This weekend we launched into a series that is specifically about living through this economic situation. It’s a little more than “living through.” It’s more like how do we follow Jesus in & through this.

I said when in the message that we are in a “Kairos” as a people. As opposed to the Greek work “Chronos” which is usually translated “time” which refers to the linier passing of time, the word “kiaros” is more like “moment” or even “opportunity”. For example in Ephesians 5:16 you read this in the NASB translation:
… Making the most of your time, for the days are evil.
Sounds like a statement on time management. The Greek looks like this. Exagoragoadzomenoi ton kairon. – agora was the marketplace – idea is to buy up the opportunities, the moments.

Moments can be precipitated by positive developments or by negative ones. This crisis represents one. All that to say, a few months ago I felt led to this series. We are facing an opportunity. An opportunity for us to ask hard questions about where our hope is. It’s a chance to wonder if maybe we have it all wrong. (which is the basic idea of the great book Freakonomics – from which I’ve adapted our series title).

WHAT A GREAT SUPER BOWL!

Unlike many other Charger people, I don’t hate the Colts. What’s not to like about them. Payton is all that you would hope for in a guy that is pretty much the face of the league. The coaches are people of character. The owner thanks and glorifies God every time there is a mic in his face. Be that as it may, how can you not LOVE THE SAINTS. We had a fun mix of people at hour house watching the game.

• I loved the shot of Drew Brees with his son with the confetti falling
• It was the shortest SB I can remember – a well played game. It truly was the best 2 teams in the NFL
• Usually the schmaltzy human-interest angles of the game get annoying. But in this case, the connection with a city uniquely devastated was real and wonderful.
It was a great weekend.

I was having lunch with a friend a while back. It was in my Fresno days. He was a fellow youth ministry veteran and we were having a great lunch. We got on the topic of various books and he said something I won’t soon forget (as proved by the fact I remember it even right now, 10 years later): “One of the things I’ll regret at the end of my life is that I haven’t read more.”

I think I agree! So every turn of the year, I always plan to read more & watch a little less TV. I hope you are with me. I know that we are all a little different. I even said in last weekend’s message at Journey that some of us love to read & some of us just don’t. For some of us it’s a chore. For some it’s a delight. For a lot of us it’s somewhere in between.

I have no illusions. I know that most people that I speak to will not read Divine Conspiracy much less The Confessions of St Augustine. I wish it were different. But I do think it is reasonable to hope, encourage, cajole & pray that we might read MORE. Just a little more!

So in that spirit, here’s what I’m reading lately, kind of like a family picture.

The ME I Want to Be by John Ortberg. I’m reading this in conjunction with our beta launch of Monvee. It’s a good accessible book. I would recommend it to anyone that things Dallas Willard or Richard Foster might be a little too much.

A Year With Dietrich Bonhoeffer – this is a reading a day from the great 20th century martyr. I’ll be enjoying this all year.

The Works of Josephus – I always have a long-term reading project going. I read a few pages a day working my way through a long, often ancient or dense work. This is how I got through the Qur’an, The City of God by Augustine etc. I’m finally on volume 4… the last one! My goal is to finish it before my next trip to Israel.

The Practice of The Presence of God by Brother Lawrence & Letters by a Modern Mystic by Frank Laubauch – this is a re-read for the message that I did 3 weeks ago called Mystic Me. It was sheet joy going through these little gems. Everyone could & should read these 2 little works.

Freakonomics by Levitt and Dubner – I’m reading it kind of in conjunction with the upcoming Journey series “Godonomics”. Just started it.

When The Game Was Ours by Magic & Larry – if you need last names you won’t read this book anyway. Rod Kaya gave this to me as a Christmas gift. It’s like getting a box of Sees Candy. I’m deliberately reading this as slowly as I can. I could easily just take a day & whiz through it; it’s that fun.

So what are YOU reading so far? Leave a comment. I’d love to hear.

Watch for in an upcoming post – books I wish EVERYONE would read.

Some weekends feel like a sprint. Some weekend feel like a marathon. This last weekend felt like a marathon run at the pace of a sprint. I found myself on gasping for breath & chugging 5 Hour Energy like a crazy man.

It didn’t help that I woke up sick on Thursday. To deal with what I thought might be an impending cold, I went surfing with a buddy at lunch (guys who surf believe in the magical powers of “The Salt Water Flush”).
There was mounds & mounds of seaweed washed up from the recent storms
You will be surprised to learn that it didn’t help at all. I was not doing well on Friday & it felt like the cold was going to my throat. Thanks to all my Twitter / FB people who prayed it out of there, because my voice stayed strong all weekend.

Ah, the weekend. We were finishing up our series “FORMED” with the 2nd half of last weeks message (FORM US) with a message entitled “FROM ME”. It was a really fun message. We had a little fun with Play-doh as my omni-competent friend Greg King demonstrated his knack for Play-doh sculpture.

It was also a scary message in that the message could be taken the wrong way & play into our all too deep thinking grove of western individualism.

SATURDAY: The morning was taken up with the beta launch of something called Monvee. I am really excited about this tool for spiritual growth & formation. About 100 of us were involved in the simulcast with other churches around the country that are going to be using Monvee. It won’t be fully public for a while, but we plan to broaden the use of it gradually over the course of 2010. They are still in the development phase working out bugs & we get to help with that all the while getting the benefit of it.

BETHANY’S GRAD GATHERING – My very smart, very hard-working daughter Bethany, graduated form SDSU in a mere 3 ½ years. Yeah. This last Saturday we had an open house for her & her best friend and fellow college grad, Christina Burns.

SUNDAY: More church of course. Lots of very cool intense stuff. More 5-Hour Energy.

After the services we had our PRAYER MINISTRY LEADERS LUNCH. This is a really important meeting for us. About twice a year we gather the leaders of all the prayer ministries and we try and get all those in ANY ministry at Journey who are lifting up prayer within that ministry together. We try to cast vision. Report on what God’s doing. And try to deliberately see how we can keep the fire for prayer & dependence on God stoked at Journey. For whatever reason, these are the people God has allowed to have their hand on the burner knob of the stove. We try to encourage them to KEEP TURING IT UP! (Hope this analogy made sense). Such great people.

PARENT SEMINAR – the rest of Sunday until about 8:00 was taken up with our “PARENTING SEMINAR”. Since Brian Berry arrived at Journey, this has been a really important & wonderful time. I usually speak and do a Q & A panel at these. This year we also had Kara Ekman Powell who is the head of the Fuller Seminary Youth Institute speak on STICKY FAITH. It was wonderful to see the room packed with parents who want to be good parents & help their kids connect with God in a way that will last. One of the highlights for me was how many new Christ follower parents were there. One woman had only been coming to Journey 2 weeks. She has accepted Jesus into her life. She said to me, “I wish I would has started when they were young, but I’m so new to this myself.” I told her how wonderful it is that she was there & that God would meet her. He has a way of making up for lost time.

I got home and even though I was near comatose, I was still able to enjoy watching the DVR Laker’s victory over the Celtics.

What a weekend! Monday & Tuesday found me on my monthly solitude retreat to the desert. I hope sleep is a form of solitude.

A friend sent this poem / prayer to me. It is a response & reflection on how God is speaking to & working in her heart in response to our current series “FORMED”
It’s awesome and I asked her if I could share it with you. Here it is:

Prayer of Transformation

Father, I forgot what it was like to pass through the fire and have pain, for my good.
Because I willingly kept my flickering candle lit with control and happy places,
…Feel good energy, I traveled in the middle, and it WAS good.

I didn’t lack fruit or love,
I was productive and even opened myself up to lessons and growth!
I gave and served, even sacrificed.

I celebrated every moment I walked with You -
Of mountains climbed or valleys overcome,
I practiced disciplines and sought your face daily
…But even that wasn’t the flame of injustice or adversity,
The fire of refining that you feel will consume your very being
…and destroy the essence of who you are
If it wasn’t for You,
…For Your loving intervention of Your loving transformation, of me.

Thank you for reminding me how to cry out
To bleed emotionally
To feel and identify with Your sufferings and those of others.
I am in the painful birth of true transformation
And the beginning of death to my fleshly premeditated and controlled conformation.
I am yours.

To You be all glory, honor and praise. Amen

Written by Rikah Thomas 1/8/10

This last weekend at Journey we delved into “the practice of the presence of God” with a message titled “Mystic Me”.

It was no secret & it was unapologetic that the message & theme of the weekend was heavily indebted to brother Lawrence’s classic “The Practice of the Presence of God.” Perhaps my favorite thing about the whole deal was reading that little work again. It’s one of those books that get sweeter every time through. I loved it more this time than the other times I’ve read it. We also took a fresh read of Frank Laubauch’s beauty, Letters from a Modern Mystic. Put those to together & you got yourself a message title.

I felt like I had to spend a little time rehabilitating the idea of “Mystical” for those that have spent a while in churches like ours. The first fairly modern evangelical that I was opposed to that used “mystic” in a positive way was A.W. Tozer. Anything you can read by him will be well worth it. Somewhere around my freshman year in college I read, The Pursuit of God & was knocked on my *&^% in a great way. I want us to recover that sense of the mystical in our community & in our lives.

LOTSA PRAYER – This weekend we tried to lead people to use whatever energy of the New Year & New decade to turn our attention to the Lord. We were signing people up for a day of our 21 DAYS OF PRAYER & FASTING. We also tried to make some headway on our 24/7 PRAYER movement. It was cool to see people coming to the little info meeting. Way to go Bryce Turner. It’s going to happen. We don’t have every hour covered yet. There’s still one with your name on it!

HAITI – I love being a part of the body of Jesus for lots & lots of reasons, but one of them is how we have the opportunity to do good, to be a part of the solution. We took an offering for Haiti that will go to Samaritan’s Purse – a great relief organization headed by Franklin Graham (Billy’s son). We asked everyone to give at least $1 on their way out. At a church our size we can do a lot if we all do a little. Click here.

SURFING WITH SOME JOURNEY PEEPS ON SATURDAY – It was a beautiful sunny day with some weird surf conditions, but it’s become a fun part of lots of Saturdays for some Journey-ites to paddle out together on Saturday mid-morning. We had a blast.

ALAS THE CHARGERS – I would be remiss if I didn’t mention this. I saw so much Charger gear as I preached. It was cool. I felt like we were going to do LT’s touchdown slide during worship. I actually go chided for not preaching in a jersey, but my thinking was, “I’m waiting for superbowl weekend b/c I can’t wear a football jersey 3 weeks I a row, that would be weird. As a bonus, I was given a ticket to go to the game, so I was in the middle of the madness. I have never been to a playoff game for any sport so that was cool. But what a gut-wrenching loss. The blots were the only bye team to look like it was pre-season w/ so so SO many brain-dead mistakes. Alas! Well next week’s AFC championship is scheduled for 11:00 PST. So at least we’ll have people in ALL 3 services next week. When life (the Chargers) gives you lemons…

You don’t have to be a church historian to know that part of the title (MYSTIC ME – Learning to Practice the Presence of God) from this upcoming weekend’s message comes straight from the classic devotional book by Brother Lawrence, Practicing the Presence of God.

My challenge is coming up with a message that says it 1/100 as well as BL. I’ve read this little work before (it is little – 90 pages, 1/2 page size). But I am loving reading it again. It is so full of insight, grace, encouragement, gentle rebuke.

So here’s a little gem from “The Sixth Letter”
Dear Sister
As I promised, I am praying for you, even though my prayers are meager. Wouldn’t it be happy if we could find the full treasure described in the Gospel? Nothing else mattes. This treasure is infinite; the more we explore it, the more riches we find. May we never stop searching until we have found all of it.

BAM!

Here’s another
“The most holy & necessary practice in our spiritual life is the presence of God. That means finding constant pleasure in His divine company, speaking humbly & lovingly w/ Him in all seasons, at every moment, without limiting the conversation in any way. This is especially important in times of temptation, sorry, seperation from God, and even in times of unfaithfulness and sin.”

U R Killing me BRO!

We’ve ordered a bunch of copies and will be selling them along with Frank Laubach’s classic, Letters by a Modern Mystic (where the rest of my message title comes from – I’m glad these guys aren’t here on earth or I’d be compelled to mail them my paycheck for this week). Feel free to buy a copy, sing with our band & then commence to reading – I’ll understand if you tune me out.

Jesus, thank you for brothers like Brother Lawrence!

Last Monday & Tuesday (January 4 & 5) was my 1st desert retreat of the New Year & of the decade. It had spectacular weather and winter landscape was breathtaking.

Since one of the points of this here blog is to avoid being just the Journey talking head, I thought I’d share some reflections, wrestling and insights that I came home with. Just so you know these are largely unedited journal entries so bare with the writing style and grammatical errors.

Here’s the opening blast:
Monday, January 4, 2010 – Desert / Fasting
Here I am. I’m here to expose my life to Your presence. I hope I can bring the real me.
I just realized also, that I’m here to rest & recover. I barely took a breath after an exhausting Christmas. It’s funny; I don’t know that I fully felt that till right now.
I’m here to seek You for this New Year. I want a lot of things to be different this year.
**As if to prove my point I just fell asleep in this chair, long enough to be dreaming & forget where I was. I don’t know how I’m going to get through this night with any reading, because I can barely stay awake. But the quiet is good
- No sports to watch & juggle
- Nothing recorded on the DVR,
- No emails, no texts, no calls.

Moving on to Tuesday morning:
Tuesday, January 5, 2010 – Desert / Fasting
I am thankful for rest & quiet. It’s under 50 on the porch so I’m chilling in the back bedroom looking at the badlands through this large picture window. The flighty birds are on a break from mowing seeds due to the arrival of 2 monster crows. There are 12 or so doves perched on ocotillo about 50 yards away. Hopefully they’ll conclude it’s ok to come back & entertain me.
God, I’m not sure what your agenda is for this time, but I don’t want to jam mine in & lose Yours. I know I’m tired. I know I need some quiet. I know I need solitude & time away from people & their expectations. I probably need more than I’m taking.
I hope to have some goals, some resolutions, some areas for the year, but if that’s not YOUR plan, I’m fine with that.
Gen 18:14 Is anything too difficult for the LORD? What a great question. What if I kept that in the front of my mind all the time? What if I practiced Your presence & kept asking myself this question. Checking the Hebrew kicks it up a notch:
The Hebrew verb aDlD;p (pala}) means “to be wonderful, to be extraordinary, to be surpassing, to be amazing.”
The sun is over the ridge lighting & warming things up (on it’s way into mid 70s perfection) and the quail have showed up in force. They forced some large rabbit away from the food.

Again this year, I’m using the Discipleship Journal Bible Reading Plan. It gives you daily readings in Old Testament, Wisdom Literature (Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, Job), Gospels & New Testament. I love these days for the gift of slow meandering through the scriptures they offer. Here are a few places I stopped, that ended up feeling connected:

I’m so filled w/ hope & optimism for my life & for the church in reading Acts 3 & 4.
Acts 3:26 “For you first, God raised up His Servant and sent Him to bless you by turning every one of you from your wicked ways.” Good news – we can, I can turn from my wicked ways because the power of God is here. God is going to turn me from my ways.
Acts 3:12 But when Peter saw this, he replied to the people, “Men of Israel, why are you amazed at this, or why do you gaze at us, as if by our own power or piety we had made him walk? There is no power or piety of my own that heals a person, that does great things, it is faith, acting in the authority of the name of Jesus. These guys had nothing else: no budget, no position, no network. What they did have they gave. They had Jesus presence & His authority to act.

Matt 3:17 This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased… 4:3 “If You are the Son of God, command that…” Maybe this is why we look so different than Acts 3 & 4. We have forgotten who we are or more correctly, and diabolically, we have listened to the wrong voice as to who we are. Have we set up false “if… then” scenarios?

Later in the afternoon, I wrote this:
It seems like I’ve spent this afternoon committing (consecrating?) this year & this decade to You, should You give me that much time. I want to finish well. I want to make the most of this opportunity. I realize that my time is short.

I really am grateful for the gift of a God before whom “no creature is hidden and all things are laid bare.” One of my life’s quests is to stop pretending this isn’t the case. It’ll probably take a few more runs out to the sand.

It was an intense weekend but a really good one! This was the weekend in which we lay out some tracks around

We talked about Ancient Practices for a New Me. This is a kind of repeating message. We do this message in one form or another every year. The idea is we lay out some basic areas of spiritual practices & then ask people to commit to practicing those this year. It’s kind of like agreeing together to launch out. As I said in the message, it’s the place where by our decisions we make our DECISIONS experiential.

The challenge is to not speak of spiritual practices or discipline in way in which it becomes law. Part of our flesh is hard wired to go there, so I always feel like I’m in a tug of war when I’m teaching about this subject.

OUR WORSHIP (I know I say this often) was amazing. I felt in an unusual way that God was at work during the music segment. It never ceases to blow me away how many people are carrying such heavy things into the room when we gather. I had this epiphany as we were singing: we really NEED to be here together experiencing His presence.

BECOME KNOWN IN A SMALL GROUP – We tried to wave like crazy the small group flag this weekend. Our leaders are wonderful & have a real passion that no one has to do this thing alone.

21 DAYS OF PRAYER & FASTING – This weekend we began a collective turning our hearts & minds to the Lord as we launch this year. The theme: LORD, HERE’S OUR YEAR!” The idea is that we do this together. You don’t need to fast all 21 days. We don’t even really want you to. This is an US thing. So grab whatever piece of this that you & the Lord would have you grab. You can email, facebook or Twitter me & pick a day or contact our offices. Remember too, PRAYER GATHERINGS EACH WEDNESDAY.

SELAH – I love how it worked out to begin our 21-Day prayer emphasis with a Selah. It’s great to see God moving, to hear of how He is touching, healing & delivering people as well as launching them into adventures that He has for people. Here’s an email I received about Selah, which I thought, was cool – his subject line was “Selah is Life”
Ed and Jason,
I know that I would survive in my walk with God without my monthly Selah “fix” but it sure would not be as abundant and rich! God does stuff in me that He does not seem to do elsewhere. Thanks to the two of you (and the many others!) that make this possible each month.
Blessings on all of you

I do think there is a something special about gathering, inviting the Holy Spirit to come, proceeding to worship & pray and then seeing what happens.

AN OC MOM RUN – On Saturday I made a run to the OC to see my mom. Bethany, my daughter, was able to go with me. She is so good with my mom.

One of the highlights of this week will be praying through all the cards that people filled out declaring their intention to practice some spiritual disciplines. I’m praying that we will be filled with GRACE at every turn.

Disclaimer: if you don’t like sports or don’t care what I think about sports (both are legit) you might want to not spend the time reading this.

Whoever you are, congratulations. I am referring to the winner of the Fiesta Bowl in which two undefeated Division 1 schools, each with quality wins, each taking on all comers played in what should have been called the “WE BCS HONKS HAVE NO GUTS & DON’T WANT OUR MONEY GRUBBING SYSTEM EXPOSED YET AGAIN BOWL.”
I didn’t watch the game. I was in the desert on my monthly solitude retreat. But I don’t care who won. You are my national champs. And I beg, I plead, I implore any sports writer, any coach out there to defy the BCS contract and strike a blow for equity and vote these guys #1 (think old Apple commercial with athlete throwing hammer through giant screen).

Let me digress. I like sports. I like football. I like college football. In fact, thanks to my friend Chad Reelfs, I went to my 1st bowl game. He flew out from Omaha and we went to the Holiday Bowl. It was a blast sitting with all those Nebraskan’s. It so brought back memories of the 8 years I lived in Nebraska. It was awesome. As much as I love being at the Q for a Chargers game, there is a different magic to the college game.

But I’m almost done. I’m almost ready to stop watching, to stop caring. The old system of Bowls & multiple polls was not great. But at least it wasn’t corrupt. The BCS is corrupt.

Case in point: the Fiesta Bowl this year. Yes, these 2 non-BCS conference teams got to be in BCS bowl. That’s good. But they had to play EACH OTHER. When they’ve let party crashers like Boise State & Utah in before their schools have been embarrassed for the most part. Can’t have that. Can’t have the system exposed. We really can’t have both these teams beat up on our teams in our club, so let’s act like we’re being magnanimous & give them a BCS bowl, but let’s make sure we don’t have 3 undefeated teams at the end of the year & by all means keep them away from the title game (even though Texas is only there by a very suspicious ruling in the Big 12 Championship Game that oddly enough preserved the desired BCS match up).

I’m sure it’s too late to go back to the old system. So we have to have a true play off.

Don’t talk to me about the season being too long. If they can pull this off in division 1A with actual student athletes, it can be done with the big boys.

Don’t even start with me about “the integrity of the bowl system”. The current system destroys it. Bowls are on all different dates rather than the magic of the New Years Day games after the various parades. And since none of them matter for the purposes of a national championship, no one who is not a fan of THAT specific team has any real reason to watch. There’s no drama about how this will effect the standings. There’s no passionate pleas by a Scott Frost asking writers to consider who would win in a head to head match up. We have killed the bowls they can only be improved.

So, this Thursday, I will not be watching the “National Championship Game”. It already occurred. So there… ummm…itch… scratching head… acting like I have to go potty… O.k. I might peak at it. But I won’t enjoy it. And I’ll say… (Just looked and saw BCS killer B State won) Hail to the Broncos. (14-0 beat every ranked team willing to play them) Unlike your NFL tokios – you finish strong!

This weekend we launched a new series called “FORMED”. Every January we do some kind of series that hopefully casts vision for our personal lives, for our souls. I believe that New Year is a gift from God. He’s entrusted us with another shot at this thing. I think that knowledge is in our Soul & is “primal to human experience” (Robert Mulholland). Thus the tradition of the New Year’s Resolution. The problem of course is that we ARE still the same person. So we end up doing about the same stuff.

The kind of change we long for is the kind that only God can bring. That was the essence of the weekend. I thought of this as kind of a launch sequence for the rest of the series. I also thought of it as a safeguard. It’s funny (not ha ha) how something so cool as God forming us into the person we were created to be, that the thinking on that can get so distorted. It’s one of those places were “Following Jesus” can easily turn into “the Christian Religion”. So we spent some time on that.

WORSHIP & COMMUNION – I loved how our worship seamlessly went into communion. I love it when we do communion as a body, as community. Jason said something profound as he set up out time: “this is one meal we don’t eat alone.”

OUR KILLER BOARD – It’s fun to use that thing. I only wish I could write in a way that the average person could discern that it is indeed English.

COOL SIDE NOTE – Notice Jason’s cool guitar. It’s a custom SG that my friend from the gym (who has only been to Journey one time mind you) came in a donated. J shared that he was just that week trying to figure out how he could get a good electric guitar to occasionally lead from sent chills – I love God’s timing.

FRIENDS FROM CHINA – We had the chance to reconnect with some friends that we have known since college, Christy & Alex and their daughter Teri. They live in Bejing and are serving the Lord there. Although it’s a difficult thing that brings them here (Christy’s mom is in the final stages of pancreatic cancer), it was still great to see them.

It was a great start to 2010. Every weekend is designed to help you to stay in step with the Spirit of God for your life in this year. May God make it so for each of us.