unbelief part 3

Could it be that the heart of a man is in his mind? Often,we hear people say things like, " I've known God in my head all my life, but now I finally know him in my heart as well." Could it be that what they are really saying is, " My cerebral cortex has long believed in God, but now my limbic system has finally gotten the message"? Every culture chooses a body part to anoint as the symbol of a persons essence. For the Hebrews it was the kidneys. For us it's the heart. But ultimately, we're all saying the same thing. Please understand that I am in no way attempting to rob the work of God, or the phenomenon of belief of its mystery. The ways of God will never be fully unraveled. He is God, and can therefore never be fully comprehended by mere mortals like us. At the same time, a basic understanding of how the brain works can help us in our quest for Christ likeness.

So, we've established that to influence a persons core beliefs, we must plunge to the depths of their identity. But don't forget, we're paralyzed, and therefore rendered incapable of saving ourselves or each other. We must pray. Only God can penetrate the many lies that have taken root in the soil of our self-understanding. We must pray fervently and with determination. Our prayer should be like that of the father in Mark 9; " I do believe, help my unbelief!" Could any prayer be more appropriate for our current predicament?

Second, we must reverently, and fearfully drive scripture into the heart of our existence. Be careful, the Word of God is alive and active. It is not applied science. Once it is implanted into your mind, it takes on a life of its own. There is no way to determine what kind of radical rearrangements it may make once it moves in. Again, it's not enough to know God's Word. What matters is whether or not we believe it. Think of God's command to Joshua. He did not tell Israel's new leader to read the Word. He told him to meditate on it. As unromantic as it may seem, there simply is no replacement for memorizing scripture and silently repeating it through the monotony of daily life. Earnest prayer and a humble, yet radical commitment to God's Word are the only means by which our crippled limbs can be rejuvenated.

So rise up Church! You have a message that brings injustice crashing to its knees. A message that breaks the chains of sin, and demolishes the walls that hold souls in isolation. The world is desperate for us to take a dose of our own medicine.

unbelief part 2

Well, it's been two weeks, and I've yet to hear an audible message from the Lord, so I thought I'd just shoot and hope for the best. Just to recap, we've established that the church has been immobilized by unbelief. Two questions remain. First, why do we believe other things more deeply than we believe the promises of God? And second, how can our paralytic predicament be rectified?

To answer our first question, we need look no further than our own childhood. Some of us in the Bible-belt may have heard the Good News at an early age. Yet we had, at that point, already come to believe other things. The world is full of direct and indirect messages about our worth, or lack there of. Since day one, we've been absorbing false messages that have convinced us to trust no one, and to be discontent with our true identities.

There is actually a science behind all of this. At the very base of the human brain, there's a tiny region known as the limbic system. This area has nothing to do with rational thought, but instead deals with emotion, motivation, and instinct. It only makes sense that those things that we've believed the longest are the things that would be buried the deepest in our brain. Essentially, our intellect can believe in God, while the deeper areas of our brain are sold on an entirely different set of ideas. Ultimately, it's those things that we believe down deep that steer us.

Those of us who were raised in Sunday School are well versed on the Word of God. We know the basic plot, and can fill-in much of the details. Unfortunately, what makes a good Bible Trivia player doesn't always make a good disciple. Again, our problem is not what we know. Our problem is what we believe. Put simply, we have ourselves a problem that bypasses our intellect, transcends our analytical capacities, and strikes at the very root of who we are . As common sense would tell us, a deep problem calls for an even deeper solution. We'll get to that next time.

unbelief part 1

One of my favorite preachers is a lady by the name of Beth Moore. You've probably heard of her. She is, in my estimation, an anointed messenger of God, and hard proof that God calls women to proclaim his Truth. I was listening to her recently when she said something peculiar. She stated that she had received an almost audible message from the Lord. I turned up the volume and inched closer to the speakers. I'm no seasoned veteran, but I've been around the block long enough to know that, as a preacher, you only get to play the "message from God" card once. I inexplicably used mine up to secure the last piece of chicken at a church potluck. But the message that Beth received was different. It went something like this......"My bride is paralyzed by unbelief."

I was stunned. The more I think about it, the more stunned I become. I had heard that the church was lazy, self-centered, irrelevant, and even ineffective. This message however, painted a much more perilous picture. You see, you can choose to be lazy, and you can choose to be self-centered, but you can't choose to be paralyzed. Lazy people don't move because they don't want to. Paralyzed people don't move because they can't. That means, that unless Mrs. Moore got her lines crossed, the church is in a predicament that she cannot remedy. Her disease runs too deep to answer to will-power.

And what is it that has robbed us of our freedom to act? Unbelief. The very thing that kept the Israelites out of the promised land, has us flat on our back on a gurney of works-righteousness. In the span of history, humans have had no greater problem than unbelief. In many ways, we have had no other problem. Every temptation that we have yielded to has been nothing more than the fruit of an unbelieving heart. Of course we believe in God on some level. We've read much of the Bible, and we can comprehend most of what we hear in sermons. The problem, is that we believe other things more deeply.

-Well that's enough ranting for now. I plan to have more on this subject next week. Hopefully I'll get a word from the Lord between now and then.

Inside-out

Poverty affords depravity no hiding place. No two-car garage to mask the depths of your discontent. No picket fence to fancy up your hatred. No garden to soften the edge of your existential anger. Poverty is stingy with her standards, and unflinching in her demands. She forces you to come clean about your dirt. She stirs you up to speak the truth without the trappings of political correctness. And so, poverty's people walk around inside-out, their broken souls on public display. Fallenness and corruption would never play hide-and-seek in the projects.

new pics of AG

Valentine's Day



She's a climber!



Easter Sunday on the island.

three rules

Have you ever heard the saying, "you gotta start somewhere"? Although I have heard this maxim many a time, I must confess that I am just now beginning to appreciate the inerrancy of such a sentiment. I recently agreed to work with a group of teens in east Asheboro, which is the location of our outreach ministry. So far we have been on two field trips with this group, each one preceded by a recitation of my three rules. The rules are as follows; no cussing, no fighting, and no making babies. Now to you, these rules may indicate my lack of faith in these young people, or an utter disregard for what most would consider good Christian behavior. But unfortunately, many of these kids have long been immersed in a violent society and have come to place a high value on the elocution of the less accepted members of the English vocabulary. Put simply, they drop the f-bomb like it was Pee Wees secret word. As far as the third rule is concerned, it's no secret that the black female has been reduced to nothing more than a sex object by our sin-sick society. What the white man started by raping his slave girls, the black man has perpetuated by forcing her to surrender her innocence to a video camera. The end result are young women with no sense of self-worth, and little willingness to say no. I say all that to say this.........I'm realizing that it's not my job as a minister to get everyone converted on day one. It's my job to nudge them closer to the Cross than they were when I found them. And for some of these bright, talented young people, keeping the three rules is a giant step toward the Cross. Some days, I'd say two outta three ain't bad.

Whitey McWhiterson

Last month, I had the unique opportunity of participating in a panel discussion as part of the Martin Luther King day festivities. I was the only white person sitting on the panel. I have never felt so white in all of my life. I wouldn't have felt any more white if I had been eating a mayonnaise sandwhich, while singing a duet with Barry Manilow.

All of that aside, it was a great opportunity to interact with the community. One of the questions that was posed to the panel was whether or not we as a society were any closer to the realization of Dr. King's dream. It wasn't until later that I thought of a really good answer to that question. Don't you hate when that happens? At first glance, the obvious answer to that question is yes. We've got more blacks in positions of power, and we've even got a brother in serious contention for the presidency. It's easier now for a black youth to get a college degree, and the days of seperate water fountains seem like ancient history. We seem to be closer to equality now than in days gone by. Yet in truth, King's dream wasn't about equality. It was about unity. When the people join together, equal rights is no longer an issue. Meanwhile history has consistently proven that seperate but equal is a myth. Unless both the population and the power is split 50/50, there will never be equality. And even if their was somehow equal power, the equality would be empty, because we would still be a people divided. King's dream wasn't about two parellel nations experiencing the same quality of life, it was about one nation sharing the same struggles and triumphs as a single, unbreakable entity. So, as long as there is a black side of town and a white side of town we are still an eternity away from realizing the beloved community that Dr. King envisioned. To say that we have arrived when we are clearly still separate is to make a mockery of his martyrdom.