They couldn’t get it right when he was walking in sandals right next to them, and we still struggle today.

I read a newsletter today that included the following sentence.

“It’s amazing to see how the Lord is using [this college]’s alumni to build His kingdom.”

Somehow that just opened my eyes to something I don’t think a lot of us see. This “kingdom” that is being referred to there is a visible, tangible, measurable kingdom. One of numbers, and results. One that you can point to and say, “Look at God building His Kingdom!” But what we’re really talking about is, “Look at how many people have made this decision, or changed this in their lives. Or, even better, look at our super-cool new facilities and our amazing staff who have a tremendous strategy for mobilizing our church for growth and outreach into our community!

Is that really God’s Kingdom? Do we really build his Kingdom? Really???

My mind says no. I am writing this after a brief search of scripture, but there are no New Testament verses containing both the words “build” and “kingdom”. The OT references were to the temple, “build” God’s house and establish Solomon’s “kingdom”. (2 Samuel 7:13) There are obvious connections to Jesus in this verse as well… a foreshadowing of what God really wanted to do in Jesus, but again, there’s no building of THAT kingdom either. It will be established forever.

The disciples and all of the followers of that day wanted to help Jesus “build” his “kingdom”, too. They envisioned a strong leader who would vanquish their powerful Roman suppressors and establish his kingdom forever (much like that 2 Samuel reference from above). He evaded their attempts to make him king, as they understood it, on several occasions. He spoke of the Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of Heaven many times, and never once was their a reference to building this Kingdom.

Because… it already exists. There is no building to do. His Kingdom is forever, and just is. It is not a kingdom of territories and boundaries and walls. Not a kingdom with social heirarchies where lords rule over vassals and servants submit their lives to the King. The Kingdom simply is. It can not be defined by us. Jesus mostly attempted to reveal it through his parables. “The Kingdom of Heaven is like…”

And, in my opinion, the kingdom is not what we perceive it to be today, either. We see our successes in getting people to attend our programs, and even bigger victories when they not only regularly attend, but begin serving in those programs to assist in bringing others to attend. That’s not the Kingdom. That’s the same as what all the people around Jesus wanted. A visible, measurable “kingdom”.

Jesus said to Nicodemus, “The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.” (John 3:8) God’s Kingdom is not being built with every victory we claim. It’s not something measurable. It’s the reality of Him. It’s Him. Jesus often claimed, “The Kingdom of God is near.” There is a sense of something yet to come, but I think he also meant it’s nearby… like, RIGHT THERE. Attainable, knowable, but not shaped by borders as they might have thought. It is a knowledge of the world as it was designed to be, by its Creator… by its King.

Let’s not follow paths already trod. When Jesus was here, they tried to make him King, as they understood it. We now proceed with our plans to “build his kingdom”, and they appear much like the plans of old. In fact, the truth is, WE do not build his kingdom at all. His kingdom has been established. Our joy is to live in it and not watch his kingdom grow, or attempt to help it grow, but to enjoy the freedom of life in Jesus, cultivating our relationship with HIM and loving the people he puts around us.

That is his Kingdom.

They did it!!! They’re in the FINAL FOUR!!! Last night’s game was incredible!! It was back-and-forth the whole night, until the Spartans had an 8-pt lead with only minutes left in the game. UK scored a few 3-pointers and were back within one point I believe. Then with 4 seconds left, and the Spartans up by three, the Cats got off 3 shots, the last one at the buzzer – off-balance, with a man in his face, and with his toe RIGHT on the line, not over it… as close as you can be to it, though… – THEN the shot bounced FOUR TIMES on the rim, on every side it seemed… for about 5 MINUTES… and fell through, sending the game to OT!!! AHHHH!!!!! 🙂 Well, same thing after the 1st OT… UK had the ball last but failed to get the shot off. That was good. On to double overtime. In double OT, MSU made ONE field goal!!!! That’s not so good, but they won by 6 pts I believe by making 11 of 12 free throws. That is good. Whew!! 🙂 Quite a game! Looking forward to the next one. We are singing on Saturday night (Check Out Where) from 7 till 8pm… the game starts at 8:47…. so, it’ll be tight, but we can probably see most of it! 🙂 🙂 For some photos from the game, and more MSU fun, click here GO STATE!!!

I had a moment this morning. Thought I would share it.

It’s not new. I imagine countless other people have shared it over the past 2170 years or so…

I had to get up around 6:00am this morning to get ready for the day, and was surprised to see the sun had woken up just a bit before me. It wasn’t full-on bright, but the light was beginning to illuminate our formerly dark house.

In the quiet, dimly lit morning, I just had a flash of a thought… “This is when it happened.” The coolest moment in history. Well, perhaps the second coolest, as Jesus said “It is finished” on the cross, but there isn’t much space between 1st and 2nd place there, in my mind!

God’s plan had come to fruition. Everything went as planned, and now the curtain had been torn in two. The door was now wide open, no… it was gone between the Creator and his creations. No more rituals, no more sacrifices, no more separation… just wide open and free friendship.

In the quietness, I imagined the exhiliration he must have felt. As he once again breathed the air He created through his resurrected nostrils. As his eyes beheld the beauty of a morning sunrise, and his ears took in the busy sounds of the little fuzzy critters put there by his own hands. Amazing.

And it all happened today.

We can’t wait to hunt the easter eggs with the boys, and see what the Easter Bunny left in our baskets. That is a fun part of Easter! (My favorite part is of course, the chocolate…) 🙂 But Ian is wearing his “Jesus is ALIVE! That Rocks!” shirt. The true joy of the day is not the momentary fun of egg hunting, or present getting (or giving). It is the simple yet confounding truth of The Resurrection. The firstborn of a redeemed race. The ultimate picture of new life.

I had a moment this morning. A shadow of the original, but still a moment. One day I will experience a similar moment, and take my first breath in my new skin.

That will be quite a moment as well. 🙂

JAMIE FEICK! Whoohoo!! I remembered! 🙂

(WITH the help of the internet, of course!)

Other fun blast from the past names at this page:

Michigan State Basketball Alumni

Victory for MSU!!!

Some of you may know, I attended Michigan State University as a freshman WAYYYYY back in 1992. Back in the days of Shawn Respert and Eric Snow. And… I don’t remember who else… There was a guy from near Mansfield, OH, because a friend of ours is from there, and I remember him telling me to watch for him.

Well, these 13 years later, I am still a fan!

If you have been keeping up with the NCAA tourney… you know they are now in the elite 8… taking on Univ of Kentucky tomorrow. Should be a great game.

So far, they beat a fiesty Old Dominon team, had a fairly easy time with Vermont and last night they clobbered Duke!! The #1 Team!!! Nice!!! 🙂

So… I’m having fun. And my two boys are enjoying singing the fight song and wearing their MSU gear!

Tune in Sunday to see them thrash the Wildcats!!!

Go State!!!

Hey… I figure since Joe is the one who got me started on this blog thing (see credit above…) I can give him a little air time here! 🙂

Click the photo to see Joe’s commercial on Americal Idol!

I touched on this in my other post this morning, but after some of my reading last night, and then reading the blogs of a couple friends (Laura and Steph, and also Chris) I thought I would expand on what I was thinking there…

God made us to relate. Relating is sharing life with other people. Sharing your successes, partying with the good newses of life. Sharing a meal, a game night (we like those!), a movie night, a day in the park, or any sort of fun thing. Sharing the good things God is doing in you. Even sharing your possessions. That builds a foundation for sharing in the hard times. When a child dies. When a spouse cheats, or leaves. When a job is suddenly lost. We share those things too.

Now somehow over the past 2000 years, the church has made that essence of who we are, relational beings, into a system. We have come up with all kinds of structures to create opportunities to relate, we have classes to learn how to relate (to believers, and especially to the lost), and pastors are paid to relate. And it’s their job to make sure others are relating well also. It’s a business. The product, healthy people relating well with each other and with God. And we’re pretty OK at turning out that product, without much deviance from the norm in each one.

We call that ministering. When you give it that spiritual sounding title, it makes it seem more important. Attaches “kingdom” value to it. We talk of “ministering” to someone who’s hurting, or someone who is outside the lines we ourselves have drawn. It is an effort to accomplish some sort of visible result in someone’s life. Or even just our own. The accomplishment is a feeling of satisfaction at allowing God to minister through us.

I myself am a perpetrator of such thinking. I have been in “paid” ministry for a long time. Granted, I have done it most unconventionally, but still, I get paid to love people and “minister” to them. Which on some levels is super cool. But mostly it makes me sick. I just want to love people because I do. No strings. No obligations. No attachments. No requirements. I don’t think that I have those, but I know that we have created sets of expectations of our paid ministry people. It’s their job to “minister”. Do you know what that does to them??? To their hearts???

People. This is not a job. We should not get paid to “minister”. It is not a command from God. He leads by example. We love because we have first been loved. He loves me, so I love you.

I really don’t think I have a problem with this, personally. (That sounded arrogant… it’s not meant to be…) I think somewhere along the line God showed me this truth, and I got this one. I do love people, not because I have to, but as an overflow from how much my Father loves me. My struggle remains in my being a “professional christian”. I am moving slowly away from that, but not sure how to use some of the gifts God has given me, and completely leave the system of organized relating. That is certainly a work in progress, and ever shall be perhaps.

There is no magic in loving someone. No special way to do it. It doesn’t count more with the loved or with God if we call it “ministering”. That word, that idea, frustrates me so much.

Really, the problem is in our view of two worlds. The sacred and the secular. I really think Jesus lived in what we would call the “secular”… but didn’t think of it that way. He did not have the boundaries we do. He hung out at the synagogue, at the temple, with the religious dudes (whom we blast, but would be today’s pastors, ministers, elders and other church leaders)… and he also hung out with the drunks and the whores and the other “dregs”. Jesus knew one world – the Kingdom of God. It’s all his. All of it. Perhaps I will develop this more at a later date.

We don’t need special words. We don’t put on our cape and fly around “ministering” to people. If we do, we’re robbing them and ourselves of the deeper joy of living in God’s love and grace and sharing that with them. Listen to your Father, and love whom he wants you to, when he wants you to… and just get to know him. Do your job, whatever occupies your 9-to-5 life, always aware of how He is working in and around you there… and then love the people he places in your path everywhere else.

There is no grand strategy needed. Just obedience and attention to his lead. His specific lead for you.

I didn’t finish the story…

We watched for about 30 minutes last night before we (perhaps just I) figured out that Joe was going to be on the show they moved from tonight to tomorrow night. 🙂

So, if you want to see our friend on TV… tune in tonight at 9pm on Fox. He’s “the lead role in the music video/Ford commercial with the idols.” That’s what he says.

Go Joe! 🙂

Believe it or not, I finally succumbed to national peer pressure last night. I had resisted for a long time now, standing my ground like a good soldier. My resolve was firm. I would not give in. My TV would not tune in American Idol. But, last night I did.

Now, it’s different than you might think. 🙂 The reason we were watching last night is a friend of ours from college Joe Boyd, e-mailed (well, his wife did) and let his friends know he got a spot on that very network TV show! So, we figured one night couldn’t hurt us. 🙂

(OK, it wasn’t that bad… but I won’t be tuning in any more shows, unless other friends are on it…) 🙂

If you, like me before last night have never seen it, during the course of the show there are little one to one and a half minute versions of popular tunes that these young unknowns belt out with all their might, and then a panel of three judges lets them know what they thought. Sometimes humorous, sometimes accurate, they rate the performances. Then, I guess America does as well at the end of the show, as people can vote for their favorites by phone.

During one of the performances in the middle, there was a young guy singing about a girl without whom he’d be incomplete. Typical love song. We were created to love, and sometimes we can be quite good at it. We can see the absolute best in someone else, even if perhaps they can’t. We buy flowers, present gifts, even write songs. (Or at least sing them.)

Now, I am a song writer. And I have actually written a song or two about/to my beautiful wife, Jen. I love her. That’s why. 🙂 BUT, I have also thought many a time… I can’t write any song with the emotion of a song I write for God because, I love him most. How could I love anyone more? He loves me completely – even more than completely?? – even knowing everything about me. So I always thought it silly that everyone writes love songs to a guy or a girl that they have or don’t have. In a way, I thought it was idolatry.

A lot of Christians might agree with me. I was reading a book last night – good book, by the way.. AND it was a 99¢ find at Book Warehouse in Savannah, GA… one of our favorite bookstores! – and he was talking about loving people. That we need to love people to show them how much God loves them. And then it struck me. We have such a clinical approach to loving people. We are surrogate lovers for God, who is obviously incapable of loving them, so we need to out of obligation step in and help out. Perhaps that is to condemning, but I do believe we look at it that way at times.

Why can’t we love someone, just because they are amazing as God created them. Even the “unlovable”? Jesus loved them. He spent much of his time with the people that everyone else hated, or thought to be worthless. Because he was God? perhaps… But I think more because he really loved people. It wasn’t duty, or obligation. He was not “ministering” to them. Not a conduit for God’s love. HE LOVED THEM.

I do believe that God said we were “very good” (Gen 1), and that are made in his image. I believe that even though we on our own can not attain perfection (like God), he has made us to be like him (I am not sure the fullness of that statement, but he says we’re made in his image…) So I think that just as we are built to love God with all we are, that another of his creation – another human – is worthy of OUR love as well… not our love as a substitute for God.

What if I said to Ian, “I love you Ian,” and then quickly tagged on, “… because God does. He loves you very much, and so, I do.” Would that make Ian feel all warm and fuzzy inside? A little. But what about when I just tell him that I love him??? OK, too easy you say? He’s my son? Of course I love him? Well, what about my wife, before she was my wife? In a quiet moment… just the two of us… enjoying the company of one another. In the moment, I let her know, “I love you Jen,” and with deep sincerity, I add, “BECAUSE God loves you, and he wants you to know he loves you!” Ha! That would have been awesome! NO!!! I love Jen because I see in her the coolness that God put into her! SHE is awesome (that’s what HE thinks, isn’t it??!) WELL… SO DO I!!!

So am I being idolatrous? Putting someone else “before God”? You know, if we let our hearts go too far in loving someone or something, that makes it a god, and God said to have no other “gods” before him. I remember hearing as a kid that Coke could be your “god” if you like it too much.

Why are we so insane???

To love someone, really love them, not to serve out of obligation or duty, but to truly love someone is not idolatry… it’s not worshipping them. And it doesn’t even have to be a spouse or a child. The story in the book I read was about a homeless guy the author had met a few times. He gave him lunch as a second thought because he felt like he should. And he admitted as much at the end of the story… but he still said he needed to love the man to show him that God loves him. And I say, “No!” We can and should love each other because God made us all loveable. Somehow he does. Despite any of our messed-up-ness.

SO, while American Idol unabashedly sets up people to be worshipped, even calling them idols… 🙂 I was reminded how valuable each person God created really is. So do something nice, love with your words… even sing a love song for someone today. (Preferably save the love song for your spouse, if you’re married…) 🙂

They’re worth it.

My son Alex is a blast. He is the middle child (currently?) and so as all middle children will probably attest, he is often overlooked in some ways. We have album upon album of photos of Ian (our first) and have been taking lots of our little girl, because, well… she’s a girl! She’s cute! 🙂 Ian is incredibly intelligent, and as the firstborn, is always reaching new milestones first. So we often shower him with accolades. Kirsten is the baby right now, and again… a girl… so… she gets her share of attention.

But despite these apparent set-backs, Alex does not get lost in the cracks very easily! He’s a RIOT! He says and does the funniest things. I am cracking up as I type this! He’s SO fun and crazy and loud and silly and great in every way!

Today, I was watching a movie with the boys in our little cubby in the attic (my office)… it was quite a unique set up! And as we were Alex was climbing on me, and then he wanted to just stroke my hair. As he was doing it, he said, “You like that, Dad?” with very sweet, innocent, loving look on his face. Now, I actually didn’t really like what he was DOING, but I loved why he was doing it, and I love him… and it was a cool moment.

This is the same boy that I had to yell at at 4:50am this morning for repeatedly waking up (and whining!) for no apparent reason all night. The same boy upon whose rear end I dole out physical consequences for his repeatedly foolish actions. The same boy who has seen the full wrath of his much larger father…

And he still loves me. A lot.

I have a friend who thinks that it is a selfish act to procreate. (Not the act… the end… 🙂 I understand logically his thinking. He says there are too many people on the planet now, and lots without a home, a family… if you NEED to have kids, you should adopt. And, I agree with him that adoption is one of the most amazingly selfLESS acts one can carry out, but it is preposterous to say that deciding to be a parent (whatever role we actually have in that decision) is a selfISH act.

Jen is tired. She is a Mom of THREE young kids. I am tired. I am the Dad. 🙂 There are lots of things we have given up for our kids… things we would do or have. And did you know… they cost a LOT!!! 🙂

But all of that is so worth it for the moments like the attic. Or hearing Ian say, “It’s OK, Dad” after reading my St. Patty’s Day blog. And then with genuineness he said, “I love you, Dad!”

It’s so worth it.

I suppose if that is the only reason I wanted kids, was expecting moments like those, I suppose that could be selfish. But let me tell you… they are NOT expected! After all of the work that goes into shaping these little people… you wouldn’t think they’d like me at all! 🙂

But they do. And I love them so much.

You can’t know until you’ve tried. Kids will change your whole view of life. It is incredible the love I have for them. And even moreso the love they have in return. Unmerited, but unwavering.

So go ahead and procreate! You don’t know how great it is till you’ve tried!

(that was a funny sentence…) 🙂