The Ingredients Of Your Life

Media marketing continues to ask “What’s in your wallet?”  Right--like the most important thing in my life is a small plastic card I sit on!  However, there is another group growing in passion and popularity which asks a much better question, “What's in your food?”  More specifically, do you know what you’re eating?  

Have you read a food label lately? Did you look closely at all the strange and wacky pharmaceutical-sounding ingredients?   The labeling of the ingredients in the food items we consume is huge and controversial, including several legislative initiatives to not only take the jargon out of the ingredient labels, but to actually be honest about what’s inside the products we buy and eat.

Don’t you look more carefully these days at the label?  20 years ago, most of us only looked at the price.  Now we tend to micro-scan the label because we want to know the full story on the ingredients within the package that will soon end up within us!

And, it’s right to be discerning.  I saw a news segment last week highlighting that what we believe is inside a product, is not present at all.  One example was pumpkin spice coffee.  The amazing thing was the pumpkin spice coffee actually had no pumpkin listed as an ingredient!  

The best example I found was a product which listed raspberry flavor; however, on close examination of the ingredients, it was only artificial raspberry flavor.  You may want to stop reading now because that artificial raspberry flavor contained castoreum which is extracted from the anal glands of beavers!  Maybe they should label it beaverberry!  

We pay so much attention to the prepackaged ingredients we consume but so very little attention to the “ingredients” which make up the content of our lives.  Who are we really?  What is it that makes you, you?  What are all the realities that you carry within?

 Our lives are a complexity held within our soul. We are all made up of a variety of accumulated experience or “ingredients” -- the content of our lives. 

So, if we were reading a list of all the ingredients (contents) that have been poured into, forced into, or invited into our lives, what would they be?  I’ll bet you can list out many of the “ingredients” that make up the content of your life.

Now look at your list.  These things are living in us all the time. But how much of our content is connected to the living God who made us and desires a full and complete relationship with us?  This is so crucial, because God wants us to be fully connected people. I don’t know about you, but sometimes I am really tired of being fragmented.

Several weeks ago, I suggested that a significant goal for our lives was a process of connecting the content of our lives within God and God’s purpose!   This Sunday we begin that journey with a new series called “Connecting the Content.”  I promise it will be way better than beaverberry!  See you in worship!

Renewing Hope

During the past 25 years, I’ve officiated at more weddings than I can remember.  Occasionally, when I see some of the pictures of these services on my shelf, I wonder about all those couples and how the hope of those wedding-moments has been transported and supported through the years.

Surprisingly, several months ago, I receive a call from Austin – a man whose wedding I conducted did ten years ago.  I remember it well because we held the service on the beach in the midst of a full-blown hurricane.  No kidding!  We ran out in the storm on a board walk, speed through the vows, and ran back into a restaurant across the street for the reception.

 

Since the beach wedding was literally a wash-out, he wanted to bring the hope of the moment alive again.  He asked me if they could have a redo, only this time with all the bells and whistles they missed before – a wedding renewal.  It was a wonderful request!  So, we held the renewal service last Saturday on the beach in Daytona. 

 

Here is the greatest part - it was all a surprise to his wife, Jena.  He told her they were having anniversary pictures taken on the beach to celebration the union exactly ten-years ago to the day.  He blindfolded her and led her down to the beach.  In contrast to the hurried-caned wedding, this day was beautiful -- a wedding-day-dream. 

The sun was beginning to set on a backdrop of blue sky with just the right amount of dotted with fluffy clouds for texture.   And, at just the right moment, he removed the blind fold and revealed to her a wedding gazebo and chairs filled with all of the guest and family from the original wedding – including me, the officiating pastor!  The tears began to roll down Jena’s face.  Austin had actually done it – recaptured the wedding hopes of a moment ten years before.

 

I don’t know about you, but I find it difficult to maintain the heights of hope and joy from one particular moment to the next.  Hope seems to drift in and out of my live at times leaving me a bit hungry for re-fulfillment.

 

 

 

 

I think soon or latter, everyone finds it hard to maintain these hopeful positions in life.  It’s because the dark clouds of a broken world have a habit of sweeping over us periodically, diluting down our hope -- shifting us away from the light into overcast darkness.

 

This seems especially true for Christians!  We may be people of faith, but we are just as susceptible to the dark clouds that would sweep us away from our relationship with God as anyone! 

 

 

I believe we all long for a sense of hope – maybe a chance to have a do-over – a renewal that actually recaptures the hopes and dreams, like that of a perfect wedding day.

This Sunday in worship, we will explore a renewal that guarantees a hope that doesn’t just drift in and out of our lives.   You can hear all about it as we talk about “Raider’s of the frozen Dark.”

 

Do you disagree with God?

We may think that things with God and us are, in the words of the young Forest Gump, “just just fine and dandy.”  However, God may have something to say about that. 
 

Romans 10:9 says if we believe from the bottom of our heart to the tip of our tongue, that is, confess that Jesus God raised Jesus from the dead (Jesus lives as the Savior of humankind) that you will be saved.  Who could disagree with such a sweet deal?  It sounds easy but not so fast. 

 

I’d like to think that I fully agree with how God loves me and proved it through Jesus.  However, if I were really honest, I’d have to say many of the ways I go about living this trusted-truth in my life, may have a few ticks on the disagreement side of the ledger! 

 

 

To truly trust God is to agree with Him not only in our hearts but also by what we say.  If we confess that God proves his unconditional love for us by saving us in Christ, yet live and act in ways that do not agree with our trust statement -- aka confession -- we fall into the precarious position of disagreeing with God.  It's hard to trust some one who you don't agree with! 

 

 

Confess in the Greek literally means “to say the same thing.”  In other words, the heart and the mouth are in union – an agreement so trusting and tight that not even a light sliver of light could pass between.  So to “confess” Jesus essentially means we are saying the same thing as God -- we are in agreement with God. But are we really? 

In some Arab countries, there is a saying that if you trust someone, you should give that person your breath (hopefully after a tic-tac). “In other words, there is no space between people who trust; no light shines between trustees who share personal space.” 

Just how tight are we with God?  How much of our lives are really “in agreement with God?” It’s hard to admit, but we disagree with God far more than we might like to admit or are even aware.  Because, in many ways, our hearts and voices and actions really don’t say the same thing as God!

In this Sunday’s message will continue our series on “Trusting God From the Bottom Up” by asking how our lives might look and feel if how we trust God from the bottom of our heart not only agrees with what we confess with our lips, but also with God? 

  

 

Snatching Victory

Have you felt like you are experiencing life in a mirror?  Not the narcissistic gotta-see-myself kind of pathology – and not the Harry Potter Mirror Of Erised type of reflection where you see an image of your deepest desires having been met. 

There is another sort of mirrored-irony in life where what we want and what we get is often the very opposite of the image we desire.  One of the characteristics of a mirrored reflection is that of the opposite - the reversal of the object being represented.  Just hold up any word to a mirror and it will be turned around backwards. 

 

Such is the case with the well-known and often-used cliché, “Snatching victory from the jaws of defeat.”  “To snatch victory from the jaws of defeat” means to suddenly win a contest when it appears that a loss is a forgone conclusion, to succeed in an endeavor through reversal of fortune, skill, effort, of good judgement..

 

Unfortunately, however, in our lives we often experience the mirrored opposite side of this phrase, or, “Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory” -- also a well known and used cliché.  I think all of us as some point in our lives feel like what we want, and what we get somehow gets turned around leaving us to feel a bit like life is playing some cruel trick on us.

 

Is your life more a “Snatching victory from the jaws of defeat,” kind of experience or, like its mirrored reversal “Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory?”  One is freeing, while the later is confining - like being helplessly crushed upon or trapped with no one to extricate you into a victory life. 



On the night of November 19, 2011, we received the kind of phone call no one wants to receive.  The state trooper on the other end told us our 17-year-old daughter, Rachel, had been in a serious car accident and was being airlifted to the hospital.  

 

 

 

What they didn’t tell us was that she was literally “Snatched from the jaws of defeat.”  Before she could be flown the hospital for the emergency treatment, there was the matter of extricating her from the tangled remnants of her car which had been crushed in-around her.  And, the mechanism that was used by the rescue team to snatch the victory was called “The Jaws Of Life.”

 

Rachel was rescued, but she had nothing to do with it.  She could not be smart enough, faithful enough, good enough – she was asleep in a coma.  All she could do was be rescued.

 

Have you ever felt helpless? Maybe a time when you were faced with some difficult real-life issues? Sometime we find ourselves in a personal situation where life seems to be crushing-in around us and there seems to be no way out – at least by our own power or abilities. 

 

There are certain times where all we can do is be rescued.  There is one who can always snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. 

 

 

This Sunday in worship you can hear all about him. His name is Jesus, and He is “The Jaws Of Life.”

 

 

 

 

  

 

Viral God

Did you hear about the new reality drama being cast?  It features two very competitive sisters – one strikingly beautiful and the other a bit homely.  In the reality series, they are fighting for the affections of the only available potential husband in the area.  

 

Add to that mix an exploitative father-in-law looking for cheap labor with benefits, and stir in some behind the scenes “catfish type” shenanigans and you have an instant hit. 

 

 

The clips from this reality show will probably go viral immediately.  But how long will the series last?  One season, two, maybe five?  It actually lasted 14 seasons, but in one sense it lasts forever. (You can read more it in Genesis 29:15-28)!

 

We live in a video-clip, sound-bite age.   What is all the rage in one moment becomes old news in a 24-hour news cycle.  

 

 

This cultural conditioning seems to excite the desire of humanity everywhere for instant satiation of well - whatever.  We demand quick solutions, instant pain relief, and instant gratification.  I suppose you might say we long for a god of miracles gone viral!

 

  

Electronic posts can go around the world in seconds.  So, what happens to us when God doesn’t act in a like fashion?  When it seems like God isn’t posting fast enough – doesn’t go viral in our lives?

 

 

  

I think we all have a universally-held desire for God
(or for some, a higher power) to act on our behalf
without delay.  We need to know that pain, loss,
suffering, trauma, loneliness and the like won’t last
too long.  We want god-medicines that quickly take
away the pain.


So, how long should we give God to act? In today’s social-media viral-video age, everything happens instantaneously with just a click.


I think today, in a designer-god age, would we want him more like the proverbial tortoise who is painfully slow, or like the hare who speeds lightening fast toward the finish line of our dilemma in record time. We all know the answer to this one!
 

 Given our choice, we would want God to look and race more like the hare.  In today’s world, a tortoise-style God just moves too slow for us, our problems, not to mention the world’s problems. 

Our memories are short and our expectations for service or “need response” is immediate.  Like the viral video of last week, the rage of the moment, is quickly left behind and forgotten.   I think this “new reality” leads us to doubt God, His presence and His ability to reach us personally.  Let’s just say it, God’s promises don’t exactly seem to go viral! 
 

But that’s the point! God keeps His promises to you, but not with a social-media timeline!  If we are looking for God to go viral in a social-media-second, we misunderstand the power and duration of His Word and His promises.  Even the old trickster Jacob figured it out -- and waited it out!  In the message this Sunday, you will see and hear what a guy who lived 3,000 years ago knew even before electricity -- God's promises doesn’t go viral, they go forever!

God Fits Us

Have you ever felt like a round peg trying to fit in a square hole?  As far back as I can remember, I have definitely felt this way.  It’s a bit disconcerting because deep down, I think everyone has a desire to fit it – you know, find our place in the world where we do belong. 

 

 

It’s like we are Cinderellas waiting for the prince to offer us to try on the glass slipper.  And, when “it” happens, the two matching shapes will fit and everything will be happily ever after!

 

 

More often, we are just in the long line of those who try hard to squeeze their foot into the unique shape so we can receive the reward.  Unfortunately, just like the movie, it only fits “the one,” so we feel rejected!  And, to make matters worse, in often looks as if many around us give the outward appearance that they do fit in.  This only has the effect of making us feel even more isolated, weird or somehow defective as a human beings.  Resonating yet?

 

Then comes the squeeze – trying for press ourselves into someone else’s mold or shape.  Usually, this means getting a hammer and just banging and beating on ourselves to make a forced-fit.  And, if we still don’t fit, we just get a bigger hammer!  Hence the phrase “beat up by life.”

 

What was God thinking when he made us?  Well, actually he was creating a perfect fit.  Did you know our brains were designed to operate by making perfect fits?  Neurons fire exact shapes that find their place in an exact receptor.  All other shapes are rejected to ensure the perfect fit and function -- we think, act, live, and love! 

 

 

In other words, God made our brains work on the principle of round pegs round holes, squares peg, square holes – a perfect fit.  It’s built into us.  We seek to fit in, to find the perfectly shaped receptor, and we are relentlessly driven to find this match – the place where we belong.

 

This Sunday we will explore God’s perfect design and discover where we actually belong – the place where our shape thrives.  Here is a hint – God fits us!