It's been a while

It has been a while since I last wrote a blog, and as I look at my last blog, I am amazed at the things that have happened since then. Amazed at how little I knew was happening to me, to my world, my family, wife and children, and everything in between. To write it all in one blog would be like writing a book, because so much has transpired through the last almost 6 years. But one thing I do know...this Father of ours, the one we call "Lord" has blown my heart and mind away in ways I didn't know were possible. His truth, life, character, spirit, word, gospel message, love, joy and everything He represents and has chosen to reveal to us has become so much more than I ever had imagined. His trustworthiness, faithfulness, unfailing love and pursuit and lovingkindness have become our daily bread through all the trials, challenges, changes, highs and lows, and He has never been so real and active and alive in our lives. Well, He has always been real, active and alive. It is just that our hearts were not truly awakened to it.
But like I said, I wouldn't even know where to begin, so as I sit here, I will ponder on what things I feel like I could share that would best reflect and expose the glory he deserves through everything that has happened in our lives these last 6 years.
One thing I do know. In December of 2010, a few months after I wrote my last blog, Leah and the kids and I made a very hard decision. We left Mexico when things looked and felt very good as far as ministry goes. It really all looked so good and we felt that God was truly at work in the small community of Cerro Azul, Veracruz. But we knew something was not ok within us, in our family, our children and marriage. On the outside it looked great, but inside we were falling apart, broken, hurt and hurting each other. We were wounded soldiers trying to aid others. We were wounded people wounding others without knowing. And here is where the craziest thing was revealed to us. God didn't need us doing things for Him, achieving great dreams for His glory. He didn't need us dreaming up great dreams for Him, as we had heard so many times before. He didn't need us doing, going, planning, envisioning, achieving, etc. Not the way we were doing it. Not with a wounded, broken vision of who He truly is. You see, our perception of Him was not right, healthy. We were living our lives running on what little we knew about our Father, mostly because we were fed the awesome idea that to serve God you didn't really need all that preparation. All you needed was a passion for Him. And passion we had. Yet, our intimate knowledge of His word, His character, His heart and His truth were very limited, short sighted and broken.
You see, we were living life from the perspective that once you get saved, once you ask Jesus into your heart, you are good, or "gucci" as my kids put it. We are led to believe that once you are saved, then you should be able to overcome anything and that we have instant victory over sin and everything else that life brings our way. That swearing, anger, porn addiction, lying, cheating, unfruitful and filthy thoughts, greed, bitterness, adultery, drinking, smoking, anxiety, lack of trust, overworking, overachieving, low self-esteem, cutting, depression are things that needed to be blotted out of our lives instantly. That we needed to get our acts together, and that struggling and battling these things was shameful, embarrassing, worthy of judgement and scolding. And these things resulted in our putting up a fake face, a mask, a big smile when someone asked us how we were doing. We were trained to say "God is good brother!!!" And if we ever did share with someone, the cliche response is always "well, there must be something wrong with you. You are not trusting enough. Christians cannot be depressed. Gotta pray harder. Gotta do devotions everyday. Go to church more. Attend every single activity. Go on a fast. Read the Bible more.
But inevitably these things come around again and get a hold of us, making us fail, throwing us down on our faces, ashamed, embarrassed and left thinking "why can't i get rid of this?"
And the more we fail, the more we struggle with these things and don't get a victory over them, the more we feel like we are failing God, that we are letting Him down, and these feelings, instead of making us come to Him as the only way to be free from these things, make us create an image of our father in our own image, as one who won't take us back again, who is mad, disappointed and frustrated with us, and who will reject us.
This is the way we lived and served. The more we struggled, the more we tried to do, to accomplish. We needed to compensate for what we were struggling with, our shame, our feeling of inadequacy, being disqualified, insufficient, etc. So, this drove us to be more effective. Bigger events, numbers, houses built, bibles passed around, clothes given, food provided, programs developed, schools ran, evangelistic campaigns, events planned, etc. It was not coming out of a heart to bring others to Jesus' truth, feet, salvation, and liberating gospel. On the outside it was, and we believed it to be that way. But deep inside, the real motive was an unseen, yet very present feeling of shame and torment that drove us to do all those things for US...yes, for US! We needed to feel better about ourselves, so we kept telling ourselves (without knowing) that the more we accomplish the more appeasing we would be doing towards God's anger and disappointment in our lives. We did things to try to keep Him happy, satisfied, not-so-angry and frustrated at us. We did things to appease that feeling of inadequacy within us.
Sound familiar?
I'll get to more later. I think it is time for me to go home and pick up my wife. We are having breakfast with some really cool people. Until next time, peace out!

Drained out

Well, one more time I sit here thinking on what is happening to me, and how hard this road is. In the emtying of me, God is truly taking everything away from me. All my securities, my anchors where I held onto, and stripping away everything known to me. I am being left to force myself to wait on Him, to not come up with the answers by myself, on my own, and it is being very difficult. Specially since that is all I have known up until now. So, to wait in him while reading, or being quiet in his presence is so foreign to me, that is really causing me to change, to wrestle, to go against my old nature and it feels good but weird. I want to be emptied out of all that is me until there's nothing else but a heart that is ready to be poured into by my Father. Strip it all away God!


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

DYING...

WOW! I never thought i would be at this place, like this, and feel good about it. You see, what is happening in my life right now is that i am seeing and feeling this old person living in me dying slowly. And you might think, what do you mean? What i mean is that for so long i have been "play acting", as a friend put it, under this fake identity, this false person that i thought it was me. Weird, uh? No, not really. Reality is, we all function like this most of our lives. We acquire this fake identity, this false person, and pick it up and put it on as a defense, self-protective mechanism. From what? From all the wounds, past and present, that have been inflicted upon us and that have led us to, as a result, to inflict on others. Past sins committed against us as well as sins we have committed to others are all a part of this false identity. And i have lived with it for so long, it is so familiar, so comfortable, that i don't even realize this is not who i am. So, how did i get to be in this place where this old "David" is dying? What does that mean? Well, let me tell you about this old David. The old David is a person that lives insecurely in everything he does. He lives everyday to perform for his heavenly Father, for his wife, kids, and everyone else. He lives for the approval, acceptance, recognition and acknowledgment of other people. Everything he does is on display, on a grading scale, and usually he fails to perform "his best" performance, therefore he has to try harder every time, doing more, better, louder, flashier, more intense things in order to get the attention and meaning he so desperately needs. But it is never enough. It's a trap. He doesn't know who he is. He is serving the gods of other people's opinions. He is serving the gods that cannot ever be appeased. He is functioning under pagan traditions, spiritually cutting himself, yelling louder, dancing crazier, etc. Kinda like the story of Elijah and the prophets of ba'al.
What a pathetic way of living, isn't it? But this is what was fed to him as he was growing up. He was shamed, embarrassed, made fun of and belittled a lot. And so he felt he needed to work his hardest to make up for all his shortcomings. He felt that he needed to perform more, better, etc. And so, in this same way i have been relating to my Father. And it is icky to Him. Day after day trying to perform for him, to impress him, to buy his affection, to work hard to earn his favor, when in reality, all of that stuff is the reason why Jesus came to save me. Cause nothing that i do, that i can offer can earn my his love. That is why he gives it to me for free. Cause he loves me. And how hard has that been for me to understand. Every morning for a long time i have woken up trying to force intimacy with him through a set of "rules" and disciplines that only make it worse. Every morning i make a to-do list, wishing i have enough activities for the  day so that at the end i can feel like i did something, like i accomplished enough, but feeling so bad for not doing the most spiritual, the most impacting, the most life-altering stuff. If the day was filled with crappy projects, it still wouldn't be enough. I needed to feel spiritual enough. Man, what a slave.
But that old David is dying. And i am going crazy. The David i knew is going away, and i am being left with limbo, all the while God is preparing me to reveal to me who i really am. It is a weird place. It is a scary place. Because everything i held onto for security, for meaning, for purpose, in my personal life and ministry is being taken away, and i am being left to trust in a God that says He knows me, and He knows what He's doing.
So, my question to you is this...are you living under a fake identity? Will you be brave enough to let him take you out and "kill you softly with His love"?

WHEN IN OBEDIENCE...

It was only yesterday when i shared this story about my friend, and how God has totally opened the door to share so much truth with him, and to be there to help guide him into the freedom and life that God has for him. It was only yesterday when i knew that i had to be obedient to "ONE HEART AT A TIME", the words from God we heard about how he wanted us to go about this ministry. After i came back from the coffee shop, i found a message from him, where he shared about how fed up he was with the life he has been living, and that after talking to me he made the decision to put an end to his lies. An end to trying to protect a life that is empty, a life that has given him more hurts and wounds than anything else. I told him, "why are you trying so hard to cover up, to protect and to defend a life that is empty anyways?". Why are you trying so hard to defend and protect a life that has given you nothing but thorns, that has inflicted wounds on your soul and that is full of fake stuff, masquerades and emptiness that you can't bear anymore"? And that is exactly what he told me in his email afterward. He was encouraged, excited and ready to give that life up, to let it die, to let God kill his old self, no matter what the shame, or rejection or fear of being alone would be. He is already feeling alone, ashamed and guilty. So, he has nothing to lose but his old, yucky life.
So, i was so proud of him.
Today satan was not lazy, and he got to work right away. This evening i get a phone call from Juan, and his parents had a fight, and they told him to leave the house. He calls me crying, hopeless and confused. God, what are you doing? SO, God gave me the words to say to him, to encourage him, to uplift him, and to make him see that just as he is broken and in need of healing, and how his past has played a huge part in the sins he has walked in lately, so is his dad in a huge need of healing, and his mom, and the whole family. And just as he has been given grace, he needs to realize that even though what his parents are walking in is sin, they're also desperate for healing. Then Ricky got to talk to him cause they were at the coffee shop, and he said they had a good talk.
God is definitely doing something here, and it is one heart at a time. Thanks for listening...

At the cafe right now

So, as I sit here at the coffee shop, with my friend Juan, I can't help but be amazed at the goodness of God and how faithful he is. Juan has been on a journey with me the last few weeks where he has been learning about sin in his life, about torment, the seduction that that torment and shame bring with it, and the trap that seduction offers, the fake and empty relief it brings us and how to stand against it. He has been confessing ugly sins and learning how that doesn't disqualify him from God. How in fact that shame is what keeps us away from God. It goes back to Adam and eve and how they hid from God as soon as they sinned. As we have been chatting here, he's learning that true love can be found and that sin is just that, sin, and it has consequences but it has been paid for, and as long as we bring it to the light and confess it to one another, it loses it's power over us to bring that condemnation in our lives. I can tell he's freer just by being allowed to be real and not judged. Maybe that is what Jesus was trying to communicate when he told the adulterous woman, "where are those who accused you", and then said "neither do I. Go and sin no more".
Thank you for your revelation Jesus


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Wouldn't you know...

As we closed our 6th week and entered our 7th week of SOMD, we had a great time with our speaker of 2 days, Jose Joseph. An amazing man of God from India, he brought with him stories of what God is doing through him to redeem his own people, and the faith it takes to believe God can and wants to do amazing things through our lives as well. His challenge was not to just dream a great dream for God, but what are we going to do once that dream comes? You might say, I don't really have a dream, or, "i don't know what God's vision for my life is". Well, his challenge again was this, "How come all the creativity, all the great ideas, the amazing feats of victory in every sphere of society, every new invention and great product, came from the minds of people who %95 of them didn't serve Jesus? How come, if we are the children of God, cannot be creative and instead we are always copying the world in everything they do? How come the most beautiful music is not being composed by followers of Jesus? how come the greatest inventions are not coming from those who know the creator God? How come Microsoft, Apple, Coca-Cola, IBM, Starbucks, Facebook, Myspace, the Internet, Sony, etc are the ones dominating the creating world? Don't we have a Creator God? Don't we know Him? then why are we copying the world. Let's co-create with God. Let us dream, yeah, but let's ask God to help us materialize that dream. Let us be faithful in doing what we know we can do...PRAY. Let's be man and woman of prayer and faith. One thing he said is that he believes 100% that God is his provider. And funny that as he was here speaking, Leah and I were reading the story of George Muller to our children. We were so impacted and challenged by the life of this man. He never once asked for anything in his life, except to God. He didn't share his needs with anyone but God. He didn't expect anything from anyone but God. He didn't plan on retirement, or health insurance or anythhing like that. We think ourselves very wise and amazing for thinking and planning for these things, but i am beginning to believe they are more a product of our lack of faith and false sense of security than of real faith and trust in God. Some people may say it is foolish not to plan for our future, but if our future is in God's hands, then what do we have to worry about? Yes, it is very true we oughta be good stewards of God's provision, but how much is too much? This man, as well as the man who came and spoke to us said that there's no plan b or c, or at least there shouldn't be. God oughta be our only plan. George Muller never retired, and he never saw any of his needs not met. What are we doing when we save for the future? We gotta make sure it doesn't get it the way of fully trusting our God for our every need. As long as we seek His kingdom, He will take care of us. So take heart, and do not lose faith. He called you! He can stand by his word!!!

SOMD CONTINUED...

Well, another week has gone by and things are getting really interesting here in sunny LA. The last week we had quite the crazy week. Sunday morning we woke up to a fire near us, which i'm sure you've all heard of, and we saw God perform miracles in a very sweet way. Twice we had a fire near us and twice the Lord kept us safe and made the fire turn around and go a different direction away from us but also away from the community we live in. Just the other day we were going to church and we saw how the fires had burnt a lot of the mountain side around the city, but there were no homes damaged, even though the fire came as close as 50 feet from the homes. God is awesome and He hears our prayers all the time. It was awesome to see a bunch of people on that Sunday morning, after being evacuated to Denny's, stand outside in the parking lot @ 5am in the morning worshipping and praying and interceeding for the city and then seeing God move in such an awesome way as an answer to our prayers. God, you are good!!!

But because of the craziness of the fires around us, we were able to serve at a shelter that a huge megachurch set up for the evacuees. It was a great sight to see a mega church not care or worry about their carpet and their building as they were having hundreds of people come to them with pets, with their belongings, etc and to see the church love and minister to those people in very practical ways. It was a true "sighting" of real church happening, without selfishness or arrogance, or greed or apathy. They simply did what they knew God has called us all to do...HELP and meet people's needs in practical ways, thus showing God's love to people in tangible ways!

And that is what this week and last weekend classes have been all about. Our ministries should come out of our lives, our experiences with God and our love for Him and others. Ministry is not something that we do, but a way we live. To minister means to serve, to love, to meet people's needs where they're at. Not to preach, not a title, not a profession or a carreer, but a lifestyle.
And that is what Jesus said, "whatever you've seen me do you do also". We need to learn from Him to do ministry. He was about the people and the need they had. Yes, they needed Jesus, and forgiveness and redemption, but they way Jesus brought it was different than we have made it. He hung out with the people, with those who really needed Him, and He loved them and served them, not without speaking the truth of His love to them, but not just with words but actions. James says "faith without works is dead. I believe this to be true. And i believe this is the way i ougtha live my life.

God has called us to serve and minister to the people of Mexico, specifically Cerro Azul. We oughta do it with the knowledge that as we love, serve, give, bless and show Jesus to them through our lives, God will draw the people of Cerro Azul to Him as long as we portray who Jesus truly is. Something i thought about today was this, "if we are God's reflection to people, or at least that is what we ougtha be, then how are people percieving God through us? What is the reflection people are seeing like? What qualities and characteristics of God are people seeing in me? Love? Compassion? Integrity? Mercy? Truth? Freedom? Generosity? Faith? Forgiveness? Patience? Joy? or are we reflecting ourselves in the name of Christianity and Jesus?