Thought if the Day- 31 January 2007

"Love the sinner, hate the sin"

So I have heard and used the above mentioned cliche more than I can humanly count (because I have forgotten every time I've heard it...but it is definately a lot!). What does it mean to love the sinner but hate the sin? Yeah, yeah, I know that we should love people and yet not have to agree with the lifestyle they are living, or hate sin but still love "sinners" (cuz you know, us Christians got our crap together). After hearing a quote, that I will reveal in a few more lines, concerning this cliche, I am fairly confident that I will never use it again...unless I am stuck for an explanation for how I can disagree with someone on how I don't think what they are doing is right but I still love them anyway, yadda, yadda, yadda. Just kidding

So here's the quote

"Love the sinner, hate the sin? How about: Love the sinner, hate your own sin! I don't have time to hate your sin. There are too many of you! Hating my sin is a full-time job. How about you hate your sin, I'll hate my sin and let's just love each other!"- Mark Lowry

Yeah, you got it right....Mark Lowry! Christian comedian, song writer, Gather Vocal Band member!!!! Yeah, that Mark Lowry...I was stunned too! To think, one of the most profound, destructing statements for Christian cliches came from a comedian and a member if the GVB. Pretty awesome if you ask me. Hey, this is the same guy who wrote "Mary Did You Know?" Not a bad resume~

Anyway, I think what Mr. Lowry, Mark if I may, said is right on and truly reveals a deeper truth that needs to be addressed. We as the church have used sin as an excuse to exclude, verbally abuse, kill (emotionally, spiritually, physically, and socially), divide, and the list goes on! We have used sin as our justification for removing ourselves from the world that we have been sent into. We have taken our children and placed them into "Christian" schools instead of into the world in which we are called to go. We give our money to building expansion projects and neglect the people who will expand the CHURCH...no, not First Baptist, Methodist, AG....THE CHURCH! We have gotten so caught up in political jargon that we have forgotten to love our neighbors, "conservative" or "liberal". We have made Jesus a white, middle class wussy! Jesus was middle eastern! And he was, excuse the term, "bad A!" All of these things call for repentance from every single person who calls themselves a Christian...because, WE are the church.

I think proposals are awesome. For crying out loud, the process towards a marriage starts with a proposal! So, here is what I propose. How about we love people. That's it. How about we go to where people are, during the week, and make friends. Not with agendas! Just make friends. Heck, you don't even have to bring Jesus up when you meet them!

"Hey, I'm Jerry...this is Jesus".......that scares people!

Instead, just make new friends, or start loving the ones you've got. Don't bring up the fact they smell like smoke, or that they are wasted, or make them button up their shirt if they are showing too much cleavage (I used to do that to my one friend)- Just be around, just be like Jesus. Forgive them for throwing up on your new $100 shirt (You should have used the money on something worth while anyway!), live a holy life, and show them love.

Sidenote
You know what, I am pretty sure that I am going to buy someone a beer sometime. I am going to go up to them and be like "Hey! Can I get you a beer?" and they are gonna be like "Sure, my name's so-and-so"...and we are gonna be friends and I am going to love them unconditionally! That sounds pretty cool to me. Kind of like a movie scene or something!
End Sidenote

I don't have time to look at the sin of the world, not if I am showing love. Sin is there, I know, but so is Jesus. I acknowledge the sin and look to see how I can bring about Christ's work of redemtption and restoration in that situation/place. Besides to look at others sin...HAH! I have way too much of my own crap to deal with! I see what God has done and is doing in my life and I want to be a part of it in other people's lives!

Just love. Please, just love.

You Bring the drinks, I'll bring the love!

Making a Difference Alert!

To Write Love on Her Arms

So I was checking out some pretty sweet bands on myspace tonight and I came upon this body of believers that I am demanding everyone check out! If you don't I will deny you as my friend...well ok, I wont do that but I will punch you right in the earlobe! And you know I'll do it!

Here is the story behind their ministry. Read it all!

TO WRITE LOVE ON HER ARMS by Jamie Tworkowski

Pedro the Lion is loud in the speakers, and the city waits just outside our open windows. She sits and sings, legs crossed in the passenger seat, her pretty voice hiding in the volume. Music is a safe place and Pedro is her favorite. It hits me that she won't see this skyline for several weeks, and we will be without her. I lean forward, knowing this will be written, and I ask what she'd say if her story had an audience. She smiles. "Tell them to look up. Tell them to remember the stars."

I would rather write her a song, because songs don't wait to resolve, and because songs mean so much to her. Stories wait for endings, but songs are brave things bold enough to sing when all they know is darkness. These words, like most words, will be written next to midnight, between hurricane and harbor, as both claim to save her.

Renee is 19. When I meet her, cocaine is fresh in her system. She hasn't slept in 36 hours and she won't for another 24. It is a familiar blur of coke, pot, pills and alcohol. She has agreed to meet us, to listen and to let us pray. We ask Renee to come with us, to leave this broken night. She says she'll go to rehab tomorrow, but she isn't ready now. It is too great a change. We pray and say goodbye and it is hard to leave without her.

She has known such great pain; haunted dreams as a child, the near-constant presence of evil ever since. She has felt the touch of awful naked men, battled depression and addiction, and attempted suicide. Her arms remember razor blades, fifty scars that speak of self-inflicted wounds. Six hours after I meet her, she is feeling trapped, two groups of "friends" offering opposite ideas. Everyone is asleep. The sun is rising. She drinks long from a bottle of liquor, takes a razor blade from the table and locks herself in the bathroom. She cuts herself, using the blade to write "FUCK UP" large across her left forearm.

The nurse at the treatment center finds the wound several hours later. The center has no detox, names her too great a risk, and does not accept her. For the next five days, she is ours to love. We become her hospital and the possibility of healing fills our living room with life. It is unspoken and there are only a few of us, but we will be her church, the body of Christ coming alive to meet her needs, to write love on her arms.

She is full of contrast, more alive and closer to death than anyone I've known, like a Johnny Cash song or some theatre star. She owns attitude and humor beyond her 19 years, and when she tells me her story, she is humble and quiet and kind, shaped by the pain of a hundred lifetimes. I sit privileged but breaking as she shares. Her life has been so dark yet there is some soft hope in her words, and on consecutive evenings, I watch the prettiest girls in the room tell her that she's beautiful. I think it's God reminding her.

I've never walked this road, but I decide that if we're going to run a five-day rehab, it is going to be the coolest in the country. It is going to be rock and roll. We start with the basics; lots of fun, too much Starbucks and way too many cigarettes.

Thursday night she is in the balcony for Band Marino, Orlando's finest. They are indie-folk-fabulous, a movement disguised as a circus. She loves them and she smiles when I point out the A&R man from Atlantic Europe, in town from London just to catch this show.

She is in good seats when the Magic beat the Sonics the next night, screaming like a lifelong fan with every Dwight Howard dunk. On the way home, we stop for more coffee and books, Blue Like Jazz and (Anne Lamott's) Travelling Mercies.

On Saturday, the Taste of Chaos tour is in town and I'm not even sure we can get in, but doors do open and minutes after parking, we are on stage for Thrice, one of her favorite bands. She stands ten feet from the drummer, smiling constantly. It is a bright moment there in the music, as light and rain collide above the stage. It feels like healing. It is certainly hope.

Sunday night is church and many gather after the service to pray for Renee, this her last night before entering rehab. Some are strangers but all are friends tonight. The prayers move from broken to bold, all encouraging. We're talking to God but I think as much, we're talking to her, telling her she's loved, saying she does not go alone. One among us knows her best. Ryan sits in the corner strumming an acoustic guitar, singing songs she's inspired.

After church our house fills with friends, there for a few more moments before goodbye. Everyone has some gift for her, some note or hug or piece of encouragement. She pulls me aside and tells me she would like to give me something. I smile surprised, wondering what it could be. We walk through the crowded living room, to the garage and her stuff.

She hands me her last razor blade, tells me it is the one she used to cut her arm and her last lines of cocaine five nights before. She's had it with her ever since, shares that tonight will be the hardest night and she shouldn't have it. I hold it carefully, thank her and know instantly that this moment, this gift, will stay with me. It hits me to wonder if this great feeling is what Christ knows when we surrender our broken hearts, when we trade death for life.

As we arrive at the treatment center, she finishes: "The stars are always there but we miss them in the dirt and clouds. We miss them in the storms. Tell them to remember hope. We have hope."

I have watched life come back to her, and it has been a privilege. When our time with her began, someone suggested shifts but that is the language of business. Love is something better. I have been challenged and changed, reminded that love is that simple answer to so many of our hardest questions. Don Miller says we're called to hold our hands against the wounds of a broken world, to stop the bleeding. I agree so greatly.

We often ask God to show up. We pray prayers of rescue. Perhaps God would ask us to be that rescue, to be His body, to move for things that matter. He is not invisible when we come alive. I might be simple but more and more, I believe God works in love, speaks in love, is revealed in our love. I have seen that this week and honestly, it has been simple: Take a broken girl, treat her like a famous princess, give her the best seats in the house. Buy her coffee and cigarettes for the coming down, books and bathroom things for the days ahead. Tell her something true when all she's known are lies. Tell her God loves her. Tell her about forgiveness, the possibility of freedom, tell her she was made to dance in white dresses. All these things are true.

We are only asked to love, to offer hope to the many hopeless. We don't get to choose all the endings, but we are asked to play the rescuers. We won't solve all mysteries and our hearts will certainly break in such a vulnerable life, but it is the best way. We were made to be lovers bold in broken places, pouring ourselves out again and again until we're called home.

I have learned so much in one week with one brave girl. She is alive now, in the patience and safety of rehab, covered in marks of madness but choosing to believe that God makes things new, that He meant hope and healing in the stars. She would ask you to remember.

I took this from their website:

twloha.org or myspace.com/towriteloveonherarms

Check it out, buy some gear, join the team, show the truth of God's hope, get on board with people who are making a difference! People are important!

Peace
Brandon

TWLOHA

Thought of the Day- 30 January 2007

Cheerleaders

Being an athlete I have had my fair share of cheerleader encounters. In high school....uh yeah, were not going to go there. On to college, quickly! For the one year they had cheerleaders at Taylor they were pretty good. It is always fun turning around just in time to see a girl bite the pavement or to hear them cheering for the other team! It was actually pretty funny. So, maybe they weren't good in terms of skill level, but they were definately "good" for a laugh! Besides, in their short shorts and tight (the literal translation) tops they took the attention off the football team who probably wasn't playing that well!

Anyway, the reason I bring up cheerleaders is because everyone loves to have people cheer for them. It is how God created us to be! No one likes the pessimist or the person who only tells you what you can't do. We were created for greatness and greatness is fueled through encouragement. Perhaps that is why God is constantly telling us who we are and how much we are loved...not to mention the uncomprehensable things we can do! I really appriciate people who encourage and don't ask too many questions, because I probably don't know the answer. If I had the ideal, let's say girl, encourager here is how I can imagine our conversation going.

Girl: "So Brandon how are you going to start all those homes?"
Me: "I don't know"
Girl: "Wow, you are such a man of faith! I really love men of faith!"
Me: "Actually, I feel more confused than anything right now....I am kind of just waiting on God"
Girl: "Holy Cow! Patience is so important! I really love patient men!"
Me: "I get really agitated though when I know I am supposed to act and I just don't know which step I am supposed to take at this time"
Girl: "Brandon, can I tell you something?"
Me: "Sure."
Girl: "I really want a man who is just trusting God, who has no money, wants to travel the world, wants to give his life for hurting people, and is agitated!"
Me: "ZZZZzzzzzzzzzzZZZZZZZZzzzzz....huh? Oh, it was just a dream. Crap!"

I'm just kidding! Girls, wipe your mouths because I know you probably just threw up!

Seriously though, I think I am going to start being a cheerleader (figurative sense). Every person has, or has had, a dream. A dream that they probably don't know how to achieve and it scares the snot out of them! You want to know something cool. There is a God who believes in people, who knows they can succeed, who is pulling for them, who loves them and is proud of them! I think I am going to let people know that...yeah, I'm pretty sure I am! Because if a person can truly come to believe this truth they will never be the same again. When this change comes, this reality shift comes, dreams will start to become reality and the world will be changed!

You know the cool part about cheerleaders.
When they start cheering other people join in and follow their example!
You might be the only one cheering in a failure focused world but it only takes one....be patient, the stadium will be rock'n soon

Cheerleaders

Thought of the Day- 29 January 2007

Excerpt from Good News About Injustice
By: Gary A. Haugen

But at Kibuye, as at ever massacre site in Rwanda, a painful glimpse of the truth always came through. This was not an undifferentiated mass of lifeless clods on the inevitable dust heap of a fallen world. In truth each body, now dull and limp in the mud, was actually a unique bearer of the very image of God, a unique creation of the divine maker, individually knit within a mother's womb by the Lord of the universe. For as difficult as it was to imagine, each crumpled mortal frame had indeed come from a mother, one single mother who somewhere in time had wept tears of joy and aspiration over her precious child-a child endowed with the mysterious spark of Adam and an immortal soul. We would never number all the mother's children in these mass graves, but their father in heaven had numbered even the very hairs of their heads.

taken from pages 28-29

The reason I chose these lines is because I believe it is time for people to wake up! It is time to wake up and start seeing people as God sees them. It is time to wake up and stop acting like we only owe God 10% of our income. It is time we wake up and stop thinking that this world is all about us..."all about me!" It is time that we fight for those who have no more strength to do so. It is time we seek justice, peace and love! It is time we stop acting like it is a big deal to give to starving children around the world when we spend $4 on a single drink at Starbuck's. We don't owe God 10%, we owe Him everything! The same God who loves you like crazy loves those around the world just as much! He is asking for you to act! Seek Justice! Give Peace! Be Love!

Here are a few organizations that you should look into...I am not going to spoon-feed the info, if you are serious about making a difference you can check them out.

International Justice Mission (ijm.org)- The author of the above quoted book is the founder
ONE Campaign (hey, it is endorsed by Bono, it must be cool)
Acting on Aids

Justice, Peace, Love

Thought of the Day- 28 January 2007

My Sunday

1. Wake-Up
2. Get Breakfast
3. Go to church...where Joel and myself taught the High School class
4. Go to the Beach

...

and later have dinner with my friends from all over the world!

Not a bad day in the life of a Hoosier university student...oh yeah, it was pretty hot!

Psalm 97:1

The Lord reigns, let the earth be glad;

let the distant shores rejoice.

Thought of the Day- 27 January 2007

I find joy in you

People are important! I am finding that for the first time in my life I am really enjoying people. Not that I didn't find joy in them before, but I guess the way I am living is different now. I think I am starting to see mankind as God sees us, His perfect, choice creation.

In his letters to the churches Paul often greets that individual church with a blessing and expresses his thanksgiving for them. Now, Paul could have done this for "political" church-board-campaigning-I'm better than Peter purposes, but I don't think this is the case. I think he really meant it! It is kind of funny because as of late I have been relating with Paul. I have been thinking about my friends and family and this Paul like thankfullness has been welling up inside of me. As I see growth, love, peace, brokenness, etc. in people, joy rises up within me and I can't help but smile and thank God for them. When I see imperfect people being imperfect I can't help but feel love for them, as if I see myself in them and know the love of God for us all.

Here come the desires..."If I had one wish"
I desire a community of failure, laughter, love, peace, debate, disagreements, reconciliation, anger, healing,.... I desire to know people. Not just know of people but really know people. I want to love someone despite their failures. I want to see someone through the tough times. I want to cry and to laugh, to celebrate and mourn. I want to be able to have the heart of Paul. I want to have the Heart of Jesus, the heart of God!

These thoughts and desires that I am having make me smile.

My life is of purpose. My life is not a mistake. I was bought with a price.

Let my life be spent on people. The most dirty, poor, broken people this world holds. Heck, I'll even take the clean ones. Because people are important! We are God's chosen creation.

I am filled with Joy everytime I think of you!

Thought of the Day- 26 January 2007

Excerpt from Velvet Elvis
By: Rob Bell

Movement Two: Yoke (P. 62-63)

The Bible is not pieces of information about God and Jesus and whatever else we take and apply to situations as we would a cookbook or instruction manual.

And while I'm at it, let's make a group decision to drop once and for all the Bible-as-owner's-maual metaphor. It's terrible. It really is.

When was the last time you read the owner's manual for your toaster? Do you find it remotely inspiring or meaningful?

You only refer to it when something's wrong with your toaster. You use it to fix the problem, and then you put it away.

We have to embrace the Bible as the wild, uncensored, passionate account it is of people expiriencing the living God.

Doubting the one true God.

Wrestling with, arguing with, getting angry with, reconciling with, loving, worshiping, thanking, following the one who gives us everything.

We cannot tame it.

We cannot tone it down.

If we do, then we can't say that it is the life-giving Word of God. We have made it something else.


Velvet Elvis is one of the three books that I am currently and actively reading (the other two are The Good News About Injustice and The Pilgrim's Progress). I highly recommend (if I could, I would demand) that you read all three. These books are some of the most challenging, eye opening, testing, and stretching books I have ever read. I will be putting up excerpts from the other books in the days to come. I hope I don't get sued!

The Word of God

Thought of the Day- 25 January 2007

"Whoever smelt it, dealt it!"

Last night, during a fatal game of Mafia, one my friends, Ellison, a Hong Kong resident who spent half of his life at a boarding school in Britain (he has quite the British accent), uttered these words after he had been accused of "being Mafia"

"In this game my girl, Whoever smelt it, dealt it!"

Whether or not this defense worked I don't recall, but the very fact that he used this statement as a defense for his life makes one wonder. Can the idea of "whoever hath smelteth it, hath dealteth it" (KJV) really be applied to other aspects of life besides flatulence?

I recall hearing some wise man once say, Get the tree out of your own eye ball before you start picking at the splinter/eyelash in your friends! (loose translation of Jesus in Matt. 7:4)

I know this may be a stretch (I started it out with a farting reference!) but in all reality it is so true. Many times as individuals we look at the faults ('stink'n' parts) of other people and rip them apart. In reality, the reason we often get so upset, and what we fail to see, is that the thing that we despise in the other person, the thing that stinks to us, is a characteristic or sin that we posses. I will always remember my mom telling me, "Brandon, the faults you see in other people are often the things that are inside yourself." The reason I will remember this for so long is because it made me so mad! Looking back now from a perspective of wanting to grow and mature as a man of God, I can say that my mom was right on. Many of the things that I despise in others are some of the very things that I myself do. Realizing this, there are three things that I must do.

1. Recognize who I am! I am not God!
2. "Have mercy" (kind of like Uncle Jesse on Full House). God has shown me so so much. That mercy which I give to others pales in comparison.
3. Check myself! See if that which annoys me in others is something that have in myself. Grow from it. Grow in patience, mercy, and love!

So, from Mafia, to farting, to biblical application...I will leave you with this. A definition

flat·u·lent /ˈflætʃələnt/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[flach-uh-luhnt] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation
–adjective
1. generating gas in the alimentary canal, as food.

"Whoever smelt it, dealt it!"

Lion Rock

MythBusters-Asian Style

So a few of us (around 12) decided we were going to climb Lion Rock, more like Lion "mini-mountain" Rock, at 2:30 am on Saturday. You'de think that every Asian girl, who still lives in Asia, would be in the best shape ever! You know, like the women in those videos you saw your mom working out to while you were growing up

i.e. Slide Aerobics, Step Aerobics, Jane Fonda...pretty much any video that has any freakish human being pretending that exercise is fun....

Back to Asian girls
You would make this assumption based on the fact that everybody walks everywhere and there is never a place to sit down. Well, I have come to the conclusion that Asian girls might be able to walk 100 miles in the horizontal direction, but if they take more than 100 steps vertical they crumble like a pack of freshly opened, crushed Ramen noodles (I was trying to find an analogy that would fit the culture...I think I did pretty well with the noodles). So, the common belief, that many of us in the western world hold, that Asian girls are packed with incredible stamina that allows them to do super-human feets (i.e. Fly) is in fact not true. We have been mislead! Western, African, Latin American girls, Cheer Up! Your Asian sisters have to work out just as hard as you in order to go vertical! I know it sucks, I want them to be able to fly just as much, if not more, than you do, but it just isn't going to happen!

Myth: Asian Girls Can Fly
Verdict: Busted!....we can always hope though, there might be that 1 in a 1000

Anyway, us guys helped and waited (I can just hear Mr. Miagee sayings, "Patience is a virtue, Brandon son") for the girls, this included a couple of French along with some Asian. We were in fact gentlemen! I am maturing...hahaha

When we arrived at the top it was beautiful! Isn't it funny how so may of us stand in awe of the scenery (not at TU) that surrounds us but only complain about God's most dear creation, the people who surround us. Although the hike was a bit streching and character revealing/developing it was great to see everyone accomplish the task. It was also great to be able to follow my brother and friend's (Joel) lead in waiting and encouraging those who were "bringing up the back". He [Joel] modeled Christian virtue through his attitude of encouragement.

Truth: You grow and learn from other's as they live out a Christian life.
Verdict: Confirmed

Asian Mythbusters

Thought of the Day- 24 January 2007

Chicken Hats

In retrospect...if someone were to don a Chicken Hat (that being a hat that looks like a chicken head) would it be permissable for them to state:

"I'm finger licking good!"

Answer: Only if you are from Scotland and have a sweet accent!

bwack, bwack, ba cok

Chicken Hats

Thought of the Day- 23 January 2007

The Persecution Factor
Being here in Hong Kong, a few hour plane ride away from some of the "hot spots" of Christian persecution, I can't help but think about pain and persecution as it relates to me. I guess it doesn't help that I am studying Philippians either. As I think, and even type this now, questions are racing through my head. Why is it that I am so afraid to hurt? Why is it that I value my physical comfort more than the Gospel of Christ? Why do I say 'yes' to sin and chose not to think on things above? Why is it that as a culture we seek the blessings of God but we don't seek the priviledge of suffering for Him? What am I living for? Who am I living for? Why am I so selfish?

And on, and on, and on....

I desire to be raw. I desire the priviledge of believing and suffering for Christ. I desire to boast in my weakness. I desire the Gospel of a dirty, hurting man/God. I crave reality!

Perhaps what I need is not the shelter of the church walls but the damp cold of a jail cell. Not the warm hug of a brother but the blow of an accuser. Not the approval of the church but the filling of the Spirit.

Who are you? What do you need?

Persecution

Welcome to My Life

Greetings! I would just like to take a moment to welcome you all to the Blogalicious (Hey! If Fergie can do it, why in the world can't I?) revelation of me. I would love for all of you to be able to know me on a deeper level than this blog, but seeing that I am on the other side of the world (well, those of you in the western world) I guess the words that I place on your screen will have to serve as the paint by which you will "create" the masterpiece (or number painting) of me...for now at least. I hope I make your job of "creating" really difficult!

On this blog you will find many things including but not limited to:
1. Some of my favorite stuff
2. Least favorite stuff (Petpeeves)
3. Updates from my time in Hong Kong, Mainland China, Thailand, Burma, Phillipines, etc...
4. Random thoughts I am having (Hopefully Daily)
5. Revelations from the Lord
6. Excerpts from books I am reading
7. Poems and Songs
8. Possible journal entries (love, sin, missions, God)
9. Things that I am looking for in a wife...hahaha J/K
10. My "wilderness" calling

etc...

I hope you all find joy in my lyrical revelation. I pray that you are challenged, stretched, encouraged, taught, and provoked by my life.

Joy, Peace, and Love
Brandon