I have never really been that good at confession.

Always found it odd to see people in the movies go to confession in the catholic church. That was usually the time in the movie that the we learned some juicy details about the plot or began to unravel the mystery of the story. Also wondered…what did the priest do with all that information? I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that priests are the writers of some our current sitcoms. Do people really confess everything to the priest in those little closets?

A couple of weeks back I started leading kind of an impromptu Wednesday night service for our non-denominational church during this season of Lent. Last week I included a corporate confession of our sins during the service, which I stole from my new favorite book The Book of Common Prayer. This is what we said…

Most merciful God,
we confess that we have sinned against thee
in thought, word, and deed,
by what we have done,
and by what we have left undone.
We have not loved thee with our whole heart;
we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves.
We are truly sorry and we earnestly repent.
For the sake of thy Son Jesus Christ,
have mercy on us and forgive us;
that we may delight in thy will,
and walk in thy ways,
to the glory of thy Name. Amen.

 Anyway, as I have dug into this Lenten process…I have realized it is so much more than giving up something like junk food or chocolate. Saying and thinking through the words of that confession woke me up. Evidently it moved a few others because last week one of them sent me an article that I need to share with you. This is an excerpt from that article written by Ruth Haley Barton (the whole article)…

“Confession is good for the soul—and everyone around us. Without the ability to face ourselves honestly and confess not only our sin and bad behaviors but also the shadow that drives them, we become dangerous to one another in the human community. We project our own darkness onto others rather than dealing with the darkness within ourselves and the weight of that is too much for any of us to bear.  Lent is the season for coming out of the shadows and coming clean.”

That makes a lot sense to me. It is extremely easy to see how the sins of others does damage to the innocent in their lives and how for some reason they don’t see it. Men seem to have a real knack for this. Not that women don’t sin or have a need to confess…I just see it easier in the men. More than likely because I think like they do. I know there are a number of different beliefs on how you are to confess and who you are to confess to…not really wanting to debate that here.  

Just want to say…I am beginning to see the sin in my life, and feel the need to confess. Do you?

                          

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If you were around Christian music in the late 80’s and early 90’s then you know the name Rich Mullins. If you went to almost any protestant church in last 30 years then you know or have heard one or both of these two songs…”Awesome God” and “Step by Step“. Rich was an insightful songwriter and a wonderful musician who’s life was tragically cut short by a car wreck in September 1997. Rich lived what he believed and that is what has drawn me back to him these past couple of months.  I ran across this video of him on YouTube. I keep going back to it and listening to what he says in it. Funny part is it is not him singing…it’s him talking. I find that I keep going back to it and playing it again. I want to invite you to listen to it and see if it touches your heart too. It was shot at a concert of his in Lufkin, Texas shortly before he passed. It is about a 9 minute video…if you don’t have 9 minutes then come back later when you do…it’s worth it. 

Click here to view the embedded video.

This is the part I can’t get loose from…

“Jesus said whatever you do to the least of these my brothers you’ve done it to me. And this is what I’ve come to think.

That if I want to identify fully with Jesus Christ, who I claim to be my savior and Lord, the best way that I can do that is to identify with the poor.

This I know will go against the teachings of all the popular evangelical preachers. But they’re just wrong. They’re not bad, they’re just wrong. Christianity is not about building an absolutely secure little niche in the world where you can live with your perfect little wife and your perfect little children in a beautiful little house where you have no gays or minority groups anywhere near you. Christianity is about learning to love like Jesus loved and Jesus loved the poor and Jesus loved the broken….”

Do you believe that?

If you believe it do you live like you do?

                          

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There are a few words that are very deep for me. What I would like to do here is to post a word and talk about it a little and then ask you to add your thoughts and comments about the word.

MERCY

With the earthquake in Haiti a few weeks ago, and some of the things God has put on my heart the last few months…the word mercy seems  to keep coming to the forefront of my mind and to the tip of my tongue as I pray.

As a boy growing up there was this game we would play as we wrestled with each other. The stronger would eventually pin down the weaker and force them to say uncle or mercy MERCY. So mercy to me was a sign of weakness. I have always defined it from the perspective of being weak or hurting. It was wrong for me as a strong American male to need mercy. Then when we had our first daughter who struggled at life for only a week…I found a whole new  meaning for mercy. I found that the hurting position required intense strength and incomprehensible perseverance. That is what I see in the eyes of the Haitian people.  

It also required faith in a God that could provide the mercy I so needed. Because you see, the MERCY giver acts out of a clear position of strength too. Just how much compassionate strength does it take to save the world? That is the mercy I want to understand. That is the mercy I want to flow through me!

Click here to view the embedded video.

What does mercy mean to you?…please leave your thoughts in the comments below…

                          

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In the Evangelical churches that I have attended I never remembered the Nicene Creed being a part of what I was to believe. I admit, they could have been saying it between the Sunday school report and the hell, fire and brimstone preaching…but I don’t remember it. Even after I stepped out of the denominational infighting churches and switched my church going habit to the liberating Non-denominational brand, we still didn’t hear much about this creed deal. I guess it’s because the creed is not in the Bible and we all know God ONLY speaks to us through the Bible? Really?

I have a confession, I have been quietly attending the early Eucharist at a neighborhood Episcopal Church for the past six months and it has been very refreshing and very worshipful. Entering the service quietly and in prayer is a great way to prepare your heart to be with God. It’s not passive…I get to kneel and pray out loud. They have this book called The Book of Common Prayer and it is full of these sayings and prayers. This Nicene Creed is one that we seem to say a lot…this is how it reads…  

We believe in one God,
the Father, the Almighty,
maker of heaven and earth,
of all that is, seen and unseen. 

We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ,
the only Son of God,
eternally begotten of the Father,
God from God, Light from Light,
true God from true God,
begotten, not made,
of one Being with the Father.
Through him all things were made.
For us and for our salvation
he came down from heaven:
by the power of the Holy Spirit
he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary,
and was made man.
For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate;
he suffered death and was buried.
On the third day he rose again
in accordance with the Scriptures;
he ascended into heaven
and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead,
and his kingdom will have no end. 

We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life,
who proceeds from the Father and the Son.
With the Father and the Son he is worshiped and glorified.
He has spoken through the Prophets.
We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church.
We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.
We look for the resurrection of the dead,
and the life of the world to come. Amen. 

If you read it fast please reread it slowly thinking about what you are saying…is that rich or is it just me? Come to find out it was written a few years ago (325AD) by some pretty smart and holy men. I am humbled by those words and I am humbled by reciting them with other believers in worship. Now that you know that I am a closet Episcopalian…let me say that I firmly believe in the Nicene Creed…do you?

                          

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Having been raised in the church and being a Christian since the age of seven, I was interested to see if my gospel had a hole in it? Better than average at treating the people around me, consistent church attendance (college years don’t count right), Bible studies, elder board, and no “big” sins. Surely if there is a hole…it would be quite small! 

However, I have also spent most my life turning my head or turning the channel when I came across pictures or stories of hunger, poverty, and death. I cannot stay in my comfort zone seeing clear evidence and knowing that kind of wickedness exist in the world that I live.

Richard’s book The Hole in Our Gospel ripped me out of my comfort zone. It wasn’t a complicated book to read but it was a very hard book to read. Hard because the horrible stats took on a realness that I had never felt. The motivation by him to describe the pain and the way that we have missed it was out of love not guilt. And his presentation as to why this is an integral part of the Gospel of Jesus is clear and convicting. Richard’s experience in the business world, the “Christian” world and in the world that few of us venture to go (the hopeless world of hunger, poverty and AIDS) has given him the credentials to tell the rest of us where we have fallen drastically short. To live out this part of the Gospel would inconvenience us and expose us to great pain and heartache. Therefore we accept Jesus but rarely follow Him into this part of His story.

I am humbled to say I have a gaping hole in my gospel. But I am now committed to closing that hole because of Richard Stearns and his book. Thanks to Richard and Thomas Nelson for allowing me to read and review this work.

                          

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I received this in an email from one of my friends a couple of weeks ago and I encouraged him to allow me to post it here for you…thanks Terry.

When I was a child
I caught a fleeting glimpse
Out of the corner of my eye.
I turned to look but it was gone
I cannot put my finger on it now
The child is grown,
The dream is gone.
but I have become comfortably numb

——–from Comfortably Numb, by Pink Floyd

Click here to view the embedded video.

This past Thursday all five of us were in the car coming back from Thanksgiving in S.C.  I was driving and my son Greg was riding shotgun.  Greg made a quick playlist on his ipod of music that he thought I would enjoy and started it off.  It was quite a list which included Peter Frampton, White Stripes, Matchbox 20, John Cougar Mellencamp, Pink Floyd and many others.  He and I had had a conversation about Contemporary Christian music – Greg said he liked the message but that you could always tell a Christian song by the sound of the singers voice, by the singer’s mood as reflected in his voice.  Well that generated some conversation back and forth and somewhere in there Greg said “you should look for Christian themes in all of the music that you listen to, Dad!”  Well, I never would have thought to do that!!!

The Pink Floyd song he chose was “Comfortably Numb” – a song that I haven’t heard in awhile, but it has been on my mind for some reason.  I’ve included some of the lyrics above.  Who knows what Roger Waters and David Gilmour had in mind when they penned these lyrics back in the 1970’s.  I’ve read some commentary that says that Roger Waters had a bad fever as a kid and took some medicine that helped him through it – the medicine made him “comfortably numb” to the point that he didn’t notice the fever too much.  There are times when I sit in “my chair”, TV tuned to Sunday afternoon football, somewhere between consciousness and sleep and I have to say that when I achieve that state of “comfortably numb” that I like it!  It’s better than sleep somehow because I am aware of my family around me, I am aware of the game and I am aware of the deep relaxation I am feeling at the moment.  That is until Geoffrey’s friend Gaither rings the doorbell and sets Mazie and Annabelle off to barking!

In our Christian journey, I dare say that too many of us (myself included) have achieved a state of “comfortably numb”.  We go to church, we sit in the pews, we hear the message, we go to the covered dish supper, we sing in the choir – heck we even pray every once in a while and crack open the Holy Bible.  But if God is calling us to action, we must not be hearing it.  If the Holy Spirit is ringing our doorbell, we do not rise out of our chair to answer.  We are aware of all the Christian busyness going on around us and we participate in it, but we are not transformed by it.  We are not moved with passion to action. 

Ephesians 4:11 It was he who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers, 12to prepare God’s people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up 13until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.

Guys I believe as Christians we are all called.  As the above verse states, some are called to preach, some to teach, some to serve in other ways.  All Christians are called.  I am afraid that too many of us have become comfortably numb to the point that either we don’t hear the call of God or we don’t care.  I can’t imagine that we are hearing the voice of God calling us to action, and that we don’t care.  I CAN’T IMAGINE that!  So I have to assume that we are not hearing God’s call.  We sit there in those comfortable pews and we have achieved a state of numbness – yes, we go through the motions of church and we stop right there.  How sad!  We are numbed by TV, politics, business, busyness, gadgets, overcommitment, fatigue.  We are numbed to the point that we actually don’t hear God’s call on our life.  Brothers, we cannot allow this to go on any longer!

Call To Action:  Get out of that chair, out of that pew, turn off the TV, forget politics and business and gadgets.  All of those idols that we have placed ahead of our Creator – let’s turn them off, put them on the back burner.  Let’s bring Almighty God into focus.  Let’s draw upon strength from the Holy Spirit.  Let’s ponder on the passion of Jesus Christ.  Let’s be moved to evangelize, to preach, to teach, to tithe, to unite, to love.  Guys, let’s shake off that numbness and score a touchdown for our savior.  Let’s go out today and make a difference.  Will you join me?

Guys, I am get so excited when I think how we can make a difference for our Lord.  I get pumped up when I think how we can make a stand for Jesus.  Imagine us, arm in arm, making a bold statement for our Creator.  In unity, with passion let’s go out into this awesome world and proclaim the Gospel.  Let us evangelize, let us teach, let us love – all in the name of Almighty God.  Amen!

I don’t wanna spend my whole life asking,
“What if I had given everything,
instead of going through the motions?”

—-from The Motions, by Matthew West

Click here to view the embedded video.

1 Corinthians 1:8-10 (NIV)

8He will keep you strong to the end, so that you will be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. 9God, who has called you into fellowship with his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, is faithful.

                          

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Don’t get me wrong – I love Christmas. It’s time for family, for comfort, for love. And for Christians, it’s a time to celebrate what’s most important, the birth of Jesus Christ.

But there are a lot of things we get wrong about Christmas.

For one, we give each other so much stuff. Whether it’s out of obligation or just to truly show someone we care, we’re still essentially material-rich people giving other material-rich people more… materials. The purpose of our holiday, though, is Christ. And Jesus made his purpose clear to us – sacrifice. He died so that we could live. And we struggle to keep that the focus of Christmas while we’re busy buying and unwrapping gifts.

Let’s face it, we actually sacrifice very little. But what’s small to us can be huge to someone who lacks basic health necessities. Just $20 is enough for one person to have clean water for two decades, for example.

So, this year, I’m asking others of you to join me and give up some gifts and donate that money to help me build a well. 100% of all funds raised go directly to the water projects. Between now and Christmas, I aim to raise $2,500 in my charity: water campaign.

Jesus sacrificed himself for us. This is the least I can do.

Please join me and donate whatever you can…..http://mycharitywater.org/ebroussard

THANK YOU!

                          

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Chateaubriand

We will finish the book The Fine Line this week and so I want to use this post to wrap up and leave you with a final thought. Kary used a quote from a guy named Francois-Rene de Chateaubriand. He was a Frenchman who lived back in the days when Frenchmen had a significant influence in the world. If you are a history buff, check him out here. Anyway this is what he said…

“A master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction between his work and his play; his labor and his leisure; his mind and his body; his education and his recreation. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence through whatever he is doing, and he leaves others to determine whether he is working or playing. To himself, he always appears to be doing both.”

That caught me when I first read it because I have always lived with this dichotomy between my work and my “off ” time. Most of my life has been split between the time when I had to go to work verses when I don’t have to go to work. Why does our Western culture drive such a distinction between the two? Why do we feel like we have to survive for the weekend? Why is the goal in this life to get to retirement? What a wonderful world this would be if we could  merge our work time with our play time such that we didn’t know the difference. I know there are many people that work for others and are not able to literally live that out. But there are many of us that could live in that paradigm but choose not to.

We have carried that dichotomy into our Christianity!

Maybe a better place to live out that concept would be in our Christian life? We don’t really have a boss that requires us to live one way on Sunday and if we meet that requirement we get “off” time the rest of the week.  But that is exactly the way I see many Christians living. It’s all about Sunday morning and checking  the box of attending a church. The rest of the week doesnt get in the way. We rarely let Christ get in the way of our Christianity! The Fine Line has challenged me to be a transformist…to be in the world and not of the world…to love without reason or condition…to blend my life. 

My life is less concerned with finding the right church on Sunday as I am with finding Christ in my life everyday.

click comments below tell me what you are thinking…

                          

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re-envisioning the Gap Between CHRIST and CULTURE

I am reading through this book with about 12 other guys this fall. We started a few weeks ago and will be reading and discussing it for the next six weeks or so. I want to invite you to grab a copy of the book and join us in the discussion. Through the miracle of the internets (it’s what we call it here in the foothills of North Carolina) and this blog…we can read and chat together. Maybe we can get Kary to join the discussion…I am sure he has the internets in Ohio. My last couple of post “What’s the difference between in and of” and “love your neighbor as yourself” have dealt with some of the first topics brought up in the book. If you get a chance, read back through those and comment as you feel led.

The question is kind of this…as Christians, do we have a responsibility to be relevant to those around us? It seems we churchgoing Christians focus a whole lot on getting ourself “saved” and convincing others of their need for that same fire insurance. But once we get the ticket we go back to blending in…either in our church clubs or in melding into the big bad world.  If we do have that responsibility then just how do we live that? Kary talks about these two camps…the Separatist and the Conformist. One removes itself from the world so as not to be tainted and the other joins the world so they can be accepted into the culture. Then there is this third camp…people that are able to walk The Fine Line between separating and conforming. Wouldn’t it be great if others could see Jesus in us without trying to be so religious.

On page 20 He says “Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that there is little difference between the attitudes and actions of believers and unbelievers. Rather than drawing people to Christ, many Christians are pushing people away because of the disconnection between what we say and how we live.

Run down to your local book store and pick up The Fine Line or do like I did and cut this deal with Amazon…I send them money and they send me books. If you are interested in the subject or in joining us, click the word comments below and let me know.

                          

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In Matthew 22 Jesus says

37 Jesus replied: “ ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’38 This is the first and greatest commandment.39 And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’     NIV

37 Jesus said, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your passion and prayer and intelligence.’38 This is the most important, the first on any list.39 But there is a second to set alongside it: ‘Love others as well as you love yourself.’     MSG

37  Y El le dijo: Amaras al SeÑor tu Dios con todo tu corazon , y con toda tu alma , y con toda tu mente .38  Este es el grande y el primer mandamiento.39  Y el segundo es semejante a éste: Amaras a tu projimo como a ti mismo .     LBLA (just in case…it’s a big world)

37 Jesus said to him, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the first and great commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’      NKJV

37  Jesus answered:
Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind. 38 This is the first and most important commandment. 39 The second most important commandment is like this one. And it is, “Love others as much as you love yourself.”      CEV

Here is the part I need help with…how do you love yourself? What does that mean? If that is the way we are to love others then it’s kind of important, right?

Who is my neighbor…the one next door…or across the street? What if his dog poops in my yard?

click the word comments below and help me answer these questions…

                          

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