Hobbnobbin in C-Bus

The Tale of Two Temples

2012-02-10T14:44:00.000-05:00

In all of life and human history, there are only two temples.

There's the temple where Man Meets God and the temple where God Meets Man. There's Babel and there's Bethel.

They may sound similar, and it may seem like hair-splitting to say there’s a difference, but these two temples could not be further apart.

The first temple, the one where Man Meets God, is constructed at a place called “Babel”, and you can read about that in Genesis 11.

At Babel, all the king’s horses and all the king’s men gather together to build themselves an enormous tower, with the top of it “reaching to the heavens”. There were a couple of stated goals in the building of this “stairway to heaven”:

“let us make a name for ourselves”
“lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth”

While these may not seem to be that bad of goals on the surface level, in reality, they are both wicked, awful goals.

Why?

Because they are both declarations of war against God.

God had created man, along with every other thing that exists. He says in Isaiah that he will not “share his glory with another”.

To work so as to make a name for yourself—that is, to build up and accrue your own glory, reputation, honor or fame—is adamantly opposed to the God of Heaven.

And what about that second goal? “Lest we be dispersed over the face of the earth.”

That one seems pretty benign when you first look at it, to be honest with you.

But the fact is that God—both in creation and again after the Flood—had commanded and even blessed man with the words, “be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth”.

So, when the workers went to work with their blueprints and their bricks and their mortar, they were openly rebelling against God as their king.

That tower, which God immediately destroyed, is a perfect picture of the temple of Man-Meets-God. But even though the tower at Babel was destroyed, the Man-Meets-God temple is still alive and well.

There’s all kinds of flavors and variations to choose from at the Man-Meets-God temple, and they range from mere religion, which can be summed up as strict adherence to a set of man-made rules, to irreligion, which is a complete absence of rules and morals, and to be fair, is much more common than its ugly step-sister.

But the tricky thing is that, whichever camp you may belong to—whichever end of the spectrum you find yourself on—either way, the Man-Meets-God temple is a mirage, an utter failure.

The Man-Meets-God temple fails because it refuses to receive God on his own terms, to let him reign as king, to let him define and declare what is most valuable.

The Man-Meets-God temple fails because it tries to back God into a corner or force his hand or, just as bad, to simply cut him out of the picture altogether.

So, what about the God-Meets-Man temple?

We get a good picture of what this temple looks like in Genesis 28, at a place called “Bethel”.

The story goes like this:

Jacob has been a lying, cheating snake-in-the-grass, and he’s stolen both Esau’s birthright and his first-born blessing. As a result of his bamboozling, Jacob finds himself on the lamb from his brother, escaping the land that was promised to his granddaddy, Abraham and his father, Isaac.

But, just as he’s lying down to sleep on the first night of his journey, Jacob has a dream.

“And he dreamed, and behold, a there was a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven. And behold, the angels of God were ascending and descending on it! And behold, the Lord stood above it…”

As the story unfolds, God promises that Jacob will inherit the birthright—even though he stole it. Jacob will have the land, a people, God’s blessing and God’s presence.

When Jacob wakes up, he’s afraid, and he says, “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven!”

God comes down at Bethel. It’s where he makes his dwelling place with man and promises to bless and rescue sinners.

Babel is the place where good people go to get better, but Bethel is the place where God interrupts, redeems and changes godless cheaters into God-fearing worshipers.

In the end, Babel was destroyed--quite unceremoniously, I might add--but Bethel only gets better.

In the end, Bethel moves from a place to a person, as Jesus--the Word Taken on Flesh--completes and fulfills what started as Jacob's ladder, the stairway to heaven. It's Jesus who tells the first of his disciples in John 1:51 that they will see heaven opened up and the angels ascending and descending on him. That means access, full and unhindered access between heaven and earth.

In Jesus, those of us who trust him as Savior, obey him as King and treasure him above all else have union with our Creator and access to the very throne of God.

If you're a card-carrying member of Babel--where Man Meets God--lay down your arms, lay down your bricks and lay down your mortar. Look to the true Temple, Bethel--where God Meets Man--look to him and worship.

Look to him and you'll see God himself.

An Open Letter to Generation Y

2012-01-21T15:39:00.000-05:00

Brothers and Sisters of Generation Y,

I'm writing as one Millennial to another. More specifically, though, I have a message for myself and for my brothers and sisters in the Evangelical Church.

I have an old message to convey, but it seems particularly timely as 2012 prepares to close out its first full month. The message is this: Let's not be afraid to pursue holiness.

Right now, authenticity, brokenness, and "just being yourself" are all the craze. We're the generation that is embracing a haphazardly watered-down version of Dietrich Bonhoeffer's "religionless Christianity"--a version which basically amounts to the Outback Steakhouse slogan of "No Rules, Just Right"--but in reality, we are in danger of missing Bonhoeffer's essential distinction between "cheap grace" and "costly grace".

Costly grace, Bonhoeffer said, is what happens when Jesus calls a man "to come and die". Cheap grace, on the other hand, doesn't make any requirements on its recipients to deny themselves, take up their cross and follow Christ, but simply removes sin's consequences and allows a person to continue in the same direction they were headed.

We Generation Y-ers need a constant reminder that Jesus never calls us to be simply authentic, but rather, to freely admit our sin while we turn from it and put it to death.

We of the great Generation Y are quick to criticize institutions--including governments, banking sectors and the church--and we love to lambaste anyone who urges us to live within any set of rules, dismissing them immediately as hypocrites and--our favorite--legalists.

True, many of the legalistic tenancies that many of us grew up with in the church rightly deserve our criticism and repentance from, such as equating mere Sunday School attendance with genuine piety and substitute cuss words with self-control.

True, the bare trappings of Christianity mustn't be confused with the core of the Christian message--the Good News that Christ came to reconcile sinners to himself by his death and resurrection.

But let's be careful that we don't forget what God in Christ has saved us to. Let's be careful to remember that work that we are called to as God's adopted sons and daughters in Christ.

Let's be careful to take into full consideration the writer to Hebrews' command to "strive for ... a holiness without which no one will see the Lord" (Heb. 12:14). Let's not neglect Paul's command to "work out (our) salvation with fear and trembling", remembering that "God is at work within us, to will and to work for his good pleasure" (Philippians 2:12-13).

Dear brothers and sisters of my generation, myself included, Jesus came not to abolish the Law, but to fulfill it (Matt. 5:17). And shockingly, what Jesus did in the Sermon on the Mount was not to say that we need to obey less of the Law of Moses, but more of it.

The righteousness that is to "exceed that of the Pharisees" (Matt 5:20) consists in an obedience from our hearts to the heart of God. That's why conversion is necessary. That's why we need born again. Not so that we can live unto ourselves, but so that we can "belong--body and soul, in life and in death--to (our) faithful Savior, Jesus Christ", as the Heidelberg Catechism puts it.

Brothers and sisters of Generation Y, let's put aside our battle with institutions, regulations and rituals, and let's begin to do battle with the sin that dwells in our hearts. Let's be a generation of believers who are faithful to "put off" sin and "put on" righteousness, even if those around us deride us as hypocrites and puritans.

Let's accept the world's denouncement as a blessing, remembering that "no servant is above his master" (John 15:20), and let's get about the business of fighting our sin and openly proclaiming the Gospel of the life-changing, life-owning, life-satisfying Savior that calls us his friends.

Let's be a generation of believers who take up the mantle of the eighteenth-century missionary, David Brainerd, who said, "Oh! That I may never loiter on my heavenly journey!"

Let's not be a generation of loiterers and chameleons. Let's be a generation who embraces the costly grace that changes, sanctifies and turns cowards into fearless ambassadors for the King of Heaven.

Yours in the fight,

Jay

Anticipation and Christmas Eve

2011-12-24T18:05:00.000-05:00

It's here, my favorite day of the year! And I'm not posting this a day early, either.

No, I'm convinced that December 24th is my favorite all-time date. Today, Christmas Eve, contains all that is right and good about the entire Christmas season. Christmas Eve is all about waiting, expectation and hope.

And unlike the day that follows, Christmas Eve never ends on a down note. Let's face it, even the very best Christmas Day, filled with joy, laughter, movies, games, the best of presents (in both wrapping paper and the kind that come from the oven), ends with a twinge of despair because at the end of the day, Christmas is over.

But not today. Today is Christmas Eve, and it's here in all its hope-filled glory. When tomorrow is over, it's Monday, December 26, as far is it can get from Christmas, but when today is over, it's Christmas.

Today, I'll be waiting (along with Anabelle) for my parents to fly in from Northern California and for Janelle to get off work, then it's back to the house to watch and see the annual fall and redemption of one George Bailey. And who knows, maybe we'll get some card-playing in as a fitting follow-up.

I wish my brothers, sister-in-law and niece could be here too, but as the song says, "one day soon we all will be together..."

As a kid, Christmas Eve was always a stellar day. We'd get going in the early afternoon to visit our aunt and uncle for the evening, and--it seemed like always--on the way home we'd listen to Nat King Cole (or Nat King Smith, as he was affectionately known) bid us a Merry Christmas in song.

Sometimes on Christmas Eve, we'd go see the lights at Dovewood Court, which was a neighborhood almost certainly sponsored by PG&E power company, but we invariably would end up back at home reading the familiar Christmas story out of Luke and making sure Santa and Rudolf had a nice spread when they paid us a visit later on.

Then it was to bed with the three of us, which on Christmas Eve meant that it was to an all-nighter of Monopoly that was consistently--shall we say--monopolized by my older brother, Dusty.

Meanwhile, our dad would be out in the living room, building a presentation fit for Christmas morning, and we'd try and sneak a peak from the hallway every couple of hours. We couldn't wait for the sun to come up, and that time in between first light and 8 o'clock--when we were allowed to wake my parents up--seemed like it would never end.

The hope of Christmas morning, the anticipation, is what kept us up all night, and that's what always made Christmas Eve so special.

All of this hope and expectation is nothing but a glimmer of what must've been coursing through the veins of an old man named Simeon back in Jesus' day. We get introduced to Simeon in Luke 2, when Mary and Joseph take Jesus to the Temple to have him dedicated at eight days old.

Simeon, we're told, is a man who is righteous, devout and he's filled with the Holy Spirit--that is, he's a prophet. But maybe the biggest thing that defines Simeon is that it's said he's "waiting for the consolation of Israel."

In Simeon, we meet a man who embodies the history of Israel in miniature. It's as if we're introduced to the very poster boy of Israel's waiting and longing for a Savior, a Redeemer, a Prophet, a Priest, a King.

Now here's a man who has lived an entire lifetime of Christmas Eve.

But, unlike probably anybody else on the face of the earth, Simeon had lived for ages with the God-revealed promise that, before he went six feet under, he himself would see the Lord's Christ. This old man, filled with God's Spirit, knew that he would one day meet God's Anointed One.

Can you imagine what he must have been feeling when he not only saw, but cradled the Consolation of Israel? I can still remember the unbridled joy that my brothers and I felt as we discovered our first Nintendo one fateful Christmas morning, and that joy was trumped a hundredfold on Janelle and I's wedding day, then a thousandfold when I first cradled our daughter a year ago.

And he rejoices. With the Christ-child held close to his chest, ol' Simeon blesses God for keeping His promise, not merely to himself, and not even just to Israel, but to the world. At last, Christmas morning has come and Simeon's eyes see the salvation of God, "prepared in the presence of all peoples".

Think about that this Christmas Eve. As you experience even a twinge of anticipation for what's to come, think of ol' Simeon, holding God-With-Us in his withered hands.

Think of ol' Simeon and rejoice, because Immanuel has come to Israel.

Merry Christmas Eve!

Caroling, Caroling

2011-12-22T16:32:00.003-05:00

As we darkened the doors at the Schiller Park Rec Center for Sunday worship, twenty minutes late and fighting a collective bad attitude, Janelle, Anabelle and I were greeted by the familiar words of an old carol that at the time seemed more fit to mock us than to draw us to worship.

Thankfully, that song didn't include the first-hand account of a fictitious gift-less child percussionist, nor did it make mention of another child whose lack of financial planning and hazy idea of the resurrection had left him just shy of the price tag for a new pair of kicks to get for his fading mother.

No flame-bearing request was made of a mysteriously unknown French maiden, and Thistle Hair the Christmas Bear was mercifully left unmentioned in the Alabama backwoods.

But it was something entirely un-mockworthy in the song we were singing that really rubbed me the wrong way, as we sang out the words: O come, all ye faithful, joyful and triumphant! O come ye, o come ye, to Bethlehem!

If you don't catch where I'm going with this yet, let me clue you in: When you're so hopelessly late for church that you have to put a Sunday morning spat on the back-burner, the last three words that come to mind when you take stock of yourself are, in no particular order: faithful, joyful, triumphant.

Taken at face value, it's almost as if we, the meager-faithed strugglers and stragglers, were being asked to sing a summons to another kind of person: you know, the faithful, joyful and triumphant. It seems like it'd be hypocritical at best, and self-cruelty at worst, to join in a happy chorus seemingly meant for other people--happier people--and yet, I'm never one to leave a carol un-sung.

So, what do we do with those words? Faithful. Joyful. Triumphant.

It seems like we'd be braggarts to call ourselves any of those three words when we're feeling our best, performing at top-notch spirituality and springing out of bed before the rooster crows to cry aloud with David, "I was glad when they said to me, 'Let us go up to the house of the Lord'!"

But these words seem even more out of place on a day like this Sunday. Would joining in the happy chorus just be lip-flapping hypocrisy? Maybe.

The more I've thought about it this week, though, the more I'm convinced that what my heart needed--and needs at this very moment--is a stout reminder that as I stand and trust in the Jesus I'm summoning myself to adore, I claim His faithfulness, His joy, His victorious triumph.

You see, Christmas isn't a time where we celebrate our own faithfulness, joy and victory, mainly because there is no such thing.

Apart from Christ, we're separated from God, alienated from His presence, strangers to the covenants of His promise, hopeless, godless, powerless rebels who have taken up arms against the King of Heaven, the same King who created us in His glorious image and for His glorious name.

Apart from Christ I have no faithfulness, no cause for joy, and in the end, nothing but crushing defeat. (One great picture of this defeat is found in Revelation 20, where an army led by Satan--an army to which we all belong apart from Christ--gathers and marches to Jerusalem with a full head of steam, only to be immediately destroyed by fire coming down out of heaven).

But because the Word took on flesh and dwelt among us, because of Christmas, and because in dwelling with us, Christ lived the life we should have lived and died the death we should have died, I who am faithless and miserable on my own am declared righteous and faithful by the very righteousness and faithfulness of Christ.

This is cause for joy in every circumstance, because I know that whether I stand or fall, win or lose, succeed or fail, that God in Christ is for me, and that there is nothing--nothing--that can separate me from the love of God in Christ Jesus my Lord.

That is my reality today and it is my hope for every future tomorrow. No matter what happens, God stands before me and calls me His child, welcomes me into His embrace and into His family.

And there's no better time than Christmas to remember that we are triumphant--more than conquerors through Him who loved us. Because the baby Jesus grew up, died, defeated death in His resurrection and now intercedes for us before the Father, you and I are more than conquerors through Him who loved us.

He who knew no sin became sin so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. That means that in Christ, you and I are faithful, joyful, and yes, overwhelmingly triumphant.

So come, let us adore Him, Christ the Lord.

Many Thanks

2011-11-26T14:56:00.000-05:00

Four months into our great Ohio adventure and on Thanksgiving weekend, I figure there's not a more opportune time to get some of the things I'm thankful for out on e-paper.

So, in no particular order, here's 15 things I'm thankful for...

1. I'm thankful that God has faithfully provided both jobs and great friendships during our first four months in a new city.

2. I'm thankful that, in the shuffle to find gainful employment and means to pay the bills, that we've needed minimal baby-sitting for Anabelle.

3. I'm thankful that, when we have needed baby-sitting, the body of Christ--particularly the Flower and Burns families--have gladly stepped in to fill the need.

4. I'm thankful for Skype, and for the connection Janelle and I are able to have with our families and friends back home.

5. I'm thankful for Rich Mullins, and for words that he wrote to the Lord, such as, "I'm home anywhere, if you are where I am."

6. I'm thankful that, as a great and desperate sinner who has been rescued by faith in the shed blood of Christ, the accusation of "Hypocrite" can never stick to me.

7. I'm thankful that grace is a free gift resulting in glad obedience, and not a subsidy doled out to nearly deserving hard-workers.

8. I'm thankful for God's gift of mentors and models of His manifold grace.

9. I'm thankful for the quiet and tireless humility that I've watched in a man named Mo.

10. I'm thankful for the intentional, relentless pursuit of souls that I've watched in my friends, Ken and Miss Beverly.

11. I'm thankful for the frighteningly fearless joy I see in my Hawkeye State brothers.

12. I'm thankful that Pastor Bob went door-to-door, inviting the neighborhood kids to Vacation Bible School, and that God blessed his diligence by shedding the light of the Gospel in the hearts of my brothers, my parents and I.

13. I'm thankful that God did a similar work in Janelle's family just a few years later.

14. I'm thankful for my dad and Scott Burns for showing what the Gospel looks like in blue jeans.

15. I'm thankful that there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

Cowardice, Courage and Pure Religion

2011-11-11T13:12:00.003-05:00

All the evidence that I needed to be convinced about man's depravity, my own depravity, was to listen to the news for five minutes this week.

In one week, there's been the Herman Cain allegations and press conferences while entire European economies falling apart. There was a local news report in the last 10 minutes about a dad who repeatedly beat his little girl on the head because she was having a hard time recognizing letters in the alphabet.

But, of course, the dominant story has been the Penn State child sex abuse cover-up scandal.

I honestly haven't been able to stop thinking about the implications that this story brings along to it. You know there's an overwhelming amount to think about when a grown man raping young boys is only the tip of the iceberg to a story.

The incredible, widespread cover-up and enablement afforded to a child rapist--ranging well beyond the university coaches and president, all the way into the local police department and public school district--is staggering, repulsive and literally sickening.

As far back as 1995, police knew that Jerry Sandusky showered with little boys and made physical contact with them, but when he apologized to one of the boy's parents during a police-organized sting operation, the case was closed.

"Sorry I raped and molested your son." Oh, okay, as long as you're sorry... If you weren't sorry, I was really going to be upset... Case closed.

And, when a 28-year-old man walked in on Sandusky raping another boy in 2002, he not only failed to immediately intervene and protect the child, his reaction was to call his dad and wait for the next morning to tell Coach Paterno about the scene.

Lest we give a hall-pass to Mike McQueary, may I remind you that Meriwether Lewis was 28 when he was commissioned to lead the journey to discover the Northwest Passage. Twenty-eight years ought to be enough time to figure out what you're going to do when you walk into that kind of situation.

When I was a kid, my dad told us about a startling, reoccurring dream that he had had. There was a home invasion, and there he was, a man defending his family. What would he do? His response in the dream was to vomit and--in a girly motion--to launch a coffee cup with his left hand toward his attacker.

Now that I have a little family, I understand that scary feeling of being put into my dad's situation and thinking through his scenario. How will I act? Will I wimp out and flail, unleashing the unbridled fury of my Care Bears coffee cup toward my assailant? I don't know.

For that matter, I honestly can't say what I would do if I were in McQuery's shoes. What I can say for certain, though, is that vomiting and throwing a coffee cup like a girl would've been an utterly courageous act in comparison with how he did handle the situation.

I'm being completely serious here. If he had thrown up and dropped whatever he was holding, then took the matter directly to the police, I guarantee this situation would've been over and done with back in 2002. That would've been an utterly courageous feat, and Mike McQueary would've been a hero.

Courage takes different forms in different situations. If all we can muster in the most surprising, terrifying moment of our lives is a pathetic, girly scream, then let's at least belt out the scream and fling our coffee.

We'll be heroes if we do.

And what's more--much more--is that if we don't, we'll be judged, not only by our peers or 12 angry men. We'll be judged by he who keeps watch over our souls.

Proverbs 24:10-12 says all we need to know about this subject. It starts off by making a declaration that I think we can all assent to and identify with:

If you faint in the day of adversity,

your strength is small.

As someone who has a tenancy to literally faint from time-to-time, I can own this passage. It can be my life verse. It's not exactly the most flattering thing I have to say about myself, but, as brother Joel says, "This is my Bible, I am what it says I am."

The next couple of verses give us two commands, which are really one command, and two warnings, which are really one warning:

Rescue those who are being taken away to death;

hold back those who are stumbling to the slaughter.

If you say, "Behold, we did not know this,"

does not he who weighs the heart perceive it?

Does not he who keeps watch over your soul know it,

and will he not repay man according to his work?

As people created in God's image, we bear the responsibility to protect others, who are also made in God's image. We don't get to make up excuses either, because God knows what is in our hearts, and He swears to avenge our unspeakable sin of nonchalance and apathy.

As a person redeemed by my Creator, restored to the Giver of Life through faith in Christ Jesus, I am doubly accountable to the Watcher of my soul.

Lord, let me never, never excuse myself from obedience to your Word, which involves--at bare minimum--speaking out against evil and abuse around me. Lay my soul bare before the light of your Word, so that I may see where I am abusing your blood-bought grace and forsaking my Savior.

And give me courage to at least do something, anything, everything to protect the helpless around me.

Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this:

to visit orphans and widows in their affliction,

and to keep oneself unstained from the world.

Flesh and Blood Needs Flesh and Blood

2011-11-11T07:00:00.151-05:00

The great American prophet Johnny Cash really hit this one on the head: Flesh and blood needs flesh and blood.

Obviously borrowing from Adam's pre-Eve bachelorhood, Cash's little ditty is about a guy looking all around him for a companion, but unable to find one until he lights upon his true love. The song culminates into a very cool, unique-to-Johnny line at the beginning of the main chorus:

Mother nature's quite a lady,

but you're the one I need.

Flesh and blood need flesh and blood,

and you're the one I need.

Creation, as beautiful as it is is, can never satisfy like a friend, companion or lover can. And this points us to a deeper reality.

Over the past few days, we've gone over the story of a God who dwells with His people. So far, we've only gotten as far as wood and canvas, however, as we've focused primarily on God's instructions for Israel to build Him a Tabernacle in the Wilderness, "so that I may dwell with them."

As great as this immeasurable, certainly undeserved grace is--that God would in any sense dwell with His people--it would never be completely beautiful or satisfying, and it would never demonstrate both the justice and mercy of God, if it were confined only to acacia and canvas.

For God's love to truly be poured into our hearts--for God to truly dwell with man--His presence must become "realer" than wood and canvas.

Flesh and blood needs flesh and blood.

One key piece of evidence to support this statement is to look at the entirety of Israel's history throughout the Old Testament. The rise and fall, obedience and--most often--disobedience of God's people point to their need for a deeper cleansing, a fuller revelation of God, a final and fuller dwelling of God with man.

And hope is scattered throughout the Old Testament, right alongside disappointment and disillusionment more times than not. But in very few places is hope expressed more clearly than in Isaiah 7, which we will soon hear throughout the Christmas season, as Advent grows closer and closer.

Amid severely hopeless prophecy about the up-coming demise and capture of Israel by invading armies, the Lord speaks to King Ahaz, who had recently taken the reigns from his father, King Uzziah. The Lord commands poor, terrified Ahaz to ask him for a sign from the Lord, "deep as Sheol or high as heaven."

When Ahaz declines, most likely from fear and even mistrust, the Lord gives him a sign anyways--the sign of Immanuel, "God with us."

Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son,

and shall call his name Immanuel.

Speaking just a chapter later to Isaiah, the Lord further tells of this One who is to come, this "God with us" against whom the enemies of Israel and the Lord will not stand:

For to us a child is born,

to us a son is given;

and the government shall be upon his shoulder,

and his name shall be called

Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,

Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

Of the increase of his government and of peace,

there will be no end,

on the throne of David and over his kingdom,

to establish and uphold it

with justice and with righteousness

from this time forth and forevermore.

The zeal of the Lord of Hosts will do this.

In this One, God will dwell among men in a way previously unimaginable. This "child", this "son" will also be called "Mighty God" and "Everlasting Father", along with other names that pertain only to the Lord.

Upon Him, this God-with-us, the Lord of Hosts will lay the government even of the great king, David. That is, the One to take up the everlasting throne of David as the right ruler of God's people is Himself God-with-us.

What an amazing thing must it have been for Mary--the virgin who conceived--to hear these words echoed and applied to her yet-to-be-born Son in Luke 1: "And the Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end."

And what an amazing thing it must have been for righteous Joseph to hear in a dream that--far from a failed engagement ending in a shameful annulment--his pregnant fiance would bear the one called Jesus, who would "save his people from their sins."

This pregnancy was not to lead to shame, but to the ushering in of Immanuel, "God with us."

Finally, what a shockingly clear statement John makes in his opening prologue, 1:14 in particular:

And the Word (Jesus) became flesh and dwelt (literally: tabernacled) among us...

To quote a Christmas carol before it's proper to do so (it being early November and all), Do you See What I See? In Jesus, the God of the universe, the Lord of Hosts, whose loving presence and kindly kingship we have spurned, has finally and fully come to "dwell among men."

God spanned the distance that we proved unable to do at Babel. He didn't require for us to go up, He has come down.

The Word taken on flesh means that God got his hands dirty. In Jesus, the Creator of all that is literally became what He had formed out of dirt.

In the Wilderness Tabernacle, God came and met with man in a tent made of canvas, but in Jesus, the true and better Tabernacle, God came and met with man in man, as man.

That is good news indeed.

But the great news is, that taking on flesh and dwelling among us wasn't the furthest extent to which God has gone to again be with man. He went still further.

Flesh and blood needs flesh and blood. Not just to live for us, but to die for us.

A New Dawn of God's Dwelling

2011-11-10T07:00:00.076-05:00

As we trace the theme of God dwelling with His people, a major set-back has occurred in Genesis 11.

A daring and potentially self-satisfying attempt at repairing the major rift that first took place in the Garden failed miserably, as the builders of a great tower were suddenly confronted with their futility, as "the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of man had built."

We, the children of man, thought we were going up, congratulated ourselves on reaching the heavens--going up to God--when, like a dad sits down at his daughter's tea party, God came down to see their "progress."

The result is disaster, as our self-religion and autonomy are condemned and the people are scattered over the face of the earth.

There at Babel, man has plummeted to the bottom of our banishment, the depths of our nakedness--which, incidentally, we only noticed after we first sinned.

How will God dwell with man?

But, like the dawn of a new day after a dark, torrent night, hope rises in Genesis 12, when God initiates contact with a run-of-the-mill idolater named Abram.

In Abram, God re-initiates His process of dwelling with man. In Abram, God creates the nation of Israel, a people for His own possession who are eventually exiled to Egypt, then rescued and redeemed at the hand of Moses.

Fast-forward to Exodus 25-30, where Moses is given a detailed blueprint for a Tabernacle in the Wilderness. What a stark contrast these six, painfully detailed chapters give to the building project at Babel.

At Babel, the workers decided the plan, purpose and dimensions of their collective monument to human religion, but in the wilderness of Sinai, God's people were given exact, precise instructions.

Babel ended, predictably enough, in disaster and further banishment from God's presence, and by the time Moses comes down off the Mountain, having heard the clear instructions of the Lord, Israel nearly meets the same fate.

Because, while Moses is up the Mountain receiving the precise details of God’s meeting place with Israel, the people are down in the flat, casting their gold into a bonfire and smoothing out the edges to their golden calf.

Within a matter of hours, 3,000 men are killed by the priestly Levites and many more perish from a plague sent by the Lord, but the real disaster is still to come.

Moses goes up to meet again with the Lord and try to make atonement for the people, but he’s met with a “disastrous word” from the Lord:

“Go up to a land flowing with milk and honey; but I will not go up among you, lest I consume you on the way, for you are a stiff-necked people.”

Though Israel is still to inherit the Promised Land, it will be without the presence of God, and the lack of God’s presence there doesn’t just put a damper on the party—it spells disaster.

But, as the story unfolds, Moses pleads to the Lord to come with the people—either that, or stay with them indefinitely in the desert. This beautiful conversation in Exodus 33, between Moses and the Lord, culminates in the Moses boldly asking that the Lord would show him His glory, and in the Lord allowing Moses a glimpse of His goodness while He declares His name.

The end result of this encounter is that God will indeed accompany His people into the Promised Land, and Moses is soon set to work at building the aforementioned Wilderness Tabernacle. Exodus closes with a dramatic scene, where God's glory fills the Tabernacle, so much so that Moses isn't even able to enter it.

The point is that God has taken up residence with His people in the Tabernacle, and that is great news, but it is also temporary, shadow-like news.

As Israel's history progresses, that tent is replaced by Solomon's temple, then by the rebuilt temple under Nehemiah, but still, the best is yet to come.

Great as they may be have been, the Wilderness Tabernacle and the Temple are meant serve as mere shadows--good, godly shadows, but still just shadows--of the real Tabernacle, the true and better Tabernacle, where God comes down to meet with man finally and decisively.

God's full and final dwelling place with man won't be made of canvas, but of flesh and blood.

Beginnings of Banishment

2011-11-09T07:00:00.005-05:00

God desires to dwell among men. That is good news worth dwelling on.

In yesterday’s post, I pointed out the tension that comes along with God’s desire and plan to dwell among men.

If it’s to happen at all, it will all happen on God’s terms.

Like most good stories, the story of the God who dwells with His people starts at the start.

When Adam was first formed out of the dirt, God placed him in a garden, gave him a job, a blessing, a command and a wife. But we’re also told that God himself was with them, walking among them in the garden "in the cool of the day."

That nearness to God was soon broken, however, when Adam spurned the kind and loving authority of his Maker and disobeyed the only command he was given. In addition to curses falling upon the serpent, the earth and all of mankind as a result of Adam's willful disobedience, something even more dreadful and painful overtook us as a result:

God banished us from his presence.

From that moment on, the tension and plot-line of God's story revolves around one question: How will God and Man dwell together as at the beginning?

Also, from that moment on, the world is seriously out of whack. Brother turns on brother and murders over jealousy. Problems escalate from Cain's shameful murder of his brother to Lamech's shameless boasting of murder to his two--count 'em, two--wives, and finally to God reducing the world's population to right around eight.

The best solution man can come up with to remedy the core issue of banishment from God's presence comes in Genesis 11, where the world's first and finest self-help religion arises at a place that came to be known as Babel.

As the workmen stand back and marvel at their enormous tower, bottle of suds in hand, they pat each other on the back and raise a toast. "We did it! We've worked hard, and finally reached heaven! Soak it up, boys, this is a day they'll remember!"

Just then, "the Lord came down..." That's a painful phrase to would-be God-reachers. No matter how great you are, successful we are or hard-working we are, we can’t ever hope to reconcile ourselves to God. We must give up all hope of reaching Him ourselves.

In other words, if you are to meet with God, He must come down to you. Not the other way around.

And yet, even amid constant failure on a personal level and scandal in the public sphere, the world around us—including myself—instinctively strives to reach back up to God, to restore Eden and even to assert ourselves as good, worthy and right.

If we are to be re-united with God as we were in the beginning, it will have to be His doing, on His terms. The Babel experiment failed, and with it, so do our repeated efforts at self-justification.

God must take action to bring us back to Himself, to again dwell with man. And that's where Abram comes in.

The God Who Dwells with Us

2011-11-08T10:10:00.001-05:00

I'll be honest, if it were up to me to pick which text I was to teach on in Sunday School last weekend, it probably would not have been Exodus 25-30.

Maybe it's owing to my church's paltry flannelgraph supply or my woefully inadequate knowledge of the cubits-to-feet conversion table--or maybe it's a combination of the two--but, somehow, teaching a handful of 3-to-11 year-olds about the wonders and glories (and precise dimensions) of the wilderness tabernacle isn't quite at the top of my must-preach list.

I mean, think about how many flans would have to be butchered to come up with enough flannel to depict six chapters of the sometimes-excruciating detail that Moses is given in order to construct Israel's mobile worship center.

That's a lot of flans, and certainly a good measure of droopy eye-lids to go along with 'em.

So imagine my relief and blossoming excitement when I ran across only the fourth sentence of chapter 25, a sentence that serves as a heading and purpose statement for everything that follows: "And let them make me a sanctuary, that I may dwell in their midst."

This may not be new news to you, but it's the best news you and I could ever hear. God desires to dwell with His people.

That's the plot line of the entirety of the Bible, starting with our great grandpappy Adam and running all the way through the end of Revelation, where the joyful conclusion of history is pronounced: "Behold, the dwelling place (literally "Tabernacle) of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God."

And the plot line runs right through Exodus 25-30, where God is telling Moses and Israel--in no uncertain terms--how He will go about dwelling with them in the desert.

As the details flow throughout these six chapters, prescribing everything from yarn colors to priestly boxer-briefs, it becomes inescapably clear that God is very particular about the way He desires to be met and worshiped.

In fact, the follow-up to God's stated purpose (...that I may dwell with them) is, "Exactly as I show you concerning the pattern of the tabernacle, and of all its furniture, so you shall make it."

And that's the rub. God desires to again dwell with His people. Fantastic, wouldn't we all like to dwell with our Maker? But, God will only dwell with His people if He gets to call the shots--in other words, He'll only be our God if He is God, King, Authority, Boss.

Maybe you chafe against this concept, of God calling all the shots even as He reconciles us to Himself and accomplishes His grand purpose of redemption. Maybe you feel like God is playing the much-maligned "One Percent," throwing His weight around while we hapless "Ninety-Nine Percent" are left to only cower in His shadow.

If that's where you're at, lend me your ear over the next few days and let's talk about the God who dwells with His people.

And I promise to keep the flannelgraph use at a minimum.

Crazy Forgiveness

2011-09-27T11:34:00.003-04:00

"Bless those who curse you; bless and do not curse."

Those words of the Apostle Paul are typed in Courier New font atop my copy of The Devil in Pew Number Seven, which is the unbelievably gripping true story of a woman who saw both of her parents shot--her mother killed and father never to recover--as a seven-year-old.

While the details of the story are gripping enough, with the shooting of a mother and father in front of their two children serving as the culmination of a six-year campaign of terror waged against a rural pastor's family back in the 70's, the whole point of the book boils down to one word: forgiveness.

After devoting 12 chapters worth of ink mainly to the events leading up to and including her parents' shooting, the author, Rebecca Nichols Alonzo, spends three chapters largely describing and unpacking her on-going road to forgiving not only the gunman, but the man who had been behind the terrifying span of her early childhood that including 10 bombings of the pastor's house and church, and who ordered the final "hit" that would take her mother's life.

With incontrovertible evidence--and lawful convictions--in both cases, the two men served a combined 22 years in prison.

While her mother was shot to death in the episode, her father, the pastor, whose nerves had been stretched paper-thin in the years leading up to the fatal shooting of his wife, slipped in and out of paranoia in his remaining seven years, much of which was spent recovering physically from the two bullet wounds he suffered in the attack.

Justice was not served. Not by a long-shot.

In fact, the top investigator of the case, an agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, has been undone by the injustice in these cases, leaving a string of broken marriages in the wake of his 30-plus years of frustration over the shortcomings of the justice system.

Rebecca Nichols Alonzo, in stark contrast, had been taught to forgive her enemies and pray for her persecutors, both by the word and model of her parents.

When she was 16-years-old, entirely orphaned, Rebecca received a phone call from the madman who was behind all of the attacks, yet served only one year in prison.

He was out of prison at this point, but he had a completely surprising message for Rebecca: "I'm sorry".

Her response, even at 16, was completely beyond worldly explanation: "I told him my brother and I did forgive him. I told him, in fact, we had forgiven him long before he had asked for forgiveness."

As it turns out, the on-going witness of a pastor unwilling to return evil for evil had paid off, and this madman had repented and believed in the gospel after all. The pastor's life had been ruined, his wife killed, but his obedience had been rewarded.

The fact is, that we, as Christians, have absolutely no choice but to forgive. "Forgiveness is the language of heaven," Alonzo says, and she--if anyone--would have the right to shrug off such a command if it were optional to the believer.

This forgiveness is obviously shocking to the world, because it's impossible without knowing--or rather, being known by--a God who has forgiven our prideful belittling of His Glory and baseless murder of His Son. It took the death of His Son to make us His children, and we are to carry on that legacy of costly forgiveness.

A reporter for CNN that wrote a four-part series on Alonzo's book asked the author if she had been crazy to forgive the man who had drove her family to the brink of ruin and, ultimately, taken away the lives of both her parents:

"I'll tell you how I respond to that," she says. "If I had not forgiven, I would be crazy in an institution somewhere. My parents had planted the seeds of forgiveness in me as a little girl: Pray for those who persecute you and bless those who curse you."

With more time and ink to explain her road to forgiveness, Alonzo lays out her "top four" observations forged out of her thoroughly biblical lifelong path to forgiveness:

My sins will not be forgiven by God is I refuse to forgive those who have sinned against me. (see Matt. 18:35)
I miss an opportunity to show God's love to an unforgiving world.
I'm the one who remains in jail when I withhold God's grace by failing to forgive.
If I have trouble forgiving, it might be because I'm actually angry at God, not the person who wronged me.

Let me tell you, reading through this book over the last few days has served as a telescope for seeing afresh the gospel-arranged constellation standing all the way through Jesus' sermons and the rest of the New Testament--not to mention the entirety of the Old Testament, which continually calls God's people to wait upon His justice, to "leave room for the wrath of God."

God has forgiven me of the vilest, cruelest and ugliest of sin, and He commands me, as His child, to extend that same forgiveness to others, even though they may sin against me "seventy times seven."

This is the message I need to preach to myself daily, to keep the garden of my soul free from the weeds of bitterness, and to live as a free man, loved and accepted by the God of Heaven by the virtue of the death of His Son.

A Comparison Beyond Competition

2011-09-14T17:15:00.006-04:00

I don't know about you, but I really enjoy a good competition, and there's no better sport to bring that out in than baseball.

In baseball, more than any other team sport, you've got the spotlight on a 1-on-1 competition throughout the whole game. Whether it's the pitcher versus the batter, the base-runner versus the catcher, or even the manager versus the umpire, the 1-on-1 element is there throughout the sport.

Games and playoff series often come down to a single play involving a mono-y-mono showdown, and sometimes, even an entire season can be decided by such a play.

One such moment happened to my beloved Giants this May. The Orange and Black was in the midst of defending its World Series title, when 2010 NL Rookie of the Year Buster Posey went down for the season on a play at the plate that not only cost the team the game, but--in hindsight--effectively ended the season with four months left to play.

While other team sports may not feature the same type of in-game individuality, there's always constant debating about who's the best. Is it Kobe or LeBron? Magic or Michael? Favre or Montana? Rice or Ocho Cinco?

Alright, maybe that last one was a bit of a throw-away, but you get my point. Matchups are really fun.

That's probably why the book of Hebrews is always a good read. The basic premise of the book is that Jesus is supreme over everyone and everything, and the repetition of the book has all the complexity of a "My dad can whip your dad" argument.

But the simplicity of the argument form doesn't by any means reflect a lack of depth with the book, which is widely considered to be a sort of transcribed sermon from the early church.

In fact, the simplicity of the "my dad can whip your dad" outline only serves to frame some of the most clear and precious truths of the gospel.

Over and over again, the writer (or preacher) holds up something rightly regarded as worthy of honor and, in many cases, even worship, and over and over again, he holds said thing up to the light of who Jesus is, putting that thing in its proper perspective and Jesus into his--as the supreme Son who is indeed the final Word of God to the people of God.

The goal of this repeated comparison (in which there really is no contest) is to worship Jesus and cling solely to him whose throne is forever (1:8, cf Ps. 45).

In chapter one, Jesus is superior to the angels as the unique Son of God, image of God, creator of all, holder together of all things, heir to all things and final purifier of the sins of his people.

Chapter two sees Jesus further compared to angels, as the one who has tasted death for his people and sanctified us, and is therefore not ashamed to call us brothers.

Chapter three trumpets Jesus' superiority to Moses, the greatest of Old Testament figures, who nonetheless is counted as less honor than Christ even as a servant is counted of less honor than a Son.

Chapters three and four contain a solemn call to enter into the rest provided by Jesus (the true and better Sabbath), and chapter four ends by beginning a larger argument that will last through the end of the book.

It's toward the beginning of this broad argument that the writer/preacher brings up the name Melchizedek, who stands above all Old Testament figures as a mystery man among men.

Melchizedek had been introduced in Genesis 14, just after Abram had returned from whipping up on some kings. Melchizedek is introduced as the king of Salem (which means peace) and as the Priest of the Most High God.

As the writer/preacher of Hebrews points out at the beginning of chapter seven, Melchizedek had basically come out of nowhere to bless Abram and collect 10 percent of the spoils from war. No genealogy, no father or mother, "no beginning of days nor end of life, but resembling the Son of God he continues as priest forever."

And this Melchizedek, having mysteriously entered and exited the human scene, has only one true successor to his priesthood. Who might that be? You guessed it, Jesus.

Jesus, as eternal and unique Son and Image of the Invisible God--that is, as God himself, is the fulfillment of this mystery-shrouded Melchizedek character. And this priesthood--not the Levitical priesthood of the Old testament--has always been ultimate in God's plan.

The Levitical priesthood, even at its best, was always going to be temporary. It was a shadow, and this mysterious priesthood, began in Melchizedek and completed in Christ, has always been and always will be the substance.

And the writer/preacher will go on to explain that not only was Christ the true successor to the priesthood of mysterious Melchizedek, it was Christ himself who was the one-time sacrifice that would stand permanently for his people.

Alright, I know what you're thinking (if you're still reading). You're thinking, "So What?"

Good question, because as exciting as comparisons to the Old Testament and the Levitical priesthood may be, we need to come away from our time in the Word with something that applies to our everyday lives.

To frame it another way, "How does Jesus being the true and better Melchizedek motivate me to love my neighbors, or submit to my boss, or lead my family?"

Well, I'm not exactly sure it works that way. But I do know that we are to worship Jesus, and that will change everything--all of who we are and all of how we interact with the world.

As people who belong to Christ, we are in the process of being shaped into the image of Christ, and that only comes about by beholding Christ, as 2 Corinthians 3:18 makes clear. Beholding is becoming.

So, take a minute and let's behold five truths about Christ in this text:

Jesus is our everlasting "in" to the inner place beyond the veil, and he can get us beyond the curtain with him. (6:19-20)

The power of an indestructible life--not tribal lineage--is what makes Jesus the true successor of Melchizedek. (7:16)

Jesus' replacement of the Levitical priesthood ushers in a "better hope, through which we draw near to God." (7:19)

Jesus is the guarantor of a better covenant. (7:22)

Jesus' eternal nature and present on-going prayer for those who draw near to God through him means that he's able to save them (us!) to the uttermost (i.e. completely). (7:25)

If all of this is true, if it's true that Jesus is--right now, even as we speak--interceding for us before the Father, having offered himself up for us once and for all, then we can trust him, worship him and obey him.

If he's the guarantor of a better covenant, then we Christians can have faith to boldly proclaim the gospel as ambassadors of the King and heralds of good news.

If he's a priest based on the fact that he has indestructible life (think resurrection), then we know that nothing can separate us from his love.

Yes, as impractical as it may sound, worshiping this "Incomparable Christ" will change all of who we are.

The Easy Street to Cultural Currency

2011-09-08T23:54:00.002-04:00

I don't mean to brag, but last night, I came home with quite a bit of coin.

In fact, I'll go so far to say that what I brought back from my new job at Easy Street Cafe amounted to the best 18 bucks I could have hoped for.

What's so impressive about the 18 dollarinos? I'm glad you asked.

A major portion of the answer revolves around the fact that, when you're training as a server, you're not supposed to walk out the door with any money whatsoever. The basic idea is that you know nothing, so you follow someone who does (kind of like a lost puppy), and you use that time to figure out what that particular restaurant's soup of the day happens to be, or what fries come with what sandwich, etc.

As you might expect--or know from experience--it doesn't take a superabundance of shifts to feel like you have a pretty good grasp on what you're supposed to be doing when the restaurant sets you loose on their patrons. So after two or three shifts, you're serving tables all by your lonesome, only to find yourself bequeathing all of your newly earned riches to the aforementioned server who knows way more than you do, but nonetheless has been doing very little work to earn the tip that you've just handed over.

My manager from Macaroni Grill had a kind way of reminding me of this when I was first starting out. As I was running around hocking wine and lasagna, Cliff took time out of his busy schedule to stop me and say, "You know what stinks about tonight? You're doing aaaaaalll of this work, and making no money."

Thanks, Cliff, I really appreciated your comment, and am in no way bitter even four years later...

Where was this blog going? Ah yes, the 18 bucks I made last night.

As I was saying before, you're not supposed to me making any money while you're training, and since I was still in training mode last night, I didn't go to work even expecting to cruise with 18 Washingtons. So, my low hopes were more than exceeded when both servers that I had been working alongside of approached me and offered me some 'atta-boy' cash.

What those 18 bones stood for was much more than just a couple dollars shy of 20. What they say, along with the actual words of the servers dealing them out, was that--at least for a night--my hard work had not gone unnoticed, and that my status as the new guy had been somewhat upgraded.

What those 18 dollars really stand for is forward movement toward cultural currency, the right to speak into the lives of others. It means that incremental progress has been made (if only a little) in building a platform for the proclamation of the Gospel in my workplace, and that thrills my heart.

You see, I really want the Lord to use me in this job--as long as He has me there--to be involved in the lives of my co-workers, to get to really know them and care for them, and to invite them into the life of my family--both home and church.

I really want them to see Christ as the all-satisfying Treasure that He is, and to know the joy of being called the sons (and daughters) of God.

If this motivation is true, then my pattern of work has to remain consistently Christ-centered. It means that I need to be careful to ask the right questions at my tables and pay attention to detail when I communicate the order back to the kitchen.

I really think there's few things more detrimental to the Gospel taking root in our workplaces than our failure to work hard. It's laughable at best, but blasphemy at worst to think that I can be a half-hearted employee and lousy co-worker, yet expect anyone to want to hear about the hope that I have within me.

It means that when everyone else stands around complaining about the heat, cold, humidity, slow night, slammed day, demanding boss, that I need to do all things without grumbling and complaining, and so shine like light in a dark world.

In short, all I'm talking about is living out our old friend, the Puritan Work Ethic, which is to say that the way we work reflects the way we think of our God. If we think lowly of God, then we will join the host of slackers and whiners that the world is chalked full of.

But, if we think highly of God, then we will realize that He put Adam in the Garden to work the land. That means that God created everyday work, blesses it, and desires for us to live out our passion for Him through our so-called Joe jobs.

Can you picture Jesus, while living out the active righteousness that we owed to God, working as a carpenter? It's not a glamorous job, to say the least.

Picture the One who not only spoke oak trees into being, but currently holds together by the word of His mouth, carefully crafting a cabinet or a table. Do you think He did shoddy work in His Nazareth storefront? Not likely.

For my part, I know I have been rescued by a great God who has done all that is needed for my salvation and my sanctification through the life, death and resurrection of Christ. And if this is all true, then it applies at Easy Street Cafe.

Pray that God would give me the strength to live this out, and I'll be praying for you.

The Forgotten Fruit of Faithfulness

2011-08-10T12:40:00.001-04:00

It's safe to say that we live in a culture that prizes the concept of "radical."

We--and I definitely include myself in this category--love to think of ourselves as revolutionary firebrands, as if our generation is the cumulative second-coming of a technologically equipped Martin Luther.

We love to glorify the cowboy, the lone ranger, the wild men who break free from the prison bars of a 9 to 5 and a lawn to mow.

While much of this is attitude can be good and necessary, I think that we as Christians are especially prone to exalt a radical out-of-the-box attitude as the newly discovered chief end of man.

It strikes me as odd--and most of all, humbling--then, that the concept of "radical living" in and of itself is nowhere to be found in the Scriptures. Of course, as Jesus steps onto the stage of human history, He delivers one challenge after another that require a radical change at the heart level--akin to being born again--but you won't find Him calling His disciples to become a group of mavericks who renounce convention as a spiritual act in and of itself.

In fact, what the Scriptures hold up as the the normal and practical context of a Christian living out his or her faith is just that: normal and practical.

Maybe, instead of Christ calling His disciples to merely flaunt convention, He's calling us to a change that is deeper than simply quitting a job or selling a house. You don't need to be given a new heart to figure out that the American Dream isn't all it's cracked up to be, but you do need to be given a new heart if you're going to love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.

This is the kind of change that will result in that increasingly forgotten virtue known as faithfulness.

Now, if you're anything like me, that may not exactly thrill your heart to hear that, because it seems so mundane and ordinary. Faithfulness doesn't sound all that exciting, but for the believer, faithfulness is a clear sign that God is actively working in our lives, producing the fruit that is to be characteristic of His people.

The forgotten fruit of faithfulness is what my friend and former boss, Tim, reminded me of this past year. Tim had originally hired me at Concordia, and I worked under him for a year before he moved onto a different position at the school.

I have all the respect in the world for Tim as a godly man and a leader, and so when I came upon hard times in the past year, I went to him for advice.

After listening to my situation and helping me to think through a couple of different issues, he said something so simple that I was almost tempted to pass it by.

He said, "Jay, God is not calling us to do anything heroic or to be liked by everybody, but He is calling us to be faithful. With His help, I think it's a pretty achievable goal."

A few months removed from that conversation, I'm still getting a bit choked up just remembering those words and the deep, lasting consolation the Lord delivered to my soul that afternoon.

Far from boring and mundane, faithfulness is a miraculous fruit that is produced by God's Spirit in the hearts and lives of believers.

And how does faithfulness show itself? In everyday life, of course.

Faithfulness means answering the bell morning after morning, working hard, paying attention to detail at our jobs, refusing to be distracted and waste our company's time. It means that we are consistent in the time we spend with our families, making that time count by pouring into them and showing them how to walk with the Lord.

Faithfulness also means pursuing relationships that God is putting naturally in our lives; relentlessly loving, knowing and caring for our friends, co-workers and neighbors and ceaselessly praying that God would open a door for His gospel there.

Faithfulness means that we make the most of our time, realizing that time is short and we are on a mission to reach a dying world with the good news of God who has loved us and pursued us even to the point of death so that we might live in Him.

I pray that God would produce this forgotten fruit of faithfulness in me more and more.

"But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires." -Galatians5:22-24

Columbus, C.S., and the God of All Comfort

2011-08-08T17:03:00.000-04:00

As I checked my email for the ump-teenth time this afternoon, it hit me: My god is too small.

Before you get too excited and start putting a tract in the first-class mail headed for Columbus, allow me to point out the lack of capitalization on the above "g".

Because by no means is the God of Glory, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, too small. No, no, He is the One who raised Christ Jesus from the dead.

The god I'm talking about is decidedly smaller than the aforementioned God who sits enthroned above the earth, looking down upon the sons of men as if they were grasshoppers--yet still taking notice of us image-bearers of the Holy One.

The god I'm talking about is nothing more than a crude replica of the God of All Comfort. This mini-g deity is simply the god of comfort, offering--in the place of unconditional trust in the creating, sustaining and redeeming love of God--a paycheck.

Not that I'm against paychecks per se, in fact quite the opposite, I'm for 'em. Especially as it applies to supporting my family, as per the emphatic direction given in 1 Timothy 5:8, which declares that a so-called believer sitting on his duff, neglecting the needs of his family, is in a worse predicament than that of an unbeliever.

Or, to steal a line from It's a Wonderful Life, "(Money) comes in pretty handy 'round here, Bub!"

With right around 25 applications in process and just over a week into moving my fledgling family across the country to the fair (and slightly humid) city of Columbus, Ohio, I'm ready to get working.

A natural and godly inclination, to be sure, but one that is easily perverted by the Enemy.

Here's how it has worked in my mind over this last week: I'll spend a few hours at a time feverishly applying to anything from local coffee shops to multi-million dollar marketing corporations, then I'll refresh my inbox, literally not willing to leave a new email unopened for more than a minute or two.

Since I have my email set to pop up when a new email arrives, the question to "Is there a new email?" is invariably "No" when I check it this way, but still, I want to be extra sure I'm not missing something, as if the email will read, "This job will self-destruct in 10-9-8..."

Now I'm sure I'm not the first, last or only person to ever experience this cycle, but what I noticed with increased clarity this afternoon was the fact that, instead of thanking God for allowing me to play a part in His story and asking to make me faithful to play it well, I have been begging that He would quickly bring along a job, period.

But what if, during this time of job-seeking, God is not most passionate that I find a job, but that I seek Him more, that I realize my dependence upon Him more. What if He desires me to pray for His kingdom to come with a fervency that I wouldn't have if everything was dialed in?

Could it be that He is using this unique time--now more than ever--to cause me to deny myself, take up my cross and follow Him?

If that's going to happen, I know that the top casualty is going to be the mini-g god of comfort.

It's going to end up looking something like the scene C.S. Lewis creates in The Great Divorce, where one of the ghosts has an extremely painful lizard-ectomy of the shoulder. The lizard had been a nuisance and a tormentor of the ghost up until this point, directing his paths, yet disallowing him to be free and whole.

When the lizard is finally removed from the ghost's shoulder, there's a terrible, agonizing scream from the ghost, but he is transformed into a solid man, and the lizard is transformed into a great stallion that suddenly serves as a faithful steed--not an encumbrance--for the now-solid man.

Uncomfortable as the process may be right now, there stands the God of All Comfort, promising to replace my self-made, shabby version of "comfort" with that infinite, unfading variety of Comfort found only in sharing in the afflictions of Christ.

The test is going to be whether or not I check my email right after I get done posting this self-directed sermon.

Ready? Set? Go.

The Reason for our Watchfulness

2011-05-21T14:48:00.000-04:00

With all the buzz created from the most recent End-of-the-World prediction, I'm glad the Giants and A's had the foresight to schedule an early start time to this afternoon's game.

First pitch is at 4:10, so Tim Lincecum and Brett Anderson have a solid 1:50 to get through five innings and get a winner declared before the clock strikes 6 p.m. Billy Beane must have been behind that decision--Moneyball indeed...

It really has been interesting, and even thought-provoking to watch how today's world takes in an exact doomsday prediction, what with all the social media out there (including, but not limited to, the Official Site of Jay and Janelle Hobbs).

In the past few weeks, I've joined the Twitter-verse, and along with my theological/pastoral follows, I'm following several sportswriters (mainly Giants beat writers), along with one of my favorite comedians, Jim Gaffigan.

Jim has plenty to say about all the aforementioned buzz, for example:

Dear God, Can I get extension on my Judgement Day? I was sick & distracted by Twitter. (btw follow back?)
This Rapture stuff is silly. BTW how do I become a good person in 12 hrs? Anyone know what God’s favorite ice cream is?
Anyone know if the shuttles to Hell will have Wifi? Asking for a friend.
“I didn’t say Judgment Day. I said Judge MINT Day. Which is better Mentos or Tic Tacs? Hope there wasn’t any confussion.” - God

Outside of recognizing these tweets for sheer comedic value, isn't this an enlightening window to see how our world--and if we're being honest--we tend to view the coming Judgement, that Day on which God will set everything to rights and separate the sheep from the goats?

The enlightening and convicting element to all of this is that, in response to a knucklehead on the radio who no doubt has a whacky timeline that includes some version of flannelgraph, we are treating the Judgement as something fictional.

What we need to realize--both Christians and non-Christians--is that the Day of the Lord is coming. It's as far from fictional as it gets.

And Jesus has plenty to say about that Day. In fact, he devotes two chapters-worth of solid teaching on the subject in Matthew 24-25, which begins with his disciples asking him for a precise date of his return and ends with Jesus reminding the Twelve that a different "Day" is right around the corner--the Day of his death.

A few things about the Day of the Lord (Judgement Day) to glean from these chapters:

Birth Pains Precede Baby
You can't miss it
Ready or Not, Here I Come

Birth Pains Precede the Baby
For anyone who's been in or around a delivery room (or even a pregnant woman), you know that pain precedes delivery. This may seem like a fairly obvious point, but Jesus applies it to the signs of his coming.

He says that nation rising up against nation, kingdoms rising up against kingdoms, famines and earthquakes will precede his coming. Alright, we have all of those things happening now--in the past year, month, week, even days, not to mention the Israel border scuttlebutt in Washington--doesn't that mean that He is coming soon and very soon?

Well maybe. But birth pains don't start the same clock for everyone. They are valid signals that the process is underway, but some women are in labor for 24 or more hours, while others are in labor for just an hour or so. It's an inexact, non-precise metaphor, and you've gotta believe that Jesus understood that.

The folly of predicting the exact timing of the Lord's return is underscored repeatedly throughout these two chapters, as Jesus says things like, "But concerning that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only."

Are we to believe that the angels and the very Son of God himself, Jesus who is at the Father's right hand, don't know the time, but some old dude in Oakland does? That is folly.

The fact that all these things (wars, earthquakes, etc.) are happening and have been happening for 2,000 years is directly related to another statement of Jesus in Matthew 24: "And this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come."

The end is coming, and that means we Christians need to get about the work of worldwide evangelism. It means that I need to be bold with people I interact with on an everyday basis, and it means that I need to be willing to orient my life in such a way that people hear the gospel and have a chance to believe.

You Can't Miss It
Okay, so we can't know for sure when. Does that mean that we won't know when it actually is happening? Not at all, it's going to be the clearest event imaginable. You can't miss it.

Jesus uses at least three metaphors in these two chapters that all speak to the clarity of his coming:

It's like lightning going from one end of the sky to the other--you can't miss it
It's like when vultures gather, you know there's a corpse there--you won't be able to misinterpret it
It's like when a seasonal tree that blooms only in the spring blooms, you know it's spring--again, no interpretation necessary, it's that obvious

He's saying these things in order to comfort his disciples--the Twelve and us. We're always afraid of not getting invited to the party, or showing up late to the dance, but what Jesus is saying is that it will be an absolute impossibility to miss his coming. When he comes, everyone will know it.

That means that when someone claims to have insider knowledge, we can and should reject what they are saying out of hand. By definition, nobody has insider knowledge. What has been whispered in the inner rooms will be proclaimed from the rooftops.

That's why its baffling and a clear work of the devil that so many are sucked in by claims to insider knowledge. Anyone who claims insider knowledge to the mind and work of God is a charlatan and a liar, and there's no grey area there. Jesus doesn't allow for it.

Ready or Not, Here I Come
Then what should our response be, as Christians who know we will be rescued on that great and unmistakeable Day of the Lord?

Jesus says that we need to get busy.

He uses several metaphors to point out the fact that we need to live in constant readiness and preparedness for his coming.

It's like the master of the house has gone out of town and we don't know when he's coming back. Our response, in that case, ought to be to live as if he's coming back today. To redeem the time and be a productive servant in his house.

It's like the 10 young ladies waiting for the bridegroom to come. Half of them are wise and bring extra oil for their lamps, because they don't know exactly when he's coming, while the other half are foolish and assume that they won't need extra oil. Guess what? The run out of oil and miss the wedding feast.

It's as if he has given us various gifts and wants us to make the best use of them possible. We may know that he requires much of us--i.e. all of who we are--but that is to be motivation for productivity and kingdom advancement, not a sanctifying of our laziness.

In each of these metaphors, the consequences for abusing our time are severe. The wicked servant is ordered to be chopped into pieces and thrown out where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth, while the worthless, gift-wasting servant is likewise thrown out into outer darkness, where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Maybe the most severely disappointing consequence comes to the unprepared virgins, who, in the words of Rocky Balboa, "Should have planned ahead." They have to make a last-minute run to the lamp-oil store, and when they return, they knock on the door only to hear the devastating words of the bridegroom:

"Truly I say to you, I do not know you."

As rightly terrifying as the other two consequences are, I'm struck even more by this statement. That is tragedy. To think you know the Heavenly Bridegroom and find out at the moment of truth that in fact, He doesn't know you.

What to Wear
I want more than anything else in the world to be known by Heaven's Bridegroom. So how do I prepare?

Here's how: I will trust in the Bridegroom and his sin-bearing death, and I will claim his resurrection as my own. Then, I will get active and live out his mission.

It won't do to short-circuit trust in the Bridegroom and just start working. No, he has done the work. He is the master of the house, the Bridegroom, and it would be the highest act of mistrust and treason if I were to just try and work my way toward preparedness.

He has done the work, yet I am called to fruitful, prepared kingdom living. That's the difference between a sheep and a goat. A sheep feeds the hungry, gives drink to the thirsty, clothes the naked, and visits both the sick and the prisoner.

The sheep does this because he himself was once hungry, thirsty, naked, sick and imprisoned, but the Shepherd-King, the Son of Man, gave him--gave me!--food, water, clothes, and visited the sick (dead), imprisoned sheep.

This is the heart of the gospel. King Jesus has visited us, and he himself has given us life, righteousness and joy. He is coming back some day soon to rescue his people, and I can't wait.

Lord, make me busy, useful and prepared in the meantime.

God Beyond the Trivia

2010-11-27T14:09:00.000-05:00

When I was a kid in Sunday school, our teacher asked us this question:

"Can God make a rock so big that He can't even move it?"

Even though I was 12, that question struck me as bogus. One that I would later come to find out to be on par with, "How many angels can fit on the head of a pin."

The reformers had a pretty sweet answer to questions like that. There was an on-going battle of half-wit theologians who were trying to decifer what God was doing before He created the world. The reformers' answer:

"He was creating hell for people who pry into mysteries."

You've gotta love an answer like that. It like when the Pharisees came asking Jesus where He got His powers in Matthew 21. Far from playing along with their little politically charged game, Jesus poses them another brain-buster in return:

"I'll answer you that if you can tell me where John the Baptist got His power."

This was a provocative question, and the Pharisees had no answer at all for it, because neither of their potential answers would meet their self-serving purposes. If they say John's authority was from heaven, then that doesn't square with the fact that they opposed him and eventually had him whacked.

On the other hand, if they say his authority came from man (which is really what they think), then a riot is going to break out immediately, because the people overhearing this conversation believed whole-heartedly that John was a prophet of God.

Jesus then goes into a couple of parables that depict God's chosen people--Israel, and more specifically, the Pharisees--rejecting and killing not just the prophets (i.e. John), but the Son Himself (i.e. Jesus). Now that's what you call conversation domination!

What do these questions have in common? They're irrelevant, and therefore, irreverent and even sacrelgious. When God comes to us, He doesn't come in the form of a brain-teaser, whipping up gargantuan stones that He may or may not be able to lift.

He also doesn't come in the form of a decoder ring, breaking down His every thought from eternity past. He doesn't come to answer all of our self-serving curiosities.

But still, when God comes to us, questions are answered and His Truth--He Himself--is revealed. When Jesus, the eternal Word of God, takes on flesh, He is "full of grace and truth." After all, He is "the way, the truth and the life."

In Jesus, we are given "all things that pertain to life and godliness." That means God doesn't just reveal to us tid-bits or trivia about Himself, but rather, in Christ we see and know all things neccesary to know God and live for Him.

Let's put this into practical terms: When Christ is revealed, we don't receive any insight into God's creative ability as it pertains to rocks, but we do discover something about suffering.

In Christ, we see that God not only knows and cares about our pain, but He comes down and joins us in it. Christ--the very essence of God--who was eternally loved and cherished by the God the Father, took on flesh and lived among us.

It's like the song says: "What if God was one of us/Just a slob like one of us/Just a stranger on a bus..."

Well, He was one of us. He came and joined us in our suffering, and in fact, suffered much more than we could ever imagine.

Do we know the pain of watching the innocent suffer? What about the pain of losing a loved one? A mother, or even a son?

The beauty of the Gospel is that God not only knows all about our suffering, He identifies with it to the maximum degree. Picture Christ, naked and alone on a cross, what does He cry? "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?!"

He knows all about our suffering. He has experienced it to the max. But that is little comfort if that's all that He's done. What if God knows all about our suffering and even identifies with us, but can't do anything about it? That is little consolation, if any.

We need a God that is stronger than our suffering, One who goes toe-to-toe with death itself and comes out on top. Picture Christ, risen and exalted, and what does the Father say, "You are my Son, today I have begotten you ... Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool to your feet."

God creating universe-sized rocks that He's barely able to lift means absolutely nothing to me. Christ on the cross, suffering for me and conquering death on my behalf--now that means absolutely everything to me.

What's it mean to you?

Dental Drilling, Gospel Wounding

2010-11-23T20:37:00.000-05:00

I'm not a big fan of pain, and even less so when it comes to my mouth.

Because of that, I usually avoid the going to dentist at all costs. Come to think of it, cost also has a good deal to do with why I generally steer clear of road signs directing me to anyone bearing the initials "D.D.S.".

Call me crazy, but I don't normally look for ways to lose money and endure pain at the same time.

What is the cost? Great.

How will it feel? Not so good.

Count me in!

One of my favorite things that the dentist tends to ask is, "How are you feeling?" Not so good, actually, you've got a drill in my mouth and I'm just praying that the needle you shoved into my gums not too long ago does its job and keeps me numb.

Maybe they're asking the wrong question. Maybe (ok, probably) the reason I'm there at the dentist has more to do with setting my disheveled mouth back in order than it has to do with my momentary comfort.

But notice, I said "momentary comfort," because what I hope and expect to gain from this momentary discomfort--or, in the words of Paul, "this momentary affliction"--has everything to do with my future comfort, my future health, and my future happiness.

Dentally, I don't want to be like my dad, whose teeth betray him like Julius Caesar's good buddy Brutus on a daily basis. It's time to take action now, while there's still time to save my 32 teammates.

All this to say that the more serious our situation, the more we will be willing to give up to fix it.

Think about it like this: I don't remember ever throwing a cooler full of drinks and food overboard from my parent's ski boat, but then again, I've never been in the middle of the Arctic Ocean with a glacier-shaped hole in the hull of said sea-going vessel.

When God comes to us--when the eternal Word takes on flesh--He finds us in dire straights. We don't just need a cleaning or a filling--we need oral surgery. We don't just need to gas up the ski boat, our vessel is damaged beyond repair, the band is playing and we're out of life boats.

And that, my friends, is uncomfortable news. Oh, how comfortable it would have been if the dentist would have told me that my mouth is awesome and I don't need any work! But that would be a hateful and cowardly dentist who would deliver such false news, and my teeth would continue to decay and die.

Thank God that He is not hateful and cowardly. He not only delivered the bad news--"You must be born again to inherit the kingdom", "You were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked," "You were alienated and hostile in mind"--He himself became the Good News.

"The Word became flesh and dwelt among us."

In Christ, we have One who came and joined us in our suffering. More than that, He became the worst and lone truly innocent victim of human suffering. Or, as Isaiah had said so long before, "with his stripes, we are healed."

Is this an offensive message? Does what God says about your sin offend you? Good, because it's supposed to.

Receive the news. Endure the affliction that it causes, because the cost is minimal compared to the inexpressible joy of seeing Christ, being united to Him and living in the hope of seeing Him in glory.

A True and Better Rehoboam

2010-10-02T15:35:00.000-04:00

One of the hardest lessons for a leader to learn is that he is first and foremost a servant of those he's leading.

I'm learning that myself both as a small group leader at church, and as a student-worker supervisor at my job. The problem isn't grasping the content, though, it's letting that content penetrate and result into action.

The best example I've ever had of this servant-leader concept being lived out is found in my good friend, Mo Roberson, the Associate Athletics Director at Cal Baptist. "Robe," as he's affectionately known, has got to be the easiest person to respect that I've ever met simply because he personifies servant-style humility.

The great thing about Robe is that he serves those whom he's trying to lead. And the reason he's able to do that is that he gets grace. He knows the One who emptied Himself and made Himself nothing, taking on the form of a servant, became obedient to death--even death on a cross.

Robe isn't the hero of his own life, and that's why he's able to impact the lives of others.

With my friend Robe in mind, compare the leadership style of King Rehoboam, son of Solomon, successor of David's throne.

To be fair, Rehoboam had already been prophesied to be the fall boy in the line of David. Solomon had followed after other gods because of his marriage to foreign, idolatrous wives, and the Kingdom was to be largely stripped away and parceled out to another as a result.

Because of God's promise to David, the Kingdom wouldn't be taken away from Solomon himself. And only because of God's grace, the Kingdom would never be taken away entirely from David's House. That's because David's House was to produce the Promised Seed, the Deliverer of Israel--Jesus.

So here's Rehoboam, trumpets sound as he takes the podium for his first press conference as King. The newspapers are there, and they want to know what's going to define his Kingdom.

   "Your daddy was a harsh ruler, are you going to be the same?"

Rehoboam does the first, last and only wise thing ever reported in his whole life here. He delays answering the question.

   "Uhhh... Come back in a couple of days and I'll answer you."

Now, Rehoboam takes counsel with the old men who had advised his father Solomon--the wisest of all wise guys ever. It seems like a good move at the time, and they give him some stellar advice.

   "If you will be a servant to this people today and serve them, and speak good words to them when you answer them, then they will be your servants forever."

"Serve the people and they'll follow you, Rehoboam." I can't get the picture of Robe out of my mind here. No boss I've either had or been around has been easier to follow, and it's because he's a servant to the people he's trying to lead.

What will Rehoboam do with the jewels of wisdom that the old men laid down? You guessed it, he's going to spurn them, "like a strumpet in the street."

Rehoboam goes to his high school buddies to ask what they think. (And there's a lesson here for us younger guys listening to older men here, isn't there?) I'm picturing his buddies sitting on their Harleys and wearing sleeveless leather vests, maybe snapping their fingers in rhythm like the Sharks and the Jets.

   "Hey dudes, what do you think I should say? Should I lower myself and be a servant?"

The reply comes back from the Causeless-Rebels:

   "Serving is for suckas! Your finger is thicker than your daddy's thigh and your daddy's whip is going to be a scorpion in your hands!"

Well played, young punks. Great advice. Dear reader, I'll save you some time and say that he took the young punks' advice and the Kingdom fell into ruin and divide shortly thereafter.

Now we come to the point. Robe's servant-leadership style versus Rehoboam's scorpion-leadership style, right? Not exactly.

It's more like this: We need a True and Better Rehoboam.

Rehoboam was called upon to lead his people by way of service. He was charged with the task of laying himself down for others.

Rehoboam could not have failed any worse than he did, and come to think of it, we could not have failed any worse than we do. We consistently put ourselves above others, making ourselves little copies of Rehoboam.

We need a King who is willing to serve us. A Master who washes His disciples' feet.

We need Very God of Very God, Light of Light, to liquidate His Eternal-God assets and take on the form of a servant.

We need Him to submit to the old men's advice, because we're lost and ruined if He doesn't.

It's only by looking away from ourselves and to the Servant-King, the True and Better Rehoboam, that we can expect to lead like Robe. We can't be our own hero. Only Jesus can fill that role.

The Tale of Two Prayers

2010-08-07T23:02:00.000-04:00

This past week, I was the happy recipient of a prayer in the form of a chain email.

I was so grateful to get said e-prayer in the first place, that I received it again later on that day.

And this prayer didn't travel by its lonesome in either email, as you might expect. Its traveling companion was a poorly written email (maybe as poorly written as this post will be), the sole purpose of which was to perpetuate the sending of the prayer to as many people as possible. More simply put, it was a half-hearted effort at laying down an e-guilt trip.

What did the prayer say, you might ask? Well, at the cost of perpetuating the life of the prayer itself, here it is:

"God our Father, walk through my house and take away all my worries and illnesses and please watch over and heal my family in Jesus name, Amen."

A prayer like that has the invariable effect of making me echo the words of the Church Lady, "Well, isn't that special."

To be fair, the prayer contains no heresy and actually gives a shout out to God the Father and Jesus, and you may be able to draw some connections from "take away all my worries" to something like "cast your cares on Me".

Praying for healing isn't a bad thing either, last I checked. Growing up, we had a little old lady in our church who always seemed to be praying for healing in bizarre family health situations, so much so that the joke in our family became, "My great-grand nephew Eddie was born without a face. Pray for healing."

The main thing that rubs me the wrong way about this prayer is that it's lacking something--something big, in fact. How about the first petition of the Lord's Prayer: "hallowed be Thy Name. Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven."

So often, I find myself trudging through prayer with no sense of God's glory, no sense of the reality of God's kingdom (into which we are welcomed by the blood of Christ), and minimal acknowledgement of the sole purpose of the universe: God showing himself to be great.

But then it hit me last night, like I honestly don't remember it ever hitting me before. God means to fill the whole earth with His inexpressible glory and that is all that matters in the universe and my re-realization of that was enough to wake me up all through the night with that one overwhelming thought.

"Blessed by his glorious name forever; may the whole earth be filled with his glory! Amen and Amen!"

It's almost comical to contrast this prayer with the e-prayer that permeated my inbox twice this week. I mean, even as the piddly e-prayer ends with one Amen, the psalmist ends his prayer with two calls for Amen.

Here's the psalmist, in this case Solomon, as he takes the throne of his father David. He, like his daddy, was a fore-runner of the great King that would one day come to govern and care for Israel, and his prayer starts in verse 1 with a cry for God to make him a just and righteous ruler.

Throughout the prayer, he asks God again and again to make him a king that cares for the oppressed, the poor and needy, one in whose sight even the blood of the oppressed is precious.

He also asks for length of days--which our bashful e-prayer is evidently not bold enough to try--and he asks something else that our e-prayer left out: "May people be blessed in him, all nations call him blessed!"

Does he sound like anyone you know? Heir to the throne of David. Righteous and just King. Merciful ruler who cares for and rescues the downcast. The One in whom all nations are blessed.

And it's this one, the Son of David and true rescuer of Israel, who has made sense of the lofty goal to fill the whole earth with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord.

Even if it costs me sleep all night every night, I pray that God would keep waking me up to the reality of his glory, the greatness of his name and the greatness of his love toward us in Christ.

A Pilgrim's Thoughts on Home

2010-07-07T22:39:00.000-04:00

I guess it's that time of year in the Hobbs of Corona residence. That time that has now come up for the fourth time in our two years of marriage. You guessed it, moving time!!

We almost talked ourselves into staying at 603 West 11th Street for a second year, but we found out in the meantime that the casida behind us was available and much cheaper.

We Hobbses may not be the best with money, but sometimes we make a good decision, especially when there's a bun in the oven.

At any rate, as I think about the past year that we've spent in our house, my attention turns more and more to the concept of home.

I guess this kind of thinking dates back about four or so years for me, when my brother took off and went to seminary in Birmingham. Up until then, even though we were in Southern California and our parents were up where we grew up, in Greenwood (beyond Cool), Casey and I always had each other, and we even had Dusty to hang out with during our first year of college at CBU.

So, when Casey left for school, I think that was the first time I ever really experienced a real loss of "home". It really was the first time I felt out of place in regard to where I was living.

But it's not like home left forever and didn't ever come back. In the following couple of years, I experienced real community--"home"--among with good friends and roommates. Along the way, I met Janelle, and our experience of home together began two years ago on an evening in June.

Together we have a great home, even though we feel like a couple of tent-dwellers when our lease comes to a close. Regardless of where we live, there's real community in our home. We fight together, laugh together, and pursue our God and His kingdom together. I dig our home.

And I especially dug our home over the past few months, when our good friends, the Warfields, lived with us throughout the end of Hannah's pregnancy and the first month or so of little Judah Warfield's life.

That's why it felt so strange coming home to an empty house a couple of nights ago. Janelle and I had grown so accustomed to sharing life with Hannah and Garrett (and of course, Judah), that when they finally moved out of 603 West 11th Street, they took with them a good piece of what "home" had become.

I don't want to sound overly emotional (too late for that, I'm sure), but I really miss my brothers. I miss hanging out with Garrett and talking about the Gospel over a World Cup game, and I miss hanging out with Casey and talking Bonhoeffer in between pitches of a wiffle ball game.

But maybe it's more than me just being emotional. Maybe what I'm feeling has more to do with who God is and who he's called his people to be. We are wanderers, way-faring strangers, pilgrims, strangers in a strange land. We, like our father Abraham, are looking forward to a city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God.

And as long as we redeemed ones are apart from our God bodily, I think we're going to feel like this from time to time.

We'll feel like we're missing part of home, even when we are at home, because the truth is that we're still waiting to arrive at that place that Jesus said he's preparing for us. We won't be whole and fully at rest until we are able to see him as he is.

We'll be at home when we enter into the Celestial City, when our pilgrimage has come to an end.

Think about what Jesus had to give up to guarantee us entrance into this land--this city whose designer and builder is God:

Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus,
who, though he was in the form of God,
did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped
but made himself nothing,
taking on the form of a servant,
being born in the likeness of men.

And being found in human form,
he humbled himself and became obedient
to the point of death, even death on a cross.

Or, if you're like me and want to read a hymn about it, here's one to help:

He left his father's throne above,
so free, so infinite his grace.
Emptied himself of all but love,
and bled for Adam's helpless race.

'Tis mercy all, immense and free
for O my God, it found out me.

Amazing love, how can it be
that thou, my God shouldst die for me?

We're Pregnant!

2010-07-03T18:26:00.000-04:00

Due date: 12/16/2010 :)

Beware the Mountaintop

2010-06-21T13:47:00.000-04:00

Well, it's June again, and that means but one thing in the life of Student Ministries--Summer Camp!

Nothing like the combination of camp-dirt and milk-chug, along with the nightly camp fire and daily time of sitting under the Word in both individual and community-wide meetings.

But this blog is written as a warning to would-be campers, especially those at our beloved Northpoint Church, nestled in the heart of that center of the universe known as Corona.

The warning is this: Beware the Mountaintop.

Maybe it's a dated expression by now, but I remember like it was yesterday my old pastor, Jim Holmes, talking about a phenomenon he called a "Mountaintop Experience." Now, Pastor Holmes was about 80 years old when I knew him, and he's since gone home to be with the Lord, but his expression has stuck with me ever since I was a little boy.

When Pastor Holmes talked about the Mountaintop Experience, he meant that 'spiritual' high that has always been so common among believers when we've been surrounded by God's Word and God's People for a weekend.

The problem with the Mountaintop is that it's all-too-often an illusion because it's all-too-often based on emotion, not on Truth.

There's a great story about my favorite musician of all time, Rich Mullins. He had a great line for people who would come up to him after his concerts to share about how the Holy Spirit had moved in their hearts during one of his songs. Rich would look at them and say, "No, that's actually when the kick drum and the bass came in. It's easy to mistake energy and emotion for worship."

When you go up to Summer Camp at the end of this week, dear Northpoint Student, pray to the Lord that you would not mistake emotion for worship, experience for obedience.

How do you know when you're really worshipping? It's when you're obeying difficult commands of Jesus, like loving your enemy. Or, more to the point, it's when you come down off the mountain and obey your parents with a genuine heart.

Another way to tell whether or not you've actually encountered the Living God up at camp is to ask yourself this question: "Do I want to be part of the community of believers (at Northpoint) week-in and week-out?"

You see, emotional experiences destroy real community, because they hold community to an unrealistic standard. We believers are at the same time fallen sinners and beloved saints, so real community means that we'll bump into each other's sin and interact with each other even on our off-days.

The Mountaintop Experience expects my brother to be on his game all the time, and so when I see him struggling with pride and selfishness, I reject him because he's getting in the way of me and Jesus. I shout at my brother from my lofty Mountaintop perch, along with the Rolling Stones, "Hey, you, get offa my cloud!"

Friends, let's come down off the mountain after this summer camp and love each other more deeply with the type of love that "bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things". After all, that is the kind of Son-sending love that God has shown us.

"Nothing is easier than to stimulate the glow of fellowship in a few days of life together, but nothing is more fatal to the sound, sober brotherly fellowship of everyday life ... It is not the experience of Christian brotherhood, but solid and certain faith in brotherhood that holds us together." (Dietrich Bonhoeffer in Life Together)

Gospel Vaccination is a Bad Thing

2010-05-14T13:05:00.000-04:00

"When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory." (Colossians 3:4)

There's certain times when I notice a sort of Gospel vaccination in myself. It's like I've got just enough Gospel truth on my mind and in my heart to render the Gospel ineffective to change me.

Then a text like this bowls me over with the unsearchable depths of God's love for sinners.

The text says that we who have made Christ our life by faith will one day appear with Him in glory. That is incredible news, and it's much better than the watered-down version of the Gospel that I settle for so often.

It would be good enough news that the God of the Universe, for whom and by whom we have been made, takes pity on those who have rebelled against his kingdom and taken the life of His Only Begotten Son, but that's not the extent of God's love.

God's love consists of much more than pity, it's more like God inviting us to inherit all that is His by the blood of Christ.

Far from an isolated text throwing out a tentative truth, this text functions as one thread in broad biblical tapestry. Consider a few more passages that draw out God's inviting us to glory:

"Fear not, little flock, for it is my Father's good pleasure that you should inherit the kingdom." (Luke 12:32)

"The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs--heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ..." (Romans 8:16-17)

"The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one..." (John 17:22)

If this is too much for you to handle in one sitting (which it sure is for me), then think about this: Jesus is not ashamed to be called our brother. My brother, Jesus.

Our perfect High Priest and holder-together of all things visible and invisible delights to share His throne with us, His brothers and sisters.

God save us from that false humility that robs us of the joy of anticipating that Day when we will appear with Jesus in glory.

The Awkward Dance, a.k.a. Corporate Prayer

2010-05-05T13:53:00.000-04:00

You can picture the scene.

The young bucks cluster on one end of an empty dance floor and dare each other to go ask one of the pretty maids in row to dance. Meanwhile, the pretty maids--unbeknownst to the aforementioned bucks--secretly conclude that the reluctance of the bucks has everything to do with their own perceived unattractiveness.

"Dancing is for sissies anyways," declares a severely intimidated buck, but if he's like any of the others, he knows good and well the only reason that he hasn't broken the dance-floor-sized gender barrier.

He doesn't go because he's fearful. He doesn't go because he's anticipating (or recalling) a toe-curling turn-down at the other end of the floor. So, he resorts to comfort in the form of shooting spit-wads or kicking out his fellow bucks' legs out from from under them.

Who will be the one to cross the floor and extend his hand to an awaiting maid? I'll tell you who, it's the buck who knows (or is confident enough to assume) the response ahead of time.

Once the confident buck goes ahead and asks his pretty maid to dance, the party begins. Air is put back into the room and once-petrified stags take to the dance floor.

Praying together is a lot like the awkward dance.

We Christians know that we ought to pray together, and we even may agree that there's joy in praying together. We may even be comfortable complaining and moaning that we don't pray together enough, but when it comes time to take to the dance floor of prayer together, we wimp out.

Prayer is nothing less than communicating our hearts and lifting up our concerns to the God of the Universe, who created everything with the Word of His mouth and currently sustains everything by the Word Become Flesh.

Not only that, but when we pray, we have a great Mediator, a Great High Priest, who is interceding for us with the Father. Jesus himself is at the Father's right hand, pleading our case by His blood whenever we pray, and that give us confidence.

"Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need."

This is the kind of confidence it takes for the first buck to cross the dance floor and ask that pretty maid to dance. We know our God, and we know that His Son stands and pleads our case before Him. We know His response will be loving acceptance, as if Jesus Himself were coming to Him in prayer--which He is!

So why should we feel awkward to pray together? I may not know how you're going to react if I ask you to pray with me, but I do know how God will react. I'll be able to conquer the initial awkwardness of prayer only when I remember that you and I are approaching the Living God together, and He is on our side.

Cross the dance floor of corporate prayer, young buck. You first.

Jeremiah: Not for All Audiences

2010-03-20T14:36:00.000-04:00

Last week, I told Janelle that I want to launch an intra-marriage campaign to name one of our future sons “Jeremiah,” after the weeping prophet himself.

In preparation to launch an all-out offensive, I went through and re-read Jeremiah and Lamentations this week, and let me tell you, the campaign is on.

Don’t get me wrong, though, Jeremiah’s life and the events that took place in Jerusalem at that time have to encapsulate one of the ugliest stories ever told.

Put it this way, Hollywood is never going to make a movie out of it, and if they ever did, I’d be the last to see it.

I really wouldn’t be able to stomach it.

Fast-forward all the way to Lamentations, which basically functioned in the same way that a presidential visit to declare a state of emergency does today.

Here’s Jeremiah, surveying the damage that he’s spent his whole ministry predicting, and borne constant persecution to that end.

The word “Lamentations”, of course, means weeping or wailing, and that’s what Jeremiah does plenty of as he sees what has become of God’s chosen people.

All along, he’s been speaking the Word of the Lord that instead of fighting against Babylon, the people need to surrender and go along with the program, and all along, they’ve resisted the Word of God and listened to false prophets declaring “Peace, peace” when there is no peace. (Jer. 6:14).

It’s a simple Word that he’s declared all along. Two options

A. Surrender to Babylon and keep your life as a price of war
B. Resist Babylon/flee to Egypt, and die of sword, pestilence or famine

Israel goes with Option B—kinda like we Sons of Adam are always going with option B—and God has carried out his promise for disaster, and as we come up to Lamentations, it’s just at the time when Jerusalem is surrounded by Babylon and basically starved to death until they surrender.

That’s why you see absolutely tear-jerking, gut-wrenching literal statements like these in Lamentations:

“Look, O Lord, and see! With whom have you dealt this? Should women eat the fruit of their womb, the children of their tender care? Should priest and prophet be killed in the sanctuary of the Lord?” (Lam. 2:20)

“Even the jackals offer the breast; they nurse their young, but the daughter of my people has become cruel, like ostriches in the wilderness. The tong of the nursing infant sticks to the roof of its mouth for thirst; the children beg for food, but no one gives to them.” (Lam. 4:3-4)

“The hands of compassionate women have boiled their own children; they have become their food during the destruction of the daughter of my people.” (Lam. 4:10)

How in the wide world is Jeremiah going to handle this?

No wonder he’s the weeping prophet.

"For these things I weep; my eyes flow with tears; for my comforter is far from me, one to revive my spirit; my children are desolate, for the enemy has prevailed.” (Lam. 1:16)

“My eyes are spent with weeping; my stomach churns; my bile is poured out to the ground because of the destruction of the daughter of my people, because infants and babies faint in the streets of the city.” (Lam. 2:11)

“My eyes will flow without ceasing, without respite, until the Lord from heaven looks down and sees; my eye causes me grief at the fate of all the daughters of my city.” (Lam. 3:49-51)

Is there any hope for God’s people?

Will the comforter from Lam. 1:16 ever come?

Will the Lord from heaven look down and see from Lam. 3:49?

Oh yes, there is hope. And the hope of Jeremiah is eternally tethered to both the steadfast love and the sovereignty of God.

It’s not enough if all we know about God is that he has a love that is steadfast. There’s no comfort for Jeremiah or the daughter of his people in a handcuffed lover.

On the other side of the coin, there’s no hope in a sovereign King who’s out to get you. In fact, there’s no more hopeless situation than to be God’s opponent—which we all are without Christ.

Just at the height of Jeremiah’s weeping comes some of the most staggering worship we could ever imagine or experience:

“But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope:
The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. ‘The Lord is my portion,’ says my soul, ‘therefore I will hope in him.” (Lam. 3:21-24)

Is there hope? Oh yes, there is hope. God’s steadfast love is absolutely unconquerable.

It’s unconquerable enough to sustain Jeremiah in a situation that defies the imagination or even description.

But God’s love is shown to be even more unconquerable than that at the Cross.

For Israel, there was judgment:

“We have transgressed and rebelled, and you have not forgiven.” (Lam. 3:42)

God was not about to let the idolatry of his people—the adultery of his wife—slide past the scales of justice. That’s why Jerusalem was besieged.

But at the Cross, Jesus endured the entirety of God’s wrath for his people. That’s why he says, “It is finished.” What is finished? God’s forgiveness of his people’s transgressions.

And what about hope? For Jeremiah, there was God’s never-ending love shown all down through Israel’s history, but on this side of the Cross, it’s the resurrection that secures our hope in his promise.

In the resurrection, God showed that he’s not only powerful, but that he’s for us.

To the believer in Jesus, God’s not a handcuffed lover, and he’s not a “bear lying in wait for me.”

The Good News is that the sovereign King is for me.

To Know You is to Love You

2010-03-09T14:10:00.000-05:00

As always, the King is right.

B.B. King, that is.

In one of his signature songs, B.B. unwittingly makes a radically Gospel-centered connection: "To know you is to love you."

I say radically Gospel-centered because I'm starting to detect in my own heart that I artificially disconnect the concept of knowing a person from that of loving a person.

What has pointed out the artificial disconnect in my heart is a statement in Jeremiah 9:24.

Jeremiah is the weeping prophet, the one charged to deliver horribly sad news of the up-coming capture and slaughter of a people who will utterly reject his prophecy and persecute him all the way until the point when its gates are overrun by its foretold oppressors.

In the midst of this wave of bad news, there comes an incredible "Thus says the Lord."

Thus says the Lord, "Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, let not the mighty man boast in his might, let not the rich man boast in his riches, but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me..."

Knowing a person in the Old Testament was an inseparable concept from that of loving a person.

Three times in Genesis 4 alone, the expression for knowing is used as a figure of speech for sexual intimacy, and when God hears the outcry of his people in Exodus 2, the text says, "God saw the people of Israel--and God knew."

God knew. That is, God cared. We know that he cared because then he acted.

The more I've thought and mulled over the text in Jeremiah, the more I've started to realize how true it is that we can only really love people that we really know.

With respect to our relationship with the Lord, there's no loving Him without knowing Him. Not just knowing things about Him, either, but actually knowing--and caring about--what makes Him tic.

That's why the text in Jeremiah continues like it does:

"but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the Lord who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight, declares the Lord."

What makes the Lord tic? In what things does He delight? Well, steadfast love, justice and righteousness in the earth.

Once we know that He really delights in these things, it becomes a litmus test for us on whether or not we actually love Him. Do we love the things that He loves? Because if not, then we don't love Him.

It takes a miracle of God's grace--God coming down and rescuing us by the death of His Son--to make us care about the things that delight Him. Sheer will-power won't get it done and self-improvement won't go far enough.

That's what I mean by radically Gospel-centered.

And what about this idea of knowing-loving as it relates to our love for others?

Jesus said that the world is going to know who his disciples are because of their love for each other, and we only really love the people who we really know.

That's shocking, I know, but bear with me.

Of course, there's a general love that we can have for everybody in the world--the kind that makes us want to join hands with everyone around the world and sing Kumbaya, but surely that's not what Jesus is calling us to as His disciples.

It's really not a radical call at all to invite you to want to generally love everyone everywhere.

Where the call gets radical is where it relates to people that we actually interact with and don't neccesarily--how should I say this?--like to be around.

A couple of guys that I interact with on a regular basis fit into this category. I feel like, instead of wanting to hold hands and sing Kumbaya with them, I'm constantly holding myself back from decking them (either physically or verbally).

So, what's the call for me, as Jesus' disciple?

It's first, to remember the Gospel. Remember that God knows me, He sees me, and in Christ He approves of me and loves me with a love that defys expression or overstatement.

Then, I'm called to actually care about the dude who I'm trying not to knock out. By actually caring, I mean trying to know him well enough to know what makes him tic.

Why is he constantly chattering about nothing in particular?
Why does he return my attempt at a conversation into an opportunity to slam others?
Why does he go out of his way to be a general bonehead?

As a follower of Jesus, I want to be easily identified by my love. I want to actually care about people. I want to be willing to get uncomfortable and love others with the same type of love that God has shown me in the Cross.

God, give me the stregnth to pursue a knowledge of You that will cause me to delight in what you delight in. Give me the patience to love others with a Gospel-centered love.

Wish Shots and Worship

2010-02-14T22:59:00.000-05:00

It's my job to hype sports, and most days, I like doing what I do.

Then, there's days like yesterday.

I was watching my adopted team of Concordia play at my alma mater California Baptist in a little game of men's hoops, when I suddenly experienced a rare moment of losing myself in the game.

I say a rare time, because I'm supposed to keep my head about me in the course of a game. I'm supposed to be analyzing field goal percentages and rebounding margins. I'm supposed to be as neutral as possible.

The play that made me lose myself and cross over (if only momentarily) from sports writer to sports fan went a little something like this.

Concordia had built up a 9-point lead with about 2:30 to go, and it looked like we had it in the bag, when all of the sudden, here comes Cal Baptist on a 9-0 run to tie it up at 63-63.

Concordia then scored to take a 65-63 lead with 33 seconds left, and stopped CBU on its next possession to take control of the ball with 7 seconds left and a two-point lead.

That's when things got interesting. Concordia--a team who turns the ball over 8 times per game fewer than its opponents--gave the ball up on its possession, and CBU tied the game at 65-65 on a layup with about 3 seconds left.

It looked like overtime all the way to the end, but then again, that's why the play 40 minutes and not 39:59. Concordia's Justin Johnson took the ball from the opposite baseline and sprinted for halfcourt, where he uncorked a game-winning three-pointer to end the game at 68-65.

The shot--which Johnson rightly called a miracle--also left a gym full of Cal Baptist alumni (including myself) speechless.

For my part, I instinctively sprang up from my seat at the scorer's table. I'm not really sure why I did, but like I already said, I had just made the shift from sports writer to sports fan.

In a real sense, I've been captured by that shot ever since it went in. Even though we were there and had the best seats in the house, Janelle and I must have watched the clip on YouTube (here) at least 20 times in the last 20 hours.

The more I think about that moment, and what it means, the more I think about the affections of my heart. I really think this has something to say about what I worship.

That which we worship is that which we value the most, that which we wait for and that which, when it's taken away from us, we are not quite ourselves anymore.

Worship captures us--all of us.

With that in mind, as I woke up this morning with my thoughts still revolving around the last moment of a basketball game last night, I knew that my heart was in need of something better to worship.

I don't want to settle for less than to be captured by the worship of Jesus.

As I thought about this, my heart was turned toward the glorious vision of Jesus, the Son of Man, in the first chapter of Revelation.

Here's how John--the disciple who knew Jesus best--describes the first scene of this book:

I was in the Spirit on the Lord's day, and I heard behind me a loud voice like a trumpet...

Then I turned to see the voice that was speaking to me, and on turning, I saw seven golden lampstands, and in the midst of the lampstands was one like a son of man, clothed with a long robe and with a golden sash around his chest.

The hairs on his head were white like wool, as white as snow. His eyes were like a flame of fire, his feet were like burnished bronze, refined in a furnace, and his voice was like the roar of many waters.

In his right hand he held seven stars, from his mouth came a sharp two-edged sword, and his face was like the sun shining in full stregnth.

And when I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead.

My first reaction to seeing to seeing a great shot is to stand up like a yahoo. John's first reaction to seeing the Son of Man was to fall at his feet as though dead.

The glory of a game-winning basketball shot is one thing, but the glory of the risen Son of Man is another story altogether.

And, what, besides winning a basketball game and all assigned benefits did that shot accomplish?

For that matter, what did all my work writing about it accomplish?

So here's John, on the ground like a dead man before this unspeakably glorious Son of Man, and what's the Son of Man say?

Fear not, I am the first and the last, and the living one.

I died, and behold, I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of Death and Hades.

This unspeakably glorious One is for us.

He's the living One.

He's the One who died for us and conquered Death and Hades in His resurrection.

That's the worship I want to be captured by.

That's my King.

A Little Help from my Friends

2010-01-30T17:15:00.000-05:00

If there's one thing I know I need to grow in it's being open to community.

Maybe it's got something to do with where we grew up. You could only see one house from our porch, and the only communication we had with those people consisted of my dad and the guy hitting golf balls back and forth from our hill to his.

Maybe it's got something to do with being a twin. It doesn't take a genius to tell you that twins have pretty solid built-in community that doesn't require a lot of intentionality to build.

Whatever personality traits may have conspired to create a natural barrier to sharing my life with others, and whatever effect the sleugh of John Wayne movies I've watched and Johnny Cash songs I've listened to may have had on me, this much I know: My God values community and He's shaping me into a community-valuer too.

This challenging and refreshing truth has come to me in two parts over the past couple of weeks. The first deals with a 2000 Nissan Sentra, and the second deals with a Psalm I like to refer to as #16.

Sentra first. This post is only one removed from the story of my 1989 Bimmer dying a year ago this February, and whether or not it's becoming an annual activity to get a new car every year I don't know, but I do know that I needed to ditch the Bimmer's replacement, and that right soon, about two weeks ago.

Said replacement, a 1999 Corolla that had been badly damaged in a wreck involving one parked vehicle and one vehicle in motion (that's all I have to say about that), began making the same hideous wheel-bearing noise it had made in October, that at the time had prompted me to give a temporary fix to the problem that I'd hoped would last longer than it did.

Well, it didn't last quite long enough, and so when the wheel-bearing noise reared its ugly head, I decided right then and there to get rid of the 'Rolla and locate a new car pronto.

Enter the Blakeys. Our good friends since before we were married (their wedding day marked the first day we Hobbs officially started dating), who had also been in our wedding, Billy and Cory had recently bought a car that made the Sentra their third car.

Short story kept short, the Blakeys made us an offer we couldn't refuse on the Sentra, and we are now the proud owners of the fine Japanese automobile.

Friends come in pretty handy around here, Bub.

But the functionality of friendships is never the goal. Otherwise, your friends become contacts and you become the pan-handler going down your contact list and offering your friends a chance to buy in to your deal-of-the-day goof ball product. Friends become contacts, which become alienated.

No, friendships serve a higher purpose, and I was reminded about that today while reading through Psalm 16.

Verse two struck me like a thunderbolt: I say to the Lord, "You are my Lord; I have no good apart from you."

No good. No good apart from the Lord. Do I live that? Can I come close to saying that apart from the Lord, I have no good, no rest, no solace?

I don't think I'm there yet. I want to be there, but I know I'm not when I overreact at a situation that threatens my dependance on comfort, like I did first thing when I walked through the door last night.

The claws come out and the fangs get sharp because I'm not finding all my good in the Lord, instead, I'm finding it in things that make me comfortable.

Reading through the Psalm, I thought that maybe I was done being challenged. But I read on to verse three:

As for the saints in the land, they are the excellent ones, in whom is all my delight.

Okay, no good apart from the Lord, check. All my delight in--the saints of the land?

How does this fit together? I think it has everything to do with community, that is, actually caring about our brothers and sisters, having a stake in their lives and making ourselves vulnerable to them.

When we find friends who help us to see that the Lord is all our good, then we've found the saints. We've then found the excellent ones.

I'm so grateful to my friends for helping me to find all my good in the Lord. Real friends do that. They're always bringing Jesus before us, always bringing us before the Savior's feet.

I want to be a friend like that. I want to be one who points everyone I come into contact with to go away refreshed and renewed to look upon the One in whose presence there is fullness of joy, pleasures forevermore.

At Ease, Soldier

2010-01-18T21:54:00.000-05:00

"Resolved, never to allow the least measure of any fretting uneasiness at my father or mother. Resolved to suffer no effects of it, so much as in the least alteration of speech, or motion of the eye; and to be especially careful of it, with respect to any of our family." (Resolution #46, Jonathan Edwards)

On Martin Luther King Jr. Day, when we remember one great Christian leader and the changes that took place (and are still in process of changing) on account of his courage, I'm reminded of the above resolution by your friend and mine, Jonathan Edwards.

Throughout the past couple of years, I've tried to make a point of reading Edwards' resolutions as the new year approaches, and this January was no different.

While I've read through these resolutions, #46 has struck me as a bit out of place, to be honest. It seems clear enough that Edwards would want to fight against "fretting uneasiness" with his family in particular, but it seems out of place.

I mean, in a list that includes such lofty statements as to "live with all my might while I do live," and to never do anything "but what tends to the glory of God", a resolution to not sweat his parents seems a little bit trivial.

But as I've thought about this more and observed myself and the world in general, this resolution has started to make more and more sense.

I could be wrong, but I think that this resolution is as broad in its application as it is deep in its meaning.

Consider Resolution #46 in light of #25: "Resolved, to examine carefully, and constantly, what that one thing in me is, which causes me in the least to doubt the love of God; and to direct all my forces against it."

Bear with me now, I think I may have just lost myself in a fit of Edwards-quoting that I'm not soon to come out of.

The fight to overcome uneasiness around authority figures, and parents in particular, was, for Edwards, a fight to find his rest in the love of God.

I can see so much of this fear-of-authority, fear-of-man idolatry in myself. Why is it that I care so much about peoples' opinion of me? Why is it that I can become so undone when a co-worker says something negative (true or false) about the quality of my work?

The answer gets right down to the core of my being, and it gets right down to the core of Edwards' resolution.

The anwer is that at that moment, when I'm rattled by someone's perceived low opinion of me, or when I am rendered nervous because my boss enters the room, I am failing to believe the love of God as my source of life and meaning. Something else has taken its place.

When I'm nervous and fidgety around authority figures or become undone by someone's perception of me, I'm dethroning the God who has won me back at the cost of His Son.

When this other god--who cannot satisfy and always holds its victims in slavery--sits on the throne of my heart, I'm dethroning the Son of God who has set me free, free indeed.

When I go to the temple of Man Fear, I'm missing out on the true temple, where I'm encouraged to "draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith" because of the "new and living way that (Jesus) has opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh."

Let's stand firm with confidence in the love of God. He won't waver and He won't fail us. His opinion of us won't change if a professor gets ticked at us, or if we spill food on a patron or if all of our game stories are boring and similar.

His love--His perfect love--casts out all fear, and it's His love that gives us true, God-centered and Christ-exalting confidence.

Das Bimmer Ist Tot

2009-02-10T14:46:00.001-05:00

It was two years ago last September, and I was driving my sa-weet 1986 Celica down the road when all of the sudden, the wheels fell off.

Okay, maybe that's a bit of exaggeration, but what did happen is the passenger-side front tire disconnected from the suspension and turned perpendicular (i.e. 90 degrees) to the rest of the car, causing a slightly abrupt halt.

It was then I realized that the ol' Celi had driven its last. I mean, Casey and I had already combined to drive the first engine to a dramatic death--throwing a piston through the engine block never really is a good thing--but this time, the wheel came off, so it was officially an ex-vehicle.

Little did I know in that September, though, that I was soon to meet a friend who came to me via my Uncle Manny and my Grandpa Hobbs. That friend was a 1989 (yes, three years newer!) BMW 325I, a.k.a. the Ultimate Driving Machine, a.k.a. Miss Bimmer.

And she served me well during our friendship. She was there on just about all of the dates that Janelle and I ever went on. She was there in the great Cheese Wheel Fiasco of 2007. She was there on countless trips up North, including the last two to see Katherine Noel Hobbs. She was there when I proposed to my beautiful bride in January 2008, and she was there June 7, 2008, when she drove us from our pastor's house (we used his Mustang convertible to leave the reception) to the airport hotel.

Unfortunately, she was also there last Friday night (Feb. 6, 2009, a date that will live in infamy), when we hit a patch of black ice and spun a nifty 180, kissing a guard rail before we high-centered on a curb clear on the other side of the road.

We're both highly uninjuried (as you may have guessed by the tone of this post), but the Ultimate Driving Machine, she's another story. We had her towed to the good people at MidValley Auto Repair in Frazier Park, CA, and there she stays, pining for the days of confident freeway exceleration while her body parts are harvested and sold to the highest bidder.

So, I end with a poem, and ode to a car that was so "berry berry good to me":

Ode to Miss Bimmer, you drove us so far,
Everyone knew you were the very best car.
You drove and you drove, till you hit the black ice,
The rail and the curb, they weren't very nice.

Merry Christmas!

2008-12-26T01:14:00.001-05:00

A real blog post to come soon...with fun details of our first Christmas as the Hobbs! :)

Fall is finally here!

2008-11-03T23:57:00.000-05:00

Okay, so this post is a few months late. But since its just in the past few days that it actually feels like fall, now I feel like blogging about it. :)

Spending the first fall as Mr. and Mrs. Hobbs has been very busy so far, but definately a lot of fun too! September of course meant back to school and work for us, and it was definately a transition from the lazy days of summer. My how we miss those days of sleeping and relaxing! Hopefully they'll come again soon. :)

As Jay already posted, work for him has been full of getting the new website up, while trying to keep up with all the fall sports. It's been an interesting time for him settling into the job at Concordia, but we're definately thankful for the job that the Lord provided, and he's really starting to enjoying the work there. On the other side of things, school for me is crazy as ever, with tests and projects more than I could imagine, but God's definately blessed me this semester with plently of time to study and a fantastic husband to support me through it. I can't say how thankful I am for that, and how excited I am for the day that I will actually be a nurse! :)

As for the fun side of things, we really have tried to take advantage of the time we do spend together and make the most of it. For Halloween, to really get in the mood for fall, we visited Riley's Farms, where you can pick your own apples or pumpkins, and you can really enjoy leaves changing colors. It was so much fun! We also got to check out some sweet animals, including cute baby goats and a couple of really funny geese. Here's a few picutes of the sweet things that we got to see...

Don't Mess

2008-10-23T14:40:00.000-04:00

Article on Obama

2008-10-14T18:23:00.000-04:00

I just got done reading a pretty harrowing article in which the writer (a law professor at Princeton) details Barack Obama's pro-abortion views.

It's particularly interesting to me in light of all our friends and family who are having or about to have babies. To see a baby up close is such a clear reminder of the miracle of life that God endows on each person, equally.

With all that so fresh on my mind, it brings in the main issue in the upcoming election and politics in general--where is the right of every person to live upheld and valued?

Click here to link to the article.

Outta Site

2008-09-26T19:22:00.000-04:00

When I got here, lad, all there was was swamp! All the kings said it would be daft to build a castle on a swamp, but I built it all the same... just to show 'em!
-Mother in "Monty Python and the Quest for the Holy Grail"

The above quote pretty much explains what I've been up to at work for the last three months, and the picture on the right is finally living proof that something has been accomplished.

When I got to Concordia in early July, one of the top things on my agenda--I even told everyone who interviewed me--was to create a new website for athletics. Up until today, when we went live with the new website (www.cuieagles.com), you'd see the following...thing...when you visited the athletics page:

So, needless to say, I'm pretty excited about the new website. It's been a pretty trying time getting people who think of me as the new guy from Cal Baptist to get on board with a pretty big decision like this, but I've been learning a lot about patience and just dealing with people in general throughout the whole thing.

I just hope that this project doesn't end up like the first castle, "That one sank into the swamp, so I built a second one..."

Check it out!

2008-08-14T02:05:00.000-04:00

Our wedding photos are here and lookin' fabulous! Check 'em out at:
http://shaythomason.com/clients/hobbs/

If you're looking for a lighter dose of photos but still want to see some great shots, check out:
http://shaythomason.com/clients/hobbs_preview/

Don't Mess

2008-07-24T22:12:00.000-04:00

That's right, keep your distance, ladies and gentlemen, we mean business!

This shot was taken the other night at Disneyland's California Adventure, which now features the coolest ride ever. Actually, it's not really a ride, more like an attraction, and boy were we attracted (and attractive, if you don't mind me saying).

Back to the attraction itself, "Toy Story Mania"--it's like a 3-D carnival in there, complete with plates to throw virtual baseballs at and aliens to throw virtual rings around.

We played it twice with our friends, the Blakeys, who--incidentally--were there to snap the shot of us in our 3-D spectacles. We won the first game by a hefty margin, but then they snuck in under our radar and picked up the victory in game No. 2, a stunning upset.

So, we have unfinished business with the Blakeys, which I'm sure we'll take care of soon. But for now, we're going to play some tennis, which could end up ugly like our last tennis date in the Summer of '07. But then again, you never know...

Home, Sweet Home

2008-07-05T13:32:00.000-04:00

Well, we're finally home and getting settled into our humble abode here in Corona. Our travels have taken us to Banff National Park (Canada), Clear Lake, Greenwood, and Big Bear, but we're finally home.

God has been so good to our little family in the past month (i.e. the only month we have been a family), we hardly know what to do with ourselves. In the midst of all the blessings we're constantly surrounded by, we're striving to view God Himself as our reward and treasure, and it's so incredible to exalt our King together as the Hobbs family!

As I said in our last post, I found out about a Sports Information Director position at Concordia University the day before the wedding, and after a couple of interviews and plenty of prayer, we accepted the position earlier this week. It's going to be an interesting adjustment for me after taking a year off to pursue seminary education, but I stoked about the job in every respect and I'm looking forward to working hard for the glory of God wherever He places me.

It's been cool to look back and see the Lord working in my life over the past year, working at the Macaroni Grill and going to school full time. Somehow, I feel more like my most important education came at the Macaroni Grill, fighting to live a life worthy of the Gospel and learning what it is to battle against pride and selfishness on an everyday basis.

With the Mac. Grill training under my belt, then, I feel armed and ready for battle at my new job at Concordia. There's plenty of minutia to get lost in and discouraged by, because sometimes you feel that nobody notices your work and effort, but what God has been in the process of teaching me is that friendship with Him and fellowship in the type of humility that caused Jesus to regard equality with God a thing "not to be grasped" is far more important and satisfying to the soul than a sturdy pat on the back could ever be.

That "well done" is best to be communicated by Jesus in the Kingdom He has purchased with His own blood--I can more than stand a little non-recognition here on earth.

Plus, things are so much different now that I have a wife. Janelle came out with me on my first two days of work this week, and let me say that literally having her at my side is such a motivator and adds a satisfying element to life. I wonder how much more Adam knew the same phenomena when God presented him with bone of his bones and flesh of his flesh?!

On that note, how much more complete is Christ along with His Bride, the Church? His union with the Church is something so astounding that we'd never begin to understand it without all the models and pictures He has placed all around us.

I just pray that God would mold Janelle and I into one of those models of His redeeming love for the Church, His Bride who was purchased with His blood.

Pronounced Mr. and Mrs. Jay Hobbs

2008-06-15T16:51:00.000-04:00

Wow! For five and a half months, I'd look at the ticker on our blog, moving steadily closer to our wedding date--"three months left", "two months left", etc.--but now, I'm looking at the same ticker telling me "eight days since the event." That is insane.

Our wedding and honeymoon were absolutely spectacular, complete with breathtaking view after breathtaking view in Banff National Park (in the Canadian Rockies). We'll get some pictures up later this week, but I don't want to spoil the surprise and the shock and awe that my family will feel when we show those pictures to them this week up North.

God has been extravagant in giving us all things throughout this time, through our family and friends' generosity, and He's making Himself look great through working in our financial situation via one great job opportunity that's on the horizon. Our friends, the Fishers, wrote us a card for the wedding that contained this blessing--one of my favorites from those cards--"We're looking forward to God doing violence to the gates of hell through you guys." That was a great blessing, and God is working to provide for us in great ways while accomplishing His purpose through us.

The job I'm talking about is the head SID job at Concordia University, which is one of Cal Baptist's rival schools and one that it'd be super easy to transition to because of their reputation for doing things in a competitive, respectable way. I'm interviewing with the Athletic Director this week before we head North, so be praying for us this week and keep checking our blog for updates--I'll be posting.

Striving to please Him in all that we do,
J&J

A few more happenings in the Jay-nelle world...

2008-04-14T23:00:00.000-04:00

Some photo updates on the fun happenings in our lives...

A few days ago the nursing school at CBU had their dedication cermony, where Janelle,
along with all her classmates, lit candles and dedicated themselves to serving the Lord as
the future nurses of the class of 2010.

As mentioned before, we went on a little picnic outing to Yorba Linda for Jay's birthday last week. We had so much fun spending time together, eating some delicious sandwiches (as you can see) , and having ducks visit us for most of our time there. :)

We've also made our way to Hollywood, where Janelle's parents took us to see Wicked for Janelle's birthday. The play was amazing, and it was great to spend time with family. Thanks Chad and Teresa!

Damaged Bimmer, Thriving Relationship

2008-04-12T18:18:00.000-04:00

Yesterday was date day, and it went out almost without a hitch. I say almost because on our way back from the date, a picnic outing to Yorba Linda Regional Park, we were struck--not by a thought or idea, but by a Peterbilt big-rig.

So, the Ultimate Driving Machine has a dent in the rear-quarterpanel fender, big deal, right? At least we're still getting married June 7th--plus, we're still covered by the blood of Jesus and restored to a relationship with the living God--good news all the way around!

Our wedding plans are going great, by the way, Janelle and I went and worked on our invitations with the great Peter Ross last week, where my genius idea to include the Hobbs family crest on the invitations themselves was unceremoniously shot down by my beloved. But, here's what it looks like, as prominently displayed on my grandpa Hobbs' gate in Newcastle, CA.

Here are some more engagement pics, courtesy of the great Bill Blakey, photographer extrodinaire. Enjoy them!

(And, as a side note, in case you saw the article in the trustworthy Auburn Journal, you can go ahead and utterly disregard all claims that it makes, besides our wedding date and the photo, which are both uncharacteristically accurate).

*If you're looking to kill another couple of minutes, check this article out too, which was found by Dusty (or Dustin, depending on who you talk to). This one's for free!

Pink is the New Black, So Get off My Back, Jack!

2008-03-13T17:59:00.000-04:00

Saturday was the big day! Sorry, I know we told all of you that June 7th was it, but we figured, "What's 2 months and 3 weeks anyhow?"

Just kidding, we didn't actually move up the ceremony, even though Ken Flower would have us move it to align properly with his birthday, so you can put down that phone, mom.

But what we did do was pretty cool in its own right: we busted out a trip to scenic downtown Riverside, which actually has a ton of nice spots to offer the newly engaged couple.

It wouldn't have been anything more than a trip for two downtown had it not been for our friends, the Blakeys--all three of them, including the camera. Billy and Cory took some amazing pictures, which you can check out the best of them at their blog.

Saturday was a pretty busy day all the way around. I finished a paper for school (about the Ephesians 5:24-33 analogy of Christ and the Church) at about 2 a.m. Friday night, and Janelle and I met for breakfast the next day a little before 9. From breakfast, we went by Bed Bath and Beyond and Target to register for the wedding, which took about 4 hours altogether.

I can't say that it was the greatest idea to register and take engagement photos on the same day, but we survived without really arguing about anything, although both of us were a little bit cranky in the middle of the day.

Another thing that's new in the life would be the free trip to the Bahamas that Janelle won for us at a bridal expo the other day. We had to cross a great wilderness called shameless sales pitch, but we made it across that burning wasteland with no monthly payments, no timeshares and no sheers that were so sharp they could cut a penny in half--although that was pretty tempting, I admit.

So, it's Banff for honeymoon, Bahamas for 1-year anniversary. Boy howdy, we're stinkin world travelers!

Finally, we're both super thankful to the Lord that he's teaching us to trust in him in an uncertain time, with trying to plan out our lives together, especially the next year. There's that big challenge in James 4, where he calls such talk as, "Tomorrow, we will go to such and such city..." "boasting" and all such "boasting" as "evil". In short, his will is going to be accomplished, and our attitude needs to be, "Your kingdom come" rather than, "Here's my plan, Lord, now stay outta my way while I do it."

Thanks again to the Blakeys for capturing the future Mr. and Mrs. Jay Hobbs' in action.

We're so excited...and we just can't hide it!

2008-02-18T22:15:00.000-05:00

Today makes it exactly one month since Jay proposed, and we couldn't be happier to be getting married.

The wedding plans are going so well, and we spend all our spare time together dreaming of that day, only 3 months away! In our first month of engagement, we've gotten a lot of big plans out of the way...

Some things we've finished so far include finding our reception site(my maid of honor's backyard:) and booking the church. We'll be getting married at our home church here in Corona. I've gone to the church since elementary school, and it's the very place that Jay and I met. We're involved with the college group there, and also love doing ministry with the junior high kids, so we're excited to be getting married in the auditorium where we meet to worship every Sunday.

Also officially booked and checked off the list is the honeymoon! We booked our trip to Banff National Park (pictured) a few weeks ago, and we're SO excited! :) For those of you who don't know, Banff is just an hour's drive outside of Calgary in the heart of the Canadian Rockies, and is full of mountains and lakes to explore. We can't wait.

Another big thing off the list is buying my wedding dress! I'll have to leave out the picture, since Jay isn't allowed to see, but it was definitely an exciting experience! I can't wait for the day that I get to wear it and walk down the aisle to say "I do". :)

Until then, we'll keep you posted with all the exciting happenings of our engagement.

We're Engaged!

2008-01-25T13:33:00.000-05:00

Hopefully this isn't your first interaction with our big news, but if it is, we greatly apologize and beg for either your forgiveness or your swift and nearly painless judgment (hopefully your forgiveness, though).

At any rate, here are some pictures to let you into our little circle of joy. The beautiful girl who's pictured is my fiance, or, if you prefer, my bride to be. Actually, I prefer that one!

We've set a date for June 7th at Northpoint, our church home here in Corona, CA, the center of the universe.

Here's a little of our engagement story, as told by Jay.

I had planned on waiting until the middle of February to pop the question, but the opportunity presented itself and I went down to the jeweler on Monday, which, if you're as unfamiliar with jewelery as I am, you may not have known that many of them (including this one) are closed on Mondays.

So, Tuesday became the big day, and I went down to the jeweler along with our good friend Staci Worthington (who is set to be the maid of honor). There we saw the perfect ring, as previously picked out by Janelle herself, I threw down the dough and the excitement was on.

Tuesday night, I was a wreck before I went over to Janelle's parents to ask permission to marry their daughter (that's wild, I can't believe I'm writing that!). But they said yes, and so I figured that was a good sign.

Friday night, January 18th, became my new D-Day, and believe me, I was so nervous the whole week, leading into that night. We started it off with a little bit of Disneyland--a Nemo here, a Matterhorn there--and made it to the beach just before sunset, where I asked her to marry me and put the ring on her finger.

Now, my brother, Casey, had offered to pay for us to have a celebratory meal at Ruth's Chris Steak House in Anaheim and that's where our evening took us--the newly engaged couple. When we arrived at our table, on a side note, there was, sitting on the table, a wheel of cheese, which I know will take a little explaining.

Last Valentine's Day, you see, I had tried to rebel against the hoopla of the holiday and had purchased, much to my chagrin in hindsight, a cheese wheel instead of the traditional flowers, chocolate and card.

Well, our relationship survived that great self-inflicted storm, but Casey and all of his cronies (I say that in the most complimentary way) in Alabama won't let me live it down (which is not to say that they ought to).

We had a spectacular dinner, definitely the best meal we've partaken of in our time together, and capped it off with an impromptu get-together at the Burns' house to celebrate.

Thanks to Casey for the dinner and the cheese wheel idea, and to Dad (he was instrumental in planting the wheel on site), and thanks to Staci, Aubrey and all the girls for correctly conveying the information about the ring.

Oh yeah, thanks Chad and Teresa for giving us the go-ahead! Also, thanks for the sweet camera, which will serve to populate our blog with mucho pictures in the months to come.