Submission in the Trinity

I have been doing a lot of Trinitarian study lately, and in God’s divine providence as I was studying recently, the book I was in (Bruce Ware’s “Father, Son & Holy Spirit”) was talking about submission. In the book he proves that submission is fully Trinitarian and when I read what he wrote I almost fell out of my chair!! By submitting to authority we are not simply honoring God but we are imaging our maker as well! Dr. Ware has this to say;

As P.T. Forsyth writes, the beauty of the Son’s simultaneous equality with and obedience to the father expresses the willing service God intends his people to render. Forsyth asserts that, “subordinating is not inferiority, and it is Godlike. The principle is imbedded in the very cohesion of the eternal trinity and it is inseparable from the unity, fraternity and true equality of men. It is not a mark of inferiority to be subordinate, to be under authority, to obey. It is divine.”

And here, one of the lessons of the trinity is that God loves what we despise; namely, God loves, exercises, and embraces rightful authority-submission relationships. God loves this authority-submission structure because God embodies this very structure in his Trinitarian relation of persons. The Trinity works in perfect harmony with each other, though equal the Son willingly submits to the Father. If we have difficulty embracing authority and submission, we can be helped by two things: 1) recall that it is our own sinful urge for independence that leads us to despise authority and want our own way; and 2) reflect on the fact that in the very eternal relations that are true of the persons of the trinity, authority and submission are lived out with love and joy. We must learn to embrace what is eternally true in God, and this means, among other things, embracing rightful authority and rightful submission. When we are submitting to our earthly authority we are embodying the Imago Dei, we are reflecting the glorious nature of the Trinity!

This is why Jesus is hot

So I’m not a big radio guy, I like to be in control of my tunes, but a couple of years ago I stepped up and I listened to the radio in my car, really glad I did because this song came on and I would like to write the lyrics to you, prepare to be moved..

This is why I’m hot

I don’t gotta rap

I can sell a mill saying nothing on the track

I represent New York

I got it on my back

This is why I’m hot [2x]

This is why [2x] Uh

This is why I’m hot

As you can tell it’s a very poetic song.

A lot of depth to it…

Not really. But what this song does embody is the way we view ourselves more often than not. If I could just show you that I got it going on, If I could get you to see that I’m hot that I’m the man then its all going to be good.

Society and our culture teaches us that this is what it’s about making a name for ourselves.

When what Christ teaches us is that its about making his name known and spreading his fame!

The truth is God already thinks your hot anyway, God thinks you are beautiful and you don’t need to worry about trying to make yourself the man. If you are a believer, God already thinks you are hot, because when he looks at you, he sees Jesus, and Jesus is fresh, Jesus is fly, Jesus is legit, Jesus is what it is all about!

Jesus Manifesto

Been reading a book by Leonard Sweet & Frank Viola called “Jesus Manifesto” and I could not recommend this book more! It is one of the best books I have read in a while. It’s one of those books that doesn’t just talk about Jesus, but stirs one’s affections for our savior.

Toy Pharisees

I grew up going to children’s church in the early and mid 90’s and children’s church has really changed drastically. Like back in the day in my children’s church, there was no fog, no lights, nothing really.. But the felt board. The felt board for those of you who don’t know what that is, it’s essential a carpet board that you Velcro bible stories too. All the stories that I learned in children’s church were through the felt board. Like there would be the felt board ark, the felt board Noah, there was the felt board Peter. The one felt board story that always stuck out to me when I was younger was the one about Jesus calling Paul on the road to Damascus. It has always stuck out to me, because it was creepy. Like the teacher would have Paul walking down a road, and he looks like what Paul would have looked like, but what made it creepy, was when my teacher put Jesus in the sky calling out to Paul, it wasn’t a normal Jesus, it was Jesus face superimposed into the sun. it was so bizarre. Creepy I know, maybe it was because I grew up in California, I don’t know.

Beyond the felt board though there is something that sticks out to me even greater, and it’s the songs we sung in children’s church. Songs like, father Abraham had many sons, many sons had father Abraham I am one of them and so are you. But then there were other songs that we sung that were a little different like this, “Jesus loves me when I am good, when I do the things I should.” Or the legalistic or I mean classic one, “o, be careful little hands what you do” and then each new verse would select a body part to warn about. What these songs reinforced to me and many others from a young age is that there is a merit system with god. It carried into everything, if we brought a friend to church, we got more stars than everyone else, if we memorized a verse of the bible we got more candy than everyone else. And I learned from a very early age that I was pretty good at this merit game. I would pride myself in how many more stars I had than everyone else, I like my felt board Saul before he became Paul, understood how to thrive as a Pharisee. When your young, when your a child its really quite common and easy to be a Pharisee.

Little kids are great at being Pharisees. I remember listening to a Mark Driscoll message recently and he said, be careful when it comes to children not to mistake being a Pharisee for leadership.. It really is such a piercing thought, because many parents will say, my child isn’t bossy there just a leader, there not a bully, they are just assertive, there not a little toy- Nazi, they just want to distribute the toys evenly, so apparently socialism begins at an early age. So often in children we mistake what we think are marks of leadership when really what we see is marks of being a Pharisee, a little Pharisee on our hands, and I was one of them and so where you. Its important for all of us to understand that being a Pharisee is not something you grow into, its not a place you randomly arrive at, its something that is innate to who you are, we all have tendencies to be Pharisees and its so important that from an early age we see this and cultivate children to be like Jesus, not like Pharisees.

These things don’t just apply to children but to all of us. There is probably some one you work with, someone in your classes, maybe your related to them, could be you, to were they disguise being a Pharisee for leadership.

How can you tell? Leaders don’t take credit they give credit, , leaders do what’s best for everyone and not just themselves, leaders are servants, leaders are patient, leaders are encouraging, leaders are humble, if you feel like you’re a leader but this doesn’t sound like you, your probably not a leader and you need to repent of being a Pharisee, I know so often I need to repent of being a Pharisee, its so easy in my life to mistake being a Pharisee for leadership.

It takes a life of humility and trusting in Jesus to defeat the pharisee in all of us.

living redemptively

When you desire to be used redemptively for the gospel its amazing the places that God brings you to and the people that he puts in your path. The thesis of my life has become; God I want to join you in the renewal of all things and yesterday I had the chance to do just that. A close friend of mine has really been developing deep relationships with the homeless people in Ocala, and yesterday he was going to take one of these guys to Deland to see his father and get his grandfathers ring. And in God’s providence my friend and I crossed path’s right, as they were about to leave. So I get into my friends car to head to Deland and the homeless man has a gigantic pit bull sitting in the back seat, needless to say the pit bull was not a happy camper that I was sitting next to him, and I am not so sure I wanted to ride in the back seat with Big Red either (dog’s nickname, the dog’s actual name was Rudolf). So anyway we start to head on our way. At this point I thought we just going to the other side of town, I had no idea it was going to be a 5 hour trip all over central Florida. But oh well, we had to first stop and get gas, and this is where it all really starts, Jim the man we were taking to Deland (we found it was deland have way into the church, he kept telling us different places every 5 minutes, Daytona, Miami, Memphis and so on.) goes into the gas station to get something and that leaves me to talk, to Mike about where we are going, and then out of the corner of my eye I see a lady, coming straight at us and immediately in my Spirit I could sense something wasn’t right, she comes up to me and says, you guys are gonna have some fun today but first you have to do something, which she then precedes to grab my shirt and shake me as if I was Polaroid picture after this she stares at me and says, “listen you listen, I am listening ma’am, stop calling me ma’am, sorry miss, my name is Janice, what’s your name, Jordan.” Which after we exchange names, she’s proceeds to grab my hand and does not let go for the rest of the conversation. Well the conversation goes bad quick, she keeps trying to tell us that she has powers and that she knows that there is someone whose house were suppose to be working on, which I have no idea what she is talking about and I keep telling her no we don’t, then she accuses me of some stuff calls me evil and gets really heated, when I tell her that both Mike and myself are preparing for pastoral ministry, she then says fine, you want to do this you evil man, you want me to call you out in front of these guys, which at this point Jim is back, still a little drunk he begins to tell the lady we need to pray for her. Well back to the lady, she says fine, I am calling you out, she says, you’re an evil pastor and you blank blank, which ironically what she said I blank blank is one of the things that I do not struggle with at all, at this point both mike and I really smiling cause she could not of been more wrong, she is just irate, she tells me that we are going to get in a terrible car accident and she stomps of. Now although this was a funny story and time would fail me to try and unpack it all, the sad part of this is, that we didn’t get a chance to truly point this lady back to Christ and even in our respond to her slander, we didn’t make much of Jesus like we could have, although we wanted to pray for her, and open up some scripture with her, the fact that we smiled and laughed a little, destroyed any work we could have done to point this lady back to Christ. But our story continues. We get in the car and Jim begins to give us a Church History lesson. Now here is Jim he is a 51-year-old homeless man, with a Masters of Divinity from a very legit seminary, (Denver Seminary) this man knows God, and through out our adventure this man taught me a lot about the scriptures. So back to Jim in the present at this moment he is recovering from his drunk morning and during his church history lesson things are a little fuzzy, he begins to talk about Luther, Calvin, and Edwards all escaping to Geneva together, which if you have any working knowledge of church history, you know Edwards came around about 200 years later then the former two at this point he also called bloody Mary, bloody Kathy. But as he got more sober, his facts began to become more correct. During our trip we had a Church History lecture, a Trinity lecture, a Holy Spirit lecture, a lecture on predestination and a lecture on old and new covenant and coming from a guy who reads a lot of seminary books, apart from when he was drunk his stuff was really accurate, and really good, Jim could teach, and he taught with the force of a man who believes what he is speaking, a man who wouldn’t even kill the ant on his sleeve for it was apart of Gods creation, a man whose best friend was a massive pit bull, and a man that when he read scripture, it was as if it was coming from his very soul and not from the pages that he was reading. During this trip he began to talk about how grateful he was that he got to go to seminary (he went in his early forties) and how blessed and honored he was to sit and listen to great men of the faith lecture and I began to realize what a blessing it was for me to be able to spend these hours with Jim, hearing his stories, hearing him open up his life to us, feeling his pain and his hurt, but through it all intertwined between the ebb and flow of his life was the beauty of Jesus and Gods redemptive plan shining through. This man knows the love of God and what it means to be in the grip of grace. It’s so easy to say we are saved by grace, but its another thing to have truly known that you experienced that grace first hand. When you stare into Jim’s dark blue eyes, what you see is a man who has studied the depths of god and continues to swim in the streams of grace, so many men go to seminary leaving and believe that either A. there is no God, or B. there is a God but no one can truly know him. Only those who study our creator for pure intentions and not for intellectual prowess will truly discover our Father and what we were meant for. The Westminster catechism says it best, man’s chief aim is to glorify god and enjoy him forever.

As our tale continues like all great stories this one leads to a pawnshop. What Jim was hoping to do was to trade one of his guitars to pay off the remanding balance on his grandfather’s ring that was at this pawnshop. Although this ring was only worth a hundred dollars, the sentimental value is priceless. As we go into the shop there was one particular guy who was not a big fan of Jim, apparently last time Jim was here the guy was wearing a white suit, who wears a white suit after labor day is beyond me but anyway Jim gave the guy a box and it got his suit dirty and apparently the guy was still upset about it till this day, a year later.

When we get up to the counter apparently the guitar is not worth as much as Jim thought and he was still 60 dollars short from buying the ring back, so he tells us to take him to his dads to get some money. Right before we get there he tells us, to pull into the Winn Dixie he then proceeds to go in and buy Mike and myself sandwiches, which we tried to stop him but he wouldn’t take no for an answer. So he comes back with like 5 bags of groceries. I though we were about to have the last supper or something. And then for himself he pulls out an olive salad, not what I was expecting but the more I thought about it, it did fit him. From there we take him to his dads house and this is where for me it came close to home, not having the greatest relationship with my dad as well, there was a lot of parallelism between my father and I and Jim and his father, and as Jim went in to talk to his dad, Mike, big red and myself, sat in the car praying for Jim, praying that healing would be brought to the brokenness that abounded in their relationship, praying that they would find forgiveness, like the kind of forgiveness that the apostle Paul gave to John Mark, before he died, which oddly enough was Jim’s favorite passage in the scriptures, a passage that is hinged on forgiveness and the call for us to live redemptively with all those that hurt us. After about 15 minutes he comes out of the house, not saying much but the look on his face said it all. As we drove away His father stood in the doorway watching us pull away, As I looked on to this father and son, it made me realize the greater Father we have, this father, stood and watched his son drive away but our Father doesn’t stand and watch us drive away, he comes running after us, he comes shouting, come back I love you, I have adopted you into my family, I will never let go of you and I will not relent until all of my children are home, and this is where we find ourselves in gods redemptive plan of history of him taking all his children home. Our Father doesn’t stand by the way side and watch, our father gets in front of the car and says, You are my son and I will never leave. You will be my people and I will be your God. What I saw in an earthly father was one that was giving up on his son, but what we see in our heavenly father is one who to illustrate his stunning grace he adopts sinners like us into his family and says, I love you and I will make you righteous by giving up my own Son for you, so that we can truly glorify God by enjoying him forever. So we drove from the fathers house, and back to the pawn shop, we got his ring, and we headed home.

Jim convinced us more and more for the need to go to seminary, he called Mike a yo-yo which is slang for I’m not sure what it means, he told us stories about throwing rocks at alligators, of big red killing a coon and how it broke his heart, and that he made Mike bury it. He told us how he was surrounded by 40 alligators in an airboat and time would fail me to tell of all that he told us.

What Jim showed me is that every man and every woman has a story, that every person has a purpose and that we have a Father who wont relent in showing us his love, a father who calls us to abandon the comfortably of our pleasure trappings and to live redemptively, seeking to make much of Jesus and to be after the renovation of the hearts of those around us.

give me back my evangelism space

It seems in the past few years that many of our best places for evangelism have been taken from us. There was a time when you went into Starbucks to get your no room americano, you had a conversation with the barista, now we get our coffee through the convenience of a drive-thru. There was a time when you would buy a book at a book store, now most of our books are purchased online. There are so many products that we used to go out and buy and now we simply buy through a website. Now don’t get me wrong these convenience’s are great and at times quite time saving. But are they are striping us of opportunities to be incarnational in our communities and to make much of Jesus in our cities? Are they perhaps taking a space from us that is more sacred then we would have previously thought?

The Essence of Christ

We were created for humility. We were created as men to be vessels, channels through which the living God our creator can manifest the riches of his wisdom, love, power and goodness. Humility is the first and I believe perhaps the most important mark of a man, for it is in this we see Christ seated. Over 2000 years ago the God man comes down to this earth, he is fully human yet also fully divine. He didn’t have to bear the pain of humanity; he didn’t have to bear the weight of sin on the cross, a feeling that we will never be able to fully encapsulate with our finite minds. Christ did this all in humility & love, knowing fully he had the power to kill those who plotted to kill him, he possessed the power to be raptured up from the cross, yet he allowed the nails to pierce his flesh, suffocating in his own blood, he allowed the insults to be hurled at him, he allowed his face to be covered in spit by the very men who laid out branches for him a few days before, heralding him as messiah. He did all this in humility and this is the life Christ calls us to live. A life marked by humility. For just as a lake mirrors the essence of our reflection, humility mirrors the essence of Jesus.

The Dream Team

I am a sucker for good folk music. A little She & Him, M. Ward, sign me right up. So with that being said the Monsters of Folk album is like my own fantasy music team. A must buy! http://monstersoffolk.com/

To Abound

What does it really look like to love ‘the others’? and I when I say others I’m not talking about others as in our friends or family. Nor I am talking about loving ‘the others’ that are on LOST, although they need love to. But no what does it look like to love “the others”, meaning people who are unlike us, who look different, who we are impatient with. What does it look like to love them? Is it merely tough love? Is it love from a distance? Is it the, “hey, I am praying for you man.” kind of love? Or perhaps is it a love that is gentle, a love that is affectionate, a love that is sensitive, open, selfless and persistent. A love that Corinthians’s would say “bears all things.” Because before we can truly love God, I think we need to settle the answer to this question in our hearts, “do I truly love others?” For the way we truly love God is by truly loving others, to abound with love for all, even those who are otherly.

I wanna hold your hand

This is an article I wrote in the Fall edition of “The Source”. The Source is a publication for college & 20 somethings pastors of the Assemblies of God: http://youngadults.ag.org/

When I was in college, there was a girl that I dated for an extended period of time. Now this was the first girl I dated in a while so cut me some slack. One brisk night in January (I say brisk, because this went down in Florida. It really wasn’t that cold, however, I digress) I asked her if she would like to go walk around the lake and she said yes. So as we are driving to the lake she is telling me about her day and what’s going on in her life. The whole time, my response was the response of the typical guy-I am just nodding and going “uh-huh,” because I was really thinking about one thing, and one thing alone. When we get to the lake I am going to hold her hand! So we get there and as we are walking I am trying to think, how am I going to do this? Do I grab her hand? Or is that coming on too strong? Do I ask her? Or does that make me look like a wimp? Or maybe if our hands graze they will magnetically connect to each other. Well by now, we are half way around the lake and I had yet to hold her hand. So what do I do instead? I start singing the Beatles song; “I wanna hold your hand.” I sang that song the whole time we were walking around the lake; by the second go around she was singing the song with me. Never once though did I actually engage in the act of holding her hand, instead I just sang a song about it. Is this you? Do you contemplate action so much that you’re stuck contemplating rather than acting? I wonder how many of us are actively engaged within our community? When we go into Starbucks do we realize that we are not ordering from a finely crafted caramel macchiato-making machine, but that we are ordering from a person? Do we see our first concern at Starbucks as not just to get a cup of coffee so that we can have a finer sense of self, but that our first concern is to love on the barista that is making the brew? The heart of community is living in a way that decides that our faith is not only about being authentic, but also about living out our lives as a people who are filled with the wonder, the grace and the beauty of Jesus, as we are taught in the second chapter of Acts. To be a people who seek to cultivate deep spiritual, emotional, and holistic growth in the lives of those around we can’t be a people who merely sing community’s song, we have to live it!