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

Restore My Joy… Enable Me To Go

“Yet I will Rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Savior. The Sovereign Lord is my strength; he makes my feet like the feet of the deer, he enables me to go on the heights.”-  Habakkuk 3:18-19

In October of 2012 I moved from Indiana south east to North Carolina, I left my family and a great group of friends behind. I didn’t fully realize how much those friends really meant to me until I found myself battling loneliness in my little apartment. I missed the deep philosophical conversations about competition that my friend Bobby and I would have over a game of cards. I missed the late night runs to Stake N’ Shake and our off key renditions of the Avett Brother’s song “Shame, which I’m sure we sang a thousand times. I missed the random weekly get togethers at someone’s house. You can’t really recreate that atmosphere of joyful community we had. That longing to just be together with others went with me when I left.  Ever sense those first few weeks here I have been praying for a community of people that I could just worship with and be myself. People who were more interested in being the church rather then doing church.

Over the months I started to get more discouraged and more lonely. I was discouraged by the fact that even in the church that I work at as youth pastor, there wasn’t that community. The doing of Church was all there, but the level of community and openness that I have had before was not. I found that it is much harder to lead when you feel like your running on empty. I am such a people person it hurts when I have to be alone. I think this probably has to do with the fact that I was raised in a house with four sisters and parents who always welcomed in our friends. When you are around people so much like I was growing up sharing life is just part of living and so when I am in a place where I am less able to share life with others it feels like I start to die. It’s as if my souls is fragile and weak outside the context of community.

Slowly, I started to make a few friends through some retreats that I attended as a leader and started to see hope again of community. Hope is a powerful thing, when hope takes root the world starts to seem like such a brighter place than before. So as I got to know these people a little more I started to hang out with a guy also named Caleb, which I find ironic. That was the start of God answering my prayers. I had not given up, but my hope had been fading.

Two weeks ago Caleb ask me if I want to go to a house concert in Greensboro where a local band was playing. I didn’t know the band but that didn’t bother me because concerts are one of my favorite things. So we went to the concert in someones living room where we knew no one. There was maybe 30 people crammed in the front room of the house. The small intimate space made for an awesome setting and the music started playing and I felt my soul coming back to life. Every word of the each song sounded like sweet worship to my ears.

After the show we were leaving and ran into the lead singer in the street. We started talking and just out of the blue he invited me to a monday night worship gathering that he and some friends have every week. I was stunned and excited because in my heart I knew thats what I wanted, really what I needed. A rough week went by and I sorta forgot about it. But then monday hit and I remembered the invite and looked him up and asked him where the gathering would be. He told me but said he wouldn’t be there. I thought about not going because I made the excuse I wouldn’t know anyone but I felt God kept saying you need to go, just do it and trust me. So I went, I drove up the greensboro to a neighborhood I had never been to, to a house I had never seen to hang out with people I have never met and it was exactly what I needed.

When I showed up I knocked on the front door but no body answered, after making sure my directions were right, I knocked again and realized the door was unlocked and cracked a little. I would’t recommend this but I let myself in. I heard some people talking in the back so I yelled hello and walked in. There were two guys there who welcomed me as if I was suppose to be there and just like I was a friend.

Others started showing up about 20 of us were there and we all shared a meal and talked. It felt like home to me. I didn’t know anyone when the night started but I felt like I was suppose to be there. After we ate we all moved into the living room and two of the guys started leading worship. There wasn’t sheet music or hymnals, they just picked a key and started singing and everyone joined in. As we sang I was reminded of my time in High school where we use to have a time of worship every wednesday night, where we would just sing worship songs together, no set order of songs or set time. We would all pray for those who needed prayer and just share together.

As the the group sang “Restore the Joy of my salvation God, be my hope oh Lord”, I was filled with Joy again. Joy that i could just be with people that just wanted to be together and sing praises to the Lord. People who just wanted to share a meal and conversation for no other reason than to be in community. It says in Acts that the early church met together, broke bread, prayed, worshiped and just were the church. The church was the people the community. I realize my faith is much stronger in the context of community. When in a place where I can be myself and just sing with all my heart for the Lord. Where life is shared in open honest community.

As the night closed the group shared praises and prayer requests.  There was both joy and sorrow shared with no hesitation. I told the group that I had been praying for a place, a community where I could just worship with others my age and felt like God had lead me there that night. It’s one of those God things. You look at it after the fact and say wow, I didn’t see that coming but I sure am glad it happened. As I drove away I felt God restoring the joy of my salvation.

When I woke up the next morning, I turned on my Bible app on my phone and read Habakkuk 3:17-19 “Though the fig three does not bud and there are no grapes on the vine, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stall YET I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my savior. The Sovereign Lord is my strength; he makes my feet like the feet of a deer, he enables me to go on the heights”

The Lord has restored my Joy and he is my strength, out of the loneliness and times when nothing seemed to be going right God was still working. He is faithful to restore, even when it doesn’t seem like it in the midst of the drought. He will enable us to God where he leads. I hope to go back again to be with this group of people, to be in community and to go where God leads.

-Caleb Ross Hunter

Day 43 “A Year of Thoughts”: Faith Moves You to be Crazy

 

Today in church Pastor Donnie talked about Noah and how he was crazy. Crazy in a faith that moves, kind of way. Noah didn’t just build a small boat for his family, he built a boat for every kind of animal, crazy big boat, it’s crazy. God asks us to have crazy faith, Noah is not just a kids bed time story, It’s a crazy story of how God love us and by faith moved Noah to do something crazy.

 

 

I want to do something crazy in my life, God has already has, and he keeps on.

 

Are you crazy enough to build a bigger boat than will hold your family?

 

Crazy enough to spend a hundred years building it?

 

Or a life time?

 

Start dreaming big God size crazy awesome dreams.

 

-Caleb Ross Hunter

Day 37 “A Year of Thoughts”: From the Womb to Learning about Light

 

Early this morning (I’m not a morning person) my friend and I read through John 1, and as I was looking through one of my journals I found a few pages I had written up over this same chapter when I had read it last June. It’s always interesting for me to go back and read some of my writings, I instantly know the voice and many times the setting around which I wrote. In this case I spent much of the journal entry talking about how I had come to the point where I needed God to father me. I remember that moment in Brazil where I was struggling with teaching, struggling with my online classes and stressed to the max with everything else. In that moment I needed God more than ever and John’s words seemed to speak clearly to my soul.

 

“Yet to all who have received him to those who believed in his name he gave the right to become children of God- children born not of natural descent, nor human decision or a husbands will but born of God.”

After reading that I wrote in my journal, “To be as a child, humble and eager to learn. To encounter Jesus…. He changes us… to ask the father to father us. I realized how I was denying God the right to father me, I was rebelling intentionally against my father and not allowing God to father me. I was able to confront that and ask for forgiveness and for God to really teach me. It’s humbling to say that I need a father, I need God to father me and teach me all over again as a child. It’s like encountering light right out of the womb, for the first time, it’s so amazing and mysterious at the same time. We slowly learn what it is and how to see, to speak, and move. Lord, I pray that as a child I would learn these things all again, to see you and others, to speak your words, to move as you guide and to listen as you speak.”

I want to encounter Jesus everyday. To learn to be fathered by my heavenly father and to listen to his voice as I move through the day. As I was reading through the old journal I was moved by the prayer.

“To see God and others, To speak your words, To move as you guide, To listen as you speak”

What does that look like to see God and others? This requires us to get out side of ourselves, to wake up, open our eyes and begin to take in every moment of life. To breathe deeply and ask God to reveal himself to us through the world in which we live, we see. God is moving but sometimes we have so blinded ourselves with the business and chaos of our lives that we have lost sight of the presence of God moving in and through our world.

He is there we just have to look.

God will teach us how to see him.

Like exploring light to a new born baby we may have encountered it but with farther learning and experience with it we will better understand and see it. God is showing himself through his creation. Like a gardener who has labored hard over the plants and flowers for months watching them grow, God takes us excitedly into this world, this garden, this planet he has created and says “See me, see what I have created, I will always be present and show myself, my love to you.

However, God has also filled this world with people. This may be inconvenient for some people that would rather keep to themselves and forget the rest of the world but over and over God says love others. How can we love others if we don’t see them? If we don’t open our eyes to the world around us and start caring that other people do inhabit this earth.

As we begin to see people we begin to get to know them. I don’t simply want to stop at seeing people, I want to move to get to know them. This takes time, to learn, to love. We need God to father us as we encounter him.

Ask God to Father you it may change the way you see the world?

-Caleb Ross Hunter

Day 8 “A Year of Thoughts”: Discontent? Well Good Let it Move You.

For the past month I have sorta been lazy and a little discontent about that laziness. Every time I would watch a basketball game I would get excited and want to play again. In close games my heart rate would go up and I would wish I was back on the bench supporting my team and coaches.

One of the earliest pictures I have of my childhood is me standing in dad’s shoes shooting the basketball into my fisher’s price hoop. I grew up in the Hoosier state which is known to be the heartland of basketball. For years I lived and breathed basketball. I slept with a brand new ball in my hands in sixth grade and dreamed about playing for championship every night. The game was taught to me at a very young age and after three tries to make a traveling club team in 8^th grade I made it. Three years later my team went on to win both a state and a national invitational championship, and when I walked off the court of the national championship I made the decision to move on from the sport and peruse other things. I gave up playing for the final two years of high school. That was over six years ago now, yet the game is still in my blood. I can’t remove the teaching that I received as a kid, I can’t look at the game through anything but a coaching lenses, I can’t step back on the court and not feel a little confident that I can still shoot the ball.

When I was playing basketball I always wanted to hit every shot. I wanted to be ready for anything. I spent hours on my shooting form, making it perfect (yet the whole of 140 pounds of a 6′ 3” man that I am now still would just get pushed around out on the court, so it had to be perfect). But as much as I knew the game and as much as I was perfect at the little things I wasn’t that great, I’m still not great. I grew discontent, I had made basketball such a huge part of my life and when I finally won my championship (from the bench mind you), I allowed that discontentment to move me to a place of changing and finding ways to make my life more full of things that I believed would help me grow.

For most guys growing up in Indiana, basketball is something that they are born with yet it’s not for every guy. Unlike basketball though I was reminded today by Donnie Hinshaws sermon that we are all born with faith. It’s a gift that God has given us to propel us forward in hope.

I have always had faith in basketball…

That may sound like a silly statement, because it really is kind of a silly statement, but for me growing up it was true. I may not have always had that great feeling of having faith in God and trusting that he knew what he was doing. But I sure had faith that my favorite teams could win ever night, I had faith my 3-pointers were “Boom-babies” every time just like Reggie Miller back in the day. However, my understanding of faith today grew in a way that changed things.

See when we accredit God with giving us our faith then nothing we can do will earn that faith. Faith is a gift. I know you can’t work for salvation and we are saved by grace, but faith is not something we tweak in our form, or practice over and over until we are perfect at it, either. Faith is nothing like being taught as a kid to play a sport. Faith is a real part of our lives, God is waiting for us to live with Faith, to awaken what he has already put within us. To trust him knowing that he knows what he is doing. To hope fully in what God has for you.

Donnie said this morning, “To hope in something means the state of life you are in is a state of discontent”

To hope is to be discontent, to know that there is more and a way to live that is different then the one we are in. Discontentment is not a sin. Discontentment should move us to a deeper faith and hope in God. I think this is why faith is always seems to be growing in our lives, why theology is expanding as we are moved to learn and experience more of what God is revealing of himself to us. Why the closer we get to God the crazier and more awesome life seems.

I have a hope that lives can be changed. I have a hope I can learn to love. I have hope and faith that God can do the impossible. My discontentment moved me away from basketball because I had a hope that my life could be more than a sport. I have had discontentment in my heart for the next generation, for my own life, for the future, for I have faith that God can do more than what we are dreaming.

If God can take my little insignificant dream of playing a sport I loved for 16 years and winning at it come true then I have faith God can give me even bigger dreams and complete those a thousand times over. I’m not content with settling for less. I want to take risks and live by faith for hope holds my future forever in God’s hands.

Basketball maybe in my blood and I may never get it out now. Faith is in my heart and it’s pumping through all that I am. My heart is discontent to settle for anything but living life full of faith…

Sometimes we have to walk away from things to pursue in faith what God is leading us too.

Just read Hebrews 11 it’s a list of men that lived by faith, they did crazy things, they risked everything, and they walked away from a lot. But will you? Will I?

Heck yes I will.

-Caleb Ross Hunter