The Relational Mission

A Journal for When You Return Where are you? You left You wanted more I guess I am confused Everyday I ask How could I have loved you more? What could I have done differently? What more could I promise? When you first left, I was so angry At the voices At the temptations At the lure of "more" Then I was depressed Thoughts of you consumed my every day No one understood me They'd say "move on. He is getting what he deserves." But they don't know what it means to be a father. At least a real one. I promised I don't care what they think of me When travelers pass through I ask if they've seen you Once one had, but he just lowered his head. I wept For how long I'm unsure. What's that? Can it be you? Tears cloud my vision. I'll go and see. I've taken this walk so often and each time I meet someone else But I can't give up hope If it happens to be you, my friends will beat you for what you did I must pro...

The one place in our modern experience where there is some reference to covenant is marriage. In the ancient world covenants were established through official ceremonies, verbal commitments [isert from Pauls notes]. The same is true of marriage. The personal promises made by the covenant partners are made for the sake of the other person not as a contract for the sake of self-preservation. In God's kingdom, the king is not looking for servants or subjects who abide by his rules. He is seeking a bride who will enter into his love and live by his ways. God created the world to walk with his covenant partners. After the breaking of covenant, he has sought restoration of that relationship as a husband seeks his love. This is no more clearly articulated than in the book of Hosea. There God instructs Hosea to take a prostitute as his wife, symbolizing the faithlessness of Israel. In the book we see how Gomer returns to her fallen ways and rejects Hosea's love but Hosea goes and gets ...

John 3:16: by far the most famous passage of scripture in the Bible. It was the first one I memorized simply because I heard so many sermons quoting it. Up until a few years ago, there were those infamous banners that seemed to show up in the end zone of every NFL football game. This scripture contains in a nutshell the entire Gospel message and it reveals the heart of God toward us. Read it again: "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life." --John 3:16 However I think I became overexposed to this verse that I failed to get what it is saying. As I have reflected on how I viewed God's attitude toward me, I did not picture him as looking upon me in a way that reflected the meaning of this passage. In some ways I heard this verse as saying something like this: "For God was so exasperated with the world because we messed things up so much that he sent his Son as a last ditch effort ...

More than anything else, my view of God's love has been transformed by the experience of being a father. Being a father is by far the hardest thing I've ever done, but it is also the most rewarding. It is wild to experience such deep things for my kids. It blows my mind how I willingly give my life up for theirs in little ways every day. While waiting for pediatric check up, I read that the average child will have their diaper changed about 3700 times. This means that Shawna and I will have changed about 15000 diapers before it is said and done. Before our first child was born, I honestly never changed a diaper. But these kids belong to me. They are mind and I am theirs. All kids are special, but mine are different, at least to me. I wonder if this is how God sees me? Since becoming a father--I'm still quite a novice at this--I've recorded experiences with my children that have revealed to me the truth about God's love. I have used the following words of Jesus as ...

When we think about the church we often think about it in functional terms. We ask questions about what church is for, what it does for people and what purpose it has. It is a place or an activity where we get something or we go and do something. In discussions about the church tend to talk about axiological questions, i.e. values, priorities, and activities which are important for accomplishing a certain set of goals. There is an ontological assumption behind the axiological focus that rarely gets addressed. Most of our talk is about what the church does for us as individuals. Ontologically, we define ourselves as individuals so we talk about church through the lens of the individualistic way of being. We think of life as individualistly lived, and the church is an organization that promotes various ways following Jesus as individuals. The church is therefore defined ontologically as being an entity, whether small and organic or large and organziational, that serves as source of l...

I wonder if there is a back door way of peaking into our view of God. Is it possible that the way we treat others is a reflection of how we perceive God treating us? I know that there are many different reasons that we act the way we do and relate to people the way we do, but I wonder if we can see inside our hearts through our actions. For instance, the Bible tells us that we are to love one another, to consider others more important than ourselves, to encourage one another, to support one another, etc. These are the ethical teachings that describe how we are to act as God's children. Now if we start with ethics, then the focus is on our efforts, one our obedience, on our submission to these commands. But the fact is that I can do all of these things and not do them out of love. I can do them out of a sense of duty, out of a sense of wanting a reward in heaven or out of a sense of looking for God's approval. In other words, I can make obedience about performing the right act...

If I speak in human or angelic tongues, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body [to hardship] that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing. --1 Corinthians 13:1-3 My kids have a worship CD that we play in the car. Almost everyone of the 16 sons is about God's love, God's goodness, or God's nearness to us. It’s cool to see our six- and four-year-old boys sing about God’s love for them. This made me think about how we sang "Jesus Loves Me” when I was their age. But I realized something else: from what I remember about church, we tended to only sing this song it as a part of kids' meetings or events. We didn't sing about such emotional things with the adults. The songs there were about much more serious...

And now these three remain : faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love. --1 Corinthians 13:13 The experience of love in this world will always be tainted with perceptions of it that are less than love. We are surrounded by distorted, weak, and even perverted ways of love. God's kind of love is not simply a concept that we analyze, define, and then simply live. Love is a way of life that we discover how to live on a journey of living with and relating to God and others. In some ways it is like a good story, a love story, the we listen to, ponder, talk about and even participate in. It is one story that "remains" actually the greatest story of all. But it is God's story and to learn this love, we have to learn it his way. Let me illustrate how we learn this story from the my childhood growing up on a farm. In theory someone could learn how to run a farm by reading books, listening to experienced farmers or maybe even getting a degree in agriculture....

While we use the one word "love" to mean a wide array of emotions, actions and vague notions, the Greek language has four such words that allow for much more specific and nuanced usage. And while any reference to a foreign language might seem tedious or challenging, this is one case where relying on about another language actually makes things simpler. The Greek of the New Testament speaks of love in a very specific and unique way, especially when you consider the various ways these four words were used in the first century culture. Let's look at these four words. 1. Storge-This is a word that refers to the fondness or affection we might have for something because we have become familiar with the other and it brings value to us. For instance, I "love" baseball. I "love" good Mexican food. I "love" to read a good book or watch a great movie. We are fond of these things because we are comfortable with them or familiar with their characteri...

Love in the English language has many uses. This one word is used describe such things as affection for a sporting team, a one night stand, feelings teenagers have a school dance, the desire for our favorite food, and of course the devotion found within a marriage (at least some of them). When I was a teenager the band Chicago sang of love, or at least a form of it, and their words shaped many minds and hearts about that topic. Their song "Will You Still Love Me" spoke of feelings of destiny, the longing to be with another "for the rest of my life," and the inability to "go on" if this destiny did not transpire. The topic of love is everywhere in our culture. There are those who got it, those who run from it, those who long for it and those who wish it would be different than what they actually have. This word falls off our lips so easily, but their is probably no other word in the English languagee that actually represent a concept that is less understo...