The Weight of Change

Do not think to say to yourselves, 'We have Abraham as our father.' I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham.

One man bore the weight of a national change in identity. The people had thought that because their bloodline was correct that they would be acceptable to God. John the Baptist showed them in a graphic and powerful way that this was false.

This man, clothed in camel burlap, eating grasshoppers in the desert, was no ordinary man. He was a true prophet of God tried and trained in the hard places. He lived in the desert...

His formation enabled him to bear the weight of change that came on an entire generation. More than just a national change. His ministry acted as a fulcrum for the whole world's salvation. Something happened when he showed up. It was the beginning of the gospel, the historic inbreaking of God in behalf of the planet.

Likewise, today, Elijah comes again.

The power and attitude of Elijah will rest on an entire generation of young people. They are being trained to stand against the onslaught of evil and unbelief. They will not compromise. They will speak the words of God in such a way as to bear the weight of change. They are being trained in the desert...the wasteland of media. The spiritual climate is dry for such a people that have to come. These will stand against culture and evil in such a way as to herald the return of Messiah.

They will be strong and they will be joyful and they will hear the voice of God crying, "He must increase, We must decrease."

Finally

Sometimes a race seems here just to be over.

Have you ever done something or gone somewhere just to get it over with?

I remember oh way back when in ma school days when I would show up to school just so I could get it done and go home. I went to leave. I'm thinking that this is not a very good life strategy for Jesus students.


He will never bless anything but my life. He will not and cannot bless my expectation of life. He deals with me where I am. That means I cannot sit around and wait to have everything different before the "action" picks up. I'll always have stuff I have to do, people I have to help, places I have to go, or something that just needs to go away. Well, if I don't just suck it up and learn how to live with Jesus and a fiery passion in the midst of day to day grind then there's no learning.

Locked In

If we go to heaven when we die and there meet the Lord and instantly become like him why the fuss and struggle to be transformed now? Isn't that what most people think that we'll get there and then *snap*, we've arrived?

Well what if it's not like that? What if when we die we are FOREVER fixed as the kind of person we were at death. What if it seals our character's possibilites for eternity?

Every Christian has the inner capacity to love the Lord and be loved by Himand to interact with him. In a way taht's what it means to be a Christian. However, the Bible also talks about and urges us to be changed into the image of Jesus while we're alive on the earth. This increases our ability to interact with God and his kingdom. There are some alive that know God and his company in a more rich and meaningful way. When they die won't they be able to "hold more" so to speak?

Everyone who believes will get there and be blissfully happy, but the appetite of some will be greater baseed on how they'v lived their life.

That's the incentive for going for it now, is that it all transfers. We will be rewarded for our work here. There's continuity from this age into the next. We will still be us and the world will still be the world. There won't be a 100 foot Jesus returning with a magic snappy finger to cast a spell. We're in this thing for the long haul.

What do you think? The only thing that pops into mind as I write that might be argued is the parable about the vineyard workers. One group started working early morning and workers were added all day and at the end of the day those who worked all day got the same pay as those who only worked an hour. Jesus said this to reveal offense at his generosity.

Come on, I know you're reading this, let me know what you think.

Mad Men Shooting Dinosaurs

So the crazy guy goes outside shooting his bow and arrow at all the dinosaurs.

How else will they be captured and put down?

Beatitudes

Are the Beatitudes something you do?

Is it a goal for Christians to become like what the Beatitudes say? Do I aspire to become a spiritual nobody and overcome with remorse. Should I walk around weak and sad, all the while being beaten up?

This is the traditional idea that I have heard, but perhaps Jesus means something different.

Maybe he is pronouncing blessing in a way that shocks hearers out of commonly held assumptions. Ist century Jews like 21st century Americans have ideas about who is really well off...and who is not. Jesus in his characteristic style made statements that challenged those assumptions and asserted something else was the case.

He was not replacing the list of the "God-favored" with another list. He was saying even those who are nobodies, dropouts and burnout can be blessed becasue of the Kingdom of God.

What do you think?

Marci's Blog

Here's Marci's blog for all you interested parties. She has two excellent new posts.

http://marcilewellen.blogspot.com

My Wife and My Sister

I've recieved a electronic 2x4 across the head. My wife and my sister have both started the blog. I have not posted in quite some time, but this dear friends is a re-entry, a renaissance if you will. From the ashes Phoneix arises. Lazarus is coming out. Can you feel the drama? Friends, I live it.

GRE and Gandalf the Grey

I took a 2.5 hour test today.

Yes, it was voluntary. I am one day in the not so distant future going to be a graduate student. I hope that UMKC will let me study history with them so I can understand the world.

I want to be like Gandalf. If you haven't see Lord of the Rings or read the books please do so before continuing to read this post.

Well...did you?

He was a counselor and friend to both the high and low, the educated and not. He kept his finger on the pulse of the worlds and knew how to help people get to where they needed to go to fulfill destiny.

I see him as a prophetic counselor. He aided people by the Spirit of God. i wonder what kind of context this might have today. A biblical character that does similar things is Daniel. He was hihgly educated and a devoted man of God. He had understanding and counseled people. Pretty sweet.

How do people make money and serve others by having understanding?

What do my son, animals, and wind have in common?

They all put trash on my lawn.

Man I'm happy!

Jesus is alive and well. He breathes in and leads his church.

I'm on my way to Christ likeness on account of his dedication to me. Thank you, Lord.
You know we'd all be happy more if we thought about stuff like that more.

It is critical to guard what enters our minds. What we think about shapes the depths of our beings. Imagine what Jesus was like on his insides. What did he walk around thinking about? What kinds of thoughts filled his moments? They were good things. From the inside out he was good. That's what made him the man that we see walk the gospel pages. He was from his very core pure and good. His thoughts were like that.

It doesn't make sense for us to load up our heads with garbage, bad tv, books, music, movies, conversations, whatever and expect to have a flow of peace, joy and righteousness welling up from our inside.

Let's decide to fill our thoughts with little 3-5 second prayers of thankfulness to God. Our lives could change.

Some good books about this are Practicing the Presence of God by Brother Lawrence, a 17th century French monk, and Letters from a Modern Mystic by Frank Laubach, a 20th century missionary to the Philippenes. Gene Edwards and Seed Sower publishers have put together a compilation of these two books and maybe one more in a wonderfully easy read called Practicing His Presence.

Check it out.

Thoughts and Langauge

Is it possible for understanding and knowledge to go from one person to another without langauge?

Are there experiences that can communicate information but that don't use langauge?

For example, can I know something about God without the use of language or is all thought only in langauge?

Or grilled cheese?

Perforations

I think it's weird that toilet paper has perforations when no one ever uses just one sheet. At minimim it's a full twist around the hand - minimum. In perforatory counting, that's three sheets.

Why not do as the chep-o brands (the kinds at gas-stations, school, etc.) and not have perforations at all? We are all strong enough and purposeful enough to tear (man that's violence) the sheet where we need it.

Maybe perforations are actually a peace agenda meant to undermine human violence at some of it's most...tender times.

Possibly a very cool school

College of Humanities and Science

It's distance and it's based on Mortimer J. Adler's Great Book stuff.

It could be a match.

Dr. Laura

We are a one car family. My wife takes me to work on Mondays and Thrusdays and picks me up. When she comes to pick me up she listens to the radio. On the radio is...

 Dr. Laura Schlessinger

This is an interesting lady who tells you exactly what she thinks. She's been to school forever with the degrees to show for it. She was a practicing counselor for twelve years and she taught at university. She's Jewish (which I think is cool) and has a black belt in some martial art.

These things are not intimidating. What's scary is how right she sounds...

Consequence of Ideas

Talks over tea become the killing fields of tomorrow.

Humans are something and as a result they work a certain way. This is such an important fact. A computer is put together a certain way and so it operates based on how it is put together. It’s common sense.

Again, when we call something whatever it is, like computer, we mean something about how it’s put together, what it does and what we can expect when it works properly. People are no different.

Because people are people they operate on ideas. An idea is a non-physical thing that exists in the minds of people and allows them to interact with reality beyond the sensory level.

Ideas are the language of the soul.

They are communicated in words, images, music, etc. They are the tracks that lives run on. This is nothing more than a human deal. This is description not persuasion. Everyone is subject to their ideas. It can’t be helped.

What can be helped is the quality of the ideas that you run on. Once aware that people run on ideas, you can begin to consider your ideas and figure out which ones are good and which ones are bad.

An idea is good and true as long as it corresponds to reality. If it doesn’t then it’s bad and false.

The most important thing about any person is what they think about God.

dead stuff and shadows

I just went running and it's interesting what you see and notice.

• a mutilated dead thing


• a strange piece of "house art" that looked like flowers


• hills


• a lot more people have dogs than you thought


• your shadow

I'm grateful to my son, Aiden, age 19 months, for helping me in this way. He particularly likes the dogs and would stop for a long time to stare at them and bark back if his dad didn't keep him moving.

I love this kind of thing and it reminds me of what God sees and how rich he is in experience. Every beautiful thing, everything that makes you go wow, he invented and constantly beholds. That's the kind of God I like.

Heart

We are what we are on the inside.

Our life flows from the inside. Circumstance matters way less than what I've thought before.

For example, you may think that getting your back split open by a viciously handled whip would make you hate the man doing it.

Nope.

Jesus had this very thing happen to him and HE blessed. How is it possible?

Above all else guard your heart, because your life flows from there

Jesus' heart was heavenly. He walked fully in partnership with God the father. His inner world was not so easily shaken by things happening around him. On the other hand, I get upset if we run out of milk...

It is possible and actually must happen, that we who follow Jesus become like him. He offers a chance to have profound depth of peace and life from the inside out. He teaches and leads and changes.

We can be free.

Technology or Seeing is Believing

I was thoughtful the other morning as Marci and went in to the hospital early last Tuesday morning. The nurse operated a huge complicated looking computerized machine.

That's fine.

She "connected" the machine to my wife's stomach and then turned a knob, fiddled the widgets and expectation grew.

There came a rhythmic wuhhb, wuhhb, wuhhb at around 146 beats per minute. We were listening to the heart of our unborn daughter. I liked it.

The thought then came as I was watching the automated graph of Marci's stomach contractions and our daughter's heart-beat that I was listening to a heart beat.

You can mash your ear up against someone's chest and hear that.

Why invest in all that machinery and gadgetry to still depend on the good 'ole ear?

A lot of technology goes to improving on the five senses that we got. It seems that someone ought to be able to do something that totally bypasses all human contact. But then nobody'd buy it...

Millenial Continuity

When Jesus returns he will establish his kingdom from Jerusalem. The earth will have been destroyed.

The righteous dead will have risen and the saints will reign...
we will rebuild.

We will be with him and we will be like him.

How 'bout that?

We're back!

i am exhausted, but we are back in business. My family has grown and this
is my new little girl, Arwen Justice Lewellen.

I am a proud father.

My son, Aiden, is doing a great job. He leans down and nuzzles the baby and everyone "aahs." It's really very nice because he doesn't do quite the same thing with dolls. They are the subject of numerous hot-rod trips and daredevil stunts.

We are grateful for the distinction between real-life and make-believe...?