Takeo Spikes and Nate Clements converge on a Bears RB.

Well, that about sums it up. Defense. Not only was the Bills defense dominating, they even did the scoring! What a fantastic starting defense we have this year! It’s going to be amazing watching them actually win games almost single-handedly this year.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough last night.

Now, before you go criticizing the offense too much, it was just a preseason game. Yes, the Bills lost on a last minute score by the Bears for a final score of 16-12, but even with less than a minute left, the third and fourth stringers put together a very impressive drive that ended up less than 10 yards short of the endzone.

JP made some plays. MacGahee made some plays. Moulds, Evans, Reed and even some other guys made some plays. It’s going to be a fun year.

But most of all, Terrence McGee and the return team, along with the entire Bills Defense are going to make for a very exciting – and I think perhaps even a trip to the PLAYOFFS – kind of year. 🙂

Stay tuned…

Whoa. Craziness. Saw this link on a friend’s blog page.

Whoa.

Click here to read article.

OK, so I mentioned a few posts ago that the Kingdom is not quantifiable, but that does not mean it’s not fun, or cool, or good to celebrate some things that are. 🙂

Today marks two years that I have been posting random thoughts and links and various ideas to this site. The first one was back on Aug 26, 2003. I think I have mentioned before… I am glad to share this with you, and hope that by my various forms of communication that your life is in some way enriched. But it amazes me how much I benefit from such a thing. 🙂 For me, it’s a release… it’s what I need to do. I definitely was created to communicate, and perhaps specifically to write.

So thanks for joining me on my journey. I am compiling some of the material from this website for another book to be released next year sometime. I’m looking forward to that. It’s a fun process going through all the stuff I’ve written over the past year and seeing what sorts of things God has brought me through. And it’s amazing to think that just by sharing my life and thoughts that you might catch a glimpse of Father, or perhaps even drink deeply from his living water too.

So we begin the third year together.

Glad to have you along. 🙂

After my post on Evangelists this week, I got an email from a friend who brought up some points about it that made me think I might have not been as clear as I wanted to be originally, so I wrote the following e-mail back to her. Just thought I would also post that here (with her permission) for a little clarification of what I was saying originally.

I’m not sure I was completely clear in the post (I should read it again, I guess)… I didn’t mean to say sales or salesmen (or saleswomen?) 🙂 are bad in any way. Not in any way. There are some great strategies to succeed in the business world, and often they will work if applied in various settings. You can look at what one guy does, and emulate that in some way and achieve similar or greater success.

BUT… what I was pointing out was that the business world is now copying the church in their sales/marketing strategy. My point with that was that the church is not a business, should not operate like one, and it’s evidence that we’re focused on the wrong stuff when the business world is copying what we call the “church”! It was just another eye-opener to me that we’re (Christians, the Church) focusing our energy in the wrong places (in my opinion) and just forget who we are as the church – the family of God, the body of Christ. That’s not packageable or marketable.

I do understand what you’re saying though. You saw the Life of God in people, and were drawn to that. I guess God is showing me these days how much that is really Him working in me and how little I have to make the “shine” happen. It’s kinda a natural result of a personal relationship with him, not the thing to actually strive for. Like, the fruits of the spirit… sometimes we say those are things we need to work on as Christians, things to strive for, goals. But really, like it says, they are fruit of the Spirit. As he works in our life, he produces those things in us. Actually… HE is the Evangelist. 🙂

That’s obviously not to say there isn’t a place for an Evangelist… my point is that we have turned Evangelist into someone who peddles religion, instead of someone who shares the Good News. It’s hard to separate those in our current culture… we’ve only known the church as a business. But, they really are separable, and really the church has nothing to do with business, or big corporate organizations – we’ve just made it appear that way.

See, today we offer people a one-step salvation. You hear the good news (the Gospel, the Evangelion) and you receive it, and then you take possession of eternal life. It’s a product that’s for sale, for free. (Mostly free… usually at that point, you need to connect with some organization and give a lot of your personal resources to that organization’s efforts) 🙂 But after that exchange (the offer, you accepting, and then you possessing) it’s over. You’re good… on to the next client. But Jesus didn’t work that way with people. He spent a good deal of time with the same people, teaching them about the Kingdom by living life with them everyday. A very different model from what we are accustomed to. I think the evangelists early on might have done a similar model. They made disciples (Matt 28) by spending time with people, helping them see God’s Kingdom and learn to walk the rest of their life with him – a relationship with the Creator.

It’s just a different perspective I suppose. Again, not right or wrong necessarily… but I do think that the business world copying “the church” might say something about what we call “the church”.

I was listening to the Sean Hannity show tonight as I cleaned the kitchen after a big ol’ party at the Campbell home, and I thought something he said was interesting. He was talking about the “mainstream press” coverage of the Iraq war and the formation of their constitution and said, “Can you imagine the 24-hour news cycle in 1787? [They would be saying] This is taking way too long!”

(OK, so that was a poor quote, but, you get the flavor)

It was an interesting commentary on our microwave popcorn, life-in-a-high-speed download second society. We want news, we want action, we want results… and we want them now!!!

Perhaps there are actually downsides to technological advances as well?

While researching the background of the cantaloupe this week, I learned that all cantaloupes are musk melons but not all musk melons are cantaloupes.

If you’re as fascinated by that as I am… click here

🙂

I had to post this… it’s just too funny.

Lip syncing is now a crime | News.blog | CNET News.com

Last week I was chatting with a friend online who was writing up a report for some sort of governing board for their church. She has been challenged by the way we “do church” these days in ways similar to us. She is still however, the pastor of a church, so there are obviously more issues to deal with than we have at the moment. 🙂 She mentioned she was trying to present some of the things God was working in her and their church and still present a report that was close to what was expected. That was a challenge as well. When asked if I could give it a look, I was definitely curious to see how she might tackle it.

As I read the main thing that stuck out to me amongst the reports of the great stuff God was doing in and around them was the numbers. Everything was numbered. This many people were at this event, we had this many events, and so on. The emphasis was not necessarily on the quantity, but it was a strong presence throughout the report.

And this week, as I was updating this website, I noticed that sometime soon I would be writing the 500th blog. Five hundred. That’s a lot of writing. What a cool tool the internet is for people to communicate and share information and ideas. So, with that benchmark approaching, I tried to think how I would celebrate it… what could I do to commemorate the occasion? How could I make it special? What in the world would the topic of my 500th blog be?!?

How about, our fascination with numbers?

You see, David had a similar fascination. When God had brought him from the young boy who would be king, through a long, hard stretch of time where not only was he not king, he was on the lam from the current king – who wanted to kill him! But through all of that, God was faithful. God was a refuge for Dave. He had peace even when his world was insane. God began to give him visible victories. He became famous, even as a fugitive, for his victories in battle, and how God was so evidently with him.

Eventually, he became king over a very powerful nation. It seemed nothing could stop David and the entire Kingdom of Israel from doing anything they wanted. Their army was nearly invincible. David sure felt invincible. He was feeling so great about himself and his power that he had his chief army guy take a complete census of all their troops.

Well, being the good listener that he was, Joab reminded David that God had said not to take a census of the troops, but David was pretty sure it was a good idea, and made him do it anyway. Joab should have listened to his gut, as David’s pride and obsession with numbers got a good number of the Israelites were killed by a plague. Not good.

You see, God also says that we’re just like that. Men look on the outside, but God looks at the heart. Samuel said that about David, actually. (1 Sam 16:7) Everyone looked at Saul, a tall, handsome, strong man and thought, “Now, there’s a leader!” But God, looking at the world the way he does, saw scrawny little David, with the big heart and big Kingdom eyes and said, “Now that’s my leader!”

He just sees it so differently than we do.

Recently my boys and I were reading in Mark where Jesus says the yeast of the Pharisees is a dangerous thing. It’s kinda cryptic, that little section, but I think I get it. He was talking about the Kingdom, and specifically referring to what had just happened in their recent past. First he fed 5000 people with 5 loaves of bread and two fish. That fed everyone and produced 12 baskets of leftovers. Then he fed 4000 people with 7 loaves of bread and a few small fish. That fed everyone and produced 7 baskets of leftovers. As Jesus was talking with his friends in the boat about the yeast of the Pharisees, he quizzed them on these numbers. I think it was because they still didn’t get it. It’s not about the numbers.

See, those numbers don’t add up. You can’t end up with more than you had to begin with after using way more than you ever could have possibly had in the first place. That just doesn’t happen. That is the way of God’s kingdom. With God, all things are possible. Through faith in him, nothing is impossible. The numbers in the kingdom are irrelevant.

But not in our kingdom. We want to see results! We want to know what the average attendance was for the months of July and August so we can chart the per capita giving over that time table vs the budget needs and actual expenses. We need to know which programs reach the most people so we can maximize our results and streamline our efforts. There are only so many resources to go around, right?

Wrong. So completely and totally wrong.

I am not saying that we should not be wise with our money and our possessions, and yes, our time. We do in a way have limited resources, and it takes wisdom and self-discipline to manage our limitations. But God is not limited. And if he is doing something, in his Kingdom, numbers are irrelevant. Completely.

I don’t know how we could ever not look on the outside. It’s not just applicable to our church attendance, or the strength of our kings. Racism and other forms of favoritism come from our tendency to measure by the outside, visible, quantifiable things we see. The measurable world definitely exists, and is a gift from God, but it can be such a barrier to a healthy understanding of the true Kingdom. The true Kingdom incorporates these things together into a world where God is in control, and does things that are not possible. He’s more than we could possibly imagine.

I love that! That’s exciting! I don’t want a world I can completely predict! Science has always fascinated me, and I love it, but I also love that we don’t and can’t know everything. You can’t get 12 baskets of leftovers after feeding 5000 people 5 loaves of bread and 2 fish. You can’t. But God can.

The Kingdom is not quantifiable. It can’t be measured as we measure. It shouldn’t be. God doesn’t want us to or need us to. The Pharisees took pride in their achievements, and that little bit of yeast spread through the whole batch of dough and ruined their whole understanding of the kingdom. It’s not about us, or what we do, or what we have done. It’s not about quantity.

It’s not even about 500 blogs.

It’s about Him, and Him only. Focus on knowing and loving him, and all the rest falls into place.

Oh wait… I think I have heard that before…. 🙂

People who don’t know God and the way he works fuss over these things, but you know both God and how he works. Steep your life in God-reality, God-initiative, God-provisions. Don’t worry about missing out. You’ll find all your everyday human concerns will be met.

Matt 6:32-33 (MSG)

OK, I admit… I’m nervous. A friend asked me yesterday if I was, and I said, honestly, “No. I guess not.” I was not then, but last night as I told a friend we had our first appointment today with the doctor… I was nervous.

It’s been 9 months now. Seems long enough, and in many ways it is. Much of the hurt has passed with time, helped in some way by the hope we now have. But occasional sights or thoughts will trigger a twinge of pain and a memory of something hoped for.

The last time we put the doppler device on Jen’s belly, there was only silence. A heart-wrenching, lifeless silence. There were hints that we might experience that outcome, but hope can reach beyond realism. And then, hope dissapointed can produce a significant crash.

Today, we will once again listen for life. The rapid, rhythmic pulse of a newly beating heart. The signs of life this time have been only positive. Everything seems to be going as it should, which is very different from the last time down this path. And yet, I dread the moment we will try to listen for the heartbeat.

Perhaps it’s like returning to the lake where a child drowned, or the scene of the accident where your loved one was lost. I don’t mean to minimize the loss of someone you have shared life with by comparing them to someone I never met, but the hurt from our experience is at least in the same genus, if not the same species.

So, with a very strange combination of excitement and dread, we will meet with our friend and our doctor today to verify by modern medicine that the life growing inside of Jen is in fact a life and growing.

I will let you know how it goes.
===========
I saved this post till after we got back. The moment came, and I was not really at ease about it, but I knew whatever outcome, God is good and is with us.

When she first put the little thingie on Jen’s belly, we heard nothing. The doctor told us that it’s only about 50/50 at this point that we can hear a heart beat, so she tried to reassure us… but that is exactly not what I wanted to hear. I was already trying to prepare myself for how to deal with losing another baby.

But, the doctor thought perhaps we could try a different angle, so she tried.

Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh.

Wow. Relief. Peace. Joy. Excitement. Smiles. Gratitude. There’s a thriving, happy baby in there. 170 beats per minute. Very … normal.

We are relieved and excited. Taking steps all the time to really enjoy and soak in the greatness of another life God has added to our family.

Amazing.

A few months back, I wrote about our culture’s fixation with knowledge. I called it Information Exchange. Well, I have revisited those ideas again recently.

It seems everywhere I look, the more noble goal, the thing to most strive for in life is knowledge. We paint scientists and teachers and other fact-based professions as the most honorable, and wisest professions. And then there is our obsession with experts. As a society, we would much sooner trust a person who spent decades of their life in a classroom than we would a person who has been a close friend for years.

Knowledge reigns supreme.

And we see this even in the church. The place where the wisdom of the world should have no hold, but in fact it does. Our entire concept of church is much more like a university than a family. This should not be. The church is not an educational institution. Jesus did not set up 90 minute classes offered Monday, Wednesday and Friday evenings in the Temple courts. He didn’t establish the School of Jesus, or Nazareth Christian Academy. He just loved people, and revealed truth about life through stories, and through life lived with a few close friends. You’d think if knowledge were indeed supreme, Jesus might have been more intentional about it.

Now, even a quick study of the book of Proverbs, and the Psalms and even Ecclesiastes and Job (we call them the books of Wisdom) shows what an emphasis the people of God and God himself placed on knowledge. When you read those books, and the verses that specifically mention knowledge, it’s quite evident that knowledge is supreme over all else. It is better than the choicest gold, it will deliver the righteous and, knowledge and understanding come straight from the mouth of God. So, it’s quite obvious that God places a premium on knowledge.

But as I continued to read, one scripture after another about knowledge, something struck me. I have grown up in this culture, and so I first think of knowledge as the stuff of trivia – life deconstructed into lifeless fact and ingested and regurgitated by rows of mindless sponges soaking up so called “knowledge”. We have cheapened knowledge into what in Spanish is called Saber. (Yes, I know, that’s the verb…)

You see, in Spanish, there are two words for the verb, “To know.” (From whence cometh the noun, “Knowledge”.) The word saber means to know stuff. It means I know that my name is Greg. I know that I have three kids. I know that I live in Palmyra, NY. Yo sé. I have learned and can repeat to you those factoids.

The other word would also be translated “to know” but has an entirely different meaning, and a different use. Conocer means to know, and it is more intimate. It is how I know Jen, or my kids, or anything with which I am very familiar, especially people. Yo conozco a mi hjio Ian. I know my son Ian.

In English, the word looks the same. I know the Bills won this weekend. I know my son, Ian. But in spanish, if I said, “Yo conozco a mi hijo, Ian” and then said, “Yo sé mi hijo Ian” – using two words that could both be translated “to know”, I would end up saying very different things. The former would convey an familiarity with Ian… that I know him personally and intimately, that we have shared life together. The latter would be more correctly translated, “I know of my son, Ian.” It is detached, informational, intellectual knowledge. Personless. Lifeless.

And that’s exactly what we have sometimes. We have switched the words and forgotten to check the meaning. When we see that we need to strive for knowledge, when we understand that knowledge is the commodity we must seek, we are thinking the kind of knowledge that is taught in classrooms. So, we set up lectures and series of lessons and we create study guides and study Bibles and study groups and all sorts of tools to fill our minds with the “knowledge of God.” But Paul says in his first letter to the Corinthians:

“Knowledge makes arrogant, but love edifies.”
1 Cor 8:1

And later, in 1 Timothy, he states:

“[avoid] worldly and empty chatter and the opposing arguments of what is falsely called ‘knowledge'”
1 Tim 6:20

Paul knew that there were different kinds of knowledge. One that builds up and should be sought after, and one that isn’t even knowledge at all, and only serves to build up the ego of the person who possesses it.

Consider what Jesus said to a group of people who loved to learn about God and took pride in their knowledge of Him.

“You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; it is these that testify about Me; and you are unwilling to come to Me so that you may have life.”
John 5:39-40

Jesus points out to these guys (to whom I happen to give more credit than we usually do in Christian circles. It’s too easy to think of the Pharisees as ugly, grumpy old men who always walked around with a sneer on their faces, pointing and laughing at people for their spiritual inadequacies) that even though they pour through the Scriptures, and read all about the One who is life, they refuse to actually come to HIM for real life. They are satisfied with saber God rather than conocer God.

Jesus said, in probably the verse I quote the most of any that I know – John 17:3 – that eternal life is to know you, the One true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. That’s it. Not know about him… or to know all the stuff he said or did, or even to know what he wants us to do. Eternal life IS to KNOW GOD. Conocer. Not saber.

Hosea said it like this:

“For I delight in loyalty rather than sacrifice, And in the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.”
Hos 6:6

God doesn’t want us to know about him… he wants us to know him, and to be like him. We can never achieve that on our own, but as we hang out with him, and get to know him, it will be a natural outcome of our relationship with him. As we know him more (again, not about him more) we will be transformed in his likeness.

We hear at most every Christian wedding the famous cadence of love from 1 Cor 13. Love is this, love is that, love is not this, love is not that. But at the beginning of the famous part, Paul says very simply that if we have knowledge, but don’t have love, it’s worthless. (1 Cor 13:2) We say the words, but don’t heed their meaning.

I am not saying that all of our learning and information dissemination based infrastructure is devoid of love. Obviously, the heart of most every Christian leader is to impart (out of love) the knowledge that they have gained of God’s insane love for us. The motive is not in question, just the method of delivery.

Perhaps in all our desire to have “knowledge” we forgot that there are two ways to “know”.

We can know about God, or we can actually know God. We can spew facts crammed into our head in late night fact ingestion sessions, or we can breathe the familiarity that comes from daily life with our Maker. The choice seems simple to me. You get to choose how you define knowledge. You can pick what you will strive for.

So what will it be? ¿Saber, ó Conocer?