Intimacy

For those of you who read this and know me well, I hope that you are aware that the first priority of my is to love, honor and lay down my life for my bride. That is also the major thrust of my purpose and vision for my life; I want to lead young men to to godly husbands and fathers.

I have recently plunged a new depth in loving my bride. If our marriage is a remote island, I have explored and found a never before seen lagoon with a water fall and crystal blue waters. I share intimacy with her like never before. I am not talking about a sexual intimacy, but a can't get close enough to her and can't hold her tight enough and can't express to her with enough vigor, my love for her.

As I hold her and read scripture to her while she and I fade into sleep I am engulfed in a passionate intimacy with her. As we fight and one of does something stupid and gets angry, I can't wait to hold her. As we watch our children grow and laugh and smile and cry, I am ever more thankful for her. When I bury my nose in the back of her and breath her scent in deep the intimacy grows.

This is intimacy with my wife. Well, this is a tiny portion of it and my weak attempt to take an intangible truthful feeling of intimacy and put it into words. That is to say it is something that is better experienced than explained.

God has shown himself to be a great weaver of life and teller of His story. God has given us sensations in this world to explore with our senses in these bodies in order that we might experience Him rather than have someone attempt to explain Him to us. One day, I was asked to explain intimacy with God. I failed in my attempt on that day. But the last few weeks as I have discovered this new lagoon in my love and intimacy with my bride, I have found an ability to say, "that is intimacy with God"

Giving away

I was thinking today about school starting and not seeing my kids as much as I get to in the summer time. That led me to thinking about the time that I get to spend with them, playing hide and go seek, playing monsters on my bed with them, riding to school with Brii as she drives and watching them sleep. These are simple things that I get to enjoy as a parent.

Time and energy are two things that I get to choose how to spend. They are things that I have been thinking a lot about as the summer has ended. What mark am I making on this earth and in eternity? The answer to that question has very much to do with how I am spending my time and my energy.

I get to decide how to give away my time and my energy. So do you. Does how you are giving it away reflect the fact that your time and your energy are gifts from God? Does it leave a mark on this earth and in eternity? These are questions I have been asking myself and I thought that I would ask those who read this thing.

UMSL move in day

It was a great time and it was too hot either. Thanks to all those who came and helped. Drop us a message here if you were there at the UMSL day and have any questions for us.

It really was a pleasure to get to serve today.

What is a missional church?

I have always answered that question with this answer:: A missional church is a church that realizes that it has and is on a mission.

I bumped into the essay that is linked here. Click on the What is a missional church title and you will be directed to the article. Read it and let me know what you think.

Crucified

I have been crucified with Christ it is no longer I that live but Christ that lives through me.

God will you grant humility? Will you burn a passion for you in my soul? May I know and proclaim the truth of Psalm 34...I sought the Lord and he answered me he delivered me from all my fears. Those who look to him are radiant, and their faces shall never be ashamed. This poor man cried out, and the Lord heard him and saved him out of all his troubles. The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear him, and delivers them. Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good. Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him.

God will you teach me the truth of all that and allow me to own it, to embody it, to experience the truth of being encamped around and tasting and seeing the goodness of you. God I long to seek you with this degree of intensity. Make me intense for the good things that are found in you. Place in me hunger for you.

You show me poverty yet you give me yourself. You show me who I am and yet comfort me, you place in me a hunger and fill it with that satisfying you. You have changed me with your gospel. Wretched I am and accepted I am. Geez! Can I see that always and have that keep me full of humiliation and boastfulness that the God of all creation has taken me from the filth of my heart and seated me before him. God has reminded me of the fact that while I was still as the stench of an open grave full of disease and slop, his son died in that moment and willingly humiliated himself and accepted the sentence of death and aloneness and pain and mockery and separation from you. He was crucified.

I am reminded of a simple song written by some students that grew up in the ministry I led at First Baptist Ferguson. It has a simple statement in the bridge that says, "My life is not my own." It is not my own it has been given away and a life has been given back to me that causes my face to be radiant and intense contentment and surreal and tangible euphoria to simmer in my heart and brain and life. God is good, I rest and bask in my crucifixion.

This life I lead is bigger than me, this marriage I enjoy is bigger than me, this father hood is bigger than me, the church I lead is bigger than me. I am thankful that it is. Because I am humiliated by who I am and in need of Jesus, who is faithful to meet my lackings.

Your worship pastor is a celebrity and came in a dead heat with a short skirted hottie who hocchied it up for the camera. But Jeff came through and brought honor to North Church with his dancing to Sexy Back.