The renovating power of the Spirit of God

I had lunch today with a dear friend of mine who is in the military and about to be deployed to Afghanistan. What a work God has done and is still doing in his life, and the life of his family.

As we came back to my office, we sat in his car and talked about the opportunity that God was placing before Him; he's not just going on a military deployment, but a missionary journey. I encouraged him to allow the Spirit of God to sprinkle the salt of his life on all he comes in contact with..."as he is going..."

We started talking about the process of sanctification...the work of renovation that the Holy Spirit does in the life of every believer until we close our eyes and wake up in the presence of God. I like that word...renovation. After all, I understand it well living in the home in which we live.

When we first moved in, we were so happy to have gotten our home. It really was a dream home for us, one we had desired for many months. But, we knew even before we purchased it that it would need some major renovation, although that didn't squelch our zeal to have it.

We started in the kitchen and living room. Cabinets were stripped and sanded, old wallpaper was removed only to find holes in the wall that the wallpaper had covered. New paint, new trim, new appliances...it seemed like the process would never end. Dark wood was painted light, dull walls were given new life with a new coat of paint. Windows were cleaned... and then cleaned again.

And then cleaned again.

We then proceeded to the dining room. The layers of wallpaper I removed...at least 5 layers in that room alone. New paint...new wallpaper...old fixtures polished...new ones added.

On to the downstairs bathroom...the old removed, the new put in place.

Up the stairs to the rooms less visible to the public, but essential to us. One room, one hallway, one fixture at a time, carefully, meticulously placed to make it not just a house, but a home suitable for our tastes. It was no longer us living in someone else's home...it was our home.

Five years later, we are still working on it. Project by project, detail by detail...little by little, it has become a place we call our own.

In my personal life, that has been how I have viewed the Spirit's process of sanctification in me. He has not only purchased this "house", albeit at a high price...but room by room, step by step, wall by wall and fixture by fixture, the Lord Jesus has set His residence there. Every day, the Carpenter works on me, sometimes removing walls that were misaligned or wrongly constructed...sometimes tearing down wallpaper that was used to disguise the holes in my life...sometimes just polishing the handles of fixtures that have been replaced but have become tarnished. Sometimes, He washes the windows again, and again, and again.

He owns the deed...He has the tools...He knows for what the blueprints call.

Continue to renovate me, Lord. Reconstruct my life into the piece of property that You alone can call home.

The journey is hard

Mercy, this journey we call life is hard.

So many people are hurting. Who can know the depths of a person's heart, where they have walked in this experience, the hidden aches that can't quite be explained with words...just with a look or an empathized feeling. Does God really understand every subtle shade of pain that we, as His children, feel within the deepest recesses of our hearts? Is there really purpose in those little pools of death within us? Do they really serve to shape and mold us more into the image of Christ, or are they simply the result of the sin that still strives to reign over us? Does God really scream at us through our pain (as C.S. Lewis suggested) simply to get our attention?

I wrestle with this everyday...surely there has to be another way that our infinite, omnipotent God, in His wisdom, could capture not only our eye but our heart. And yet in the end, I can only come back to the simple truth written in that old hymn written in 1912 by C. Austin Miles:

I come to the garden alone

while the dew is still on the roses;

And the voice I hear falling on my ear

the Son of God discloses.

And He walks with me,

and He talks with me,

And He tells me I am His own;

And the joy we share as we tarry there,

None other has ever known.

He speaks, and the sound of His voice

is so sweet the birds hush their singing,

And the melody that He gave to me

within my heart is ringing.

I’d stay in the garden with Him

though the night around me be falling,

But He bids me go;

through the voice of woe His voice to me is calling.

He is there...

He is there...

He is there.

GO COLTS!

It is funny...around my house, I am known as the guy with very few loyalties when it comes to sports. Whoever wins the championships in each category is usually my favorite team, at least for a day. But, I really only have 4...the Arkansas Razorbacks, the Texas A&M Aggies, the San Antonio Spurs...and the Indianapolis Colts.

I used to be a Dallas Cowboys fan, but that was back in the glory days of Tom Landry, Roger Staubach, Tony Dorsett...although it was tough at first, I soon grew to love Jimmy Johnson, Troy Aikman & Emmit Smith. Now, those were the days! But after Jimmy left, I hung on as long as I could until I just couldn't stomach anymore lack of class. After all, I am a child of the Tom Landry era and of the ilk that free agency has ruined the NFL.

For years I bounced back and forth, like a football fan tossed in the stands like the proverbial beach ball. I even did a stint as a Green Bay Packers fan...and that lasted until the Mark Chmura debacle. I had no where to turn on Sundays from noon until 6, or on Mondays when ABC had MNF.

And then, Tony Dungy went to the Colts. Tony is a fantastic believer, a humble man cut from the same cloth as Tom Landry. Not alot of flash or trash...just simple enough for me to be able to jump on the bandwagon. I knew of Tony when he was with Tampa Bay, and have even had kids stay at his home when I took a group of kids to Florida on a Choir Tour. Now, in Indianapolis, he has made a fan out of me once again.

Now lest you say, "well, wait until they lose", I have been a Colts fan consistently since 2002. I haven't jumped ship, even when they had some heartbreaking losses this year. I feel towards them the same as I feel towards my other teams. And for me to finally find an NFL team that causes me to get as excited as the Razorbacks, the Aggies, and the Spurs, that's a big deal.

And now, Super Bowl.

Yea Peyton. You did it bro!

Yea Tony. Your character has paid off.

Yea me! I finally have a team in the Super Bowl!

Once again, I am a believer!

The Beauty of the Mundane

I never thought that the mundane things in life would hold such beauty for me. After all, growing up on a ranch 3 miles from our closest neighbor initiated a desire in me for a different, more exciting life. "If I can just get off this ranch, I will never look back"... and when Green Acres was in my rear view mirror, I truly thought I had arrived.

The older I get, the more I realize what a treasure that mundane home on the hill truly was. Life and the people who live it seem to get more complicated, more dysfunctional with which I can or actually have any desire to keep up. I see it and hear it everyday in ministry, and it is beyond heartbreaking to me: It is disgusting, distasteful and ignoble. If we as a society continue with this delusion that technology and "things" can actually bring us the abundant life that Jesus told us was His desire for us, I fear that one day I will wake up and be a stranger on my own street.

Lord, please renew my memories of the better times on the hill. Maybe running around in shorts, with no shoes and no t-shirts, and playing battle with sticks was more beautiful than I ever realized. Forgive me for not treasuring the beauty of the mundane.