Bridging the Chasm

If the chasm is to be bridged, God must bridge it.  If we are to desire the highest good, the highest good must come down and draw us so that it may become a reality we desire.  From this perspective there is no merit in either seeking or finding.  All is grace. The secret of seeking is not in our human ascent to God, but in God’s descent to us.  We start out searching, but we end up being discovered.  We think we are looking for something; we realized we are found by Someone…What brings us home is not our discovery of the way home but the call of the Father who has been waiting there for us all along, whose presence there makes home home.

–Os Guinness, The Call (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson), p 14.

Delicious Blogs

I spent a bunch of time over the holiday weekend getting caught up on some blog reading.  I use Google Reader to take in all of my blog content and lately have been feeling the back-pressure build.  Going into the weekend, there were over 1000 unread blog posts piled up.  Slowly but surely I chipped away at them by quickly scanning through them, starring the ones I want to read, and trashing those I don’t.  I’m now making my way back through all of the starred posts.  As I do so, you’ll see the “From My Reader” list on my left sidebar update as I tag many of them via my Delicious account which is linked in via WordPress.  Stay tuned to that list for links to some great blog posts.

The Inescapable Question of Biography

Part of our contemporary crisis of identity can be summed up by saying that modern people are haunted by an inescapable question of biography: Who am I?  From magazine covers to psychiatrists’ couches to popular seminars, we are awash with self-styled answers to this question.  But many people are dissatisfied with the answers peddled because they have a terrible deficiency: They don’t explain what to each of us is the heart of our yearning–to know why we are each unique, utterly exceptional, and therefore significant as human beings

–Os Guinness, The Call (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson), p 20.

Schlafly Gets Props in the L.A. Times

My favorite local brew gets props in the L.A. Times.  Read the article, Saint Louis Brewery Leads Microbrew Market. My favorite is their Pale Ale.

The Avett Brothers

This past Thursday night, my lovely wife and I had the opportunity to go see one of our favorite bands live in concert at the Pageant here in St. Louis.  If you’ve never heard of the Avett Brothers, it’s time you do.  We’ve been captured by their music for about a year now, and seeing them live was amazing.

Where else can you see one dude playing a cello, another the upright bass, while one of the two guys on lead vocals plays (simultaneously mind you) the banjo and bass drum while the other lead plays the acoustic guitar and a high-hat.  Incredible.  These guys have talent.  The two leads also took turns on the piano and one them would occasionally jump back to a full-up drum set or strap on the harmonica.  Crazy fun.

In addition to their great musical talent, these guys can write songs and they seem to have a gift for capturing a sense of emotion in their songwriting.  They’re storytellers and so some of their stories express grief and the challenges or hurts or pangs we experience in this life while mixing it all together in a very unique blue-grassy harmony that keeps you on your toes.

Final word – check ‘em out.  I understand they have a new album coming out at the end of September.  You’ll want to buy it.

Random Nerd 6.27.09 – iPhone Teardown

iPhone teardown articles are now out.  Be sure to checkout the iSuppli teardown article which concludes a $172.46 bill of materials and a mere $6.50 in assembly costs.  Crazy low assembly cost if you ask me.  EDN has an article that draws on the iSuppli report while GigaOM has a nice picture and writeup themselves.

Finally, if you’re into the tech stuff, stop over at Gizmodo and read Bill Nye’s layman’s description of the oleophobic touchscreen.  Go ahead…get your nerd on.

Music of Late

My wife and I are very excited to be heading down to the Pageant tonight to check out the Avett Brothers.  If you haven’t ever heard of them, please give them a sample listen via their MySpace page.

In other music of late news, I’ve been sneaking some time checking out (and enjoying) the following bands on MySpace thanks to some recommendations from various blogs and tweets,

• Manchester Orchestra
• Grizzly Bear
• Frontier Ruckus
• Whitley

Relevant Mag on Our Generation

Have you ever asked the question, or been asked the question, “who are you trying to impress?”  Relevant mag writer Adam Smith addresses the hipster culture in an interest piquing article, Who Are We Trying to Impress.  A snippet:

Our generation, the 18-to-34 set, tend to share a common characteristic. We are remarkably self-satisfied. We are socially aware, politically sensitive and culturally savvy, and we like this about ourselves. The question it raises, however, is if all our sensitivity, savviness and awareness has led anywhere. Certainly, social justice campaigns abound within our generation. One would be loathe to be identified within the subculture without a keen passion for grassroots, countercultural movements. However, where have these movements led? Is ours a generation that is quietly changing the world, or is social conscience just one more accoutrement of fashion for us? An accessory we wear with our Chuck Taylors and horn-rimmed glasses? It seems we’re out not just to change the world, but to impress. The question is, who exactly are we trying to impress?

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Moreover, we’re certainly not blind to the problem. In surveys conducted by cable network The N, our own generation described itself as lazy, materialistic and self-absorbed. So, if we know this about ourselves, what are we doing to change it? The problem, I think, comes in the fact that it’s easy to apply these epithets to our generation without applying them to ourselves as individuals. Let me be the first to say, I embody these traits as much as any of us. It’s time for us to take responsibility, not as a generation, but as individuals to live the kind of outwardly focused life we hold in such esteem. Who are we trying to impress with our cultural savvy, our rebellious fashion sense and political awareness? Essentially, it’s each other. On a whole, we’re trying to impress our peers, strangers we pass on the street who—in reality—notice us no more than we do them.

None of these things (cultural awareness, political activism, mode and standard of dress) are bad in and of themselves. The problem comes when we elevate the veneer behind our efforts above the causes we claim to stand for. I adamantly believe that this is a fantastic generation, capable of amazing things. Not only capable of amazing things, mind you, but in reality already doing amazing things. It is time, though, that all of us (myself included) take a deep look at our motives and priorities. It’s time we stop trying to impress, and start making a difference for the sake of making a difference.

Read the whole thing here. (HT: HB)

Random Nerd 6.19.09 – It Will Be Mine..Oh Yes

My 3GS should arrive later today.  For you iPhone junkies out there – what are your favorite apps?

The Gospel-Centered Life

From the Coram Deo Blog:

We are excited to announce that The Gospel-Centered Life is now available for purchase worldwide! To go directly to the ordering/publicity website, click here. For the back-story on GCL, keep reading.

When we planted Coram Deo four years ago, we structured the entire church around missional communities. The ideal missional community consists of a small band of Christians living on mission together and inviting their non-Christian friends to join in conversation and interaction about the gospel of Jesus. This seemed like a really great idea. Until we started doing it. We quickly discovered two significant problems:

1. Most traditional “church small group” material was written for a Christian audience, and therefore non-Christians relate to it about as well as a cattle rancher relates to vegetarians.
2. Many Christians have a weak and anemic understanding of the gospel, so asking them to talk about how the gospel is transforming them is like asking a teenage boy band to talk about the finer elements of Mozart’s work.

So in order to shape “gospel DNA” in our church in a way that was accessible to both Christians and non-Christians, Will and I locked ourselves in a room for a couple weeks in the summer of 2007 and wrote a nine-week small-group study called The Gospel-Centered Life. Much of the content for GCL was adapted from older material published by World Harvest Mission which had been instrumental in our own gospel formation. WHM is a mission sending agency in the Reformed tradition that was started by a pastor and missional leader named Jack Miller, who influenced many of our own teachers and mentors (Tim Keller, John Frame, and Steve Childers, just to name a few).

God used GCL to bring about a mini-renewal in our church. New Christians, older Christians, and non-Christians all began to “get” the gospel in deep and powerful ways. People began asking if they could send copies to their parents, their family members, the pastor at the church they grew up in. Which put us in a dilemma, since many of the concepts we used for GCL were the intellectual property of WHM.

So I wrote a cold-turkey letter to WHM asking if they’d be willing to look over the material and consider working with us to publish it. In God’s providence, the folks at WHM were beginning to think about developing some new gospel renewal resources. So we began forging a partnership to edit and re-launch GCL for a wider audience. The crew at WHM has been great to work with, giving us tons of creative control in everything from writing to graphic design. Most importantly, they’ve been careful to preserve the missional ethos of GCL that makes it so accessible to non-Christians and new Christians.

WHM is selling the material as a digital download, which will shrink the overhead (no publishing or warehousing costs) and literally make GCL available worldwide. We’re excited about being part of God’s means to help spur gospel renewal in churches everywhere. Please do what you can to help us get the word out so that churches and Christians everywhere can experience the transforming power of the gospel. The direct link for ordering and publicity is www.whm.org/gcl.

Until July 31, you can receive a free sample of GCL via email! Just follow the directions at the WHM site.

Myth: God Wants the Best for You

This past Sunday I had the privilege of preaching at Summit Community Church here in O’Fallon.

The sermon was on the myth (or half-truth) that God wants the best for you.  You can find links to the audio here.

Spurgeon on Thorns

Preaching on 2 Corinthians 12:7-10:

“A thorn is but a little thing, and indicates a painful but not a killing trial — not a huge, crushing, overwhelming affliction, but a common matter; none the less painful, however, because common and insignificant.  A thorn is a sharp thing, which pricks, pierces, irritates, lacerates, festers, and causes endless pain and inconvenience.  Yet it is almost a secret thing, not very apparent to anyone but the sufferer.”

-Charles Spurgeon, sermon “The Thorn in the Flesh” delivered at the Metropolitan Tabernacle on December 8, 1872.

Great New Website

Here’s a new website I’m excited about – Re:Sound.org.  I downloaded the Rain City Hymnal and have not been disappointed.

Random Nerd 6.12.2009 – iPhone 3GS

Four long months ago, my current wireless contract with Verizon expired.  With all of my sinful coveting desires in full swing, I was ready to jump ship to AT&T and the iPhone which I had been longing after for quite some time.  What held me back however, were rumors.

Rumors of a new iPhone.  One that would upgrade the processing power, double the memory, increase the resolution of the camera, amongst other improvements.

The time has now come.

Osteen Vs. Jesus

I’m preaching this week on the myth/half truth that God wants the best for you.  As part of my preparation, I did something I would typically never do: buy a book by Joel Osteen.  Now I have his smiley face staring at me from my desk and it is creepy.

Here’s a quote that I’ve honed in on as fodder for this Sunday:

“If you will keep the right attitude, God will take care of all your disappointments, broken dreams, the hurts and pains, and He’ll add up all the trouble and sorrow that’s been inflicted on you, and He will pay you back with twice as much peace, joy, happiness, and success.”

–Joel Osteen, Your Best Life Now (New York, NY: Faith Words), p 77.

Now, contrast that with Jesus’ words to Paul in 2 Corinthians 12:7-10:

“My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”

This Should Be Interesting

This:

Plus this:

Equals: must see TV (and a real hour of power).

Read more here.  Then pray.

228 Million Pounds of Coffee?

I don’t remember drinking 228 million pounds of coffee this past year, according to the side of my recent tall, black coffee:

I bought 228 million pounds of responsibly grown, ethically traded coffee last year.  Everything Starbucks does, I do.  I stop by for a coffee.  And just by doing that, I let Starbucks buy more coffee from farmers who are good to their workers, community, and planet.  Starbucks bought 65% of their coffee this way last year — 228 million pounds–and they’re working with farmers to make it 100%.  It’s using their size for good, and I make it all possible.  Way to go, me.

Shame

Why is God’s grace so tough for us to understand?  Some of us know that we need Jesus, but we just don’t quite grasp how that works and the danger is that if you try to get Jesus or you try to understand why he died on the cross without an understanding of grace, what you’ll experience in your life is shame.

Do you walk around with shame? I’ve been there.  There’s a band that my wife and I enjoy called the Avett Brothers and one of my favorite songs by these guys is simply called “Shame” and the chorus goes like this – read it and ask yourself if this is what is going on inside of you:

“Shame. Boatloads of shame.
Day after day. More of the same.

Blame, please lift it off.
Please take it off, please make it stop.”

For many people in the world, that’s a lifesong.  And maybe you get Jesus and maybe you’ve surrendered your life to him and maybe you understand that he died on the cross for your sins but you really can’t get your head around grace… And so you’re filled with shame.

Shame because you still sin. Shame because you feel like every time you do, you’re jeopardizing your relationship with God…. Shame because when you sin, you feel like your Christian friends or your spouse or your pastor or someone in that place called church is going to see right through you and call you out for the fake that you keep telling yourself that you are.

Boatloads of shame.

And if you’re there. If you’re there – these words from this song just ring true in your life and something inside is just crying out: “Please take it off, please make it stop.”

And maybe what you’ve been taught is that the reason you keep falling, the reason you keep screwing up is that you just don’t have enough faith. See if you just really believed in Jesus you wouldn’t do those things because if you’re sinning, then you must not fully believe. Have you heard this? So just believe, right? Now – for the most part, that’s true. But it’s not really that helpful.

Beseeching you to believe might appeal to your emotions, but it really doesn’t get into your heart and so what happens is you can have an emotional response to a conversation or a sermon or even a prayer and want to change. But if all it is is an emotional response, it’s going to wear off. And so a week or a month or a year later you’re back in that same place dealing with the same junk and you can’t break free from it and so you’re filled with shame and inside you’re screaming, “please take it off; please make it stop.”

So what’s the answer?  Romans 3:23 tells us that we’re all sinners – you, me, every person that goes to church, every pastor, every spouse, everyone – and we all fall short of the glory of God.  If you’re filled with shame, you know that.  You feel that.  You live that.  But what you also need to know, feel, and live is that for those that have surrendered their life to Jesus, the very next verse provides the key.  See, as Christians, though we are sinners, we are justified by God’s grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.

All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God AND, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. (Romans 3:23-24, ESV)

You want to know where the real power of the gospel is to set you free? It’s grace. Unmerited favor. None of us deserve what Jesus accomplished for us on the cross.  As Christians, we are sinners saved by grace.  Justified (put right) with God by his gift of grace through Jesus.  And when you get that – when you get that you’re a sinner and that the only way to be right before a holy God is to be PUT RIGHT before God by grace, it changes everything.  When you realize that it’s not about what you do that makes you right (going to church, reading your Bible, praying every day, helping people out) but what God did (sent Jesus to die on the Cross for your sins) – it sets you free from your shame because you come to realize that even though you are a sinner, even though you still screw up, even though you’re not perfect – Christ died on the cross for your sins.

7 Years Ago Today

Today marks seven years of marriage to my beautiful wife, Meg.  Last night I spent some time searching through old pictures for this one which is one of my all time favorites.  It took me a while to find it, but I knew it was there and I knew it was the one I wanted.  This is her holding Iris when she was about 2 months old and this image is forever seared in my brain.

Happy anniversary, beloved (pronounced, bee-loo-ved of course).

Random Nerd 5.29.2009 – Facebook and Twitter

In trying to get my head around both Facebook and Twitter, I found a helpful blog post that distinguished each from the other.  If you’re confused like I still am, give this post by Steve Thornton a read called Twitter versus Facebook: Should You Choose One?

If you’re lazy and want to cut to the chase, read the pros and cons he lists for each below.  Is it not crazy that here I am writing a blog post about a blog post about the differences between Facebook and Twitter?  The social networking overload led to the qualification of this post as a Random Nerd post.

Twitter Pros

• Easy to navigate and update, link to and promote anything
• Reach far beyond your inner circle of friends
• One feed pools all users; anyone can follow anyone else unless blocked
• Pure communication tool, rapid responsiveness
• You don’t have to be logged in to get updates; you can just use an RSS reader
• Very interactive, extensible messaging platform with open APIs
• Many other applications being developed (Twitterific, Summize, Twhirl, etc.)
• Potential SMS text messaging revenue from wireless networks (although Twitter states they are not currently getting any cut)
• Potential future advertising and/or enterprise subscription-based revenue streams
• With its “thin” overhead, Twitter is probably more scalable than Facebook, giving it a cost advantage

Twitter Cons

• Limited functionality; find people, send brief messages, direct replies
• Limited to 140 characters per update
• Not all people find it immediately useful
• Over-emphasis on follower counts
• Easily abused for spam and increasing the noise level
• Relatively smaller installed user base
• As yet no readily apparent monetization strategy

Facebook Pros

• Application mashup; find people, make connections, email, instant messaging, image/video sharing, etc.
• Most people can quickly grasp the value of connecting with friends, family and established contacts; some people report they use Facebook instead of email and IM
• More emphasis on deep connections with others vs. who has the most connections
• “True Friends” feature increases your transparency to selected connections; almost like having private and public profiles
• Huge, rapidly growing installed user base
• Inherit stickiness, third party applications, “gift giving” and personal data collection make Facebook a powerful advertising platform

Facebook Cons

• More difficult to navigate and update
• Requires investment of time to realize sustained benefit
• Opt in model requires a user to allow others to connect
• Less immediate responses; unless you stay logged on continually
• Overhead of mashup and “thick” applications could limit scalability, bloat cost structure

Facebook and Twitter

I’ve succumbed.  I’m no longer simply a blog snob.  If you want to be my friend, check me out on Facebook.  If you want a little bit more of a glimpse into my life, you can follow me on Twitter.

Learn to Praise

Psalm 1 tells us that God simply does not care to satisfy the intellectual curiosity of cooly aloof inquirers: his passion is for dragging ugly wallflowers onto the dance floor.  When we come to him looking merely for a respectable philosophical system, he not so subtly reshapes the question: “So it’s truth you think you want?  Come sing in my choir, then we’ll talk.”  In other words, learn to praise.  Understanding will follow.

–Reggie Kidd, With One Voice (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books), p 49.

Celestial Valium

This is a bracing feature of biblical song: God’s songs are not celestial Valium.  Rather than sugarcoat the human condition, the Psalms look into the cosmically rebellious human breast with eyes wide open.  They sing a brand of blues so raw and honest they would make blues singer John Lee Hooker blush.  But there is a reason the Psalms can gaze so honestly and sing so bluely.  They know a secret.  “Guess what?” they wink.  “God wins.  Darkness loses.  Praise be.”

–Reggie Kidd, With One Voice (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books), p 40.

The Blinding Instant of Unmasked, Naked Self-Awareness

God is after a convergence of his character and ours.  The Psalms offer as a chief means of attaining this convergence: “Sit and soak.  Chew on this.”  We are told to plant ourselves like a tree on the bank of a waterway, meditating on it, absorbing the Word into our being.  Several psalms are composed around acrostics, designed to do one thing: make sure the song is remembered, make sure it is anchored in our soul.  The linkage of mnemonic device, poetic form, the act of singing, repetition – all these combine to help these psalms become resources of the spirit, springing to consciousness when we need them: during the terrors of the night, the tears of the sickbed, the desolation of undeserved attack, the blinding instant of unmasked, naked self-awareness.

–Reggie Kidd, With One Voice (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books), p 34.

Random Nerd 5.15.2009 – Did You Know

I love stats and this video is full of them.  Enjoy.