A Glimpse Into My Quiet Time

After hearing the synopsis of the book my husband is currently reading, The Prophetic Imagination, my already good quiet time suddenly became alive. The book is about the importance of the church letting the truths of God capture their imaginations and the imagination of the surrounding community thus seeping into the way they live and interact with the world.

What would it look like to be wholly enraptured and convinced of the truths in Isaiah 52:12? How much peace and strength are we willing we sacrifice for the sake of widely accepted false realities? But more importantly, what hope this offers when we let it overwhelm our imaginations.

Isaiah 52:12

"For you shall not go in haste, and you shall not go in flight, for the Lord will go before you, and the God of Israel will be your rear guard."

Here God is calling Israel out of Babylon and into the peace, happiness and salvation (vs.7) He has for them. A seemingly terrifying task considering they were asked to defy the world's ruling empire at the time. But God's word is truth and transcends any seeming reality of the world. He calls them to be confident and full of faith in a situation where one would naturally terror. We as Christians should always walk in this way; confident that the Lord goes before us in everything and protects us from everything as we go, do or say. If we flee or act out of fear, we may precede the Lord and become vulnerable to attack. With prayer, petition and obedience to the guiding of the Spirit we must walk in the divine confidence that God goes before, with and defensively behind us in everything.

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Easter

Another morning in mourning we thought

Anticipating the weight of familiar grief.

They came early, brave where men would cower

Dawn revealing mystery behind mystery.

We ran, hope and fear pushing, driving us

And if one would not believe it, could you blame him?

We didn’t notice Creation redeemed,

As it celebrated we searched our hearts for clues.

He had mentioned this before hadn’t he,

Something like this?  An act full of power and love.

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New Happenings "Shpringing" up in City Cru

Hello everyone, a very happy first week of Spring to you all.  Alex and I thought, seeing as this is a new season, that an update of what has been happening at San Francisco State would be a good way to kick off this new time of the year.  We have spoken to our team and read their email/monthly updates and here is the exciting (and it is really exciting!) happenings at City Cru in San Francisco:

1)  Freshman bible study in the dorms:  The Lord has orchestrated a freshman girls study in one of the dorms on campus.  This is huge and amazing and something that I'm not sure has ever been done on the San Francisco State campus.  The fact that these girls, all in various stages of their walk with God, are interested in pursuing Jesus in community together point to the openness of this current college generation to the Gospel.  So cool!

2)  More guys in the group:  Ask anyone involved in church or para-church ministry and they will tell you inevitably women far outnumber men.  But the Lord has been bringing an increased number of guys into City Cru who are stoked about Jesus.  This is a huge answer to prayer!

3)  Increased student action/leadership:  Not only has there been an increase in numbers but there has been an increase in students taking the initiative and leading other students to follow Christ together.  From grass roots prayer gatherings to joining the staff team in "Student Action Dinners" where they brainstorm how to reach the campus for Christ in various ways (like a possible partnership with International Justice Mission at SFSU), the Lord is giving students the passion to bring Jesus to their Campus.

Obviously this is all very exciting stuff and it only makes Alex and I long even more to be finished raising support and be in ministry up in the City. We have confidence He will get us there soon and we know his timing is sovereign.  But for now we just want to say, praise the Lord for the work He is doing in San Francisco! And thank you to those who are laboring in prayer for SF state students and also for our journey up to the city.

Love,

Josh & Alex

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A Tribe United

I love this quote by Eugene Peterson and think it speaks deeply to our ministry in San Francisco: 

"The gospel is never for individuals but always for a people.  Sin fragments us, separates us, and sentences us to solitary confinement.  Gospel restores us, unites us, and sets us in community.  The life of faith revealed and nurtured in the biblical narratives is highly personal but never merely individual:  always there is a family, a tribe, a nation -- church....A believing community is the context for the life of faith....Love cannot exist in isolation:  away from others, love bloats into pride.  Grace cannot be received privately:  cut off from others it is perverted into greed.  Hope cannot develop in solitude:  separated from the community, it goes to seed in the form of fantasies.

These are truths not just for San Francisco but for people everywhere.  I mentioned this in an earlier blog post, but one of the major problems in Christianity in America is we have allowed our individualistic culture to permeate the Gospel and for many a relationship with Jesus is merely an individual thing that helps them live a good moral life and get to heaven.  Which of course Jesus does do, but his redeeming love plays itself outward from us, not merely inward.  Entering into a relationship with Jesus is to enter into the Church, a tribe of united, redeemed, broken but made new people in Jesus who are called not to enjoy a life with Christ individually but corporately, in fellowship together.  

When we as Christians see our faith as merely our own we are more inclined to build walls to keep the world out, rather than going out into communities to bring the love and truth of Jesus.  Of course there are moments of personal reflection and refreshment to be had in solitude:  Jesus did this often, but always as a way of preparation for his ministry in the world.  I reflect on this now because I think Alex and I's current situation of support raising should be seen as a time for God to prepare our ministry in San Francisco.  Not merely an annoying necessity, this period of our lives is preparation, a time of refining and remaking that we will look back on as profoundly important to our ministry in the City.  And it is also a period we aren't supposed to go through alone:  we need community and fellowship and our support team is a big part of that.  We thank God daily for you, our supporters and friends who have entered into our ministry with us.  We have an community around us in LA who have been an unmeasurable source of encouragement and a great example of just how the Gospel restores, unites and sets us in fellowship together.  And God in the past week has been reminding me of that.  So I guess this blog post is a thank you letter to those who have been our community in the recent months here in LA and a letter of encouragement wherever you may be, to pursue community and enjoy time with others.  We were not made to be mere individuals loving ourselves but to love God first and foremost and to love others.

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A Love Letter to UP

With the Oscar's right around the corner, I thought it would be fun to post about my favorite movie of the year and current Best Picture Nominee, UP.  I actually began this post back in May 09' when I first saw the movie and just recently revisited and revised it.  Of course everything in this post is my opinion, but honestly if you didn't like UP you might be the Tin Man...heartless.

Rarely has a movie captured my heart and imagination so thoroughly that all day afterwards I have wanted to simply sit down and write about it.  And not to write a review, God knows there are hundreds of those to be found on the internet and elsewhere, but to write a love letter, to simply put on paper my outpouring of affection.  

Going into UP I didn’t quite know what to expect to be honest.  I hoped I would love it as much as I loved Wall-E, that it would be loads of fun and, knowing how so often Pixar films slyly wrap their fingers around your heartstrings, I hoped to be emotionally connected to it.  But even going in half-expecting UP to be as routinely wonderful as the previous 9 Pixar films couldn’t prepare me for the emotional depth, beautiful truth and real genuine love I encountered. I won’t rehash plotlines or story points here; rather I want to explore just what I connected with on such a deep level, why I even feel compelled to write this silly piece.

This is big stuff, monumental stuff that I am dealing with, and to be honest I don’t even know where to begin. For starters, I don’t think I have ever cried so hard in the first 10 minutes of a movie ever, but such is the power of Carl and Ellie's love in the opening montage.  The montage recounts a beautiful love-story made all the more powerful by its inevitable ending.

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Watch it here if you've never seen or just want relive it's beauty. You might want to have some tissue nearby.

 Love, like all things, finishes at the grave.  What makes this death so different is the crystal clear devotion of Carl to his wife.  It is the true, faithful love so utterly clear between the two that held me spellbound.  In a world where love, especially married love, is so often viewed through the cynical lenses of a postmodern society where over half of marriages end in divorce, it is refreshing to see it treated so delicately, so wonderfully, so…lovingly, all the while not ignoring the hardship and pain that comes with it.  This love seeps through the rest of the film, into its characters, its fiber, its meaning.  The montage, purposefully placed at the beginning, is the fixed point around which the rest of the adventure revolves.  In a way Ellie is the main character of the movie, the house a manifestation of her memory and presence.  Even the score reminds us so, as it continually returns to “Carl and Ellie’s Theme”. 

While Ellie is the indistinct main character of the film, the main theme is crystal clear, the human need for relationship.  The movie constantly reminds us we are not meant to live lonely, isolated lives but to be in connection with others.  The progress of both Carl and Russell throughout the movie is a testament to the power of relationships. Carl is transformed from a grumpy, old man into a tender hearted sacrificial father figure to Russell.  It is his previous relationship with Ellie, specifically the scene where he finds her “Adventure” picture journal and remembers what a loving relationship was like, that jars him from his isolated defensive existence into a man who once again cares for and fights for someone outside of himself.  Russell on the other hand, is a child without a caring father who desperately wants to be loved. In the end, his budding relationship with Carl, formed throughout their adventure, provides the affirmation he was searching for as it blossoms into a beautiful loving friendship.

Am I looking too deeply into all of this?  Probably. After all, it is a movie and to a certain extent all movies mirror and caricature reality.  Yet UP seems to be unique mirror. One that has been pulled from the attic of broken relationships and fleeting love and dusted off to reveal the timeless beauty of what it reflects. The reflections remind us of the deep human needs and desires we all have while exaggerating the things we will do to fulfill those needs.

For example, tethering thousands of balloons to your house until it flies away.

But it does so refreshingly, lovingly and hopefully, rather than say a movie like The Hurt Locker, which does so brutally.  Nothing against The Hurt Locker, it was wonderful, but somehow the gentleness with which UP treats these huge, fundamental desires makes all the more poignant our own desires; and causes us to (hopefully) reflect upon our unending quest for fulfillment, relationship and love.  And of course, as a Christ follower, it makes me melt with gratitude that the ultimate provider of all love sought me out to be in relationship with HIm.

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Jesus Made in America

*Disclaimer* This is not a book review as much as it is a book inspired thought process. Simply put, this book has too much in it to touch on in a single blog post. So instead I took one point the book made that had the biggest impact on me and wrote the review around that…just so you know.

Jesus Made in America rocked my world, my silly little world where I assumed I had a full grasp on who Jesus is and was delusional enough to think I could compartmentalize him into something which resembled a spiritual Roomba rather than the Almighty King. He zipped around my life cleaning up my messes and if anything called this dynamic into question I could point out I was giving him all the freedom he needed to do his job. I wasn’t controlling where he went or what he did; I was just controlling what department of my life he was tending to. Even my times in the Scriptures were far too quiet and unassuming more often than not lasting just long enough for me to not feel guilty about not committing myself fully to the text.

But Jesus Made in America challenged my interpretation of Jesus by revealing my insane assumptions about Him were nothing new but in fact have been happening in America since the time of the Puritans. What does the book suggest is the most influential and dangerous theological norm in American history? The idea that Jesus is a “personal” God who exists to give his followers good “experiences”. Think for a moment about how often you use “I feel” when you are talking about Jesus. Chances are, like me, you use it a lot. Why? Because culturally speaking, Americans value personalized experiences over anything else. Now am I saying Jesus isn’t a personal God and that we can’t experience him? Of course not, he is and we can and should.

What I am saying is if our understanding of Him “fits” into the box of our own lives in a way we can control we are in serious need of a theological butt kicking if you will.

A “personal relationship with Jesus Christ” more often than not can be translated “personal relationship with Jesus Christ where Jesus meets my needs and saves my soul from hell and as long as I keep experiencing him in a good comfortable way and he blesses me we are cool” (my paraphrase & exaggeration). This is evident in my own life. My faith can easily slip into a low grade Gnosticism where I love Jesus spiritually but don’t allow him any impact in my reality. Not only is this a gross misunderstanding of who Jesus is and what he came to do, on a basic level it paints Jesus as someone very insignificant and small. This is the Savior of all creation we are talking about, the King of which Ephesians says “ALL things (are) under his feet”. Not just spiritual things, or morality, but all things: heaven, earth, creation, time, sin, death, life…everything. And when we try to make our relationship with the Savior-King something we can control we are delusionally putting ourselves on the throne of our lives where He rightfully belongs.

Ultimately God DOES desire a personal relationship with every one of his children and he pursues us even when are in sin, the same way he pursued Adam and Eve after they sinned in the Garden. Jesus Made in America didn’t make me lose hope in this Christ but rather perpetuated my already deeply ingrained desire to know Him more fully. It also challenged my understanding of Him and helped me to break down some of the barriers I had unknowingly constructed. And in some cases, like my own, the removal of a barrier allows one to take their gaze off themselves and direct it instead to the infinite glory and magnificence of Jesus.

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Winter Conference

The week after Christmas Alex and I went to San Diego for the CCC Winter Conference (Not the Holiday Bowl). This conference is a place for students to come and learn practical ways in which they can share the love of Jesus with their college campuses. It is also a week of great fun and fellowship with students from all over California, Arizona and Hawaii.


Students worshipping in the new year

To be quite honest I don’t like conferences all that much, something about the constant meetings and constant input can be exhausted, but at the same time I realize the conference is not about me (thankfully) but rather about the students and capturing their hearts for Jesus. Alex and I ended up having a wonderful time. The highlight of our week was getting to meet new students from San Francisco State who I hadn’t known last year. Of the five students who came down, four of them I didn’t know, the fifth was Ty who was a freshman last year. Just being able to reconnect with students was refreshing and a great reminder of exactly why we are so excited to be up in San Francisco. They loved Jesus deeply and the conference helped to shape their passion for reaching their classmates for Christ. For Alex and me, seeing the hearts of San Francisco students longing for Jesus to be known at SFSU was a not so subtle reminder of God’s heart for the city but also his very specific call for our lives. Lucky for us, our call takes us straight to the college campus in one of the coolest cities in the world. We hope you are encouraged to hear that God is very tangibly moving in the City Cru movement at SFSU, and that your prayers and intercession for them have been a big part of that. Please continue to pray for the students of City Cru that God would continue to capture their heart and that they can take what they learned at the Winter Conference and apply it to their campus and city.

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