"Not all Princesses are found in Castles.

“Don’t you realize that those who do wrong will not inherit the Kingdom of God? 

Don’t fool yourselves. 

Those who indulge in sexual sin, or who worship idols, or commit adultery, or are male prostitutes, or practice homosexuality, or are thieves, or greedy people, or drunkards, or are abusive, or cheat people—none of these will inherit the Kingdom of God. 

Some of you were once like that. 

But you were cleansed; 

you were made holy; 

you were made right with God 

by calling on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.” -

1 Corinthians‬ ‭6‬:‭9‬-‭11‬

Some of you were once like that. 

What a glorious hope those words give us who’ve found our true selves in the love and redemption found through the resurrection of Jesus.

I had the privilege to attend the Phase Up celebration for the women of the Union Gospel Mission Women’s Recovery Center. It’s always a wonderful time to listen to the various women and Staff retell their journeys from 

chaos to creation. 

Lives being remade, restored, renewed, revived and released from captivity to living free.

They are often stories that move me to tears.

Witnessing miracles is a part of the Christian life 

that every believer is meant to behold. 

God at work in the mess and madness of sin, addiction, devastation, abuse and betrayal. 

It’s not a fairytale of the Disney type, it’s more like the tales of the brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Anderson, Tolkien and Homer. 

True tragedies and comedies like the ancient bards would weave, full of darkness, hell and horror woven together with hope, wisdom and transformation.

Our Gospel isn’t a sanitized cartoon that reduces everything to a happily ever after. 

Here in these halls only the brave speak, 

the bloodied tell, 

the rescued sing. 

Our songs dance around graves where Kings die and are reborn. We sit at tables of broken body and spilled blood gathered in cup and bread. 

Our hearts burn within us as our Lord appears and disappears among us. 

He enters through locked doors 

and exits in the moments of revelation. 

In our worship we return again and again to remember and to believe.

The women we celebrate are not just the ones working their way through the phases 

but also the ones who guide them. 

Wise and wounded women walking alongside them in recovery. Ladies who know, who haven’t forgotten, 

who are compelled to show up day to day no matter how individual circumstances unfold. 

Women who laugh and dance on the ragged edges of eternity. Women who weep through their smiles. 

Heal through their hugs and pray or prophesy as only Spirit filled souls can do. 

I am humbled by their faithful presence, 

their wild courage 

and the love that leads gently with strength."

Pastor Eric. 

 

  

 Life is a difficult affair, and it always asks more from us than we want to give. 

I saw this picture and immediately it arrested me. 

Here is a person charred inside and out, near the end, but still clutching to the very things that caused her agony. Who among us cannot relate? 

Hopelessness causes us to clutch the familiar and fear the unknown change. 

Our hope, the only hope, is in "God, who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist".

 The following is a quote about self-protection and the 17th century authors opinion about its morality. 

“….If the knife of the murderer is raised against thee or thine, 

and, through good providence and courage, 

thou slay him that would have slain thee, 

Thou losest not a tittle of thy integrity, having executed sudden justice; 

Still mayst thou walk among the blessed, 

though thy hands be red with blood.

 For thyself, thou art neither worse nor better; 

but thy fellows should count thee their creditor;

 

Thou hast manfully protected the right, 

and the right is stronger for thy deed.

 Also, in the rescuing of innocence, fear not to smite the ravisher.” 

Tupper 1700’s

 I like that.

 

"This is a ‘Claw & Fang’ word I gave to the men at the Union Gospel Mission chapel service.

Samson was a Nazarite from birth(Judges 13:5), part of that consecration prohibited tasting or consuming grapes and wine and touching dead things (Numbers 6:6-7).

Samson disregarded his consecration and meandered through a vineyard on his way to check out a Philistine lady he was interested in marrying (also a forbidden choice: Deut. 7:3).

He was the right man in the wrong place and was attacked by a lion (Judges 14:5-6,8-9).

“…at that moment the Spirit of the Lord came powerfully upon him, and he ripped the lion’s jaws apart with his bare hands.” -Judges 14:6

The power of the Holy Spirit enabled him to slay what was trying to kill him. 

God empowered his own hands to claim a mighty victory. 

But Samson was a compromising man who chose to run through life on the thin line edges between life and death. 

Even still God used him for his purposes.

His delusion was that consecration wasn’t necessary because he was chosen by God. 

He gave himself to doing great things for God, 

while neglecting a life of communion with God. 

Great acts without deep relationship always lead to deception and devastation.

“Later, when he returned to Timnah for the wedding, 

he turned off the path to look at the carcass of the lion. 

And he found that a swarm of bees had made some honey in the carcass. 

9 He scooped some of the honey into his hands and ate it along the way. 

He also gave some to his father and mother, and they ate it. 

But he didn’t tell them he had taken the honey from the carcass of the lion.”

There are too many men eating honey out of carcasses. 

Addictions are honey out of lions that defile our souls and bodies. 

Our lust for the honey of the dead lead us to not only defile ourselves 

but we often end up harming those who are closest to us too. 

We deceive our friends and loved ones by our uncleanness.

There is a lion stalking us all.

1 Peter 5:8 “Stay alert! Watch out for your great enemy, the devil. 

He prowls around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour.”

Half the battle against Lions is staying out of the places where Lions lurk. 

Flee the vineyards!

The other half is faithfully maintaining our covenant and consecration through communion with the Lord Jesus. 

Such a posture of life prepares us to fight through the power of the Spirit and Word.

The Lion’s claw and fang are very real battles that can’t be overcome in our own strength. Christ’s defeat of death and the devil are the basis for our hope over everything that seeks to devour us. 

God has a victory that he wants to complete through our very own hands because Jesus has overcome and we can prevail through Him.

You are destined to rip some jaws apart!" 

Pastor Eric. 

 

 

Here are the lyrics to my Grandson's new song. He was dramatically rescued by Christ last year and his soul is on fire! He writes and plays all the music and calls his band "Hell's Enemy." 

"Welcome to Sodom

Witness the depths of human depravity

They march in the streets

And celebrate every form of impurity

At war with the Lord

At war with His Church

At war with the laws of nature

And demons prance in the fires

Sparked by their burning lust

Oh

Humanity consumed by madness

Will their hunger have no end?

Famished for their own destruction

This culture worships death

Faith denied nationwide

This is spiritual suicide

Virtue is tossed aside

Wealth and pleasure are deified

Usury, treachery

State sponsored immorality

Tyranny, misery

Erasure of human dignity." 

 

 "Here’s a post I read online that describes a lot of church world issues, the church is people and people sin, so the “church hurt” moniker is kinda misleading in some sense but as a catch all word I think it fits when trying to get at the issues.

The ‘Green Leaves of Spring’ wrote:

“This is a shout-out to all the 'unwanted' Christians. The ones who turn to the the Church and find no help, no support, and only a shallow and conditional welcome - which is no welcome at all. The ones who sit through message after sermon after Bible study which is entirely irrelevant to them. The ones who mess up the church's picture-perfect image.

This is for the Side B Christians, the divorced Christians, the single parents trying so desperately to fill the role of two people. This is for the Christians who have never taken Communion, or who have - for whatever reason - never been baptized. This is for the Christians who must choose between food and rent this month, or tithing. This is for the quiet Christians, the shy ones, the ones who'd rather hide under the table than volunteer for helping with the fellowship dinner.

This is for the Christians who admit something in shame and repentance and sorrow and are drawn away from and ostracized. This is for the Christians condemned by their 'brothers' and 'sisters' for things beyond their control. This is for the fatherless children who are not orphans but abandoned by their parents, for the widows left struggling while the local assembly hall is remodeled. This is for the children shut out of the friend groups and pushed away from their peers because of their parents.

This is for the Christians who are blamed for being abused. This is for the Christians who are trying to escape abuse and finding only platitudes and closed doors. This is for Christians who are trying to learn new behavioral patterns and find only condemnation for the old ones and no help. This is for the Christians struggling with mental illness who are told to pray it away. Christians struggling substances. With addictions. With anything. For the Christians who have gone to their pastor or the elders or their peers and found no help.

This is for all the Christians who have no home and no shepherd and no church to nourish them because they are inconvenient. The Christians who mess up the optics. The members who are least in honor.

This is for anyone who has ever sought the comfort of the Church and found instead stones and snakes.

I see you and I love you. Even more than that, God sees you and loves you.”

You are not alone."

 

 The devil appeared to three monks and said to them: "If I gave you the power to change something in the past, what would you change?"

The first of them, with great apostolic fervor, replied: "I would like to prevent you from leading Adam and Eve to sin, so that humanity does not separate from God."

The second, a man full of mercy, said to him: "I will prevent you from straying from God and condemning you forever."

The third of them was the simplest and instead of answering the tempter, he knelt down, made the sign of the cross, and prayed: "Lord, deliver me from the temptation of what might have been and what was not."

The demon, screaming and trembling with pain, fled.

The other two were surprised and said to him: "Brother, why did you react like this?"

And he answered them: “First, we should never talk to the enemy.”

“Secondly, no one in the world has the power to change the past.”

“Third: Satan’s interest was not to prove our virtue, but to trap us in the past, so that we neglect the present, the only time God gives us His grace and we can cooperate with Him to fulfill His will.”

Of all the demons, the one that most holds men back and prevents them from being happy is “what could have been and was not.” The past is left to the mercy of God and the future to His providence. Only the present is in our hands. Live today loving God with all your heart.

 She said: “I’m a prophet.”

  She let that declaration hang in the air in an awkward way, 

part confrontational and part explanation.

 She told me that her slightly adversarial posture was because she was sent to people and churches to discern and speak the truth. 

She wanted to let me know that I hadn’t explained the story of Martha and Jesus in John 11 correctly in a previous chapel service.

 I asked her to explain to me her thoughts from the chapter in the Bible on her lap. 

She read its words and in reading the verses they contradicted her conclusions. 

It was an awkward pause as she realized she was bringing assumptions to the text that the actual words didn’t say, in fact the opposite was affirmed.

 She exclaimed in a tense tone 

that I was correct and had shown her she was wrong.

 But it wasn’t a submission to the truth of the text, 

it was an accusation that I had beat her.

 

I saw that she identified the exchange as 

a form of abuse, 

a take down, 

a masculine exertion of pushy superiority.

 I realized that there was very little space to discuss any differences and almost none for any form of correction no matter how purposefully soft I had tried to tiptoe through the moment.

 She then told me that I needed to use gender inclusive language and Bible translations. 

I explained that I use NIV and NLT versions that do. 

I asked her what the Bible translation she used that was in her hands. It was a ESV, a version that doesn’t.

 She then went into how she doesn’t accept that women should submit to men, 

that Jesus wasn’t a Rabbi because he told his disciples to not be called rabbis. 

I reminded her that Mary Magdalene called Jesus Rabbi at the tomb at his resurrection appearance to her. 

She said it was a scribe that put that in the Bible.

 

I realized this convo was becoming ping pong, 

so I thanked her for the admonition to be sensitive to words with a women’s audience when preaching. 

I wanted her to see that I valued her thoughts and would work to be more purposeful in preparation.

 I was becoming aware that I was on trial for crimes that someone else had committed and there were far deeper matters at work in this exchange but I wasn’t the counselor or teacher needed to do this work.

 

Then she closed her eyes and began to pray: 

which was a series of declarations that rebuked Satan 

and included the spirit of misogyny. 

Her finger pointed out into the space between us as she cocked her head, poked her finger out at a dark reality that she fully understood and was combating.

 She ceased, opened her eyes and looked at me with a slightly tense and awkward smile.

 Moments like these are difficult.

 They provoke thoughts and feelings and can often spark responses that can inflame the situation. 

They always feel precarious and very unnerving.

 I knew it was time to step back from the waters edge of this woman’s soul or we would further slip into a depth where our feet couldn’t touch. 

I knew a fierce, frenzied and frantic clash of drowning victims would result, so I gently brought the conversation to a close.

 

I’ve been prayerfully holding our encounter in my heart and mind through the evening, night and morning. 

Trying to listen. 

Trying to understand. 

I know each person I spend time with is a moment God can use to help me grow and learn. 

Though this one was like traversing a briar patch, 

I valued its complexity and difficulty. 

Humility is a grace to give each other, especially when navigating lives that have profound wounding experiences in their story. 

A wound can produce wisdom 

but it can warp our views of ourselves and others. 

We are all wounded in various ways and that’s why walking and caring for one another is so fraught with trouble. 

Life is a long learning curve and loving others doesn’t guarantee we will not misstep or misspeak but it can help us become better at being together.

 Our words matter.

 Early this morning Jesus reminded me of his words:

“Anyone with ears to hear should listen and understand.” Then he added, “Pay close attention to what you hear. The closer you listen, the more understanding you will be given—and you will receive even more.” -

Jesus (Mark‬ ‭4‬:‭23‬-‭24‬ )

Pastor Eric.