Red Sky

I wish you could see the sky right now. We are at Cat Springs on a staff retreat and it is 6:50 a.m. and the sun is coming up and the sky is incredible. Th red is a ablaze and I am profoundly aware of God as the majestic creator. I am S.O.A.P.ing up in Exodus 33:12:33 where Moses is talking with God about going with him where ever he goes. The text records God's response and it echos in my mind, "My Presence will go with you and I will give you rest." I am often driven, living out of a sense of missional urgency, wanting to live and move with a sense of purpose. But everyday I find God calling me, reminding me that purpose flows from his presence, and strength from His rest! Further on that passage Moses says to the Lord, "Show me your glory..." As I gaze at the morning the sky it is truly a reflection of God's glory and a blazing reminder of God's beauty, creativity and majesty. It also reminds me of his fire that burns in my bones and the warmth of his embrace. I pray that you see and expereince his presence, rest and glory today. Blessings. On the journey together!

Garbage In Garbage Out

Every new year we make resolutions and about this time of the month they have taken a back seat to the tyranny of the urgent. We are three weeks into a new series that has challenged my mind, body and soul. If you haven't listened to all of the messages you can go www.thefellowship.org and listen. This past week I was taking about the mind and its power over our lives. I shared from Dallas Willard's book Renovation of the Heart, about what he says are the complex components of the mind. (I think I went a little fast on this part on Sunday so here they are ...

• Thoughts – all the ways in which we are conscious of things. Including memories, perceptions and beliefs.
• Ideas – very general models of or assumptions about reality. They are patterns of interpretation, historically developed and socially shared. Like, what is a family, what does it mean to make a living, to love your neighbor, etc.
• Images – concrete and specific, as opposed to the abstractness of ideas, they are heavily laden with feeling. smiles of your children, pictures of your family arguing, a favorite vacation – all with the potential to illicit powerful emotions.
• Information – without information our ability to think has nothing to work on. We need to know what God says so that we can put his word into your lives, our actions.
• Thinking – the activity of searching out what must be true, or cannot be true, in the light of given facts or assumptions. It extends the information we have and enables us to see the “larger picture” – to see it clearly and to see it wholly.

This morning I was S.O.A.P.ing up on Romans 12 where Paul speaks about the temptation to let the world squeeze me into its mold. The only way to experience the transformation of the mind is through Christ's work in my life with special attention given to the thoughts, ideas, images, information and thinking of my mind. You know the saying GIGO (garbage in garbage out) ... after all the mind is a terrible thing to waste!