The Human Heart - an idol factory

My heart - or emotional core - is an idol factory. And so is yours. This is the reason John warns "Little children, keep yourself from idols" (1 John 5:21). This stern command comes after over 100 sentences in which he is teaching about who God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit are, who we are, and how we should scurry to believe in Jesus and follow Him. John knows we are prone to wander from God and craft and worship our own created gods. 

You may wonder "What is an idol anyway?" An idol is anything that occupies the place due to God, in other words, a God-substitute. Idols are illusions, counterfeits, unreality, fakes; I call them spiritual implants. John, in writing from Ephesus, no doubt had in mind the Temple of Diana, the center for false worship in his day. It was a place filled with immorality, temple prostitution (live porn), criminal activity, sorcery, incantations, astrology, and the list goes on. In sum, it was a cesspool of vile debauchery and devil worship. That following Jesus in Ephesus was dangerous is an understatement.

Paul is similarly alarmed and grieved in Athens. He sees there a vast cultural, social, and spiritual landscape enmeshed and devoted to idols, most identified with a stone carving. He addresses idolatry in Romans 1 saying it is exchanging the truth of God for the lie and worshipping the creature and created things rather than the Creator.

Frankly put, we also live amid a dangerous cultural landscape; we do the same thing. This is how it works then and now: we take something created, like jobs, families, hobbies, power, money, sexuality, sports, medications, food, hope, beauty, dreams, churches, motherhood, treatment plans, or healing and devote ourselves to it so much that little by little, it begins to occupy the place in our lives that belongs to God alone. We worship and serve created things rather than our Creator. Not one of us is guiltless; we've all fashioned and worshipped God-substitutes and taken pleasure in it.

Let's stop doing it!

Let's call others to worship the One, true God.

And that is our motive for raising up a new community of Jesus followers: for God's honor and glory, to call His wayward children back into vital relationship with Him.

But before that can happen, God must first deal with my heart and yours. I pray that the Holy Spirit will mine my inner space for idols and do a spiritual crap clean.

God says that if we draw near to Him, He will draw near to us. I've been wondering how that looks. How can we draw near to God? You mean, there is something I can do to make this happen? Yes, I believe there is.

First, we must acknowledge Him as the One, True God. Those on Mount Carmel in Elijah's day wavered between opinions about who God is. After they saw God chuck down fire from heaven, opinions were burned up too. There were no questions about who God is. Read 1 Kings 18:39.

Next, have you ever pulled a Joshua? Have you ever chosen God for your own? Now, I'm not saying that our choosing God is the beginning of our relationship; but it is a part. Check out Joshua 24:14-15. There he says he and his family are choosing God and committing to do life with Him.

Further, God cuts a covenant with us and says "I will be your God and your children's God." There is much richness and depth to God's covenant that I won't get to here. But for now it is enough to say there is a 'response' side to what God promises. Will we also covenant with Him and commit to being His?

There is also our response of praise and adoring God with emotional affection. Nehemiah and Ezra, along with all the people, pressed their faces to the ground, bowing and worshipping Him. We ought to do the same. (See Nehemiah 8:6)

Another aspect of relating rightly to God is having a healthy fear and awe for Him. Do we fear Him with a holy awe that we dare not sin against Him? Isaiah speaks of a day when people will fear His name and revere His glory (Isaiah 59:19). Let's start today.

Trust God in everything and for everything, not just in easy times. We must rely on His power as Creator and on His love as Father. To trust God as His kid is necessary for us and pleasing to Him (See Psalm 62:8).

Love God with your whole self. Jesus talks about doing this and says it is the best thing we can do (Mark 12:29-31).

Finally, obey God without backtalk. We are prone to disrespect and question God on various levels. But how often do we simply obey what He asks and commands? A favorite verse of mine on this idea is 1 John 2:3-6.

Crafting idols is safe and comforting; it makes us feel alive and in control. But it never dulls the raw emptiness and ruggedness of our inner soul life. It is like digging a cistern to store water and watching the water slowly drain out; idols do not last, they do not satisfy.

Cultivating a relationship with the living God is terrifying, risky, and unsafe. It requires that we actually trust something outside of ourselves, it means giving up our demand that life make sense, it means surrendering our lives and laying down our dreams and letting Jesus live through us, it means being content with our brokenness and relying on God's repair to bring wholeness. It means we are willing to feel again and trusting that God is enough no matter what chaos the world, the flesh and the devil may bring.   

Gather This Friday ...

YOU'RE INVITED! Come to our home for dinner, relationships, and informal worship this Friday nite from 5 - 7 PM. We will have plenty of good things to keep the children busy and good opportunity for adults to connect. Stay for as long or little as you like. E-mail me at jimmy@gatheringtucson.org for directions or other stuff.

Gathering This Friday ...

YOU'RE INVITED! Come to our home for dinner, relationships, and informal worship this Friday nite from 5:30 - 7:30 PM. We will have plenty of good things to keep the children busy and good opportunity for adults to connect. Stay for as long or little as you like. E-mail me at jimmy@gatheringtucson.org for directions or other stuff.

Gather on 1st and 3rd Fridays

The Gathering will begin meeting regulary on the 1st and 3rd Fridays of each month. We'll gather around 5:30 PM to eat and connect with each other, then around 6:45 until 7:30 PM we'll have a brief time of worship with music, a Bible message, and lesson, crafts, and a movie for the children.

You're invited! And remember, participating in a Gathering event does not commit you to this new thing God is doing. So don't be weirded out about coming to check it out.

One of our values is sharing gifts, so, like did the early church, bring something to offer: yourselves, food, a poem to read during worship, your music, your love for children, your story to share - whatever God has given you, share it with us!

Next Gathering is Friday, October 7 at 5:30 PM. 

Great Nite!

Had a really fun night last night meeting new friends, eating together, inspiring time of singing, enjoying children, navigating chaos and noise, invigorating conversation, drawing pictures and flying paper ariplanes and community clean-up.

Our 'Gathering' events happen the 1st and 3rd Fridays of each month at 5:30 PM. You're invited so join us next time! Jimmy n Liz

Gathering This Friday!

You are invited to our home this Friday at 6 PM to relax, eat together, enjoy relationships, hear about the new church we're raising up, and participate in a brief time of informal worship. Children are welcome. Come over, we'd enjoy having you! E-mail me (jimmy@gatheringtucson.org) if you need our address and/or directions. Jim n Liz

Stand In Man

In His own body He bore our sins on the tree ...


Stories are powerful. They are especially so when they intersect with the Gospel of Jesus. And all stories eventually do intersect ...

Here is the account of how an aspect of my story intersects with Jesus' story, highlighting a key element of the Gospel.

When I was in my mid-twenties, I got busted for growing a small crop of marijuana in the basement of my home. It was a horrible and hopeless experience. A team of DEA agents raided my home and confiscated my grow-room for evidence. I felt agonizingly alone, shamefully burdened by the pending charges against me, enraged at the 'friend' who betrayed and turned me in, hopeless for any bright future, and absolutely red-hot inflamed against God for allowing my life to be torn apart. The sun didn't rise anymore. There was no way out.

But to my surprise, a DEA investigator made me an offer. If I would work with them and help them arrest someone on similar charges - one of my 'friends' - I myself could go free. A way out ... ... hmmmm ...

Trouble is everyone I knew knew I got busted; surely in vain the net is spread in the sight of any bird! I decided I would not do this violence to another like had been done to me. It was my mistake, my foolishness, my charges, my punishment. So without an advocate, I took my own hit.

A year later, after the process unfolded and my punishment was satisfied, I attended a Catholic Bible study - why I'm not sure. There I heard a priest read from the Bible. While I don't remember what he read, I do recall the tremendous impact it had on me; it left an indelible mark on my life. For the first time I heard God speaking directly to me. It was like those words were penetrating into parts of me I didn't know existed; a new world opened up on my inside and there God warmly met me and took up residence. The tap root of faith vigorously invaded and began to grow and overtake me.

I was being apprehended by God! His Spirit was raiding my inner space, lighting up my darkness, uncovering my defilement, convicting me of my rebellion, exposing my dirtiness, and all the while revealing Himself to me as an eclectic, mysterious, compelling, awesome, terrifying, gracious and compassionate God. His holy presence - now terrifyingly in me - convicted me of sin, high treason, love-lacking, self-absorption, idolatry. Talk about terror! I felt like a translucent blob inner-lit and exposed before everywhere present eyes. I was horrified yet compelled, despairing yet expectant, mixed up, broken apart and laid down.

Then it happened ...

God made me an offer. I could either take my lifetime of rebellion on my own shoulders or ... lay it on someone else's. Trouble with mine is that they are weak. Who can stand before the Lord's judgment? Not me. I'd be consumed. Trouble with Jesus' shoulders is that they require me to trust something outside of myself, to relinquish my control of things, to risk putting my trust in something or - more terrifying - someone I can't physically grab hold of, to offer my life on the altar of grateful service (along with any number of other scary things).

But why Jesus? Why not Fred or Julie or Izzie my dog? Because sin and death entered the world and human nature through a human and this human nature must pay for its sin. My sin. And because the severity of judgment on sin is so brutal - on account that it is war and violence against a holy God - only He Himself is capable of absorbing, enduring the eternal weight of His anger and wrath for sin, that is why a virgin birth is so vital. God must be born into this world with both a human and divine nature because both are necessary if I am to have a way out, a stand in.

This time I took the offer.

I became a new creation! This identity, this realization hit me while driving westbound on I-94 into Milwaukee in my retro-green 1966 Pontiac Bonneville with a 396. I was listening to - what I frankly would now consider a cheesy - Christian radio station during a brief devotion on that verse.

I began to weep, thinking, "This is true of me ... now!" Somehow I had been repaired, reborn, restored from within apart from my own doing and its feels so surreal, so unreal, so superbly real, so vital, so brand new, so new born. Old things passed away, everything became new.

Honestly, it felt weird. It felt like my old self was melting away and a new self was beginning to emerge. New, fresh faith in someone, something outside myself, new desires that were eager after God's heart, new longings for realities outside this world, new relationship with the ancient of ways, new courage to navigate a jacked world, new hope for a new world renewed by fire, new expectation for a face to face with reality of the highest order - Jesus.

In sum, repair amid brokenness. Hope amid despair. Healing amid sickness. And the relevance of Christ's life to mine. The good infection.

These are the reasons we are passionate about raising up a new faith community. To discover together a fitting response to God's matchless grace. To offer to others the same grace of Jesus we ourselves have received. To journey together on the way of Spirit-led spiritual disciplines.

To tell the story of my Stand In Man so that others may learn of and embrace Him.

My God and I.

May He belong also to you ...