fire

Leviticus 6:9 "Command Aaron and his sons, saying, "This is the law of the burnt offering: The burnt offering shall be on the hearth upon the altar all night until morning, and the fire of the altar shall be kept burning on it."
Have you noticed the plague of the church? There appears to be a shortage of fire...the world seems to be growing ever darker by the hour. The headlines seem to be more and more evil...right? Haven't you noticed. And since you who are reading this are probably part of the Church...not just my church, but the Church, I would have to assume that perhaps you have caught a glimpse of this in our altars...yeah, our very sacred altars and pulpits and on our major Christian tv networks. We huddle around the fire of those who blaze like cold refugees wandering the world in hopes of finding the real deal! And so we'll do anything to find it! We'll travel any distance to witness it! We put up with such ridiculous behavior because we soooo want the fire! So we treat those who have the fire of God like Rock Stars! We put their faces on the cover of magazines and pay absurd astronomical amounts of money to have them come to our corner of the cold universe to provide some temporary relief to the numbing coldness we feel pushing in on us from the outside. We hang on every word, send our lifes savings, make them our own personal idols and neglect the body that God has called us to minister to. We know that the fire is what will consume our sacrifice...because that is what the fire was supposed to do! God said to Moses to instruct Aaron and his sons. Wow, God was speaking to generations not just Aaron, but his sons and his son's son's. All the way to you and me. It was like God was saying, "Don't let the fire on the altar be smaller than the sacrifice you place on it!" When our fires get small, the sacrifice or the thing we place on the altar tends to snuff out the fire...because it is bigger than our fire. Sacrifices are wet and bloody and messy...so the fire had to be really hot to consume the sacrifice.
I can't begin to tell you how many times I visit a hospital and the family members circle around their dying loved ones hoping for fire to fall...instead of bringing the fire, they pray for fire to come from somewhere other than themselves...Imagine the pressure of being that guy! You walk in the room and they want your fire to consume the thing that they have placed on the altar??? I assure you, you have not known pressure until a family member looks you in the face and asks you the hard, real question of life or death. So they huddle around you as you pray, hanging on every word and waiting for the descent of heavens fire to manifest in the lifeless body they love so dearly, only to have.......nothing happen. And this is the problem is'nt it, my fire can't consume your sacrifice! It can inspire your fire and cause it to blaze hotter, but it cannot burn your pain, problem, death, circumstance. The fire that consumes the dead thing on the altar is non-transferable...but still we try don't we.
Recently, I was involved in a large building project for my little girl. There was a lot of lumber left over, so I instructed my youngest son to burn it in our fire pit in the back yard. A few minutes passed and I noticed my wife running through the back yard to rescue all the yard furniture that had begun to catch fire. God help my sons! Apparently I was not clear enough on my instructions to my son. He heard the word fire, and proceeded like a rabid caveman to build the biggest fire he could. He stopped by the garage and picked up some tiki fuel and matches and began the blaze that burned roughly 10 feet high...remember, we are in my back yard and I live in a community! And then God began to speak...."Troy, if you are ever going to start a fire, it must start here! In your own back yard." There is a part of scripture that speaks of this found in Acts 1:8 "But you shall recieve power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of teh earth." We tend to think that the fire originates in Church, but this is not the case. The power begins in Jeruselam! Jeruselam is symbolic of the small places in life...small people...like our children, and small places like our homes. It's name actually is interpreted "Foundation of peace"...meaning, that our foundation must recieve the fire power before it can come from any other place. This is the genesis of our fire...no fire at home means no fire at church, no fire in the hospital, no fire on the job, no fire when crisis comes! The small things in life are rarely treasured by our western mentality of grande cafe' faith. This is the process of real fire...tinder first! Small, dry, brittle ingredients that rest beneath the large structures of culture waiting for the spark of fire to ignite a real revival or super fire to burn through the coldness that plagues our nation...and now is begining to spread to the rest of the world! WAtch out Africa...the disease of America's greed is on its way!
to be continued!

crayons for everyone

I was reading a great book the other day and thought I would share it. It's title is "Ignore everybody" by Hugh MacLeod. It is not your typical religious read, so beware! However, it is full of lots of inspiration for the walking dead that appear to be droning through life like lifeless paranoid zombies! So to Hugh goes all the glory...well not all of it, but the part about the crayons! The glory is to you Jesus!
We all start life in school and are issued some crayons. At this age, we are encouraged to create...draw....color...anything that proves to them that we are thinking cognitive thoughts on our own! Everyone chimes in on the encouragement at this point....teachers, grandparents, moms, total strangers! Everyone likes to pat you on the back and tell you how beautifull the picture your painting is! Perhaps it was'nt a bunch of mindless scribble after all...maybe it was something deep within our DNA that was trying to speak through the end of a Crayola? But something happens when we move up in grades...they steal our blessed crayons and start screamin doctrine...mind you, its all good and necessary, but they just never give us back the crayons...for some reason, they determine that once they know you can create, they no longer need you to create for yourself! It's as if they want to own your creative ability! It's the man tryin to steal my crayons...darn you! We then graduate high school and move on to college where we pay an absurd amount of money to give them the permission to steal our creative ability even more and pump us full of more and fancier doctrine! This seems coco-nutS!
Then we graduate college with a degree in "Create for Pharoah". Thennnn...we go out and get a job workin for Pharoah! We start makin bricks for Pharoah and comin up with new and better ways to recreate his fabulous dream of bricks for Babylon! We become the drones! WE become the data keepers of another un-thinking generation! WE begin to think that this is why we were created...to make another mans dreams come true! Oh yes! This is wonderful!
SIKE!
All the while, we are groaning inside and thinking....how in the heck did I get here! Why does this suck so much! You realize that you have wrapped yourself in the ideaology of some other created beings dream like a bag of chips...and now your mad! You willingly allowed the man to sucker you into sellin his dream! Crap!
It's time to create again! It's time for you to realize, that you need your crayons back! Maybe you can't just quit the man cold turkey, but you must begin to create again!!! Because if you don't, you will continue to die! Man was not created to paint by numbers! He was created to create....so go ask your 1st grade teacher where the heck she put your crayons! Create at night while everyone else is sleeping, but once you get your crayons back, never let them go again! Use your crayons to release others into their dreams....allow what you color to inspire someone else to color freedom for the oppressed! Never enslave others with your coloring, rather, give them their own canvas to increase the picture God has shown you. They color different, but that's cool...it's God! You don't have to adopt the fear of Pharoah...they don't want to take over your empire, just color inside it!

attitude reveals truth

Who we are is on display by our attitude. What we think is not always spoken! The filth of our soul is on display by how we treat the people we feel we are better than! People speak all the time....many times they use words! Sometimes we use attitude! Sometimes we use withdrawel! Sometimes we use anger! Sometimes we steal! Sometimes we compromise! But we are always communicating who we really are! Poor attitudes usually points to poor relationships with the people around us or the God we profess. Morality is demonstrated in solitude. Be the type of person who people can trust with their eyes closed! Attitude reveals truth!