The Apex

Since the emergence of the Postmodern church there's been an underlying desire to put our finger on the equation that pulls the coldest of the frozen chosen out of their seats, past the melodies and chord structures, squeezing by the puns and preaching, to drop them into the apex where God and man meet. Now, the postmodern movement is dead and I'm seeing more and more a desire for religion. Although most would deny it, they're looking for a form to fit to their faith, as often happens after a long enough time embracing free spirits and abstract faith. Now FORM ALWAYS FOLLOWS FUNCTION, and our faith cannot function without an "exoskeleton". We struggle to adhere our passion to the structure that's been set for us.  

The problem we're presented with now, and it's not one that's terribly new to the body of Christ, is finding a way to connect with God in corporate settings through elements with a fresh perspective, a temperature for change and variety, an indigenous authenticity, and a catalyst for stories of life change. The stuff people continue to talk about. The stuff they tell stories about. 

I struggle with my title as "Worship Leader". Mainly because i'm not sure how it should look. Traditionally it involves a guitar and a song book, but if we can agree (and most can) that worship is a life style... how does one lead in that? I feel like either my title should include the word "experience" and be based in corporate settings or I should be spending a lot of time in peoples homes playing conscience. 

I'm off track...

I watched this monday night as a community, that God has grown before my eyes in a semester, engaged in an encounter with the Living God. Through prayer, on their knees, hands in the air, others wrapped around each other, some stood alone in corners and soaked in the glory of a Savior, others poured out their hearts in prayer.... but there was an encounter. So what's the equation? I wish there was one. I feel like the journey is barely beginning in myself and in our community, but i'm confident that God is happy with direction we're pointing in. 

Corporate, interactive, life changing and consuming worship is what my heart desires to see here. I want us to find that apex and dwell there.

Breath

I woke to something beating in my chest

It wasn't mine to give so You took it

Under the weight of your light I lost my head

Out of the sleeve of the night where you found me

And You took my Breath

Face to face but afraid to be eye to eye

Behind the veil You hung to protect them

Pillars of salt cry a warning to my left and right

You hold me down and with kiss break the stillness

And You took my breath

Rewind...

Timing is a strange thing. Taking a step back in my own life to observe i notice i have a strategy for almost every specific venue in my life. In sales, you carefully craft every word and gesture to build on each other until you've reached a solution that is 100% tailor made for that customer. In ministry its a very similar scenario, but the stakes are much higher, the solution is a constant and the floor in ever growing and revealing itself with every corner you turn. With both we learn (regrettably) certain buzz words and idioms that we assume everyone understands and almost develop a culture around ideas that many would otherwise never understand, to help exemplify. We've boiled it down to a fine science and it seems almost subconscious.

I finally realized that's why i'm frustrated. I spend a majority of my day controlling situations and having a say in the direction of things and then when it comes to there parts of my life that i care about equally or perhaps much more i have no say but refuse to see it... or rather to understand it. We make decisions day in and day out and don't even realize until it begins to pass, that time plays such a huge part. 

You start a band > It falls apart > You're angry > You get over it > You start a band > You've learned from your mistakes > Success ensues > You see the part that timing played.

You fall in love > Things fall apart > You shut your eyes to the inevitable > When you open it's still standing there and it's a catalyst to the peace you've been seeking > You've learned from your mistakes > You see the part that timing played.

But what about the decisions that you don't get to redo after learning? What about moves you make, that maybe you could never come close to regretting, but still end up standing in the way of another later. That scares me. I know i've been saved from one or two of these before and i know that i'll come across my share of them eventually. It's not supernatural, it's human nature. but i can't help but be frustrated when i see i'm being denied one thing or another and it's all because of a matter of timing that i could've never had a say in. 

It's not the end of the world but i feel it'd only be fair for us to have a chance to play "what if?". To entertain an idea of what could've been, and at least come closer to knowing. A waste of time maybe? No, i refuse to believe that things that make our hearts smile don't deserve a second glance or a flirtatious nod. 

To look a bitter sweet situation in the eye unafraid and unashamed and know. 

I'm going to make my decisions very carefully. But i won't be ashamed of the ones i've made or afraid of the ones i'm making. What's the point?

"If there's an order in all of this disorder, is it like tape recorder? Can we rewind it just once more?"

-U2, Wake Up dead Man

I Want to Limp...

"Then Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him until daybreak, When he saw that he had not prevailed against him, he touched the socket of his hip and it was dislocated while he wrestled. The He said, "let me go, for the dawn is breaking." But he said, "I will not let you go unless you bless me." So he said to him, "what is your name?" and he said "Jacob." And he replied, "Your name shall no longer be Jacob, but Israel for you have striven with God and with men and have prevailed."

Jacob never walked the same after that.

I feel like God has been trying to pick a fight with me. Not maliciously. But i feel like the circumstances in my life for the past two years point back to God saying chase me. Like he's given me the desires of my heart until i forget why and let them overshadow my love for Him and they're taken. I guess a better way of putting it would be that He's trying to engage me. To see how long i'll hold on in this wrestling match before i quit... to see if i'll quit. But regretfully it feels like each time i find myself with a broken hip, discouraged and focusing on the pain instead of goal at the end of endurance. 

And i let go.

I'm finding myself at that point again. Decisions that i feel like my thoughts are begging me to make that don't seem to make much sense from other perspectives. My heart is torn between two great options but only one of which really justifies a life long dedication. I'm becoming more and more obsessed with changing thing on a massive level and more and more hell bent on being person of immense impact. But a big impact requires all of my will.

Arms locked. Head to head, but not quite eye to eye with a God who's graciously willing to see if i've got what it takes to hold on no matter what. I can see Him reaching out to touch my hip and change my walk forever... and i want it so badly. To walk with that limp. The disjointing from the way it's been. To never walk the same and live in the light of that blessing that i'm fighting for with everything. I want it so badly.

My PostSecret....

i discovered a new online phenomenon this weekend through a friend. PostSecret. It's a site/service that allows people to post they're deepest secrets anonymously and be read by thousands. Some form of a release i suppose and with no consequence. It's so surprising to hear some of the secrets. Some are confessions, some are tiny insights into corky habits. But i'd bet that all of them are completely unexpected. You don't see that bottom layer of people in most everyday situations. I think, as a whole, that we're all pretty good at suppressing it.

My problem now, and just as i though it was moving past it, is that i feel i was your PostSecret. No matter how big the stage was that we stood on, and no matter how many hands we shook and smiles we pushed out, we always knew that at the end of the day we go to the other and be completely and utterly honest. Secrets we hadn't shared with anyone else. It created this trust and, i'll be honest, i fell in love with the person that no one else knew even though so many had tried to get in close enough t see it.

I miss talking about everything. I miss talking period, but this small talk kills me. Only because i was sure that my place wasn't on this side of things. I never thought i'd be the one receiving the perfect smile, and not getting a chance to know what's really going on behind the makeup. I'm not sure i want what everyone else gets. I wanted the PostSecret side as well. You in all of your funny surprises and darkest worries. 

I never kept a secret from you... until the last time I saw you when I was asked how all was and I said "fine". Don't get me wrong life is great, gorgeous even... but not quite fine. Something in me hasn't been able to rest since august.

Value

I'm becoming concerned with the value that I assign to certain things. What defines "worth" to me in situations and life in general. As i read through Old Testament accounts today my mind was burning with the need to find answers to present day questions. Questions that people seem to love to argue about. Questions that many just keep to themselves, but nonetheless, questions that i find important and pressing for an answer. 

While i was reading it seemed to creep up on me, this idea... it's all about the value we assign things. Abortion isn't about right or wrong, or choice or not, it's about the value we assign life. These are tough decisions we make. Questions like "Cake or death?" are making more and more sense. Capital punishment or not? If no, then what kind of value do we assign life? If yes, then what kind of power do we claim to have over it? Tough decisions indeed.

To take a step back to the less controversial, what about our views on life for the living? Aside from the right to live or kill, or the overall value of life, what defines value for the specific one? Money? Status? Drive? Power? ....i don't know.

I felt small again last night. Defeated and reminded of mistakes and regrets. I felt like a product of less value. Maybe it was a matter of numbers. Maybe it was an old track record of failures. Maybe it was the fact that both were so widely known in a place that i use to call home and now feel i cant return to. ...I don't know

But i can hear that certainty, although barely, in the back of my mind. Reminding me of what it is that defines me, and of the fact that it's very possible that many may never see that but myself and my God. The core of my integrity, and the root of my character may never be broadcast like my sins have been... but regardless of the value that's been assigned to our past by those bystanders we must take the initiative to value the good and right and work to create more.

I'm working on it.

Forgetting the Face

This may be the most important blog i've posted yet.

I'm finding more and more that the way God speaks to me is never the way I expect. I find myself dying to hear a word from him in the midst of situations and not realizing until later, until now, that the situation was the word i needed. Most times there's no voice. There's no booming epiphany until after when it creeps up like your own thought... "Oh... that's why that happened..."

Again, this blog has nothing to do with my past relationships but this is an example that's key to my point. I, pretty recently, went through a break up with someone i loved very much. When it was happening, she told me it was like there were two Davids. The one in front of her, that she could see and feel. The one she fell in love with. And the one she knew via text and email when she went back to school each semester in Tennessee. The one who's words she couldn't quite put to a face. She went on to tell me that every time she saw me, when we were living life together, it seemed to fit. It just seemed right. But she had trouble remembering that boy she loved and the face that went with his words when her other worlds crowded in. That's how it ended.

We'll come back to that.

A very close friend of my family recently had been going through her own hell. She became pregnant again by the father of her first child whom abandoned her the first time around and was incredibly abusive. When she revealed this to her mother, she got a response she probably expected and definitely feared. Her mother began to hurl insults and names, horrible things at her, while her 4 year old son sat crying on the floor with his hands over his ears curled up strangely like someone was holding him. 

Later that year she told me about a counseling session she went through with a woman in her church. 

"You're obviously angry aren't you?'

"Yes"

"I need you to close your eyes and picture the scene in your mind when you're mother said those things to you"

"I don't want to"

"I need you to do this and tell me where you see Jesus in all of this"

"He's not there"

"You're not looking"

"You don't understand He wasn't there, i know it"

"Please, look around the room. Look closer."

She gasps a beautiful gasp of revelation. 

"I see Him. He's standing in the room holding my son and looking at my mother. And He does NOT approve.

I listened to her tell me about this in tears. And she didn't sound angry in the slightest. Because when she looked closely, she saw His face. I hear people so often say things anger about how a God who loves us could let these things happen. But never have i ever heard someone honestly say they have seen the face of God in situations that hurt like hell, and they were angry. 

When you see His face you understand.

Maybe not why this is happening. Maybe not why He allows it. But it's enough just to know He's there. It's something that cannot be explained but MUST be experienced. The biggest difference for me between the hard times and the unbearable, is whether or not I'm remembering to seek His face and remember it.

That girl i loved so much gave me a big part of her life and heart but the problem was that she wasn't willing to do what it took to remember who was on the other end of the messages that i sent her. She couldn't remember my face... wouldn't seek it out. And that's fine she'll move on and find someone hopefully who she is willing to do that for. But as for me, i don't want to find myself in a situation of hopelessness. Pain I can handle. Fear I can get past. But hopelessness, is just that, when and only when i forget to stand back and see that He's there. 

I wish i could explain it to those who haven't experienced it. But i hope so badly that one day You'll see it and be as blown away as i am.