If you're with PETA, this story is fiction

So this story is a few weeks old now, but one I need to write down so I don't forget it. It all started about a month before when our good friend Liz borrowed our kitchen to make banana bread. She was so thankful for our hospitality that she "donated" a rotten banana to a hidden spot in our kitchen and waited for us to find it. Well, several weeks went by and all we found was a biblical plague of fruit flies, leading us to a black, soggy, maggot-y blob in the bottom of a white, insulated tea pitcher in the corner. When I found it, I was immediately disgusted with whichever roommate could have left the pitcher so disgusting before finding out that Liz was the responsible party.
Brett and I naturally began to discuss revenge, and catching one of the raccoons that terrorize our trash cans and putting it in Liz's room seemed to be the obvious solution. Of course, we can't even keep them out of our trash, so catching one seemed to be only a dream.
Well, two days later I heard my loud, unfashionable ringtone blaring across the weight room and ran to answer it, only to hear a frantic female on the other end asking me where I was and what I was doing. After telling her, she explained the reason for her unrest, describing a "wildlife problem" concerning a huge possum that had gotten stuck in hers and Maryann's trash can, and they didn't know what to do.
I told her I knew exactly what to do and called Brett. We ran home and got a plastic box.
That box was then filled with trash and a possum and a little cat food as a snack, and it was placed in a certain girl's dorm room with a banana and a note saying, "We spell payback P-O-S-S-U-M."
Yeah, that was fun.

AHOP

Check out a portion of a story I wrote about my experiences with the Asbury House of Prayer here:

http://www.asburyhouseofprayer.net/

a long shot

So Brett Cheek and I just emailed a guy named Andy about jobs with 24-7 Prayer in London (England, not Kentucky). Please pray for us about this (This is begging).

Thanks!

Jason

Holy Ground

So the message I preached on Sunday took a turn on Saturday morning. I was doing some last minute prayer and preparation, and I felt like the Spirit had something to say. I was planning on talking about Moses and Exodus and wrapping up our 2-month series on listening to God. I wasn't ready for what He actually had to say.

Here's how it ended:


God is not silent. He is not even quiet. God is screaming through the cries of 30,000 children dying every day as a result of poverty. He is screaming through the voices of countless women and children in Thailand and India who are being forced into slavery and prostitution. God is crying out through the cries of the hopeless teenagers and men and women who are addicted to pornography, who are addicted to alcohol, who are addicted to drugs. God is crying through the voices of the 15% of Americans who suffer from severe depression. God is calling out through the desperate prayers of the lonely, of the rejected, of the sexually abused, and of the billions of people worldwide who have yet to find hope in Jesus Christ.

"God is in the slums, in the cardboard boxes where the poor play house. God is in the silence of a mother who has infected her child with a virus that will end both their lives. God is in the cries heard under the rubble of war. God is in the debris of wasted opportunity and lives and God is with us if we are with them." -the prophet Bono

So the next time you encounter an overlooked homeless woman in Triangle Park or a forgotten Alzheimer's patient in the nursing home, it would be appropriate to take off your shoes, for in that moment you are on holy ground.

"And the Lord Said to Moses" and thoughts on leadership

So I'm preaching at Lifebridge (www.lifebridgelex.com) on Sunday, and here is a foretaste of that. As I haven't posted in over a year, I don't have any expectations of people reading this and responding, but if you are reading and you do have thoughts, by all means comment.

The last sermon in a series our pastor and team of teachers has been doing on Listening to God, I am focusing on Moses as we find him in Exodus. Having read through Exodus several times in my many failed attempts to read through the whole Bible (at least I know Genesis and Exodus pretty well. I apparently haven't had the endurance to make it through Numbers), I noticed something. Out of all the things we praise Moses for doing--the plagues, the Exodus and the splitting of Red Sea, providing manna for the people in the desert--well, he didn't really do any of them. I mean, he couldn't really do any of them. I mean, they're kinda big. I can't even divide the waters in my bathtub (although I can't think of any good reason why I'd want to, but you know what I'm saying). I look back on the last (and only) 26 years of my life, and my resume looks a little thin compared to Moses'. I mean, he led more people out of slavery than Lincoln, and it wasn't like he "had what it takes" to me a leader. I mean, the guy's never led anything but sheep, and he says himself that he's "slow of speech" and everybody wants a leader who can give a good speech (although the US seems to be a current exception to this rule).

So what does he have? Definitely not confidence. Courage? Nope. A plan? Nadda. Drive? He's trying to pawn his calling off on his brother. I don't think so. He doesn't have much of anything that you'd want in a leader. God must not have been at Catalyst or Willow, b/c Moses doesn't really have any of the necessary ingredients to lead a little league team, much less the whole nation of Israel. I mean, Moses couldn't speak, but that's exactly what God was asking him to do to Pharaoh.

So again, what does he have? This is all I got--Within the span of just a few chapters in Exodus, you can find the phrase "And the Lord spoke to Moses..." more than 25 times. That seems significant. Either the writer of Exodus couldn't think of anything else to talk about, or he wanted the readers to see something... or, maybe that was just the most important thing to say about Moses. Moses didn't have skills or confidence or strategy or much of anything, but he did hear from the Lord...a lot.

So basically, Moses didn't have "the right skills for the job," but he did hear from the Lord, and he turned rivers into blood, a staff into a snake, led a heckuva lot of people out of slavery, divided a large body of water with previously mentioned staff. Hmm...maybe I should change the way I do ministry.