Revolt Towards

Breaking News: Pope Calls for Palestinian state

Pope Benedict XVI has offered his support for the Palestinians' right to a homeland as he continues his Middle East tour in the West Bank.

Speaking in a Bethlehem refugee camp, he said he understood frustrations that their "legitimate aspirations" for a Palestinian state were unfulfilled.

Standing beside him, Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas called on Israel to embrace peace. Earlier, the pontiff said he prayed for a lifting of Israel's embargo on Gaza.

The BBC's Tim Franks said that the Pope used the stark backdrop of a Palestinian refugee camp to deliver one of his strongest expressions of support for the Palestinians.

Standing in the shadow of Israel's separation wall in the Aida refugee camp, which houses refugees from Israel's creation in 1948, the Pope called the barrier a symbol of "stalemate" between Israel and the Palestinians.

"In a world where more and more borders are being opened up - to trade, to travel, to movement of peoples, to cultural exchanges - it is tragic to see walls still being erected," he said.

"In front of Your Holiness I address a message of peace to our Israeli neighbours. And I call upon them to renounce occupation, settlements, arrests, and humiliations."

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Read the article here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8047134.stm

Also, an article on Christians in Palestine:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8047746.stm

Prayer For The Week

Good morning friends...

I was just reading the BBC about how the Sri Lankan government killed more than 430 people over the weekend, 100 of them being civilian children. (You can read about it here.) 

I thought it would be good to start this week off with a liturgy written by Christine Sine of Mustard Seed Associates. One where we could start the week off right, in the presence of Jesus as we give Him our week ahead as well as remembering and joining with the prayers of those we are connected to around the world:

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We gather as members of God’s eternal family to share life together with our brothers and sisters from around the world. Let us remember that sharing life with brothers and sisters in Africa, Asia, the Americas, Europe, Australia and the many islands of our planet means entering into their joys and sorrows. 

God, you offer us wholeness, not alone, but as part of your redeemed community from every tribe and nation and culture.

You ask us to love each other and to be more concerned for the needs of others than for our own. Yet often we focus on our own needs, greedily holding to ourselves what you intend us to share. 

God renew our hearts and our minds so that we may in word and deed be your witnesses throughout this world.

(Take a moment of silence)

God who created us is with us

And with our brothers and sisters from every tribe and nation

Christ who saved us is with us

And with our brothers and sisters from every tribe and nation

The Holy Spirit who brings us unity is with us

And with our brothers and sisters from every tribe and nation

Psalm 67

Isaiah 2: 1-4

Eph 4: 1-6, 11-16

Matt 28: 18-20

Our father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory, forever and ever. Amen.

God be in our heads and in our understanding,

God be in our eyes and in our looking

God be in our mouths and in our speaking

God be in our hearts and in our thinking

God be in our end and in our departing

O Lord our God,

Listen to us in this place

Accept also the prayers of our sisters and brothers in Africa, Asia, Australia, America and Europe.

We are all one in prayer 

So may we, as one, rightly carry out your commission to witness and to share life together.

In the church and around the world

Accept all our prayers graciously,

Those in our words, and those in strange languages.

They are offered in Jesus’ name.

Amen

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The whole liturgy can be found here.

The Restoration of All Things

"Repent therefore and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, so that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord,  and that He may send Jesus Christ, who was preached to you before, whom heaven must receive until the times of restoration of all things, which God has spoken by the mouth of all His holy prophets since the world began." 

- Acts 3:19-21

In this series we have walked through a lot of theology, a lot of definitions and a lot of study. We have covered why we must pursue justice, not simply from a place of "doing" good works, but from a place of intimacy with our King—every action, gesture and effort to bring the Kingdom to Earth must flow out of our friendship with Jesus.

This article opened with Acts 3:19-21, which states that we should repent so times of refreshing may come and that "He [God] may send Jesus Christ, who was preached to you before, whom heaven must receive until the times of the restoration of all things".

What does this mean for us? It means that heaven and Father God have a hold on Jesus until the earth is restored to the way God intended it to be. How can this be, you might be asking? Why would the Father be withholding His Son from the world? What is God waiting for? The Father is waiting for us.

This does not mean that the Father and the Son are twiddling their thumbs while we fumble our way through our own messes, as we strived to usher in this "restoration". Jesus intentionally left the world and intentionally left His Spirit for us to be our counselor (John 16:7). In the Greek text, the word for counselor is "paracletos", which means: one called to the side of another for the purpose of helping him in any way. Many of you will hopefully find yourselves on your faces, in worship and in your prayer closets protesting through prayer the injustice in our day. It is in these places we need to give space for the Holy Spirit to lead and guide us. 

THE HEART TRANSPLANT

I truly believe that heaven is waiting and the world is watching the Bride of Christ to see what we do and hear what we say. There will always be the many soothsayers out there that say Christianity is a dying religion. The 'Revival of Justice" has started, but as history reveals time and time again, revivals come and go. Frankly, simply reviving the heart of Church won't work in this next season. Even worse, the world cannot afford it. Rather, Heaven is looking to give us a complete heart transplant, where we replace our hearts with His. This transplant comes from us going to the deep places and the secret places with our God. It will only be out of intimacy that we can get there because justice and righteousness start from the inside, out. In fact, God leads us into righteousness and one day we will be judged by how much our righteousness aligned with His:

He restores my soul. He guides me in paths of righteousness (justice) 

for his name's sake.

Psalm 23:3

Judgment will again be founded on righteousness, 

and all the upright in heart will follow it.

Psalm 94:15

Our journey to usher justice and righteousness on the earth is an inner one that begins in my heart and yours and the outflow of that is supposed to reach to the ends of the earth.

THE NEW BREED OF LOVERS 

I know and believe there is a New Breed of Lovers arising who will understand the deep places found in the heart of Father, who want to see everlasting justice and righteousness here on earth. This new breed doesn't look like the generations before it. Many have swung the pendulum to one side or the other, putting too much weight on justice and action while forgetting the relationship, worship and prayer. Or on the side, spending so much time on the relationship, worship and prayer that opportunities for justice and action were ignored or missed altogether. 

This New Breed of Lovers know what it takes. They know the cost. They know that good works and deeds in the streets, alleys and public squares alone won't cut it. They also know that the prayer closets alone are too boring. But they know it takes both—starting with the secret histories alone with God so that the strategies of Heaven can be fashioned and fleshed out in the public arenas. 

I hope as you read this, you want to be a part of this new breed. Next week, I will be giving you an outlet to how all this is fleshed out with a new website I will be launching. Stay tuned, my friends. If you have any thoughts or comments, please send them my way as well. Would love to hear them!

God Bless America and Her Drunkards...

I went to the Dodger game last night with Aileen to watch them play the Arizona Diamondbacks. It was during the seventh inning stretch (the space between the top and bottom of the seventh inning) that they invited a performer onto the the field to sing God Bless America. 

Aileen and I stood up with the thousands around us and in the more immediate vicinity, the dozens of drunkards seated to the right and back of us. The guy began to sing the song and almost immediately, these drunk men behind us started to worship...

God Bless America, 
Land that I love. 
Stand beside her, and guide her 
Thru the night with a light from above. 
From the mountains, to the prairies, 
To the oceans, white with foam 
God bless America, My home sweet home.

While their version seemed like it should have been sung a dimly lit pub with mugs of beer in hand, I smiled at their worship and acknowledgment of Creator God, that He would guide them through the darkness of their lives with His light. 

In that moment, I was overwhelmed by Creator's love for each and everyone of us in that stadium. I've had similar moments like this while seeing Radiohead, U2 and Sigur Ros, and this Dodger Stadium experience was no different. It is a glimpse of the "yet to come"—the point sometime in the future ahead where every tongue will cry out and the whole earth will be covered with the glory of God. I have loved all these moments because God's Son wasn't sent to earth and hung on a cross so we could 'do Church' every week in a building. He was sent to the world in the name of Love and His Spirit is waiting to be poured out onto 'all flesh' (Joel 2:28) so that all might know Him: every sinner, tax collector, prostitute, drunkard, addict, teacher, doctor, politician, web designer, entrepreneur, every Dodger fan, and on and on... 

God Bless Us, Lead Us, Guide Us.

Strategy Through Intimacy

"And I—in righteousness I will see your face; 
when I awake, I will be satisfied with seeing your likeness."
- Psalm 17:15 


I once heard a story about Tony Campolo (please help me with these facts, as it was all out of conversations and hearsay), who after having see the atrocious sight of a sweatshop in Latin America, came back home with a bid to do whatever he could to shut it down and restore dignity to the indigenous people he encountered. After petitioning and campaigning, he had helped to rid the town of the sweatshop. However, a new problem arose: the townspeople had lost their livelihood. Justice had come to the people so what place did they have to think that Campolo instead was the bringer of injustice? But that didn’t matter. They had work for their families before; to put food on their tables, send their kids to school and have a life for themselves. What we would call a “sweatshop” was their income and their security and shutting it down meant that it went all away overnight.

While I don’t know if this story is all truth or hearsay, it remains a great parable for us to glean from (and sorry to Mr. Campolo if he had nothing to do with the town or this story). It allows us to see a clear picture of justice is married to righteousness (see last week’s post).

As people of faith who pursue righteousness and justice hand-in-hand, we will see that only through an intimate and intentional relationship with Jesus can there be holistic action and change. What does holistic mean or look like? Imagine sweatshops having to be forced to shut down, not because of petition and campaign, but because the people had support and funding to start their own factory, run by the town’s people with fair wages and practices. Imagine a kind of justice that doesn’t just see a homeless man receiving change for his next meal, but rather prophetically calls out to the man that still has a destiny rooted in God, with hopes and dreams waiting to be revived as he gets back on his feet, gets a job and establishes footing in society again. What do you see? What else can you imagine?



USHERING IN THE EVERLASTING

Glorious and majestic are his deeds, and his righteousness endures forever.


Psalm 111:3

Your righteousness is everlasting and your law is true.


Psalm 119:142

I want us to reflect for a moment on “His righteousness endures forever” found in Psalms 111:3. When you think of all the acts of justice you see in the world, how many of them are everlasting and endure forever? Take our efforts in America to stop homelessness—in economic times like these it seems to only get worse. Take the efforts of the peace movement—hatred and wars still evade their efforts. The list goes on and on where it seems like we have the constant, uphill battle to bring Heaven’s righteousness and justice on earth. In light of all that we have learned about God’s righteous character, we know that God Himself isn’t lying to us to think that our earth can see everlasting righteousness. So how do we usher this in? I believe He is calling us into a new era where can release strategies of everlasting justice on this earth, driven by intimacy with King of Justice himself. 

I’m sure you are wondering what does this “strategy through intimacy’ even look like. Or maybe you are currently engaged in a movement of justice and longing for it to be sustaining, everlasting and enduring. The simplest answer I can give you is prayer. But oh, how it is so much more my friends!

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In the fall of 2008, I awoke from a dream where I heard God tell me “Everything flows from My presence”. It was only one of two times where I have had this happen. I found myself struggling to understand what He meant. As it relates to justice, I think rooting ourselves in the presence of God is the only way to find strategies that endure. Intimacy with any human being is never birthed of out you talking hours on end. It is the same way with the one who holds the scepter of justice, Jesus. It is about prayer, yes, but prayer that finds ourselves in the presence of God Himself. I don’t know about you, but I cannot accept anything less than that. In times such as these, I don’t think our world can either. Creation is groaning for us—the Church—to bring about “the restoration of all things” (Acts 3:20-21).

When I look at my own life and the things I have been exposed to that pull on my heartstrings, I have come to the habit of asking God to show me what His will is. Some ideas I have submitted to God would have been huge wastes of time, had I done them myself and had God not stopped me. However, if I am quiet enough and willing enough to let go of my own ideas, I find that more often than not, God loves takes my ideas and only wants to see them be extended further beyond anything I could ever do. (After all, we are all created in His image and able to create things the world has never seen. If you ask me, that is an awesome starting place when it comes to bringing justice!). It is His righteousness that is everlasting, so the intimacy is about aligning our well-intending heart and creative minds with His so people can truly and forever find freedom, chains can truly and forever be broken and lives truly and forever can be restored.


Isaiah 51:6


Lift up your eyes to the heavens, look at the earth beneath; 

the heavens will vanish like smoke, the earth will wear out like a garment 

and its inhabitants die like flies. But my salvation will last forever, 

my righteousness will never fail. 

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THE WARNING AND THE ENCOURAGEMENT


If only you had paid attention to my commands, 

your peace would have been like a river, 

your righteousness like the waves of the sea. 

Isaiah 48:18

God tells Israel in the book of Isaiah of what they could have had if only they would have listened. They lost touch with their God and their ears were closed (48:8). It is my encouragement that we all remember to anchor ourselves in the presence of Jesus Himself. If we have the opportunity to spend even one moment with the one who holds the scepter to ushering in all justice on the earth, I don’t know why would ever turn down such an opportunity. Let’s meet Jesus! Let’s put our ear to Him so we can usher in Heaven’s strategies on the earth! May our justice be like a river and His righteousness like the waves of the sea!