“As he drew near to the gate of the town, behold, a man who had died was being carried out, the only son of his mother, and she was a widow, and a considerable crowd from the town was with her. And when the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her and said to her, “Do not weep.”” -Luke‬ ‭7‬:‭12‬-‭13‬

"In over 30 years of preaching I’ve learned to not trust emotions as evidence of true spiritual birth, it’s only the water breaking.

Tears might be the sign that something living is about to emerge,    but it’s not a guarantee. Only time will tell if a decision has been made in the will, not just the emotions. Has a choice been made reflecting being chosen? “Many are called, but few are chosen.” (Matt. 22:14).

I want to see people mobilized to action, not just moved by the message. Tears are often part of the process, but I’m looking for decisions born of serious revelation and contemplation.

Moments of transformation happen in the churning of the mind, will and emotions. When new creation is happening, the Spirit hovers over the chaos of the deep. It’s chaotic order and purposed separation is taking place between darkness and light. Old and new Creation emerges with angels singing and babies crying.

““Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding. when the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy?” -Job‬ ‭38‬:‭4‬, ‭7‬

I often witness singing and weeping as death loses its grip and resurrection life cracks open cold, dead souls.

Last night after preaching at a UGM chapel I had a woman crumble into my shoulder in sobs of uncontrollable weeping. She tried desperately to hold it all back but was powerless to constrain the emotions. She was embarrassed as her survival mode protections failed and the vulnerable heart inside silently screamed for breath. The soul must breathe and hard living is a suffocating decent. Souls being brought up from the dark depths often grasp light and life like the drowning. She clung to me like a life preserver cast into a tempestuous sea. I held her as her soul wretched out the turmoil.

Only Jesus can tell a woman that her time of weeping has come to an end. He alone holds the power to give life. Like a midwife we tend the transitions, but everything hangs in the balance.

These are the moments of chaos where death and life are difficult to discern. Are tears, gasps, grip, pain, and the tearing asunder signs of life being born or death roaring like a dragon!?!

I do not know, but in such moments I speak to God in prayer, my lips proclaim truth, my spirit cries in groans and faith strains into the fire seeking the evidence of life struggling to emerge.

It is apocalyptic.

The tears do not tell the ultimate truth, only time will confirm the victory or victim of these battles taking place on the edges of eternity."

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By Eric Blauer ·  

My views of Grace have changed measurably over the years.

Each year they get wider and more tolerant.

Grace really became far wider when I went to work for Adult and Teen Challenge, the Christian drug and alcohol recovery program.

It was all new to me, and to be honest, I saw many men,

that up till then I would have written off,

and I truly felt they would have had no hope.

Oh but I saw the God of all hope steal in and swoop up lost and broken hearts, work so tenderly with them,

overlooking glaring shortcomings

but always pressing to the goal of wholeness.

Lives that staggered, swayed and stumbled seeking God,

with behaviors that repelled me

and over and over I saw men tread the grace of God underfoot.

Relapses so virulent and outrageous I wrote them off as reprobate!

But they would come

dragging back,

bodies wasted,

minds blurred,

actions detestable,

and yet,

God's arm was outstretched still.

How can His grace be so big!!!!!

That being said, at no time were they comfortable in their sin, far from it.

To the altar they would fly and pour out tears of repentance,

vowing to walk obediently. Of course, they could not,

but God patiently and tenderly raised them back up towards the goal of holiness and wholeness,

never compromising the goal,

never accepting the sin,

but always forgiving the sin that was hated and turned from,

though they returned often to their own vomit.

If we seek comfort in our sin we will pay a heavy price,

but if we seek,

ever so feebly,

to renounce our sin, Grace will be there no matter how much we falter.

We may look like a pin-ball bouncing, ricocheting and falling against the walls, but we will find our way home if the walls are

on the "Narrow Path" that leads to life.

I like to tease. 

I like to approach certain strangers that are near my age, with a smile and some presumptuous humor.  I treat them as though we are familiar and free to be open. 

Now this is after assessing what I think they were like fifty years ago.  Sometimes it backfires, but not often. 

Old people like to talk to old people. LOL 

Some time back I did so with a checker at the grocery store. She is very small in stature, and she looks like she could either be Amish or a wild sixties child. 

I was intrigued. 

So, I opened a conversation and she said she was a very good girl, never got caught up in the promiscuous spirit of the sixties, but she admitted she thought she missed a lot, and wished she would have been freer. 

I, on the other hand, wish I had been better, so I tried to make that point in the short time I had to chat with her. That was about three months ago. 

Today, I found myself in her checker line again so I opened with, 

“So, how is my nearly Amish checker today?” 

She had a perplexed look on her face so I reminded her of our previous conversation, which she remembered and reiterated her lamentations for being “too good.”

 She then asked me what I was like in High School? 

I gave her a brief account of my father’s death when I was a young teen and how my life spiraled down after that until I was 23. 

She remarked, “It’s good you recovered so quickly, my daughter is thirty and has struggled with addiction ever since her father committed suicide when she was seven.”

I have a Great Granddaughter that is seven...... so her news shocked me and I felt a hot flash bolt through my blood, and every hair on my body raised, as my heart broke for her.

The woman in line behind me was patient so I rushed as I continued to give her some love and consolation. 

I’m not certain what I will do now, but I pray the Lord gives me insight what my next step should be. 

As I was about to leave, the woman behind me, about thirty, confided that her father died three years ago from lung cancer. 

Again, we had such a limited time to chat, but I think all three of our hearts are better for those short candid moments. 

 

“Every sin is like a sword in a penitent man’s bosom, and therefore whilst confessions are in his mouth,
you shall find
either tears in his eyes
or sorrow in his heart.

And indeed, true confession of sin is many times rather a voice of mourning
than a voice of words.

Sometimes a penitent man’s eyes will in some sort tell what his tongue cannot utter.

Many times, the penitent is better at weeping than he is at speaking. Ps.39:12

Penitent tears are undeniable ambassadors,
and they never return from the throne of grace
without an answer of grace.

Tears are a kind of silent prayers,
which though they say nothing,
yet they obtain pardon;
they prevail for mercy,
and they carry the day with God,
as you may see in that great and clear instance of Peter.
He said nothing,
he confessed nothing that we read of,
but he ‘went out and wept bitterly’,
and obtained mercy.”

Thomas Brooks.

 

Living Beyond The Wall

Our obligation to the Barbarians

"Sometimes when I am present at the various shelters that I offer pastoral presence within, I think about how the Apostle Paul must of felt in his unfolding missionary work when he said: “I am obligated both to the Greeks and to the barbarians, both to the wise and to the foolish.” -Romans 1:14

The word barbarian is a deep and difficult word that captures in my mind all that is beyond one’s known experience, that dangerous, dark and mysterious world where some people live. 

They live beyond the wall. 

Here is civilized, there is uncivilized. Here are the educated, there are ignorant. (Interesting how we tend to put ourselves in the more flattering category when we hear such categories). 

Paul felt an obligation to be among the barbarians. To cross the wall, go to the edges, be among those who he didn't understand. To expose himself to many situations where he would be uncomfortable, perplexed, conflicted, shocked, disturbed, disgusted, astounded, bewildered, touched, convicted, surprised and humbled. 

Living beyond the walls does this. 

Sitting at tables with those who eat differently than you do is a challenging experience. Sitting with people who have chosen sexual partners different from you is difficult. Trying to explain a new God to people who have other gods is hard. 

But the love of God compels us (2 Cor. 5:14). 

I was having lunch with a few ladies and their children and one was wearing a T-shirt that said boldly: “Half Hood, Half Holy: that means pray with me, don’t play with me.” 

I sat there looking at her smiling face while wrestling her giggling son who was spitting out his food, squirming and inciting the other knee-bitters at the table to mount their own mother rebellions. She was honest about who she was, living out loud, unashamed, a bit in your face, but coy. Not afraid to own the truth of who she was in this moment, in transition and change. She is full of complexities that don’t always make it easy for anyone who is black and white. I admired her spunk and told her I loved her shirt and would wear it on a Sunday. She laughed with a look of surprise. 

It’s in moments like these when my admiration for the raw truth telling, the nerve and pluck of the 9th round beatdowns who get back up grows. I look at myself and wonder who is really the civilized and uncivilized living among us…and within us.  

I ordered my t-shirt today." 

Pastor Eric.  

 My son shared this quote by Spurgeon 7 years ago, it is so good!!!

"I passed by a preacher, one evening, who was addressing certain villagers in the most terrific strains.

He was telling them, "The Lord is coming! The Lord is coming! You will all be destroyed!"

There was plenty of sound,
though I fear not an excess of sense—

and there was a savor of delirious prophecy
which went beyond the Scriptures
into personal visions and figments of the man's own brain!

I wondered what he hoped to do.
The people were standing at their doors, smoking their pipes and taking it in as a curious kind of display.

Perhaps better that he should rage like a sea in a storm than give the people no warning
and yet I do not suppose any good could come of his shouts.

Had he spoken gently to them,
one by one,
concerning faith in God, and had he gone to their doors and spoken of the great love of Jesus Christ—
perhaps there would have been some result.

But one would not look for good fruit from the boisterous shouts of nonsense!

And yet there are many who feel that if a man shouts and perspires, something must be effected." -
Charles Spurgeon


Deuteronomy 32:2
My doctrine shall drop as the rain,
my speech shall distill as the dew,
as the small rain upon the tender herb,
and as the showers upon the grass:

 

 "For the Christian, in his own household he is to be the guide and the support of his children; and out of his household he is still to be the father, 

That is, the guide and support of the weak and the poor; not merely of the meritoriously weak and the innocently poor, but of the guiltily and punishably poor; of the person that ought to have known better -- of the poor who ought to be ashamed of themselves. 

It is nothing to give a pension and cottage to the widow who has lost her son; it is nothing to give food and medicine to the workman who has broken his arm, or the decrepit woman wasting in sickness.  

But it is something to use your time and strength to war with the waywardness and thoughtlessness of mankind..." 

John Ruskin. 

  "You know how often it is difficult to be wisely charitable, to do good without multiplying the sources of evil. 

You know that to give alms is nothing unless you give thought also; and that therefore it is written, not, "blessed is he that feedeth the poor," but, "blessed is he that considereth the poor." 

And you know that a little thought and a little kindness are often worth more than a great deal of money." 

John Ruskin.  

 Where does Jesus lead?

Christ guides us into the opened hearts of those in need.

I say ‘opened’ and not open, because the tyranny of living may have

closed off the heart,

shut down the trust,

and sealed the innermost thoughts of a wounded soul.

But the “gates of hell” will not prevail when the Holy Spirit breathes and connects us with downtrodden.

Jesus warms the cold, ruptured heart;

glimmers of hope begin to rise and Christ grants a trust where the

‘Confessional work of the Spirit’

opens wide the tomb of terrors,

and tears begin to fall,

silence is broken,

and words, which may have been hidden for a lifetime, begin to flow.

The healing balm of Christ’s presence, brings to the downcast a foretaste of healing, the anticipation of liberty from sorrows past and present.

There is a holy quiet as knitted hearts realize

“It is God who is at work in you, both to desire and to work for His good pleasure”

which is the liberation of another child of His.

Terrible as an Army with Banners

Being the Church militant

"Don’t be surprised if the wolves bite when you’re stealing their prey. The enemy doesn’t surrender his captives easily. Kingdom advance is a dirty street fight not an evangelical excursion of conscience-soothing dogoodersim.

Matthew 5:10-12

“You’re blessed when your commitment to God provokes persecution. The persecution drives you even deeper into God’s kingdom.

“Not only that—count yourselves blessed every time people put you down or throw you out or speak lies about you to discredit me. What it means is that the truth is too close for comfort and they are uncomfortable. You can be glad when that happens—give a cheer, even!—for though they don’t like it, I do! And all heaven applauds.

And know that you are in good company. My prophets and witnesses have always gotten into this kind of trouble.”

Jesus’s first sermon ended with folks trying to throw him off a cliff.

“When they heard this, the people in the synagogue were furious. Jumping up, they mobbed him and forced him to the edge of the hill on which the town was built. They intended to push him over the cliff, -Luke 4:28-29

Maybe our sermons are too soft?

Devils don’t dance, they kill and outreach isn’t a mere act of mercy, it’s an act of war. We are stepping into a very real battle of life and death with an enemy who is on the prowl to devour.

The Church is a Bride dressed for battle.

“Who is this, arising like the dawn, as fair as the moon, as bright as the sun, and terrible as an army with billowing banners?” -Song of Songs 6:10

This is also why outreach is abandoned, neglected, skipped or personalized out of an actual accountable and measurable activity.

Storming beaches, busting strongholds and crossing enemy lines isn’t just rhetoric for faster worship songs, it's the very mission of God.

It’s why Jesus bled, martyrs burn and Heaven is in a continual building project for more mansions."

Pastor Eric.

  

 "All rivers, small or large, agree in one character; they like to lean a little on one side; they cannot bear to have their channels deepest in the middle, but will always, if they can, have one bank to sun themselves upon, and another to get cool under; one shingly shore to play over, where they may be shallow, and foolish, and childlike; and another steep shore, under which they can pause and purify themselves, and get their strength of waves fully together for due occasions. 

Rivers in this way are just like wise men, who keep one side of their life for play, and another for work; and can be brilliant, and chattering, and transparent when they are at ease, and yet take deep counsel on the other side when they set themselves to the main purpose." 

John Ruskin.