Podcast: No Regrets

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Faith in Advertising

On Saturday the fam and I decided to get out of the house. We made a stop at the library (where Michelle actually met a new woman and set a playdate with her (for the kids of course) this week!) and then went on to a toy store near here that has a train set and lots of toys for the kids to try and break so we have to buy them.

After following Ayla around the store aimlessly for about 45 minutes I figured it was about time to go. We put our coats on and headed out the door. As we exited into the cold Chicago (well, technically Chicago area) afternoon a few people walked briskly by us and shoved something into Michelle's hand. The guy who forced the leaflet into her hand didn't say anymore than a gruff "here." With two kids to juggle and a diaper bag we didn't have a chance to look at it until we were on the way home.

You can probably guess what it was for--a new church opening in a theater in the area. It looked nice, very professionally done, but I couldn't help thinking this trio was going to do more harm than good on their pamphlet-distributing mission. If we were people seeking a faith community (which is who they seemed to be targeting) I can't imagine we'd check this one out. Professional advertising still doesn't outdo friendliness and service. Imagine if one of them had offered to carry our diaper bag to the car and actually interacted with us like regular humans! That might have compelled someone to check out their church, but their manner on Saturday probably wouldn't do much more than further ingrain some negative stereotypes of Christians. Perhaps the most ironic part was that the slogan on the brochure was "No Perfect People Allowed," maybe they were just trying to live out their slogan.

The point is, following Christ through kindness and compassion will speak far more to people than the flash and presentation of our gathering places. And I think Jesus would be far more concerned with the former as well.

Podcast: Wrestling Prayer

This marks the first week of the Infuse podcast. As I become more familiar with it hopefully the audio quality will increase and we'll have options for you to subscribe to it if you'd like. This week's podcast focuses on prayer, something we dealt with here on Sunday night.

To listen to the podcast just click here.

Road Rage Reduction

Cory and I are working together in a coffee shop this morning and we were talking about our efforts to put into practice a strategy for prayer that we talked about on Sunday night. Basically the idea is to use down times in our day to focus on different kinds of prayer. For both of us these are the shower, driving to work, driving home from work, and before falling asleep at night. We are focusing on worship, giving thanks, offering requests, and confession. Cory said he's had times this week (in only two days!) when he was praying in the car and something happened that sent him into mild road rage, which made for an interesting contrast to the prayer. Unfortunately, I can associate too well with this.

Yesterday I was on my way way to work and came to a point in my harrowing journey where the two lanes merge into one. The sign on the side of the road clearly indicates that the right lane merges into the left, which means the left lane should have the right of way. Now, because I am so philanthropic, each day I allow one of the cars from the right lane to get in front of me. After patting myself on the back I continue on my way to work. Well, yesterday I was allowing the nice minivan beside me to take the sacred space in front of me, when a big, menacing SUV came roaring up beside me, got within about a foot of the beautiful minivan who was playing by the rules, and made it clear that he was going to try and butt his way in front of me. I was going to have no part of it! (Did I mention I was praying as this started to happen?) So I rode neck-in-neck with the presumptuous SUV as we came closer and closer to the point of merging. This continued to the point that the horrible SUV was about to be driving on the shoulder. At that point I relented and hit the brake so he could take his wrongful place in front of me. I sat in my car, shaking my head like a disappointed parent hoping with all my might that he was looking at me in the rearview mirror.

At that point I remembered I had been praying, and I knew my attitude at the moment was not godly, but even realizing that I was still upset! I prayed about that attitude and slowly remembered that in that bully SUV was a driver who God loved, who I should love. That's the hard thing about prayer, it doesn't allow us to be selfish or angry! Hopefully Cory and I will both reap the benefits of praying in the car and have a road rage reduction.

Monday Thoughts: Wrestling Prayer

Last night we focused on Luke 11:1-13, which is Jesus' teaching on prayer to his disciples. The main thing we wrestled with, which is sort of a timeless conundrum when it comes to prayer, is "why does our experience often not match up with what the Bible says about prayer?" We all know people who have prayed with incredible faith, fully believing they were praying for God's will through the direction of the Holy Spirit, expecting God to answer, but he didn't.

There are some common ways of explaining this:

1. God did/will answer, but not in the way or the time we expect.
2. The prayer wasn't in God's will.
3. The person praying had unconfessed sin or not enough faith.
4. God did what was best for his kingdom.

Here are some things the Bible says about prayer:

1. God wants us to ask him for things. (Luke 11:9-13 verse 13 is important to consider here; Phil. 4:6; Eph. 6:18)
2. God answers our prayers. (Psalm 5; Mark 11:20-25; Luke 11:1-11)
3. Our lives and the state of our relationships impact our prayer. (Isaiah 1: Mark 11:25; James 5:16-18)
4. God responds to persistence/boldness in prayer. (Luke 11:1-8, 18:1-8)
5. Motivation matters. (Matthew 6:5-15, 25-34; Luke 18:9-14)
6. Walking with the Holy Spirit directs our prayers. (Luke 11:13; Rom. 8:26-27; Eph. 6:18)

We have been talking about all these things in relation to prayer in general, but more specifically in relation to our prayers for the expanding of the kingdom of God through Infuse. Any thoughts on this important topic?

Northern Illinois Tragedy

Yesterday's shooting at Northern Illinois University is hitting close to home for us. We don't know any of the victims, but where we live in Aurora we're only about 25 minutes away from DeKalb, the home of NIU. We do know one couple who live just off campus--the husband is a grad student there, but he didn't know any of the victims well.

Somehow the proximity does make it strike a little harder though. Whenever something like this happens it is horrible and tragic. Please take a moment to pray for the students, staff, faculty, and parents of those at NIU. Pray that out of this horrible evil God will be able to fashion some good and that he will bring comfort to the hurting. If you want to read more I'm including a few links below.

The Aurora Beacon News
The Chicago Tribune

Setting Goals, Kind Of

This past Sunday night we spent some time talking about setting goals for ourselves and Infuse as a whole for the next six months. One of my hesitations with this is that goals can be limiting. I would hate to set a goal lower than what God wants to do. I also have to realize that the work or reconciliation and redemption is driven by God, not me. He uses me, but I don't have control over it, so setting goals may be somewhat presumptuous.

So in light of those thoughts, we have agreed to spend this week praying about what God wants for us individually and as a group in the next six months. We focusing our prayer on three key areas.

1. Relationships: It is natural for relationships to exist on multiple levels. Jesus had the crowds that followed him, his band of disciples, the 12, and his closest 3. We want to make sure that we are growing relationships from people we don't know yet all the way through those we're closest to intentionally.

2. Tangible blessing: We want to show the love of Christ through service to our community as a whole, and more specifically to the people we're in relationships with. This means cultivating a mindset that looks for ways to bless people.

3. Shared life: In order to develop strong and meaningful relationships we have to share life with each other. Instead of having a time we share with fellow Christians, another time with non-Christian friends, and other time serving, we want to incorporate all of those people into all of life.

We'll let you know how this comes out this Sunday!

Weekly Thoughts: Authenticity

As we launch our new website and I try to be MUCH better about blogging regularly, one thing I'm going to start doing is writing a little bit about our discussion each Sunday night. This past week we had a Super Bowl party, which went really well. But I wanted to share about the discussion we had the previous Sunday. We're reading through Luke right now, just discussing as much as we get to on a given night, and a week and a half ago much of our discussion foucused on the area of authenticity. What sparked the discussion was Luke 6:37-42.

"Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven. Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you." He also told them this parable, "Can the blind lead the blind? Will they not both fall into a pit? Students are not above their teacher, but all who are fully trained will be like their teacher. Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in someone else's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say, 'Friend, let me take the speck out of your eye,' when you yourself fail to see the plank in yoru own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from the other person's eye."

One of the things I've heard from people who won't go to church or struggled to make themselves go is that when they go they feel judged. Now your first reaction to that, like mine, might be, "But people aren't judging them, that's not true!" The problem with that is their perception will rule what they think of the church and probably Christians in general. But we can control perceptions, can we?

There are a couple ways we can try. One is by being open and authentic. Maybe part of the reason people feel judged is that all the Christians they come in contact with seem to have it all together. We all know they don't, but despite our belief in salvation by grace and the forgiveness of God, we do tend to hide our deficiencies and problems. We make it look like we've got it all together, so people who don't are naturally going to think we view them as inferior. So we need to work on removing our fascade and showing the world who we really are.

The second thing is that we can get to know people outside the church. It is very difficult to control how people percieve a large group, but it is much less difficult to control how people perceive us as individuals or families. Someone may believe the church is judgmental, but if they get to know you, and you're open about your own struggles and you are not judgmental of them, then they can't say all Christians are judgmental. But this means we can't spend all our time in a church or with our Christian friends. We need to be a light where people need a light. Our authenticity there can change people's false perceptions.

The last thing we discussed is how we respect people who are authentic. There was a woman in our Sunday School class in Denver who was completely open with the whole class (which included people she barely knew) about some very deep struggles. None of us thought, "wow, she's messed up, I can't believe she comes to church." Instead, she was one of the most respected and trusted people in the class. I will always look up to her in this area of authenticity. Our fear of what people will think is a deception Satan uses to trick us into being fake. Trapping us in our addictions and sin while making people uncomfortable about their imperfections at the same time. Real authenticity is a discipline, but it is one worth striving for.

Pray with Us

We believe that God is very involved in our lives individually and in the world as a whole. The biblical call for us to bring our requests before him is a very real invitation to impact what happens in the world. We don't manipulate God, but just as any parent responds to the requests of their children, God responds to the requests we make of him. There are times when God cannot give us what we ask for because we ask for something that is bad for us and bad for his kingdom, but when we ask in line with his will, we believe he answers our prayers. One way to know we're in line with his will is to pray the things that are instructed in the Bible. One of these is very appropriate for Infuse right now, and we'd like you to pray this with us.

Luke 10:2 says,
He told them, "The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field."

This is an important prayer for all God's people, and we feel it is especially important for Infuse right now. As we approach ministry as missionaries, we will make a much greater impact for each person who pursues this mission with us. So we're asking that you would begin praying with us that God would send us more workers who resonate with the vision of Infuse and want to reach out to those who are far from God.

One suggestion (made by Neil Cole, the leader of Church Multiplication Associates) for remembering to pray this each day is to pray at 10:02 (since the passage is from Luke 10:2). Whether you pray at a certain time each day or not, we ask that you would begin to earnestly ask God to send more workers to us for his glory and the advance of his kingdom!