“Lombada”

Last night in youth group we talked about how Jesus has authority over everything and how his authority compels us to go. The question was raised how does Jesus’ authority impact you and me as we follow him on a daily basis?

Does it?

When we came across that question it really made me stop and think, how does this effect me? Am I living like Jesus truly has all authority over my life?

Megan and I are nearing our first full year of marriage and I can honestly say this year wasn’t without some bumpy spots in the road. When I lived in Brazil I quickly learned the word for speed bump in portuguese, “Lombada”. They seemed to be everywhere, even in the middle of the highway. Every time we were about to go over one the driver of the car would yell “Lombada” to warn us it was coming, unfortunately sometimes the warning came late and I hit my head on the roof of the car a few times.

Sometimes we need those lombadas to slow us down or have someone yell out a warning for the bumps coming up. Through all the bumps of this first year of marriage Megan and i had to slow down, refocus, and rub the bumps we got on our heads from hitting the roof. Recently, I would say in the last three months Megan and I have been working on reestablishing the fact that Jesus has authority in our marriage. But even that has not been easy, we discovered our need to spend quality time together each morning and inviting Jesus into that time.

In a way our reestablishing the fact that Jesus has that authority in our lives helps us warn each other about the “Lombadas” up ahead, communication has improved and joy has started to unfold it’s peddles in full flowering blooms.

Sometimes we need to ask hard questions like “Does jesus really have all authority over my life and if so how is that effecting my daily life?” We need those questions to slow us down, to help us think and grow. Because once we see that Jesus has all authority in heaven and earth we should be compelled to go. As followers of jesus we should be relentless to love.

I have been reading a book about David Livingstone, who was a missionary and explorer in Africa back when much of Africa was unknown and dangerous. One of the things that really stood out to me from the book is how relentless Livingstone was, he often didn’t wait for others to give him the approval to go and seek out other tribes and peoples. He went when others would not. God gave him the courage to face lions and dangers unknown.

When we come to grasp the knowledge of God’s authority we will began to live fearlessly because if God is for us who can be against us. We as spirit-filled followers of Jesus need to be more like Livingstone and the early Christians who were relentless to love.

Let our lives be relentless acts of worship to our God. I believe the words in Psalms 150 verse 6, “Let everything that has breath  praise the Lord. Praise the Lord.”

 

-Caleb Hunter

Memory, Mind and Moving Forward

 

“Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things”- Colossians 3:2

 

Memory: (noun) “the power or process of reproducing or recalling what has been learned and retained especially through associative mechanisms”

 

Over the past few years I have acquired a growing fascination with the human brain. The thought that we think sometimes blows my mind. There is such complexity and mystery to the brain that anytime that I spend any amount of time at all contemplating it, I am blown away and in awe of how it all works, of course this leads me back to the very creator and engineer of this complexity.

As a group of friends and I were sitting in a house in Mebane, NC last night discussing some of the things that we were going through someone made the comment that “the fact that we can remember, or have the capacity for memory is an awesome blessing that God has given us.” In the context of our conversation we were discussing experiencing God and how often times, that is what our heart desires but we get discouraged because we go through times where we don’t feel him. And that is where memory comes in, in those times where we can’t seem to feel him, God has given us the memory of when we did.

Just yesterday I was looking back through some of my earlier blog posts and I found one that I wrote while still in college out in Kansas. In that blog I quoted Donnie Hinshaw who was the pastor of the church that I attended out there,

 

“To hope in something means the state of life you are in is a state of discontent”

 

In that sermon I remember him talking about living with a Holy Discontent. A discontent that says where I am is not where I always want to be, a “holy” discontent is when that discontent is focused on experiencing God and being in a relationship with him. Right now I would have to say I have a pretty holy discontent. Not because where I am at is a horrible place but for the fact that I want to know, experience and feel God more, then what I do right now. I can remember those time where God really moved in my life. Those times where what I was doing and how I was living was intentionally geared toward pursuing a relationship with him. Those moments moved me forward, allowed me to take risk and strengthened my trust in God.

I think sometimes we get these ideas that the life of a christian should be full of these mountain top experiences and everyday is going to be full of miracles. However, that is not how it works, granted we may have those mountain top moments where God blows our minds, but in reality God wants to be with us in every moment. God takes the mundane and fills it with meaning. Just look at the life of Jesus, the majority of his life was spent living with twelve men. He traveled around taking the daily things of life and teaching them with those things. He did miracles but there were days where he didn’t. He blew the disciples minds but there where times where they were confused because he wasn’t the Messiah that everyone was expecting. Jesus spent three years helping the disciples experience him and fill their minds with memories of his life with them, so that when he was gone they could share those memories with the rest of the world.

One of the things that really stands out to me about the early church is that they were in each others homes, they were building community, they were eating together so that they could share together in the memory of Jesus. At the last supper Jesus said “Remember me when you take this cup and eat this bread.” He didn’t just say this because he was going to the cross the next day he said this so that this moment would be written in the minds of his disciples, that they would remember all the moments they had with him and that memory would move them forward.

Moving forward. What I mean by this is that our minds have the capacity for an endless amount of memories. Jesus doesn’t just tell them to remember, but rather to go and make new memories, to go and make disciples. To go and live life with people just like he had lived life with them. The disciples could have just settled into the mundane. They could have just kept the memories to themselves and let those three years be the only memories they had with Christ. The apostle Peter even tried this by going back to being a fisherman after Jesus died, but Jesus showed up and reminded Peter of what he had taught him and asked him to do (John 21:15-25).

So what does this have to do with us. I think sometimes we settle for simply living off the memories of old rather then making new ones. In the context of the church I think this is why so many churches around america are on the verge of dying. They have stopped living, they have settled for the mundane, they say this is what we use to do and this is what we will always do and we can’t change. Those churches like to talk about the glory days, they like to talk about when all the pews were full and about all the things they use to do. They speak of these experiences like war stories, there is this feeling of it being a long, long time ago in totally different situation. What breaks my heart about this is that it leaves a feeling that there is no future, there is no hope, and any discontent there may be is a discontent for what once was rather then what could be.

We as human’s have this ability to get overwhelmed with what the world around us is doing. We focus so much on the crazy messed up world that we forget God, we forget we have experienced him, we forget he loved us, we forget he saved us, we forget how to be in relationship with him, we forget that church isn’t about the program, numbers or methods but about the people being in relationship with God and each other. We forget that we have the opportunity to experience him everyday. We forget we have hope. I believe churches will close their doors and they will figuratively dye because they refuse to move forward. A whole generation may wonder in the desert like the Israelites because they have a great fear of moving forward, a fear that experiencing God in a new way may challenge everything they know, a fear that everything might change, a fear that the new memory may be painful, hard and risky.

The memory of Jesus will moved forward not by the organized established church but by the people that are willing to say “the memories I have with God are not enough, I want more”. The people that are willing to move forward, pick up the cross and move toward Christ with the holy discontent, that where they are isn’t where God wants them to stay. I can say that is is a challenge for myself as well, I realized recently that I had been riding off of my memories of past experiences with Jesus and others rather then making new ones. I realized that I had settled with just being content with who I was and what I was doing, but when my wife pointed out something to me the other day that I need to change it challenged me to really look deep into my own heart and ask myself what I’m doing.

As I have thought about this I have tried to put this into a context of where I am at in life right now. Just this year I got married to a beautiful young woman that I love very much, it took a lot of risk on both of our parts to trust that this what we wanted for our lives. It forced us to change, it daily challenges us in the way that we live and how we see the world. I can’t live the same way I was living before I had a wife, I had been living alone, eating frozen pizzas and hamburgers, watching what I wanted to watch and doing whatever I wanted to do. Having a wife has made me realize how selfish that way of life is and providing for her and myself isn’t ever going to be easy but it’s totally worth it.

Another thing that I have realized recently is I can’t continue the relationship simply off of old memories. Where we are living is a whole new place from where we started dating, in almost every way. To strengthen our marriage we have to be intentional about creating new memories and doing the same things that we were doing while dating doesn’t always mean that much. We have to do new things, take new risks and say “what I know about you isn’t enough, I want to know you more.” Sometimes that is scary because that means we have to open up, be honest and move forward.

I have a holy discontent for life because I want to make new memories with God and those around me that I love. It starts with setting my mind on Christ. Setting my mind intentionally on pursuing a relationship and being willing to move forward. Right before the Colossians 3:2 passage Paul reminds the church at Colosse that they had been raised with Christ and Christ was seated at the right hand of God. In this he is reminding them that Jesus had already concurred death, he had already forgiven them, he had already saved them, and that setting their minds on things above was to set their minds on Jesus.

Going on from there Paul says in verse 3-4, “For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life, appears, then you will appear with him in glory”…

 

And in Verse 5… “Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature”…

 

Then he lists all these things that aren’t what we need as followers of Christ for we wont find him in those things and in contrast he writes in Verse 12-17… “Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience. Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievance you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity. Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom, and as you sing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs with gratitude in your hearts to God. And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.”

 

Paul reminds the church that Jesus is their life and then he reminds them of what that looks like to live as if Christ really was their life. He encouraged them to continue in the future to live this way, to continue to experience what it means to be God’s chosen people. The memories we have with God should move us forward toward more. We have to ask the question is Jesus just a memory or a story I read about or is he alive, seated on the throne and is he my life?

 

Jesus is the way, the truth, and the Life.

 

I am discontent with anything short of Jesus being my life.

 

-Caleb Hunter

Three Simple Words… Come Follow Me

Over the past few months I have been processing through the simple words that Jesus said to his disciples and the many people he encountered on a daily basis. The words “Come Follow Me”, three simple words that changed everything for a lot of people. Those same words I believe he is still saying to you and I today.

 

Last month I was down in Alabama on a short missions trip with some of the students from my youth group. We went to host a sports camp at the MOWA Choctaw Friends Center which is about 45 min from Mobile in an area that is at or below the poverty level. We taught a different sports everyday and got to know kids of all ages from the community. Many of these kids come from rough family situations and a couple of the kids I found out that their parents would send them out of the house in the morning and not let them back in until the end of the day, so they were on their own.

 

It’s hard to believe this is how people live here in America, but it’s real. I’ve seen and experienced poverty in Brazil, South America, but this was a lot closer to home. Seeing those kids and getting to teach them sports reminded me of how God broke my heart a few years ago to lead and love “The Next Generation”.

 

Despite their situations and circumstances these kids enjoyed life. If anything we gave them a week out of the summer where they can have a positive memory and a glimmer of hope through the gospel that was shared everyday. Those kids are the future of that community and just as the kids that I work with here in North Carolina are the future of this community.

 

While we were down there I was asked to speak to the students that had come and to the staff during our worship sessions every evening. The staff had called me and asked me to speak two weeks before we were to leave and even though I was really busy with vacation Bible school, I felt like God telling me to do it. I felt like at first that I was not going to be prepared to speak because I didn’t have the time I thought I needed to prepare, however, the closer it got to the trip God kept saying just speak from the heart, trust me.

 

So our theme for the week was “You before Me, Last before First, Jesus before Everything”. I tied that into the talks by looking at different encounters that Jesus had with people and how they lived out that theme. We first looked at the rich young ruler and how he thought he had it all together and was wondering if in the new heaven and earth he would be as rich as he was here. Jesus listed of the commandments as his response purposely leaving out the first two. The rich young ruler respond to Jesus by saying all of these I have kept since I was a child. Then those simple three words followed from Jesus mouth, “Come Follow Me”.

 

Yet, the rich young ruler walked away sad. He wanted to go to heaven, he wanted to keep all the rules, but he couldn’t follow Jesus.

 

Why? I think one of the main reasons why was because he would have to put Jesus first, he would have to stop worshiping himself, his riches and the power thought he had. The rich young ruler walked away because he did not want his life to change, he just wanted to guarantee a spot in heaven. He had put himself before God, I think thats why Jesus left out the first two commandments. The commandments of love the lord your God and have no other God’s before me.

 

I think sometimes as christians we can focus more on trying to guarantee heaven then we are about following Jesus. We lose track on putting Jesus first and we put ourselves and our possessions before God. Life was never meant to be lived for Heaven, life was meant to be lived for God.

One of the main points I made in my talks while in Alabama was that “I don’t want you to think that Jesus just came to save you from your sins, but that he came that you might live and show you how to live.”

 

When Jesus says “Come follow me”, he is saying come see how I live so that you might live, because Jesus lived out, you before me, last before first.

 

The second night in Alabama we looked at a little different encounter that Jesus had with some, this time it was with Levi the tax collector. He was rich but not a ruler, he might not have kept all the rules and wasn’t really liked by people. Tax collectors were some of the most hated people in Jesus time because Hared would appoint Jews to take taxes from the Jew for the Romans. The reasons they did this is because being a Jew, Levi would have known who had the money and what he could charge people. Tax collectors were not liked by their own people and were not to be trusted. The religious leaders would have considered them sinners and outcasts.

 

Yet, Jesus comes along to Levi’s tax collectors booth and says those simple three words “Come follow me”. The guy nobody liked, the guy the leaders cant stand, the guy that takes peoples money and cheats them to get rich, yeah that guy is the guy Jesus reaches out to and says come follow me. That guy is the guy that gets it right, then and there. He leaves he tax collectors booth and follows.

 

He could have ignored Jesus. He could have stayed there. Comfortable, rich and disliked, yet he didn’t, he knew that following Jesus would mean things would change and he followed. To me the tax collectors booth represents the selfishness that Levi was living out. He didn’t care really about his Jewish friends and neighbors, we worked for the enemy of the Jews and in all likelihood he cheated them all to get rich. His choosing to follow Jesus in that moment was the start of a long process of growth and learning about life from Jesus.

 

Jesus didn’t come along and ask him if he wanted to be saved, he didn’t point out all his sins, he just said come and follow. Jesus later went and partied with Levi and his friends. Jesus hung out with the sinners and the outcasts. Jesus did what the religious leaders would not. Jesus called Levi even when Levi was in a place where he was living for himself.

 

Levi got it, he put aside the one real thing that was keeping him from following Jesus. I challenged the students and staff down in Alabama to try to identify those things that are keeping us personally from following Jesus. To find those things that we are putting between us and God. Putting those things aside or leaving them behind may be hard, it may be uncomfortable, it may mean everything about us will change but with Jesus he will show us how to live and what life is really all about.

 

When I recommitted my life to Jesus six plus years ago now, I chose to start following, to leave behind my selfish tax collectors booth and learn how to follow. It hasn’t been easy and I haven’t always been the best follower, but it has changed me for the better, Jesus has changed me from the inside. Who I am is not who I was and following Jesus is a process of growth and renewal. Heaven will be nice but my life is not about heaven it’s about Jesus, living with and for him.

 

Jesus is still telling us those simple three words today “Come follow me”.

 

Recently I have been writing a song or poem of sorts about this idea. As you read this let it soak in that Jesus saved you so that he might show you how to live.

 

Come follow me he said

As we stood in disbelief,

Who is this man

Why would he want me

I have no place to lay my head

This is not my home,

These are not my mother and brothers

but I will call you my own

This is what he means

when he said “Come follow me”

 Sell all you have and

Give it to the poor

Trust me for I will

meet your needs

 

Can’t you see

Healing all around you

It’s doing something amazing

Inside of you

 

This is what he means

When he said “Come Follow me”

 

Simple words from a carpenters mouth

That turn the world upside down

Simple words that will change

the heart inside of me.

 

When Jesus says “Come follow me” think about what is holding you back? You don’t have to walk away sad. When we trust him he will lead us into life, life 

is waiting to be lived to the fullest. I will echo the words of my savor not because he has guaranteed heaven but because he has given me life

“Come Follow Jesus”.

 

May God bless you and keep you and make his face to shine upon you.

-Caleb Ross Hunter