Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Healing

If only it was as simple as some may say.

Grace shows us a love that transcends our humanity, our intelligence and our natural way of life.

This grace, fueled by an extraordinary visitation of a love so divine, so eternal, so above this earth and it's billions of souls who have journied in it's light, this grace challenges us to become gracious. We have the divine privilege and commission to walk towards graciousness, a graciousness that will challenge every thought, prejudice, bias and action. However this journey, a graced journey that will cost us our all, leads to a transformation of our very life. This is wondrous. This is a privilege. This is the heart of our worship.


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Monday, September 27, 2010

What can I say?


What can I say?

2010

What can I do,

What can I say to you,

What do you ask of me?

What can I give

To you in return?

What can I say, what can I do?

For all I have are these empty hands,

All I have are empty words.

For even when I try

I stumble and I fall,

What can I say, what can I do?

How can I be

The object of such love?

How can I be so graced?

How could your life

Be given up for me?

What can I say, what can I do?

For all I have are these empty hands,

All I have are empty words.

For even when I try

I stumble and I fall,

What can I say, what can I do?

And you’ve done it all,

There’s nothing left to do,

You’ve said it all

There’s nothing left to say.

Mercy comes,

Your grace has come

In your love

In your life.

I hear your voice

I hear your dying plea

I hear forgiveness cry.

I see such love

Never turning away

As I become your grace’s prize

For I am precious in your eyes.

Far above.

I am a tech faddist. I am amazed at the rapid changes in technology as we accelerate into the 21st Century.

I am writing this entry at 35,000 feet on my way home from a concert and seminar in Ballina NSW.

I am not sure how to write this. I do not want to sound like some kind of fundamentalist looking for any way to criticize and alarm.

Tucked into the seat pocket was a little brochure for a Christian event. It promised all kind of encounters and empowerments. I read through briefly until I noticed one thing. One thing that bothered me without knowing how to react. Mission statements, vision statements, seminar programs... It brought back memories from my "Hillsong" days.. I wrote so many introductions and the like for the many years that I convened the annual "Hillsong" conference....and so I read with a sense of identification, until I noticed one thing. Jesus was not mentioned. Not once.

That's sad. That's confusing, and, yes, I find it very sad.

There's nothing more that I wish to say. I have questions but I am really not wanting to have an opinion.

I simply wonder why?



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Saturday, September 25, 2010

Love

I was speaking at a seminar this morning. I was reflecting on the outrageous generosity of God's love especially when viewed at the cross. I am amazed at Jesus' determination to love without borders, to love without exclusion, to love unconditionally and to love universally. This love never ceases to inspire me. It redefines all that we would ever think about deity. It redefines all that we could ever think about love. No matter how frail, fallen and imperfect we are, no matter how great the crime or callous the criminal the love of God at the cross overwhelms us with it's perfection and it's perseverance. I am a captive to this love. It's perfection, bathed in the blood and dying pleas of Jesus, is simply too great to comprehend. I need grace to accept this.. I am unable to apply it to myself with my own works.

How could we ever ask God for more? There is no end to this love. It extends from beyond the universe making it's goal the human heart. My heart. Your heart. The life of Jesus is God's journey to meet with you and me. This a personal pilgrimage. Too wondrous for words. I am swept away with the enormity of this. I am accepted. I am graced. I am forgiven. I am free. God's love has found it's mark in me.


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Thursday, September 23, 2010

What moves me.

So many years, so many challenges. The highs, the lows, the days of strivings and the days of peaceful acceptance.

So much has changed. I have oh so slowly gained insight. What a precious gift. What has changed? Has this insight changed me from the inside out? No. However what is has changed is my knowledge of myself. I am learning to define my thoughts into what is helpful and what is hurtful. Perhaps I see this far more in retrospect than as an advance warning but the lessons are precious and the ability to put things right are no doubt precious for those around me.

How have I come to this understanding? It seems that i have slowly begun to have surrendered to God's love for me......a love that is so blindingly evident in the life of Jesus that find myself constantly caught reflective amazement. In this surrender I am caught up in his acceptance of me, an acceptance that went beyond death, it is an acceptance that finds me, arrogant, self serving and willful yelling the name of Barrabus with the rest of a religious mob. You may find this alarming, however, to all around him at the time, Jesus was ultimately a disappointment. There was no protest at his trial. All who loved him were silent. Jesus steadfastly refused to be the Messiah that every lobbyist in his followers needed him to be. When they were given the choice of demanding Jesus be released they were give the horrid choice of denying their faith..the High Priest was demanding Jesus execution...they had to abandon their nationality...Herod had joined with the High Priest...and finally, horror of horrors, they had to make Rome their enemy...Pilate had washed his hands of this horrid travesty of justice.

I know that I am simply not that sure or that brave.

I am sorry if I have offended you.

Accepting who I am when I stoop to my lowest gives me the courage to embrace honesty and set about learning to be accountable to my thoughts and actions. I am empowered by love to begin a journey of love, his love for me begins it's journey in me. I can embrace all that God has embraced in me.....my darkest most horrid places buried deep within the secrets of my soul. In accepting this extravagant grace, this extraordinary love, I begin the journey towards becoming loving....and so it is with grace, mercy, acceptance, forgiveness...these healing words, eternal words, become agents of transformation as they slowly begin their work in all that I am...all that I hide, all that I justify and all that I avoid.

My thoughts a free to bring into the light of this love. Everything is challenged.....my bigotry, my fears, my justifications..nothing is spared.

How wonderful. I am free.... And I begin to free my world...thought by thought...action by action.


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Wednesday, September 22, 2010

The journey of Grace

It is easy to legislate the avoidance of responsibility that belongs to a message that cries out for our lives to be transformed. It is human nature to find excuses not to care. We are given the choice to walk away from grace even whilst being submerged in it.

Grace cannot be stagnant. It cries out to be unleashed within the hardest of hearts, an act of transformation that can grow into a reassessment of every thought, every opinion, every deed and every relationship.

We are graced to be gracious. It is our choice. Grace lands in our heart propelled by a love that is greater than the universe full of trillions of stars. This grace is free. It is given freely and it is received freely. However choosing to journey towards becoming gracious changes us and it changes the world that we live with. This choice has a cost. It is a journey that has no end, a journey that is marked by frailties and flaws, a journey that requires grace for each step; it is a journey of transformation, an outworking of worship, an expression of love. It is given as freely as it is received.


Friday, September 17, 2010

A meditation

The greatest thought, the singular most wonderful meditation,
is the life of Jesus.
Jesus was a man long before there was a Bible, long before there were a myriad
of scholars defining him.
Jesus was "pre-theology"... before Matthew, Mark, Juke, John, Paul... Matthew Henry and Charles Spurgeon.
When we discover his life before all of our words we see God propelled by compassion, grace and love streaking through the heavens to land in the broken lives of those without hope:
"The woman caught in adultery", "The woman by the well", "The leper in Capernaum", "The Roman centurion and his servant", "The prostitutes, the swindlers, the publicans, his faithless and confused disciples"... Jesus comes with a simple message: "Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven".
His life, his cruel death, a travesty of justice, and his resurrection shows us God in an entirely different way. We also see ourselves, broken, flawed, selfish and manipulative.
We are graced, we are loved, we are forgiven, we are given hope and mercy.
Our challenge is to work this grace, this love and this forgiveness into a life's pursuit of graciousness, lovingkindness.. seeking forgiveness for our justifications, walking in forgiveness, becoming forgiving.
How wonderful.
How transformational.