Breath Deep

Morning Everyone,

Well, the temperature broke 100 on Tuesday and Wednesday here in Nashville. People had been hoping that we would get out of the 90’s since they started back in June but I’m pretty sure this wasn’t what they had in mind. It has been a year, maybe, two of upheaval in the realm of nature. I can’t really list everything that has happened but just in the last few days there are fires in Russia, floods in Pakistan, heat waves, earthquakes almost every day, the list seems endless.

30 years ago I would have said that it meant that Jesus was coming back to whisk us out of here but these days I’m seeing it as the precursor to judgment. As weird as it may sound I find that encouraging. I have started teaching from the end of 2nd chronicles, Daniel, Ezra, and Nehemiah in recent weeks. I will be posting the sermon texts on my blog:

http://withgodonhisside.blogspot.com/ in case your interested.

I told you last time that I threw off the sermon I had prepared a couple weeks ago and this historical trek through Israel’s captivity period has been the result. I find myself encouraged in the midst of the chaos that is my existence because for perhaps the first time in my life I am getting a clearer understanding of how God works in the world. It dawned on me the other day that God doesn’t change. He deals with the human race consistently through out every age. When Paul says that Israel was given to us as an example, he meant it. We should study how God worked in their midst and expect him to do much the same in our own lives and in our own nation. That was kind of revelational to me on many levels.

One of the things that it has brought about in my thinking is to switch my focus from the coming judgment toward preparing the people of God to be ready to start rebuilding once the dust settles. If we can begin to focus on that we will be leaps and bounds ahead of everyone else in culture because they aren’t even looking for judgment, they don’t even believe in it: That includes the churched and the non-churched.

I see God stirring hearts to repentance, not by the truckload or anything but here and there hearts and minds are beginning to change. I’m seeing him begin to use things in my life that I would have sworn were mistakes, like that Masters in Clinical Psych. He let it simmer for ten years before he opened the door to let me begin to use it. But now he is opening to opportunity to grow up the body of Christ in new ways and I find some joy in that.

I’m amazed at God’s timing. I mean I have been laboring in the fields for 2 and a half years and have many times wondered, why? Now, here in this place, when I am being pulled in so many directions to do so many things, he begins to let some sprouts shoot up out of the ground and, from my perspective, it is more energizing than a Monster and a sudaphed washed down with a Mountain Dew. I came home from my day job tired, a little under the weather from going in and out, in and out from 100 to 70 degrees all day long. It is time for school to start here and that means I am in high demand to get things ready in the classrooms. So by the time I came home I was getting kind of grumpy about having to go do ‘ministry’ things after having done my 'real' job all day.

I tossed around the idea of calling it off but the ibuprofen kicked in, I downed some cold pizza, took a hot bath and then I was in the car heading north. When I got to church I was pleased to find that the AC was on in our Sunday School building because sitting in a room that is 105 degrees trying to minister to needs is not fun. I interspersed praying with laying on the floor and taking a nap before the meeting.

An hour later I found myself blessed beyond measure at the hand of God moving in people’s lives. I found myself blown away that God had spent 25 years preparing me to minister to the needs of a man who, when it boiled down to it, was just like me facing the same types of issues, the same types of brokenness, in the same need of the good news to heal his broken heart: A man who needed life to shake him up so that his heart could be softened – just like me.

Just like the A-Team, I love it when a plan comes together, or at least when I can see it. I love it when the seeds start to sprout but at the same time I know that sprouting isn’t harvesting. There’s a lot of work to do in the meantime, a lot of grace to be applied. And to be honest it sometimes seems like God works all around the most pressing needs without even touching them. I know that he’s working, I’m just not sure why he’s not dealing with the obvious to my satisfaction.

Some of the guys at church were talking farming on Sunday Morning. It seems that it is so hot and dry here that the blooms have all fallen off the bean plants. There will be very few beans this year unless we get some rain so that the plants can rebloom. A lot can happen in a season; things can reach maturity and produce 30, 60 or 100 times more fruit or they can shrivel up and die. The farmer really has no control over any of it. He must work with what he has and use his skills and knowledge to the best of his ability and trust that God knows what he’s doing.

I got into my car last night and I was pumped. That hour of ministry had somehow made the 2 and a half years of labor worth it. It was a sign of hope, now it wasn’t the only sign of hope, God has been faithful throughout the whole time, but not only was this rather unexpected it was deeper than I could have imagined.

I find myself in the midst of foundation laying in preparation for what is to come. I believe deep in my heart (and not completely without biblical and historical warrant) that what is to come with regard to the repentant church is greater than anything we have seen in the age of men so far. Nations come and go but the Kingdom of God is working its way toward filling the whole earth and I am looking forward to that.

Not long after I pulled on to I-65 and began heading home a friend of mine passed me on the interstate. He was heading home after a 12 or 13 hour day. So was I. I sped up, honked my horn and waved as I went past. In a minute or so he called me and said thanks for waking him up. 100 degree days and school getting ready to start make for very little sleep for a guy who maintains all the air conditioners in all the Bowling Green Schools.

I find myself grateful to God for my life, for all the painstaking, painful work that he has done to make me what I am, for using all the screw ups and failures in my life to give me compassion for the broken, for keeping me from wealth, and power so that I could relate to the broken. I would have never gone this path if I’d had my way. I would have been rich by twenty and sitting in re-hab with Lindsay Lohan and Amy Winehouse, or I’d be dead. I am thankful that I don’t get to do what I want to do most of the time because I’m finding that the path of life is a whole lot better than the path of death, which is also known as the Brad Stephens memorial highway.

So I sit back after a long hard day and take a deep breath, a deep breath of God and all that he is doing and I am refreshed in away that I never expected. Do I understand it all? Absolutely not. I never will but I put my confidence in him who made the plan and I give up having to control everything all the time and live life in the fast lane.

The Lost Dogs sing it like this:

Politicians, morticians, Philistines, homophobesSkinheads, Dead heads, tax evaders, street kids, Alcoholics, workaholics, wise guys, dim witsBlue collars, white collars, war mongers, peace nicks
Breathe deep, Breathe deep the Breath of GodBreathe deep, Breathe deep the Breath of God

And I know that is where our hope comes from. I know that even if the world around us comes tumbling down God is still God and he is still in control. For those of us who choose to let the breath of God abide in us by humbling ourselves before him and his ways, well, the future’s so bright we’ve got to wear shades. May God give us the grace to be on a firm foundation when the walls come tumbling down, rumbling, tumbling.

Grace and Peace,
Brad