Street Lights: Elizabeth

We’re currently in a season at Mercy Street called Street Lights. If you’re interested, you can listen or watch the talks here. Light and Life go together. To get in on God’s life we have to get in on God’s light. That light pours into our lives and through our lives to illuminate darkness. Light always pushes darkness away. Light is ALWAYS more powerful than darkness. Not only is the story of Jesus that he is the light of the world, but we are the light of the world too as his light lights us up. Something beautiful happens in this as we allow God’s light through us to light up and give life to the world in which we live and the story in which we find ourselves.

I’ll be posting short video vignettes of some remarkable folks from Mercy Street who are radiating examples of the light-splendor of God.

This is Elizabeth.

Fight To Rescue New CD: Usher In

Usher In

Check out the new CD from my friend and Mercy Street mission partner, Richard Gandy and Fight To Rescue. Just released!

Get this CD.

Purchase on  iTunes.

Link to the Fight To Rescue Myspace  page for the music preview.

Street Lights: Tony

We’re currently in a season at Mercy Street called Street Lights. If you’re interested, you can listen or watch the talks here. Light and Life go together. To get in on God’s life we have to get in on God’s light. That light pours into our lives and through our lives to illuminate darkness. Light always pushes darkness away. Light is ALWAYS more powerful than darkness. Not only is the story of Jesus that he is the light of the world, but we are the light of the world too as his light lights us up. Something beautiful happens in this as we allow God’s light through us to light up and give life to the world in which we live and the story in which we find ourselves.

I’ll be posting short video vignettes of some remarkable folks from Mercy Street who are radiating examples of the light-splendor of God.

This is Tony.

Street Lights: Russell

We’re currently in a season at Mercy Street called Street Lights. If you’re interested, you can listen or watch the talks here. Light and Life go together. To get in on God’s life we have to get in on God’s light. That light pours into our lives and through our lives to illuminate darkness. Light always pushes darkness away. Light is ALWAYS more powerful than darkness. Not only is the story of Jesus that he is the light of the world, but we are the light of the world too as his light lights us up. Something beautiful happens in this as we allow God’s light through us to light up and give life to the world in which we live and the story in which we find ourselves.

I’ll be posting short video vignettes of some remarkable folks from Mercy Street who are radiating examples of the light-splendor of God.

This is Russell.

Calling: Life-Speak

Here are the questions from my two-talk series on Calling called Life-Speak. To better understand what these questions are about, listen to the two talks on our website, watch the video, or download to iTunes by clicking on this link: Mercy Street talks.

Is your Re-call louder than God’s call?

When you listen to your life, what is it saying?

What choices do you need to make to let your life speak for the most good?

How can you open yourself up more to receive God’s gift of being made fully-alive?

Coming Alive: When do you sense that you’re most fully-alive—this is what I was made for?

Context: How can you be fully-alive where you are right now?

Community: What do you hear God speaking to you through the people in your life?

Beauty In Brokenness

In his book, Return of the Prodigal, Henri Nouwen moves us into the mystery of the father’s embrace of his returning renegade, broken younger son. Describing what’s going on between the loving father and the broken son, Nouwen writes,

The truth of the matter is that the son is dressed in rags that betray the great misery that lies behind him. In the context of a compassionate embrace, our brokenness may appear beautiful, but our brokenness has no other beauty but the beauty that comes from the compassion that surrounds it. (p. 35)

Men and women who are truly filled with light…

“Men and women who are truly filled with light are those who have gazed deeply into the darkness of their imperfect existence.”

–Brennan Manning, The Ragamuffin Gospel

Do The Next Right Thing: RIGHT

For those of us (including myself) who are recovering from a perfectionistic, performance orientation when it comes to our relationship with God and others, I think we have to be careful not to confuse the next RIGHT thing with the next perfect thing.

It’s easy to get paralyzed and not do anything because, we reason, if we can’t do the next right thing perfectly we may as well not to do it at all. The tyranny of the perfectionistic shoulda-coulda-woulda-oughtas sabotages us by telling us that we can’t even do the next right thing right. We spiral down into deeper guilt and shame, rendering ourselves (in our own stinkin’ thinkin’) incapacitated to do anything else.

The theology of this is important, as Dale Ryan reminds me. For many on the journey of recovery, we have been caught up in a performance, pleasing lifestyle that shapes our view of God and our relationships.

As a result we naturally and instinctively gravitate toward theology that has an emphasis on performance. It matches our inner experience. We may, for example, find ourselves in churches where grace is talked about a lot but where it seems like everything is somehow about getting it right, doing the right thing, having (performing) a good testimony, looking good, being obedient. There may be a lot said about grace in our doctrinal statements, but the day-to-day of being a Christian somehow always seems to be exhausting. Our relationship with God gradually turns into a demanding performance of doing the right things, feeling the right things and getting it right. Part of the recovery process for Christians will involve confronting this instinctive orientation toward performance-based theology (Theology and Recovery in nacronline.com).

Jesus’ interactions with the religious institutionalists of his day are great examples that having all the right answers does not mean you have all the right moves. And having all the right moves for the wrong reasons, which many of the religious elite had (particularly the Pharisees), is not what we’re after. They saddled people with heavy religious burdens of rules and regulations. Jesus frees us up as he calls us with the invitation, “Come to Me all you who are weary and burdened and I will give you rest, and learn from me. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” (Matthew 11:28-30)

Abraham’s life is another example. The dude was conniving, conspiring, and mistrusting. But as he continued along the journey with God he became a person who was known as a person who walked with God, his life lifted up as an example of what it means to trust God. Clearly trusting God and perfectly performing for God are not the same thing.

So doing the next right thing is not about doing the next perfect thing. If we wait for the perfect time to do the perfect thing we won’t be doing anything because there is no such thing.

The right thing imperfectly done is better than the wrong thing done perfectly.

Think of it this way: If we all did the next right thing perfectly, we would not need grace, and if we don’t need grace we don’t need God because we’re doing perfectly fine on our own, thank you very much.

Loved YOU are, my friend

I’ll miss you, Sean.

Loved YOU are.

The LORD bless you and keep you.

The LORD make his face shine upon you
and be gracious to you.

The LORD turn his face toward you
and give you peace.

Do The Next Right Thing: NEXT

The NEXT part of the do-the-next-right-thing has to do with process, a connection with what has come before and what will come after.

NEXT always assumes that there are more steps to take and that the next step is connected to the step just taken. Through a process (longer than we may want) of connecting “right things” together, we discover that our lives are being shaped by good choices and good relationships. We have to trust the process. One step recovery, one-decision faith, is not reality. The NEXT right thing emerges from the previous right thing and connects us to the following right thing.

NEXT also does its part to relieve anxiety and paralysis by simply helping us to focus on what is immediately before us. We don’t have to worry about five steps ahead, speculating about what might come or about a decision we might have to make down the road.  We can relax and focus on doing the NEXT right thing. The journey unfolds with each step we take.

And God is with us in the process, helping us connect one right thing after another. If we do a wrong thing, God is still with us, moving us forward. God is patient and faithful and will not give up on us. God has promised to be with us in this journey no matter how long it takes.