One question that I’ve been asking myself lately that has been deeply challenging and incredibly helpful while remaining very simple and not highly profound is, “What am I learning?” And then I make an attempt at journaling my answer.

The task is revealing of where I’ve been and often sheds light on where I’m going. There’s nothing deep about it but I’m coming to cherish this small amount of time that I take to measure what God is doing in and through me.

I’ve noticed that when I toss this question out to another individual the response is often the same and the reply comes out something like, “A lot, you know. He’s just teaching me so much,” or “man, just so many things.” I don’t knock this kind of response, because if honesty is of any value to me, I will have to say that I respond in much the same way when people ask me that question. But, I’m choosing to change this about myself and articulating it on my own time helps to clearly communicate what is really happening in me.

Jesus went about the same exercise with his disciples, he just chose to use different words,”Why are so afraid?” “Why do you call me good?” “Why did you doubt?” And this guy, “Who do you say that I am?” In essence he’s asking, “Hey guys, you’ve been walking with me and seeing the God of the universe work through me, what are you learning, tell me I want to know if you’re getting it, if you’re growing.” Sometimes, the answer was pretty weak. Sometimes it was profound like, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”

What are you learning? (You had to know that was coming.)

For a while now, my time spent in focused growth in the mornings has been floundering. Reading other books had become such a major focus that the morning reading I was doing was just not clicking. So last week I had this thought that beginning next year, instead of doing ASAOABAWFAY (a solid average of a book a week for a year tour) I would read commentaries with Scripture and really dive in. Then, yesterday it occurred to me that it was pointless to wait until next year, now is the time. So, today it began, and I dove into studying Scripture with a commentary in hand.

A second point that must be added is the inspiration I received last night while listening to John Piper. He made the comment that when he reads, he always writes. So, he will read something and then write a poem based on what he’s read and it helps him to internalize his reading. Its a form of response basically. I was moved. So, for me, for now, I’m giving it a go. I’m diving into the commentaries to aide my study and then I’m responding with a poem.

As far as poetry and poets go, I’m in the lower 1% of all mankind in ability. But, I thought I would be vulnerable and show you what I wrote this morning as my response to what Holy Spirit was teaching me while I began my journey through 1st Corinthians. You can go read the first 17 verses of 1st Corinthians to get some background on the poem or just to see if my response fits with the teaching there.

Divided and conquered You are not
United, victorious You are

We the created are deceiving ourselves
Pressing forward the glory of our names
Believing the knowledge we have
is greater than Yours
Thus bringing upon ourselves only shame

We oft place our hope in the teachings
of mere men
robbing glory and honor from You
Kill this divisiveness, murder this pride
As one make us wholly new

Divided and conquered You are not
United, victorious You are

**I’m working through a commentary series which I think ranks in the top three of the greatest of all times. If you’re thinking of using commentaries with your study, make sure you’re not reading a crazy head author. (Yes I said crazy head).

Someone’s gonna call me crazy, but I’m not completely convinced that you can always tell an immediate difference when you’re on the inside of them, and here’s what I mean. They can both be places where “growth” is not happening to you personally in big ways, rather you’re just kind of hanging out. “Say what?” you may be thinking to yourself.

I think that sometimes God allows us to sit in an oasis area just to process what we’ve learned. Like a desert experience, there may not be much forward growth and so you may be walking around thinking to yourself, “I’m not growing, why does God have me in this dry desert area right now?” When in reality, you might should be saying to yourself, “God, this place I am in is not really like a desert in that I feel completely lost and broken and empty. Really, things are good, I’ve just come out of a desert or I’ve just come out of an amazing place of growth. Perhaps this is an oasis area that I need to just process all that happened instead of wanting to grow again.”

Again, I could be completely off base, but I really think that God occassionally takes us through places like that before the next big experience. We need times to debrief and think about what happened. But that’s often difficult for us because we are people of extremes usually that need to be really high or really low and we just view those times as more desert places.

I just read all that, and I didn’t eve make sense to myself.

God: Hey

b/: I know, I’ve got to focus more, I want to grow deeper.

God: The reason you’re not growing is because you don’t want to.

b/: What? I can’t believe You would say that. But I am growing, I feel it. I’m reading a book a week at least and I’m being shaped in great ways.

God: Sure you’re being shaped, but that doesn’t mean we are growing closer together or that you know any more about me than you did. Sure you’re growing a little, but you’re not growing in leaps and bounds and deeper like I want you to.

b/: What? I still can’t believe you are telling me I don’t want it. I do want it. I get up early, I read and spend time with you.

God: You are paying lip service to “wanting it.” You really think that is in depth time. You rush through a little bit of scripture and are more worried about getting a blog post written. If you really wanted to grow, you would spend time with me. I don’t care when you do it. But you’re not spending time with me. If you really want this, then you’ll grow, because you will be intentional about us. But until you really want it, you’re gonna stay right where you are.

b/: Dang it. I know.

For real, that just happened.

Cornerstone Simi Valley

Desiring God

The Village Church

Mars Hill Church

Thought today would be a good day to give some evidence of that transformation and what it is looking like in my life right now.

Until a year and a half ago, most of the time I spent in ministry was traveling to different places across the U.S. playing for various camps, discipleship weekends, revivals, retreats, etc. But when Kristen and I moved ourselves to Auburn, we planted pretty firmly and decided we needed to do everything we could as a family to lay down a better foundation as the first five years were spent moving and changing. Honestly, I think we changed more by staying in one place than we did in traveling.

My assumption for quite some time, in fact I remember expressing verbally to some people, was that God had called me to the “church.” And what that looked like to me was traveling and leading in new places. It exposed me to a wide variety of people across the nation and allowed me the opportunity to see the different ways people worship, which shaped me. Over the past few months, however, God has clarified what He meant by calling me to His church. Sit still somewhere and invest in a group of people. As a result, I’ve fallen more in love with the local church as I’m coming to see the power that is locked up inside of her. Yes, she has her quirks and frustrations, but she’s beautiful. God is continually reminding me that the Church is His bride and He is deeply in love with her and so should I be.

In this, I am realizing the power of one on one ministry. Its only here that true growth is going to take place, as we move away from ousourcing our spirituality to the pastor. It’s here that we help people move from, “you teach and feed me and make me a disciple…Pastor” to “I’m hungry and I want to grow on my own.” It’s here that we help people move from the selfishness of the “Burger King, Have it your way worship, give me my hymns or my postmodern emergent worship songs or whatever and that’s not the way it should be done” to “God have it your way, consume us, and may we do whatever we need to do in order to reach those who are outside of relationship with you, even if its not my preferred style.” It’s here that we help people move from “you save the world…Pastor” to “I’ve been called to go and make disciples of all nations.”

That’s one area where I’m growing. Hopefully this helps answer the question I’m alwasy asking people, “You say you are growing, what does that look like?”

Here’s a link to my local church, Cornerstone.

As I was sitting here this morning, however, I was continuing to think on a phrase near the end of the book where Dallas Willard writes something to the effect of, “Non-discipleship is the [pink] elephant in the room. It is not the moral failures or greed or any number of other supposed sins that are visible. It is the lack of discipleship that is the root cause of all these problems, and we are unfortunately not dealing with the issue.” That was an extreme paraphrase and Willard says it more eloquenty and really with more forcefulness probably. This statement couldn’t be more accurate.

We feel the need often to treat the symptoms of a problem when what we really need is to treat the cause. Last week in Colorado, I had so much sinus congestion that at night I barely slept. I continued trying to treat the congestion when it was really the virus that I had that needed to be treated. When I began taking antibiotics, I felt better in a day. Our focus must shift from trying to tell people to quit looking at naked girls on TV, or quit sacrificing your integrity for another 10,000 a year, or quit killing your body by being ridiculously overweight, or quit murdering your neighbor/friends/co-workers/whatever by “just noticing” something or “just saying what you heard,” and we could all add a thousand more. These are symptoms of a problem, not the main problem. If we would focus our energy on discipleship, the antibiotic if you will, the problems would solve themselves because a disciple recognizes, “I must pick up my cross daily and follow Him. I must make Him primary in my life.”

What this does not mean is, “Church, you make me a disciple. Give me more. I want to consume what you have. I need you to feed me. Offer another program, offer something, this is your job.” No. Nothing could be further from the truth. It means, “God, You consume me. I will allow you to speak in me and feed me. I will obediently look to follow Your footsteps in order to grow. Sometimes it will involve a program at the church, but mostly it will involve me doing life with You and other Believers. It will involve me being real about my struggle to completely and daily die to myself and allow Christ to live in me.”

Jesus commanded us, you and me who are followers of Christ, to go and make disciples. Inherent in this idea of making disciples is that we be disciples. Therefore, inherent to the idea of discipleship is that disciples make disciples who make disciples. But we’ve got to buck up and move forward in this if we desire to see the sin abuse in our life fall away. We cannot treat the symptom and expect to kill the virus. Sure it, may go away for a time, but it will come back, even stronger.

Jesus said, “Come, follow me, watch what I do and do those things, be My disciple.”

Over the course of 400 pages, Dallas Willard takes our presuppositions of what the “Christian walk” should look like and turns them on their head. He basically presents the argument that we have traded the Law for more laws. That is, Christians passed over the Old Testament law because Jesus had fulfilled it and we accepted His teaching from the Sermon on the Mount, or as Willard calls it, the Discourse on the Hill. But, instead of viewing it as a heart issue, we took what Jesus said and made it into our new law. For example, Jesus says, “if a man says go with me, one mile, then go the next mile with him also.” Willard proposes that we have taken this to be a law of righteousness, “I will be righteous in God’s eyes if I always go the extra mile.” But Jesus is not pressing laws for righteousness, that is what the Pharisees were doing. Jesus is dealing with the heart of the Kingdom Servant. The actions of the Kingdom Servant are committed out of the overflow of a changed heart. So, when Jesus says, “He who calls his brother a fool is in danger of the fires of hell,” the Kingdom servant chooses not to participate in name calling not because there is a new law that Jesus has set down, rather, a heart change takes place and the servant recognizes what Jesus has, that all men are special creations in the Creators eyes and it is not our place to devalue that person. Not about laws, but heart issues.

When I hear and read what Jesus said in that sermon now, I am moved to change my own heart. For the past week I have been wrestling with my own heart and asking if my actions are the actions of a Kingdom Servant. Here’s a short list. 1) The guy that is “in my way” on our drive back to Auburn: Why am I frustrated with him? Because I am so arrogant as to suppose that I should have first rights. My frustration is unwarranted and does not value that person. Sounds crazy. Read the book. 2) My small debate on a blog on Saturday: my comments were mostly unhelpful and did not value the community as a whole, it would have been better for me not to comment. Sounds crazy, read the book. 3) Kristen made a comment last night that frustrated me and I made a much bigger deal out of it than I should have: Arrogant enough to think that my feelings were the most important and therefore caused a rift between us that never should have occurred, thus ruining a perfect time for us to discuss how God is growing us and what steps we are taking to continue that.

Those are three, but there are countless more examples I could give. What I’m telling you is that I hope this book continues to live in me for a long time. I know over the next few weeks and months I am going to be continually reevaluating how I live based on much of what I have read in this book. To say that it should be required reading for all Believers would be to go against the very teaching that Willard is proposing, but I would say that it should be the most strongly suggested book for anyone who wants to take discipleship under Jesus seriously.

That’s my review. I don’t usually say “find a way to go spend the money and the time to read this book or that book,” but I think you should go spend the money and the time to read Divine Conspiracy.

So I asked about “church” the other day and the thoughts that word invokes. I’m currently reading a book by Reggie McNeal called Missional Renaissance. This book is doing things to my thought process that have not been done for quite a long time. Its playing with my brain. I’ve taken more notes, underlined, circled, squared, drawn more lines, and dog eared more pages than any book so far this year and really any book since that insanely difficult philosophy of English class I took at Kennesaw in 2006 during my English major sting. (Side story- that was a crazy class, but amazing and made me fall more in love with philosophy. On the first day of the class the teacher started with this sentence, “Hello, my name is ___. You’re going to get three quarters of the way through this class and not know what the h3!! is going on…..that’s okay.” For 90% of the class she was dead on!)

The point is, this book is answering/saying the same thing/reinforcing many of the questions/conversations we’ve been asking/having/discussing as a leadership team at Cornerstone for the past few months, and its just been sitting on the shelf waiting to be read. My plan is to buy a copy for my wife as soon as I can, and then our leadership team and whoever else wants a copy after that. I try not to push books too much as far as, “You need to go read this.” But this is one that I would encourage everyone to read.

Without further ado, and before this post gets way too long, here’s one of the first quotes that’s by no means “revolutionary,” but is just one of those ideas that needs to live in you daily. Reggie writes:

Program driven churches and ministry organizations operate on the suspect but often unchallenged assumptions. These assumptions are that people will be better off if they just participate in certain activities that the church or organization has sanctioned for its ministry agenda…They [the participants][then] wonder, ‘Where’s the abundant life that was promised if we only participated more?’ The answer is that achieving abundant life will require intentional personal development.

Dang. That’s a big shift for a lot of people. This means no giving up. This means less, “I don’t feel like it today.” This means less, “Well, I’ll just let it slide for a couple of days, I’ll be fine.” This means less, “that last relationship was one thing, this one will be different.” This means less, “We’ll just talk about it tomorrow.” This means less, “I promise, tomorrow I’ll start reading and praying more.”

At the same time, it means, quit worrying about a bunch of rules (irony, I know) and dive in deep to that relationship with Jesus.

Achieving abundant life will require intentional personal development.

Thoughts…

In fact, we are one member strong…we is me. You see, I have this incessant problem of continually opening my mouth and offending people rather unintentionally. Or, I have to retract bold proclamations and assertions previously made even when I don’t have all the information…thus the need for retraction. Mostly, this habitual problem is due to arrogance the fact that I like to be blunt and shoot straight with people (and they don’t always like that) or I’m just saying what I’m thinking without fully processing what I’m about to say.

As a result, I’ve decided to campaign against myself with two goals: keeping my mouth shut, and thinking before I speak, all with the end purpose of becoming better at life in general.

Why Monday you ask. Because this is the start of the work week and I need to kick things off well. Because this is the day that I do most of my talking. Its kind of downhill from here as far as how much I have to say to people. You’d think I would go home more hoarse on Sundays when I sing for so long but actually Monday’s are worse for my voice. I start the day with a three hour meeting with our senior pastor, Rusty, our connections pastor, Josh, and the guy I call the pastor who makes a whole bunch of stuff run like its supposed to, Jack. When that meeting is finished, I move into a planning meeting with Dan, our production guy, about the things that we’ve got coming up. From there, Dan and I head a creative planning meeting for upcoming Sunday’s and future series that lasts anywhere from an hour and a half to two hours (this meeting, while sometimes not as “productive” in the eyes of all of you who are not artists has the potential to be the most fun as a lot of crazy ideas can get tossed around). When this meeting is done, its up for grabs as far as who needs something from me.

When all this is complete…..utter exhaustion.

So as you can see, I have a myriad of opportunites to say something that leaves me frustrated the rest of day with thoughts of, “Are you kidding me, I really said that? Can I go back and not say that? How do I keep my mouth shut? Is it impossible for me to think before I speak? I hope that person doesn’t hate me.”

Let the Shut Your Mouth, Brian, its Monday! Campaign commence. I’ll update you tonight on how it went. (There are rumors that I will apply gaff tape or even gorilla tape to my mouth to aide in this worthy cause.)

p.s. Ouch! And note to self, tape hurts on one’s beard when removing.

p.p.s. Does this count as a sign?

p.p.p.s If that is a sign, is that sign backwards?

p.p.p.p.s Don’t post next time until you flip pic so its readable.