These changes have really had an impact on where I place my attention and time. I used to listen to the radio for about an hour and a half everyday on my way to and home from work, but that has left me feeling a little cheated in recent days. I love a lot of the music but it hasn’t stirred me and I think that is what I am looking for. I want music to impact me. I want it to reach into my heart and make me feel something. More importantly, I want it to make me feel some things that I believe God wants me to feel more deeply. There is nothing like that on the radio these days. Although I hate the distinction, this is true in both secular and christian genres. At least it’s true of the most modern music.

I recently dug back into my past to pull out some old music that does have that impact on me. I am not fond of all the musical styles a lot of the time but I love what the words of their songs do inside me. Some of these artists are Larry Norman, Keith Green and Steve Camp. Cheesy? Sometimes. But their hearts and lyrics are something that is missing in our generation. 

I don’t just want music that makes me feel better. I want music that makes me want to be better.

Am I wrong? Are there artists today that challenge us with the heart of God in a very profound way? If so, I would love to hear them.

You have vowed you will do a great many things during your term as President. Promises to fix the economy, strengthen our international relations, care for our planet, and work to decrease and one day eliminate human suffering. I believe that deep down every American wants these things but has no faith that any of them will truly happen. We want to believe in a better America but it seems that they are impossible expectations. Leaders form both parties over several decades have made those promises and all of them have failed to one degree or another. I am confident that you will do the same, but I am ok with that on one condition. Will you feel the pain of those decisions before you make them?

You have claimed that you are a follower of Christ. Although many have speculated whether or not that is true, I make no such accusation. I only ask that if you believe what you claim, that you wrestle with the heart of God on every decision that you make. I am not asking you to make no decisions at all or to fail to lead with strong convictions. I am simply asking you to lead humbly. Admit your mistakes when you make them, and you will make them. Feel the broken heart of God in your own and let it guide you in all future trials. If you will do this, not privately but publicly, you may just leave the greatest legacy of any American President up to this point. 

I am praying for you. Not that you will fix all of our problems but that your heart will be humbled by the mere fact that you can’t. Only then will you be able to lead as you must.

In God I trust,

James A. Laws

From the praise and worship leader:

“Ok, we’ll go two times through the kazoo solo and when you hear the bike horn we’ll go back into the chorus strong.”

I think the funiest part of that sentence is the fact that it was attached to an actual worship song and not some type of funny special song. And the fact that he had the kazoo and the bike horn in one of those neck gizmos.

Crazy.

Without getting into the boring details, I was a very excited and passionate person when it came to my faith. I wanted to change my community and my city. I didn’t know how to do it but I knew I had to do something. So I started building a team to reach out through arts and a zeal for both God and people. 

On two separate occasions I was sat down by one of the pastors and the drama director and corrected. I was called rebellious, obstinate and hard headed. Those words stuck with me for many years as I seemingly proved them to be true at various stages of my life. They still at times try and creep back in. I felt like God himself had called me those names since he didn’t seem to come to my side and defend me. I felt alone and in many ways gave up on my faith. I have also relived this same scenario in many diferent ways and stages.

I gave faith another chance but not without resentment. I tried to be what everyone wanted me to be. I didn’t succeed usually, but I tried. In my travelling with the New Life Drama Company I ended up at a church in Broomfield, CO called His Beloved Family Church. There I received a prophecy of sorts that to this day haunts me.

Regardless of what your views are on the Holy Spirit and the gifts that operate because of his infuence, I would like to share this prophecy with you. Know this, this message from God (and that is exactly what I believe it was) has changed and is chaging my life. 

Here is the beautiful part of how the Holy Spirit sometimes works. This was a message for me but I believe that the Holy Spirit wants to re-speak through this word to someone out there who perhaps has felt the scars of the story I shared above. I hope that you have ears to hear.

Saturday the 8th

• Kevin and I had our usual morning meeting and errand run. We so desperately need to get organized and work some sort of system to get all that is in our haeds and heart into production.
• Had lunch with our new friend Matt at Schlotzsky’s Deli. Matt is the GM there and a pretty cool guy. 
• I haven’t eaten at Schlotzskys in about 6 years. I really liked it.
• After my normal morning routine with Kevin I decided to go to Startbucks and just read and prepare myself for Sunday. I thought it would be a nice quite afternoon but then the whole neighborhood came and we hung out for 4 hours on the patio. It was nice.
• Around 6:30 I tool Ed and Dooley to the Chattanooga Billiards Club for what I have determined to be the best cheeseburgers that I have had thus far.
• We then went to our friends haunted house and went through it with a video camera. Mostly had fuun scaring Dooley. 
• Got home at about 9:30 and then watched Ed edit the video so that we could show SUnday morning. That’s right! LifePoint got to watch their pastor go through a hanuted house during church.

I always love to teach at church but over the past couple weeks there has been something, not new, but revived inside me. I felt it last week and I feel it bubbling inside me again now. I really didn’t know how to explain it on my own until I was reading earlier and came across this well known passage.

If I say, “I will not mention him,
or speak any more in his name,”
there is in my heart as it were a burning fire
shut up in my bones,
and I am weary with holding it in,
and I cannot.

Jeremiah 20:9

Wow! That is exactly how I feel. Like I have been holding something in and I can’t do it any longer. In a way I think that is what our current series Haunted is all about. I want us all to get to the point where the Holy Spirit is stirring so much that we have to do something. 

At LifePoint this Sunday we will be looking at how the Holy Spirit empowers us and provides his gifts to us to do the very things he is stiriing us to do. Will you do it? Are you becoming haunted?

There were many other departments doing similar things throughout our fundraising season. They would provide meals or raffle off a goodie basket or IPOD. It got me thinking about the state of charitable giving. Have we reduced our giving to a “what’s in it for me” mentality. Angela and I support St. Judes, not just because it’s a great cause but because we get useful return address labels too. Do many of us give to such and such charity with the idea that we are getting something out of it other than a warm fuzzy feeling and the knowledge we did the right thing? Is giving for the sake of giving a lost art?

I don’t believe this is always the case, in fact there are some who have encouraged me by their willingness to give with no promise of receiving anything in return. Jared White gave a sizable gift when we set out to start LifePoint. Gary & Suzanne Wild gave regular offerings when LifePoint was going through an extremely difficult time financially. Without their generosity we might not have even made it through our first year. And my close friends, Zack & Hollie, support LifePoint eventhough they are unable to to attend. All of these people have been a huge encouragement to me on my own journey. They compel me to think bigger and hurt deeper.

The question must not be, what’s in it for me but what’s in me for others.

This morning, not even an hour ago, I was walking from the parking garage to my office when a man on the corner asked me for a quarter to help pay for a bus ride. Immediately the standard answers almost came to the surface. “I don’t have any change” or whatever. Now I didn’t actually have a quarter but it was the fact that I didn’t want to give it even if I did. 

Through my life something has Jaded me. I think I know more about people in need than I do. I operate on an auto pilot assumption that says they are that way by choice. All of them. I have been had many times by scam artists who pan handle for a living and so I lump everyone into that category. In the end, I don’t think I am selfish or even hateful, I just don’t want to be made a fool of. But today I made a decision.

I would rather be a fool of generosity than a steward of cynicism. It’s not my job to know the intentions of other peoples hearts, only my own. I didn’t have a quarter but I did have a dollar…I hope that bus got him wherever he needed to go.

You may be right about the issues you are upset about but don’t act like that is all that defines those who identify with that particular party. The right to life, choose, bear arms, hate war, defend freedoms, care for God’s creation, hold leaders accountable, exact justice, abolish povety, end homlesness, cure disease, defend the weak and many other issues are all important to God. To say otherwise is pure ignorance of the worst kind.

I beg all of us who find our identity in the cross to stop being Republicans, stop being Democrats. Be followers of Christ and love and respect those who are trying to do so. And do this regardless of how you vote. Because whoever you vote for this November will be representing a party that has got some things right and some things wrong. Neither of which are we to place our faith.