can’t find things. Jo says I don’t look hard enough, but it’s been a chink my armor since I was 5.

Segway from mental to spiritual, I don’t talk theology like I once did. I used to love talking about spiritual and theological issues for hours on end. I’ve sat up all night a few times talking to friends about things like the sovereignty of God and free-will versus election. I loved it! It made me feel more spiritual when I made points that others said were really good.

I let all that go during what I’ll call “the struggles”. I saw how I was so good at talking, yet not doing. I saw it for a long time and, ironically, did nothing about it. When I finally did, it was because I was forced to own up.

In many ways I’m finally back to where I was back then. Playing worship, finding joy in serving and walking that fine line between modesty, humility & knowing I’m finally doing what God wanted me to the whole time.

The main progression for me spiritually over the past ten years can be summarized by a phrase that Mike Ashcraft often uses. “Lord, humble me by your presence, so you don’t have to by my circumstances”. I was a fool when I was younger. Always thinking I could get away with everything. I was in no way humbled then and my circumstances were continually bringing me back to earth with a loud thump! A few good, hard thumps and you become much more aware of where your focus really is.

This is where my biggest struggle comes: my personality. When I was younger I was much more social. I made friends right and left. I never wanted to miss anything. I kept up with all of my friends. I cared about where they were and what they were doing. I was not reflective of my actions and words. I left a wake of hurt and didn’t care what people’s perception of me was, although I truly did. I wanted to be known as a tough dude! Came from years of being compared to all of my roughneck cousins. I womanized. Came from my need to feel more like a man. I didn’t want people to know what I was doing, but I quietly did. I wanted them to know what was up! I wanted to prove to them and myself that I was worthwhile. I was a real man.

Nowadays, I like socializing, but I can be completely alone just as easily. I find myself not caring quite as much about how much of a man I am. I just want to leave this world not being pigeon-holed. I want to be seen as a whole picture, not a single color. Not a one-trick pony. Not just “he drove a truck” or “he played guitar”. That I’m compassionate. I love art. I can be serious. I can be appropriate when it’s time. I can be discerning. I can make you laugh. I can laugh at or with you. I rarely laugh at the easy joke. Even though I put far too much attention on women until I found Jo, my passion was and is in the hearts of men. I can be comfortable in almost any situation, except maybe around lesbians. Sorry, if any lesbians are reading this I’m ok if I know you. Few things can be talked about that I can’t keep up with. I love my friends fiercely! I love music only second to Jesus and Jo. Jo may argue that when we get in the car to go somewhere. I love sports almost as much. I can talk about the Cowboys and Steelers in the 70s or the demise of Leeds and Newcastle United.

My personality then was driven by contempt and complacency. It’s driven now by a thirst for knowledge and the desire to be more complex and diverse than I once was.

If you’re still reading, sorry this got really long-winded!

Character 333

I became “Character 333″ today. We didn’t have a load today so I ended up at Starbucks in Birkdale. I sat and finished up my study for small group, screwed around on Facebook, cut the people I follow on Twitter by half and listened to my iPod.

Boring, but relaxing.

I eventually turned off the iPod and listened to conversations around me while I read backlogged articles on my Instapaper. There’s a group of guys that hang out here a lot and do schoolwork and graphic design. One of the guys I hadn’t seen before. I could tell the guy was a little older and was one of those guys that is a natural salesman. He started asking me about phones and if I knew anything about Blackberrys. I told him I knew very little. It was dropped there. A few minutes later though the guy introduced himself. He told me that he had started something nearly a year ago where he was going to meet one new person every day for 365 consecutive days. I was “Character 333″. He had a 3-question interview where he asked where you were from, why you moved to NC and, lastly, what you loved most about Birkdale.

Now, the guy is obviously a marketing genius! He found a meeting he had to get to before he could finish and got my email to send me the “questionnaire”. Smooth.

Either way I found it intriguing. Meeting someone new every day. Could I do that?? At one point in college I felt like I was almost doing that in IV. It was tough to do, yet I look back on those times with fondness. Of course that time in life had much more to with other things than just meeting people. Having a massive amount of acquaintances really helped.

We get into our mode though. We do the things we do every day. Over and over and over. We decide who will be our people and who will not. We don’t invite people in. If people get in it’s because they almost have to force their way in.

Obviously, for this guy connections equals money. And though I’m not deluded enough to think that connections equals fulfillment for us, I do think that it could be an integral part of the equation. A part of the equation that we often replace with Facebook, Twitter and web articles.

Completely Gutted: The Death of World Soccer Daily

I know that no one that reads this cares at all about soccer, other than James. I know that you all will see this and skip right past, but my favorite talk show went off-air Friday with no warning and only Jo really knows how low this takes me.

It’s like the death of a good friend.

Within a week of deciding to follow Manchester United and learn about soccer overseas I looked for a podcast to teach me and jumpstart my knowledge. I found these guys and loved the show automatically. It was Steven and Howard “The Prince of Darkness” then. Once Howard left, Kenny stepped in beautifully and became as integral to the show as Steven himself. I attached to them and my love for European football became inextricably tied to World Soccer Daily. The people who called in were regular and familiar. The hosts were like buddies at a pub. It was a daily fix. A place of familiarity. And for fans who’ve given themselves over to the sport, it was a refuge. A place where you could hear people that were as passionate about a fringe sport in America as you. Let’s face it, soccer will never be the NFL. It will never attract impoverished kids from south Chicago like the NBA. And it will never feed the stat junkies like Major League Baseball. But it has made headway, especially this summer! Yes James, soccer in America may be a fad, but that’s for the average sports fan. The average fan needs scoring. They don’t understand that the game is like a flowing version of chess. Not even three days ago, Bill Simmons talked about this exact thing on WSD. He said that he had always been a hater, but the thing that attracted him most was the passing. Passing. A virtual unicorn in the NBA. Not a score of 110-113. Maybe 0-0 or even 4-4. It’s a point either way. It is the tug-of-war. The build-up in the middle of the pitch. The loss of possesion. The gaining of it back. The cross. The counter-attack. The perfectly weighted long pass to a lone striker.

Sorry….

It runs through my veins.

A community has been damaged. A show that has been the major force behind a groundswell is gone. ESPN carries the Premier League now because of this show!! And like that…….

It’s gone.

I’m attaching a blog written by another guy, if anyone is still reading. He explains the whole debacle pretty well.

“Soccer fans in America lost a funny, insightful voice Friday as radio show World Soccer Daily permanently signed off after pressure, including death threats to friends and family, from a group of Liverpool FC fans. The threats began after co-creator Steven Cohen made a series of controversial and erroneous remarks concerning a 1989 stadium disaster in which 96 Liverpool fans were killed. Cohen issued an on-air apology and backed off his tendency to criticize Liverpool and its fans. That, apparently, was not enough.

While he remained vague on the details, Cohen alluded to the fact that his step-daughters had been contacted and/or directly threatened by people who wanted the show canceled. Likewise, threats were received by Steven’s co-host Kenny Hassan, as well as several show sponsors. Much of the hate mail and mongering directed at Steven was also anti-Semitic. The announcement was made at the start of Friday’s show and most of the call-in discussion centered on fans’ expressions of gratitude, shock, and sorrow.

I know how they feel.

The daily show, which I listened to on podcast most times, had become an entrenched part of my life over the past four years or so. Hearing Steven and Kenny pack it in today was a gut check. After the 2006 World Cup, I realized how much I missed watching soccer, but I knew I was out of the loop. Fishing around for some help, I found WSD. The show brought me up to speed and kept me entertained. Over the past few years, it had gotten even better with the introductions of respected commentators and guests from all over the world. While they remained heavy on the English league, there was a real effort to make the show as all-inclusive as possible. I mean, they had a Turkish league correspondent, for Pete’s sake!

What turned me on most about the show, though, was the pure love for the game. Everyone involved was nuts for soccer and they wanted to share that with other people. It didn’t matter if you had been a fan for 50 years or five minutes, they would take your call. I can’t even remember how many times they asked people for stories about how they became fans. At its core the show was about building up the beautiful game in America, and Steven, Kenny, and the rest did a lot to foster a passionate community, and they did it the right way. Even though they were satellite-based, they kept it family friendly (most of the time); some of their regular callers were from the U-14 set. They also didn’t use their broadcast platform to return the hate being directed at them. They could have very easily gone on-air with specifics, called for violent reprisals, made things worse. They didn’t. They tried to deflect as much as they could until it simply became too much.

It is one of the great freedoms of this country that we can disagree. It means you can voice your opinions, but it also means you have to listen to other people as well, especially when they’re wrong. If something upsets you that much, don’t listen. Tell everyone you know not to listen, but don’t threaten people’s children. There’s never an excuse for that, ever. I find Rush Limbaugh offensive, so guess what? I don’t listen to his show. I loved listening to World Soccer Daily, but that choice has been taken from me.

To Steven, Kenny, Howard, Rafa, Adam, and all the rest: Thank you. Thanks for giving me and thousands of other football fans two hours a day to think about and talk about the sport we love. You’ll be missed and I hope you find a way back soon.”

Concrete, Steel & Cajun

Let me preface by saying that my father-in-law does check my blog, so for the sake of family harmony I won’t write every thought I had about certain things. I’ll just leave those between me, Jesus & JoAnn.

Returning to the idea that Houston is a moose of a city, I was definitely a little out of my depth with a place that size. Like “The Blob” but made up of a mass of glass, steel & concrete and massive expanses of land on the outskirts to devour, this city seemingly has no limits. Obviously there are other cities that may dwarf it by comparison, but they don’t take the phrase “everything’s bigger in Texas” lightly. If you’re gonna be bigger, you’ll have to put in some serious effort. Matt Vana had gone for an interview for a residency there and came back exclaiming how things there were so massive. The roads. The stadiums. Everything in between.

“Our brothers have made us lose heart. They say, ‘The people are stronger and taller than we are; the cities are large, with walls up to the sky. We even saw the Anakites there.’”

If he wasn’t exactly a scout coming back to report to Moses, he was pretty close.

Anyway, we went out the next day to see Jo’s half-brother and spend the day at the pool with various parts of the family. As with even the spring and fall there, it was sweltering. So, being near water was a good idea.

We spent the afternoon there talking and letting family catch up. As with most family gatherings of that sort, the in-laws huddled together for protection in numbers. Even if they don’t really know one another! JoAnn & Dave. Me & Joe Harris. And on this day, me and Paul, the husband of Jo’s cousin.

Paul is Houston PD, so I spent the majority of the afternoon being entertained by colorful stories of theft rings, drug busts & bust ups between local soccer supporter groups. It was all good fun and I interjected only when I had some knowledge on a particular subject or had a story of comparable entertainment value.

I had hoped, being in a completely different part of the country, that we would eat something other than Olive Garden or everyone’s standby, Outback. Luckily, we were with a former local that had better ideas of what real food in East Texas tastes like. So, that night we went with Jo’s parents to a little joint on the west side of town known as the Ragin’ Cajun. Everyone that day had raved about it and said they even had boudain (boo-dan).

Webster’s entry says:
\bü-ˈdan, -ˈdaⁿ\
Function:
noun
Inflected Form(s):
plural bou·dins \-ˈdanz, -ˈdaⁿ\
Etymology:
Louisiana French & French, sausage
Date:
1845
1 : blood sausage
2 : a spicy Cajun sausage containing rice and meat (as pork) or seafood

We were going for something more along the lines of the second option! Not the blood sausage as much.

I had eaten boudain for the first time a few years back at a cookout in Creedmoor when Jo’s uncle Don came to town with a case of it. I only ate a little since there was only a little to be eaten. Before this trip though I swore to gorge myself on as much as possible. We also hoped to devour pound after pound of boiled crawfish, but the little red delights just happened to be out of season. I had eaten those for the first time on a trip to New Orleans in ‘98 and loved them! Jo hadn’t had them, so I was a bit disappointed to say the least. They had fried crawfish because they can freeze them, but it’s not the same at all. It was more of a softer version of a clam strip. But, out came a massive bowl of red beans & rice with andouille, and I was happy once again! Throw anything at me that contains pig and I’m good to go.

So, we ate fried shrimp, fried oysters, fried crawfish, jalapeño hushpuppies, fried catfish, sides of chicken & sausage jambalaya & a double order of boudain. The platter was massive and within half an hour, it was clean.

There may be fewer things in life that compare to the satisfaction of beer & real Cajun food. Even taking the chance of passing a kidney stone from all of the fried food seems worth it in the long run.

Gullets full, we eventually waddled our ways to the car to head back to the Hyatt & our beds in our 64-degree rooms. Life was good!