Seeds for a Purpose — Don’t Quit While You’re Ahead

I was back in SNR after a long SNS – Saturday Night Slumber. I was with Frederick, my brother, indecisive over going to SNR or taking my brother out to town. I didn’t want him to feel that I was saturating him with church, yet I was happy that he was enjoying it so much. He even asked me if there was a dream center in Pennsylvannia! The charm of the dream center is like a fast oncoming train — it hits you and runs over you hard. But because Christ is in it, you rise again. I felt a tug in my heart. I could not bear to be right next to Angelus Temple and not go. I had been “robbed” way too many times of this awesome weekend night service.

SNR – April 5 was about seeds. Seeds and Purpose.

Matthew 17:20
“I tell you the truth, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.”

Pastor Brad Reed carries a container of sunflower seeds challenges the audience. Jesus does not use “seed” accidentally, because it is a pretty metaphor, or because he decided to be eco-friendly or reach out to the gardener market. Faith is akin to a seed because it is supposed to grow.

1 Peter 2:2
Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation.

We don’t get salvation like we get a precious diamond that is too expensive to use, locked away in a safe. We get saved, and then we grow, we mature, and we bear fruit. It was emphasized in the sermon that seeds are planted not to remain in the ground, but to be transferred to another pot and another pot. And finally, the tree can be planted on the ground. “The seed must be cracked to get the life out of it.”

The saddest part is that a lot of people pull out of the ground before the harvest. Stop crawling to the end of the tunnel just short of the light. Stop running the marathon 0.2 miles away shy of the finish line. Pastor Brad said emphatically — “if you don’t finish the marathon, you don’t get any credit!” This is perhaps the most poignant part of Pastor Brad’s sermon – at least for me — because his words hit home. I had gotten out of my comfort zone, stepped up to serve God, yet was giving the doubting and fearful voices in my head more attention than I should. I went through the motions of serving God, hanging by a thin thread.

It’s time to stop running away, and it’s time to face His hands. The hands that will take me gently from my pot and start planting me on the ground. Success, getting there, reaching a goal, scares more people than we realize. Sometimes the finish line is just as scary as the starting line. More than sometimes, we start more races than we finish. The race of our Christian life is a race that’s not negotiable in God’s eyes. We must long for his “well done, good and faithful servant,” the same way that a little girl longs for her mother’s approving smile. Contrary to the popular saying — “Don’t quit while you’re ahead.”

If a seed does not later on produce fruit — it does not fulfill its purpose. If salt loses its saltiness, and light is hidden……

Matthew 5:14-16

14“You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden. 15Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. 16In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.”

We are seeds meant to bear fruit. Salt meant to be salty. Light meant to shine. Go, fulfill your purpose.

I’m on a leash

“I will never leave you nor forsake you.”

This verse is so common to most Christians, that sometimes we lose touch of what it means. Never means never. As in not a single time. But sometimes we think if we’re not good enough, if we don’t pray enough, if there’s way too much going on…sometimes we think that he will leave. We’ve been stained by the way of the world — the an eye for an eye system, the i’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine system. The different thing about God is that he loved us first, and nothing we can do can ever change that. He gave his life for the forgiveness of our sins, and all he asks in return is for us to believe.

Sometimes, like a dog on a stretchable leash, I wander far from the Father, wrongfully thinking that I can do it on my own, my own way. But, no one can snatch me from his hand. God is pretty territorial about his property. If you let him, you can be his. We can be indian givers at times — taking back what we Christians have already reliniquished to God — our lives. We unwittingly kick him out the thrones of our lives and try to govern our own lives. Since we are by nature imperfect, this is bound to fail. The good news is you can’t go very far before God pokes you and tugs at your leash softly. Come back, he beckons. You’re going the wrong way. A great Sunday sermon bring us back. A friend gives us a call to check up. Out of the blue, someone offers prayer. If you open your eyes and ears, he is trying to get your attention.

A statement from the pastor at Angelus Temple last Thursday stuck with me.

“Loneliness is just a call from God for greater intimacy with Him.”

Let us seek him with all our heart in times of doubt and not stray away. He never left. He is softly prodding is to go back.

It’s worth the wait

Two wrongs don’t make a right. Same principle rings true for relationships. In the last Saturday night service I attended before I left for the Philippines, Pastor Brad Reed speaks about the “unspeakable” – love, relationships, marriage. We’re all either in a relationship, getting out of one or looking for one. Why all this pressure to commit? I feel that the word “single” these days is almost a taboo, almost a bad word, a condition that’s treated like it’s some vinereal disease. Are we really that lonely? Or are we just trying to cover up deep-seated insecurities by being with someone?

These are some of my thoughts on these questions. Number one, the degneration of identity. The world is so cluttered – literally and figuratively that we can barely see ourselves anymore. Our ears are connected to ipods, our eyes glued to computer screens, our noses pierced and covered with adornments, and our natural skin covered with tattooes. We see ourselves in connection to something else all the time. When asked that very direct, yet vaguely difficult question – Who are you? We usually speak about something that is in connection with us – what we do, whose daughter we are, where we’re from, etc. etc. And for a lot of young people, we see our identities in who we’re with romantically. If you are someone when you are with someone, who are you when you’re not? Nobody? The holy rebellion that we must start against this is to find our identities in Christ, to see ourselves as he sees us, to be whole, perfect, pure and capable because Christ loves us. We are somebody because Christ died on the cross and redeemed us. This is the only relationship that should determine who we are – our relationship with our Lord, Jesus Christ.

Second thing that it brings attention to is the unspeakable loneliness that pervades young people today. There’s that void that must be filled and that love that must be received. As the cliche goes — we look for love on the wrong places. And as the Christian cliche goes — we have a God shaped hole that guess who can fill? Only God. And when you’ve looked and looked in every nook and cranny of this limited earth for joy — you come up the same way you started — hands empty, heart even emptier. Relationships that are not right in the eyes of God, even though they seem oh-so-right when we’re in it, can only be detours that take us away from walking on the path that God has meant for us.

The main point — wait. “Good things come to those who wait.” Wait on God and prioritize your relationship with Him. Let him fill your void — only He can. That person you’ve been longing for is walking on the path that God has him/her — and your paths will intersect — in God’s time.

Can you handle the truth?

You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free — John 8:32

“You can’t handle the truth.” – Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Men.

A little imagery to remind you of that scene in A Few Good Men.

Tonite in Saturday Night Redefined — Pastor Brad Reed speaks about how we react and respond to people who because of trust in our maturity, trust in our Christianity, choose to be transparent and talk about their struggles. More often than not, he expresses, we talk over other people, using their vulnerability as a way to propel as to a platform, a higher moral standpoint. We overuse our moral ascendancy. Pastor Brad spoke about the adulterous woman in the bible, an inch away from being stoned to death by townspeople. Jesus says, “Whoever is without sin, cast the first stone.” This behavior is probably strange to us contemporary Christians. How can their consciences handle stoning a woman to death? Yet we probably don’t realize, that in the little word daggers we throw infront or behind the back of people we judge, those we deem unworthy in our mind, that we still do this in the modern day. We do not receive the truth about other people in love and balance truth with grace. Pastor Brad says that we should be nets to each other, catching each other when we fall.

Do we really believe that truth sets us free? Or do we stifle the truth and live in the illusion of being “perfect” all the time? Or maybe, like Tom Cruise in “A Few Good Men” we can’t handle the truth.

As I listen to the sermon, a lot of things go through my head – the many times I may have unknowingly shut down a trusting heart because I could not bear to listen quietly. Can we really handle the truth? We are sometimes like a gingerbread house -sweet on the outside, but it so easily crumbles with truth and transparency. We hide our own struggles and suppress them, and drown out out desperate cries with a great big Hallelujah! Some Christians cope by living a double life — having the Sunday self and the weekday self. And because we struggle ourselves, we cannot even bear to lend a listening ear, or words of wisdom or a helping hand to those who decide they will be vulnerable with us and pour out their struggles. The church should be a place of transparency, a place where we can be honest with ourselves, and have that honesty received with grace. It is not to say that we won’t rebuke our Christian brother or sister when we need to — “Better is open rebuke Than love that is concealed.” Proverbs 27:5. Only we must do it out of love, and not out of empty criticism. “If I have all faith so as to remove mountains,
but have not love, I am nothing.” 1 Cor 13. Sometimes, I don’t even have the words to say. When I don’t — I offer prayer, and it often helps a lot.

I am deeply convicted by this. I once asked of a friend — “Is it right that he has to be so transparent? Should he tell me everything?” I realized that I should have not been so concerned with protecting myself and my feelings, I should have put the other person first and see it as an opportunity to be used by God. I should have listened with my heart and not with my mind. I should have reacted with the words that Jesus would say, and the quietness that Jesus had. If we only listen with the peace that passes understanding, then we will truly understand and be able to help.

I realize that we should not be so concerned with the “garment” being squeaky clean. Stains are not always pretty – but they are real. We should gently help the person get the stain out — the entire garment doesn’t have to be thrown away.

Freedom Redefined

 The Saturday Night Redefined service at Angelus Temple lingers in my head. Master’s Commission Los Angeles — a group of God-hungry young people who have committed two years of their life to knowing the Lord — made a presentation about freedom. There was a dance, a shadow play, a testimony-slash-monologue, and more. It was a call to freedom, a perfect foreshadowing of Martin Luther King Day that would occur that following Monday.  The first question that occurred to me was, wait a minute – freedom from what? The answer came a few minutes later. It was freedom from the cult of cool. A rebellion against rebellion. We have been fooled by invented and imagined norms (most of which are perpetuated in the media) about what freedom is – it is doing what you want, being what you want, when you want. It is running through a crowd-filled concrete road half naked, adorned with multi-colored shiny necklaces at Mardi Gras, it is the freedom to drink as much as you want on a Friday night, and the freedom to roll out cuss words the way a coin machine rolls out quarters. Yet in Saturday Night Redefined, freedom is redefined. We can only really be free of we walk in obedience – unfettered by bondages and addictions that pull us down, desperate only for The Father’s approval, and wanting to be “cool” only in the eyes of Our Savior.

Definitions. We don’t really give much thought to them — unless, probably we’re about to take a test. Academics make us care about them but unfortunately, life doesn’t.  After SNR, I began to think of my own definitions. How do I  define love? How do I define happiness? Sometimes when asked questions like, when was the last time you had a boyfriend,  some women jokingly say, “well, what’s your definition of boyfriend?” We stop to think first.  But when something of a more serious nature comes along, like a profession of love  from someone whose trustworthiness is questionable,  we don’t even stop to ask ourselves,  “what is this person’s definition of love?”  Once, in the process of writing  a short story that  told the story of a  certain kind of love,  I ask one of my good guy friends — what is your definition of love?  He unhesitatingly tells me that  physical attraction, and attention, to him is love. I really  am not surprised — this is the world’s standards — it just reminded me of how much we have been deceived. The bible says in 1 Corinthians 13 that Love is patient and kind, does not keep a record of wrongs and rejoices in truth — in a nutshell.

That is just a micro case study. Love. What about happiness? How do we define that? What thoughts do you have about peace, fairness, justice, and hope?

Definitions are the framework from which we act — the template that houses our decisions. Do you need to redefine your definitions?

The Day I met Jesus by Lori Kass

This is Lori’s version of the “The Day I met Jesus” assignment. This is pure nonfiction — Lori did not only fancy meeting Jesus and create a fantasmic story about it. She actually did. In real life.
As I walked through the hospital corridor to the rehab area, I felt a mix of fear and excitement. It had been about awhile since I’d seen Jeremy. We had always partied together and hooked up. However, now it was going to be a whole different scenario.

During that time since I’d last seen him, both of us had started attending church again and were growing more and more tired of the bar scene and all of the emptiness it contained. Now the place where we were meeting was the furthest place from a bar.

As I passed all the equipment and machines, I wondered who I would see. Not only had Jeremy changed spiritually since I’d last seen him, but he had also had another monumental life-changing event take place. Three months earlier he had fallen while wrestling with a friend and hit his head on a nightstand, breaking his neck. He had the same injury as Christopher Reeves had.

My mind flashed back to the night I saw the sign about it in Godfather’s Pizza. I saw a sign about a fund for him and my hear had nearly stopped because I thought he had died. I called the number on the sign and found out he had broken his neck and had been hospitalized ever since. They gave me the number to the hospital and the next day I called it. His dad answered and told me Jeremy had just been removed from the ventilator that very day. I found out he had been paralyzed from the neck down and in a coma for awhile, then on a ventilator even after he woke up. He was just able to talk for the first time the day I called.

We visited and made plans to get together when he was moved back to rehab in our home state. He talked about God and church and shocked me with the changes he had made. The biggest shock was the “I love you” ending to the call. Shortly after that I went to a Billy Graham Crusade and a sweet little old lady sitting next to me walked me down to the altar call.

Now Jeremy and I were seeing each other again. I wasn’t sure what I had really done at the crusade or what had happened to him spiritually. I’d grown up in the Catholic church and was very religious, but I didn’t know yet that I had never really met Jesus himself.

Suddenly as I was walking I heard the familiar voice say, “Hi!”. Turning around, I was shocked at the very thin, frail young man on the rehab machine. This once buff, gorgeous man was now a mere shell of himself from the 3 months of paralysis. I had actually started walking right by him because I didn’t recognize him. At the end of his rehab session, I watched him take about 10 steps on parallel bars.

Later in the room I found out that those steps had been his first ones since the accident. I also found out that all the doctors had given him a diagnosis of quadraplegia with a prognosis of no chance for recovery. However, he and his family did not accept that diagnosis and told the doctors that Jesus would heal him.

Now I looked at him, defying all the odds. I realized I had just seen Jesus the healer – really met God for the first time…a God of power who forgives all and heals all. That was the start of a wild ride with Jesus for 11 years and counting!

The Boss

Last week’s assignment for the dreamweaver meeting was – “The Day I met Jesus.” If you met the physical Jesus in actual life, what would he look like? What would he say? How would your conversation go? This is my version of the homework. Jesus is not only the “unseen guest in every meal,” he is also the unseen boss in every cubicle.

THE BOSS
I stared at the computer screen in disbelief. It was Monday 8:11 am, just about the time I checked my email every morning, that routinary thing that I do when I want to put off the rest of the day. My coffee was blowing off smoke, in all its instantness. I have a wonderful cup of instant coffee to cap my day, two boiled eggs bought from the tiny, incompetent cafeteria, to get that important kick in the shin that I need to work.

The screen loomed a shadow on my face. It was an email from THE BOSS. That was how I referred to him behind his back. It sent chills down my spine. How could he know that I called him that? And was even stranger about the email was that it did not have a “from” email” address, like it was created out of thin air. It said:

Lunch Meeting with THE BOSS. 7th Floor, Room 77. Try to be early, hard boiled eggs and apple juice will be served as food and refreshment.

Very funny. My boss had never been much of a comedian, except when he sported that tiny smirk on his face when he saw all the post-it notes around my screen. Remind yourself to look at your reminders every morning too, he said. That was that solitary day when he decided to crack the solitary joke. It was like hearing bongos in a Catholic church. It sounded very strange.

How did he know that I ate exactly two hard boiled eggs every morning? I wondered that to myself as I absentmindedly minimized and maximized the window. I’ve always tried to hide that fact from my boss, because he once made a comment that I took breaks too frequently. Hey, that’s why it’s called breakfast. Gimme a break. Literally.

I was pissed. What could this be about now? Is this man ever happy? The cursor lingered at the delete button for a while, before I moved it to “Move to sent folder.”. There was something about that email that made me want me to keep it.

I took a deep breath. I was in the elevator and my anxiety was growing. There were exactly seven people in the elevator, including me. I had just come from the basement to get some gum in the car. I was one of those dental hygiene freaks that was paranoid about bad breath. The worst thing about having conspicuously questionable performance at work was having conspicuously questionable breath while you talked to your boss about it. The elevator made exactly seven stops, one at each floor. Everybody picked a good day to use that elevator. It was so ironic.

When I got to the seventh floor, I was all alone. Everybody had been dropped off. I cleared my mouth, moistened my lips and spit out the gum. I started walking towards room 77. I was mildly nervous because of the little illicit things that I’d been doing at work. He must have developed some system of supervising me, I thought. He must know that I’ve obsessively been looking at this website called ESCAPIST.COM for reasons that are indicated in the website domain when I was bored or I wanted to kill time. He must know that I punch in before I go to the restroom after lunch break, thus making my break a little longer.

He’s going to tell me that I’m this big fraud, that yes, in my job as a proofreader, I have the most impeccable grammar, and worked twice as fast as the past girls, but that wasn’t going to cover up my tiny misdemeanors. He’s gonna know that have AIM conversations with my online boyfriend from Hawaii when he was out to his lunch meetings. Oh, the terror of being discovered. It made getting fired seem exhilarating.

I stopped at room 77. This is it.

“Come in.” I looked at the door. I was just about to knock. How did he know?

I went in, and his back was turned. He was walking towards the big glass window and I followed him, observing how his back looked different from the last time I saw it, yesterday. His voice sounded different too. Oddly, the voice sounded familiar though, like I’ve heard it many times in my sleep.

“Do you recognize my voice?”

“Mr. Powers, I’m really sorry for the glitches in my performance. You don’t have to intimidate me. I’ll listen,” I said, all my thoughts coming out in a word bundle.

‘My sheep know my voice and they follow me,” he said. He finally turned around and I saw him. He had soft, brown kind eyes and soft masculine hair that framed his face. It was curly. He had some facial hair, and was wearing a white shirt. On it was printed, “Yes, In a heartbeat.” He had an earring.

An earring? I thought incredulously. It had a tiny cross on it.. “Mr. Powers, you look really different” I swallowed. “But good. You look really good.”

“Do you recognize me, Abby? I called you today because I’ve wanted to talk to you since that day. Since that day when the light in your heart died. That day when routine became your favorite word. When did you start changing?”

“Who are you?”

“You know who I am. I gave you that talent. The talent with the pen and the blank sheet of paper. I gave you the power to fill it with words that heal and give life. Instead, you threw the pen away for that keyboard, and the blank sheet with the templates that you edit. Are you happy?”

“Excuse me?”

“Are you happy with what you do?”

“Well, I’m not going to say happy, but I’m not going to say…”

‘Miserable?”

“Mr. Powers, if you just want to fire me, I’ll take it. I’ll take it like a woman.” I waited for that smirk on his face. It didn’t come.

“I have another job offer for you,” he said matter-of-factly, like it was an impossibility for me to say no.

I opened my mouth to talk, but he already knew.

“The pay is half of what you’re getting now. All benefits are covered though. The Father knows what you need before you ask him. Joy is a natural consequence. A bigger room in Heaven is the bonus.”

Why does he keep on quoting scripture? Why is he talking about heaven? I was really getting confused now.

“Abby, here’s what I want you to do. Go to work the next week, like you always do, do your routine. But the first thing I want you to do is tell that woman you buy hard boiled eggs from every morning that she should visit her daughter who’s dying of cancer. Then tell Mr. Powers that he should quit smoking and tell him to go him to his wife. Tell him to break up with his mistress. After this, tell the receptionist to stop dating a married man. Then quit your job.

After quitting your job, I want you to write about the first time you met me, and how you’ve met me again. I want you to tell the world.”

My eyes widened. “Dorotthy and Mr. Powers? Wait a minute, if you’re not Mr. Powers, who are you?”

“A good friend, Abby. A very good friend.”

I looked at his kind eyes. I felt sadness, fear and misery wash out from me then it was a wave of quiet joy. I threw my arms around him all of a sudden, not able to resist the urge. I touched his hand. It had a huge wound. A hole.

Like a nail had been driven down his palm.

All of a sudden, I knew. Then he disappeared, leaving me with joyous tears and an overflowing heart.

I felt a pang of regret that I hadn’t asked him that question that I’d always wanted to ask him since I first met him.

“Would you do for me again if you had to do it over?”

Then I realized that the answer was right in front of me. “Yes, in a heartbeat.”