Soon abortion will have air time in the UK…very sad.

Abortion Services to Be Advertised on U.K. TV

Last Tuesday and Thursday the sports world watched while basketballs potential great one -quit.  While Lebron in the spectrum of spirituality is fairly insignificant…his actions read like many of our spiritual lives…quitters.  We get tired, worn down, don’t get the answer ‘WE’ want and we give up…or at minimum we choose superficial head knowledge relationship with Him that feels safe from failure and let down.

Nothing is more Withering to a Romance, in our case a divine romance, than giving up!  So many of us have learned that our spirituality is based solely on the words from a good speaker, or the lyrics to a good song.  While is there is a depth, a hunger, a spirituality to our Christ life that is still missing.  In times a adversity those things never last…only our personal experience and relationship with Him can sustain us.

Think back to how many times we read Jesus escaped to be alone with the Father?  So frequently it is recorded several times in Scripture.  Yet most of the time, my self included, we throw up a quick prayer and hope that what we decide to do is actually the right thing.  In time that will never last and each of us will crash or wither to a place of hopelessness and failure.

I love what Henri Nouwen says “Anyone who wants to fight his demons with his own weapons is a fool.  The wisdom of the desert (the hard places) is that the confrontation with our own frightening nothingness forces us to surrender ourselves totally and unconditionally to the Lord Jesus Christ.” There’s a simplistic brilliance to this…one we already know but often don’t live out…we can never do this on our own…this life isn’t ours to own, it never has been and never should be.

What if it was in the quiet places that Jesus was calling us…In the stillness where the Holy Spirit could rest with us…building anticipation for the next step…the next moment of passionate worship and world change?

I am convinced passionate living cant be sustained, for us passion is a simple emotion, but passion born through the Holy Spirit is a life long love affair with the God of creation, His Son and Spirit that removes catastrophic failure, quitting, and Withered Romance from the equation of each of our spiritual lives.  Maybe the passionate life is one born out of stillness?

live//PC

Great blog from Brenda Renderos on crossing over…understanding where we have come from and who we are called to be…take a look.

Read Here

Steve Nash is often considered one of the quiet heros and blue collar workers of the NBA.  And yesterday he embodied all those qualities when his eye was split open, swollen nearly shut and returned to play and played with a vengeance.  Something about his heroics made me think ‘This guy knows his limitations.”  Somewhere in the past Nash has been hurt and forced himself to play through it, learning what new limits he is able to push past.  It may not have been the same injury but at some point Nash learned that he could go longer, even if he was hurt.

Mark Batterson says that the ‘greatest risk is the one we don’t take.’  I am convinced that this is true for all of us.  There are 100′s of guys in the NBA that wouldn’t have come back with an eye split open.  Was it a risk to come back? Sure he could have been hurt worse, or even played terrible.  But he took the risk. How many people can say that about each of us?  ‘They took the risk when a lesser person would have thrown in the towel?’

No question life is painful and hard at times…but have we pushed on believing that the Holy Spirit really does empower us? I am also convinced that far more often than we realize or acknowledge God walks us into places that we cant just push through or overcome on our own, situations that require a miracle and a recognizable action on His part to succeed and survive.  How many times have we given up, thrown in the towel before we reached the point of no return?  The point where God walks us to so He can have all the credit for the success of a situation.  How often do we quit when we think or realize we cant accomplish or survive something on our own? What risks dont we take because we know that it cant happen under our power?  How many missed God stories are there because we didnt know our limitations and thought we could do less than we actually could…stormed off ploped in the corner with our heads hanging and told God we knew He didnt care?  Meanwhile He is asking us to take a risk and make it about Him and not about us.

Whats our limit? Words pretty clear…if He is in it…there isnt one…take a risk…dont quit, and learn what it means to push past limitations.  Its the stuff that God sized stories are made of.

1 Cor 15:10

live//PC

The last words I shared with the team that went to Mexico this weekend, “Every time I come I am never left wondering ‘Why did I come?’  And this weekend was no exception. I have been here a lot, with hundreds of different people and you as a team from the first minute never ceased to amaze me.  You were on point at every turn looking with passion to see how you could love and serve with every moment.  I am continually blown away by your passion and commitment to love people.”

I cant help but sit and share my heart.  I cant help but realize that the heart exuded this weekend is the soul of PURE and WOL.  That heart is simple ‘To love the poor, the poor in spirit, and bring hope to hearts through the experience of Jesus.’ (Compassion for people, passion for God)  We look and dream about changing the world, then GO.

But something continues to ring in the back of my mind…‘experience is everything.’ Weve said it for weeks now…simply we cannot live lives of ‘Third Person Passion’ any more.  The reality of this weekend = people living out the story God is writing, with them to change the world and bring ‘Hope to Every Heart.’

I am convinced that we were not created to only experience God in the 4 walls of church or the confines of our Community Groups. And I am convinced that if we looked at the scriptures and literally lived them out it might look something like this…