for stephen

I warn you now if you do not stop the path you are on you will only become free in the Spirit and Closer to God!!! When that happens the problem is He does not worry about rapidly changing the direction of your LIFE… This is just a warning from a friend that has been blown away to nothing and feeling God rebuild him from the basic beliefs up – it is a most painful process – One has to deal with God showing them there deepest darkest closets, their own personal demons that lurk in the corners of ones soul. You have to see the monster that lives in all of us, the broken human the beast that fell from grace in the Garden of Eden.

You can try your whole life to be a Christian and do God stuff but that broken man, that fallen, unloving, self centered monster still lives inside. It is only when we come to know the Grace that is embodied in the personage of Jesus and the truly amazing act of restoration that He accomplished in the cross and through the resurrection can the broken monster be made whole.

For me I lived a life that has been full of doing God stuff --- what a waste --- I see now that just doing God stuff is not the answer. It is living and breathing your relationship with God to and in the world around you. God will open your ears to hear the simplest comments that can be used as a door to conversations about eternal things. He can change your vision to see people not as LOST and dieing in need of your god stuff to save them but as people, friends, fellow beings that need to be shown love and encouragement. “If you lift Me up to men I will draw them to Me” I thought for so long that meant doing the God stuff, being out offering salvation to those without God to save them from HELL. I have come to understand that this might be one little part of it but lifting Jesus up for people to see comes truly by being authentic and transparent in both the good side of you and the still healing human side of you.

Te whole emerging church stuff is just a call from the Spirit to be real with a disenfranchised world, both with those with a non-Jesus relationship and many of those in relationship. The whole the emerging church is simply Gods method of getting workers in to a different harvest field. I had a vision the other day of a farm and on this farm there were many different fields of plants. Corn in one, watermelons, strawberries, lettuce, potatoes etc… The people that were harvesting in each field had different TOOLS different METHODS but they were all still part of the SAME FARM…

“Look the harvest is large but the workers are few” The emerging church is nothing NEW it is and has happened many times in the past that God looked down and saw a large group pf people that were ready to come in and be part of the his kingdom and then he looked around and saw that he needed to give a group of people some different tools to do this work. That is what the emerging church is to me. A group pf workers that are equipped with different tools (methodology) to expand HIS kingdom. The tools are designed to reach out to a younger(ish), technological, spiritually seeking, friendship longing, real world living, real God experiencing and desperately needing LOVE ---- harvest of people.

My vision in not to create a NEW thing but to allow this broken fallen human to be covered under the grace of God through Jesus to lift Him up to man through my daily life, daily failures, daily successes, through my anger, joy, happiness, sadness all in hopes that my life can be used to lift Jesus up so that a few others may see HIM and then He can call them into the kingdom and they to with all their faults can do the same for a few others.

Do not be fooled into thinking that the there is anything NEW in the world God has been and He will be long after us. The emerging church is using some different tools but is still the same might God working with broken humans to draw people to him.

I was thinking the other day about the prodigal son. Did you know that when the father saw the son in the distance he ran to him? Did you ever stop and think that once he got to the son he and the son still had to finish the walk home?  I have been wondering how God can use such messed up beings like we are. Then this dawned on me, when we turn to Him, once He see us turning to Him, he does not run He FLIES to right were we are. We might be in a drug house and have a body that is full of cocaine, we might be in a mansion with a gun in our hand ready to end it all, we might be in the deepest depression it does not matter, when we turn to HOME He is there instantly wrapping his love around us, then begins the journey, we walk with Him until we get home. Like the story he calls for clean clothes and calls for food and his servants bring them for us on our journey home.

We are only able to accept His love with out understanding with out deserving with out being made perfect. That is what will happen once we get home…  That is my vision of an emerging church a bunch of people that are walking with the father home stinky, dirty, and raw but covered but Grace and Love….

Paul