In the shadow of death...

"if the foundations are destroyed,
    what can the righteous do?”  Psalm 11:3

January 2011: 6 killed, 11 injured,  Tucson, Arizona

October 2011: 8 killed, 1injured, Seal Beach, California

April 2012: 7 killed, 3 injured, Oakland, California

July 2012: 12 killed 58 injured, Aurora, Colorado

August 2012: 6 killed, 3 injured, Oak Creek, Wisconsin

September 2012: 6 killed, 2 injured, Minneapolis, Minnesota

October 2012: 3 killed, 4 injured, Brookfield, Wisconsin

December 2012: 27 killed, 1 injured, Newtown, Connecticut

Just 5 short months ago we witnessed the horrifying murders of 12 people, along with 58 injured in the Aurora Theater shootings.  We've been living in the "shadow of death" since that day, with a deep sense of grief, loss and anger.  People have drawn together.  Leaders across the city have been looking at ways to strengthen the fabric of our city.  Some good things have been happening...

Now we witness another horrifying and senseless tragedy.  A profound hopelessness and fear have gripped our country.

I keep wondering what would Jesus be saying?  Here are a few thoughts...

He always calls us to grieve with those who grieve.  We are walking through the valley of the shadow of death.

Secondly, He wants us to see these problems as issues of the heart.  

For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander.  Matthew 15:19

The law can bring a stopping point at some level.  But when there is no conscience and violent imaginations are fueled daily, people are ticking time bombs.

Thirdly, in the face of heart issues He calls us to pray and turn from our own sin.  

"If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land." 2 Chronicles 7:14

Fourthly, God says "do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good."  Romans 12:21

This is probably the most encouraging to me because God does not ask us to stand still, nor to being preoccupied with ourselves- we can make a difference!

Watching the news tonight I was blown away by the story of Staff Sgt. Jordan Pritchard , who found his old US Marine Corps uniform. It was in the attic.  The shooting massacre in Newtown, Connecticut is a thousand miles away, but what happened hit him hard.  So this week, Sergeant Pritchard is standing guard at Gower Elementary School where his 2 daughters attend.  

He's not getting paid.  He's not even armed.  He's a volunteer!  Pritchard said  "I'm doing this because we need hope man.  We need hope...  If you are able and capable of doing something you have the responsibility to act."  

Parents walked their kids into school, many with tears in their eyes, blown away as they thanked Pritchard for making a difference.

What a powerful picture!  We are all capable of doing something.  And as followers of Jesus we can step out of our comfort zones and overcome evil with good.

Finding Happy, p.2

What would make you happy?

A new job?   More recognition?   Winning the lottery?   Getting married?   Getting unmarried?   New car?   A thousand FB friends?   Losing weight?   Looking younger?   A baby?   A sane teenager?  Healing from an illness?   Hard questions answered?   Undoing past mistakes?   Freedom from addiction?   Finding a better addiction?   More time?   A new phone?

Some of these might help, but as one counselor said, most of these things can not make you substantially happier.

At the same time, Jesus doesn't condemn us for our desire to be happy.  He actually gave it to us.  Love this quote by Dallas Willard...

“The simple fact is that everyone does everything in order to be happy. You should never be ashamed of your desire to be happy. It is as natural as hunger.  God made you this way so that you would choose Him and His soul-satisfying pleasures in lieu of those which pass with the using and ultimately leave you empty and miserable. The alternative to resisting the passing pleasures of sin isn’t religious misery but relishing the permanent pleasures of God.”

So we've been on this journey to "find happy" in the Beatitudes of Jesus (Matthew 5:3-12).  I've been amazed at the simple and profound wisdom of Jesus.  When you think of happy as being a sense of well-being not dependent on circumstances, wow!  

This well-being is not a permanent possession of the proud.  But it is available to all who call on God from a humble heart.  

The kingdom of heaven opened (5:3)!  Comfort for sorrow (5:4)!  Inheriting the earth (5:5)!  Being satisfied with God's goodness (5:6)!  Receiving mercy (5:7)!  Seeing God (5:8)!  Being called a son or daughter of God (5:9)!

That might bring so much well-being you'd feel like dancing...

Finding happiness-- mercy or tolerance?

In the beatitudes Jesus says "Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy."  Matthew 5:7

Mercy goes so far beyond tolerance!

TOLERANCE SAYS…	MERCY SAYS…
Respect people who are different from you	Serve people who are different from you
Tolerate people who offend you	Forgive people who offend you
“Whatever makes you happy” is the ultimate goal	Happiness is a byproduct of the ultimate goal of pleasing God
God’s kindness affirms you can do whatever you want	God’s kindness leads us to repentance
My open-mindedness is the highest virtue	Laying down your life for others is the highest virtue
No one has sinned unless it really hurts someone else	All of us have sinned and desperately need God
Choose whatever path makes you happy	I care enough to engage you if your path is destructive to you or to others
“I’m ok and you’re ok”	“I’m not okay and you’re not ok, but we both are loved and have hope”
When you suffer, “that’s a bummer”	I’ll walk with you and carry your burdens
Who am I (or are you) to judge?	If we turn from sin, mercy triumphs over judgment
I’ll accept you	I’ll lay down my life for you

Why God Made the Church

I'm sharing a post from "Today in the Word" a daily devotional from Moody Bible Institute.
I was struck by God's perspective of the church (looking beyond the character's name) :-)

Ephesians 3:10-13 so that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places. This was according to the eternal purpose that he has realized in Christ Jesus our Lord,  in whom we have boldness and access with confidence through our faith in him.  So I ask you not to lose heart over what I am suffering for you, which is your glory. Greg sat with his mother by the lake and explained why he didn’t feel it was necessary to attend church. He pointed to the sun that had just started to dip below the horizon. “You won’t see anything as beautiful as that in any church,” he said. The two watched it set the sky aflame in hues of orange and yellow. “This is my church!” Greg concluded. Many people agree with Greg’s point of view. They wonder why church is such a big deal. Why not worship God alone in the woods or by the lake? Yet in today’s passage it is clear that church is important to God. He intends to put the church on display to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms. Paul uses similar language in Ephesians 1:21 and Colossians 1:16 in contexts that seem to refer to angelic powers. The church is doing more than meeting and worshiping. It functions as a cosmic trophy to the manifold wisdom and grace of God. How does this take place? This cosmic purpose of God is accomplished through Jesus Christ. The church’s existence testifies to the power and wisdom of Christ. It is not the church’s programs or its dynamic leaders that provoke the cosmic powers to marvel. It is rather the bold confidence with which any believer can approach God. Even the humblest believer enjoys the kind of direct access to God that might give the angels cause to envy. The angels are deeply interested in the Christ’s redeeming work (1 Peter 1:12). God’s big plan for the church was a source of encouragement for Paul as he suffered for the sake of the gospel. Paul’s ministry to the Gentiles was often marked by suffering. This included imprisonment, hunger, and beatings (2 Cor. 11:23–30). KEY VERSE Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments! (Romans 11:33) http://www.todayintheword.com/

Finding happy

hap·py  /ˈhapē/ 

a sense of well-being not dependent on circumstances.

Jesus said we're blessed when we're at the end our rope, because then the kingdom of heaven belongs to us.

He said we're blessed when we're deeply saddened over our own sin and the suffering of others.

He said the people who will inherit the earth are the ones who are meek-- those who typify strength under control. (paraphrasing Matthew 5:3-5)

So how does all that line up with recent events?  Hurricane Sandy?  The first 2 definitely apply.  The election?  Any of them could apply depending on where you sit...

I came across an article stating the determining factors for happiness are 1) your level of emotional maturity, and 2) your ability to be present in the moment. That rings pretty true when you run it through the filter of who Jesus is and what He taught.

When things go the way you want-- of course you're happy.  But when they don't what happens?  Do you throw in the towel?  Do you choke somebody with the towel? 

Or do you pray and seek to hear what Jesus is saying through His Word, the Bible? We can twist Bible verses to affirm throwing in the towel (or even choking others).

Think about what one guy said when he was imprisoned for his faith, sitting in a cold dark cell, writing to followers of Jesus who were being severely persecuted by the State (Rome), by people from their religious heritage (Judaism) and by a proliferation of false teachers:

 

Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.  And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Philippians 4:4-7

That's challenging and encouraging, and probably a good prescription: "Take several times a day as needed..."

Reflecting on worship

This morning I was reading and singing Psalm 103.

Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name!  Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits, who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the pit, who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy, who satisfies you with good so that your youth is renewed like the eagle's. Psalm 103:1-5

So much to be thankful for-- forgiveness, healing, rescue, love, mercy, goodness, renewal...

Somehow worship can degenerate into the highest goal being self-expression and catharsis.  Catharsis can be good, but when we spend all our time on "our soul" we can miss the very avenue for restoration.  

It is like going to the doctor's office and sitting in the waiting room rehearsing all your problems.  Until you "see the doctor" there is no real help (and everybody wonders why you're talking to yourself!).  God promises to restore our souls when we see Him (seeking, looking, praising).

The following is along the same lines from an earlier post (Sept 9, 2011) "About God and not about me"

Maybe self-expression dominates today because so many worship songs are marked more by “How I’m feeling” than by Adoration.? 

Adoration is "the intense admiration culminating in reverence and worship, together with the outward acts and attitudes which accompany such reverence." (International Standard Bible Encyclopedia)

Richard Schmidt in his book “Glorious Companions” points to Isaac Watts’ ‘When I Survey the Wondrous Cross’ as the first English hymn written in the first person. He says “Many at the time considered it vain because it called attention to the author rather than focusing entirely upon God.” 

Wow, seriously!?! Things have changed...

Schmidt goes on to describe Charles Wesley’s hymns (also in the 1700’s) as being “marked by their warm, personal tone.” That was awesome! A positive transformative shift was occurring, leading the worshiper out of dry formality.

Fast forward and it seems our worship is in need of a radical movement out of self-absorption into revelation of God’s greatness.

We could say the same thing as they did in their critique in the 1700’s, not because the word “I” is used a handful of times but because the rest of the words are mostly about us. The same song would more typically be “When I survey my desperate heart, I’m feeling dry and needing You…” Can we keep the warmth and change the focus?

Can we write more songs with authentic lyrics from the heart, but primarily God-focused? Can we write songs that describe God with vocabulary beyond “amazing,” “wonderful” and “awesome”? The Bible is full of God’s self-revelation, anything but boring or redundant...

There are encouraging signs... a movement is stirring among artists to rework hymns keeping the rich language but adjusting the music. Some are writing new songs along these lines of being more God-focused. Greg Russell (our worship pastor) and I share this burden and have been talking with worship leaders and songwriters who are pondering the same stuff. We're charting a course in this direction, looking to join others in training a new generation of worship leaders.

Surely God is up to something.

Margin, overload and invitation

This past week I was preparing for our 101 class, reading back through "organizing our lives (and our time) around the kingdom of God."

"Margin is the gap between rest and exhaustion, the space between breathing freely and suffocating.  Margin is the opposite of overload.  If we are overloaded, we have no margin.  If however, we are careful to avoid overloading, margin reappears."  Dr Richard Swenson, Margin

It hit me, "Wow, I remember that.  That makes sense.  Oh, that's what I'm experiencing right now, lack of margin..."

Think margin on the side of a page.  Margin is the space in our lives that God uses to bring renewal and refreshing.  Back in the day one aspect of margin was called "Sabbath" and God was quite serious about our need for it.  

Rest 1/7 of a week = happy.  

Anything less isn't good.  The religious people got pretty uptight about just how it was observed and Jesus clarified (quite remarkably) "the Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath."  In other words it is a gift given by God, just for us.  And it wasn't meant to be something to beat people up with or argue over what particular day it occurs on.  I think Jesus would be pretty happy if we observed  one of our seven days as a day of rest, more than whether we tried super hard to make sure it was Saturday (or Sunday).

Growing up in Kansas they had what was called the "blue law"  (Yep, back when we were riding horses to school).  Stores would close down on Sundays because of the blue law.  What a frustrating thing when you were trying to get stuff for Sunday dinner.  Thankfully it got repealed. 

Anyway, I've studied, taught and encouraged people re: margin and a day of rest. I've been pretty strong in guarding a day of rest in my own life.  But just this past week I realized the stress I was feeling was directly connected with lack of margin. It didn't produce a feeling of guilt.  Actually it felt like an invitation; to pause.  And permission to enjoy Jesus.  Pretty cool!

I'm excited to see what is in store as we explore the teaching of Jesus together-- this week we begin our new series on "finding happy" -- a study in the Beatitudes.  

For God so loved the world...

I've undergone a transformation of sorts in the last 15 years in my understanding of "For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son..."   For too long I embraced a fear-based, self-protective faith.  It was easy to know who you're with by identifying who you weren't with.  Sadly, I discovered Jesus encountered the same thing, and I was acting like the group He had the most problems with (the legalistic, religious group).

It was a reawakening to God's mercy in my own life and then seeing others through the same lens.  For example, when Jesus said blessed are the poor in spirit, those who mourn, the meek, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, and the persecuted -- He was saying in essence "all you people who feel on the outside, God says you're blessed, happy and to be envied!  You can be on the inside in His kingdom!  You may not be rich, happy, powerful or satisfied, but God wants to hang out with you!"

This hit home for me a few years ago on a trip to the Middle East.  I got to meet some of the most amazing people, and that included Christians, Jews and Muslims.
And BTW, check out this amazing site if you're interested in how "For God so loved the world" translates into Middle East issues.

www.MiddleEastExperience.com

A few of our friends are editors and bloggers, including Carl Medearis and Sami Awad.  Really cool and thought-provoking content.

And of course "For God so loved the world" also includes people back home. Maybe you, me, and a LOT MORE people who feel on the outside...

For judgment is without mercy to the one who has shown no mercy. Mercy triumphs over judgment.  James 2:13 NKJV

Build your own app, p. 4

After a little delay, here is the 4th offering by Chandos in his "build your own app" series.  Hope this is helpful to all the adventurous tech-savvy-developer types!  You can go to Chandos' blog to see all four posts together    http://chandos-shv.blogspot.com/

BTW, our new SHV app is almost complete and it looks awesome!  Can't wait to show you...

Guest blogger Chandos

Blog Entry 4

Whoops! Six weeks without an update! I'm sure you're all waiting with baited breath.

Apologies!

As I said last time, I've only done all of this iPhone coding business by the grace of God.  To finish my God and Google story....

God taught me some important things about myself.  Like I said before, I tend to rely on me and my thoughts, hopes, rationale, and sometimes luck to get me through issues.  And not every issue, but ones where I sometimes forget that God can still be involved.  Like technology. I tend to forget that God is absolute, and present everywhere...why wouldn't/couldn't He help me with tech stuff.

While I searched and searched for an answer, I got more and more frustrated.  And I kid you not...in a pathetic moment of desperation, I said...fine God...You're going to have to help me find this answer.

No less than 2 minutes later, I found a video tutorial on YouTube that fit exactly what I need.

God showed up...and all I did was ask.

Can God influence my Googling? It sure seems like it.  While there may have not been some magical rearranging of results, or a page created out of thin air, He used the gifts He's already given me, along with a heaping of guidance, to lead me where I needed to go.

I say it was a "pathetic moment" only because why didn't I ask God for help in the first place!?!?!?!? I've got to ditch the "Look-at-what-I-did" attitude, and turn it into a "Look-at-what-God-did-and-let-me-help-with" attitude.  What amazing things would God do in this world if we all did that!?

All in all, it was a great reminder that I serve a brilliant God. Who never seems to mind humbling me.


Now, for the rest of this post, let's follow up with what I promised.

The Deep End.....

Scary stuff, especially if you don't know how to swim in the Objective C.  Ha, a programming pun.

Terrible, I know, but true.

When I started this project, I knew next to nothing about coding.  Now, I know slightly more, but still not enough to be considered a programmer proper.

As far as swimming in the deep end, I'll teach you to doggie paddle, or maybe just how to float on your back.

If we pick up where we left off, we looked at what the code looks like in Xcode.  To save you some worries and headache right of the bat, learn to overlook the green text.

Now don't get me wrong.  I don't mean ignore it, just overlook it.

Xcode is smart.  Smarter than me when it comes to coding.  The green merely indicates that Apple, or another developer, has left you some notes.  By including "//" on any line, you start a comment.  This can be extremely helpful for remembering what you did, especially if you don't know what the code really says.  In the SHV app, I left myself several notes so as to not get lost in my own document.

Phew, one color down, more to go, which I'll knock out in a list.

Pink - more or less the command taking place
Purple - the name of something, somewhere
Slightly different green from the comments - another type of naming color
Red - something in quotations that is not considered part of the code
Black - other text
Brown - the import section of your files

Quite the list, and I'm sure I'm missing a few others, but that should be a good start.  And I'm probably not entirely technically correct, but hey, I'm not a coding expert. And I'm hoping that I put stuff in lay terms that are easy enough to understand.

Enough with colors, right?

Let's talk about what makes up an iOS app.

Basically, you have three types of files in every app.  You have a .h file, a .m file, and a .xib file.

The .h file is your header file. "Why do I need a header file?" you ask...

The header file can be used as a reusable file. For example, in the SHV app, I needed to get some information from an XML file. (An XML file is the type of file used for a podcast or sometimes a blog) So I created a header file that can be referenced by any of my other files. That way, if the SHV app were to incorporate multiple podcasts, I wouldn't have to have multiple header files.  I just have the one, that could be referenced multiple times.  For a more detailed look, read BORING, check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Header_file.

Confused yet?  Good...'cause so was I. :)

The .m file is your implementation file. The implementation file is where the majority of the code goes. Same as before...for more reading, check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Implementation_file.

The .xib file, or sometimes referred to as a nib file, is my favorite part.  To me, it's the easiest to understand.  It's your interface file.  Meaning, it's how your app, or that particular page of your app, will look.  If you think of an iPhone app like a website, the .xib file is what the website actually looks like and  the .h and .m files are the code running the whole thing. You can find out more about .xib files here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nib_file.

Xcode does a fantastic job with the .xib files.  For example:





















This is what your .xib file looks like, based on the template we used last time. Neat! It looks just like an iPhone screen.

This is what is essentially your artist's palette, or what objects you can put on your .xib.

If you want to get crazy, drag a few objects over to the .xib window.  See what happens.  Next time, we'll look at setting things up to match your previously designed app.

And I won't make it 6 weeks till then....promise!