King in the Temple of our Hearts

Over the past year I’ve been on a journey with our youth group through the life of Jesus, this past sunday night was another step in that journey.  We looked at two different encounters with Jesus and tried to figure out how they might apply to our lives today. In the first encounter we found Jesus riding a donkey into Jerusalem, up through the desert road from Jericho, a climatic 3,000 ft climb up the mountain to where men, women, and children celebrated his coming, celebrating as if he were king, they threw down their cloaks, waved palm branches and sang Hosannah. We learned that throwing down your cloak wasn’t something you did unless you were showing loyalty to them like a king. Even then very few would have considered throwing their cloak down on a dusty dirt road but in that moment those people saw Jesus as their king. They sang Hosannah which means “God will save us, right now!” They were soon to find out that Jesus wasn’t going to be the earthly king that they had planned on, he wasn’t going to overthrow the Romans, he was going to be a greater king than that. He came to be King in man’s hearts, King in our hearts.

From there we find Jesus comes to the Temple the next day. The Temple would have been an exciting place, crowded with people, a buzz of business as people prepared for the passover sacrifices. People packing in to buy their unblemished lamb or dove. Jews from all over came. The priest would have been busy from sun up to sundown offering sacrifices for the people. There would have been a constant line of those waiting their turn for their sins to be forgiven by the blood of a lamb or calf or dove. But that was all interrupted when Jesus came in and started flipping over the tables and driving out the sheep and cattle. He let the birds from their cages and disrupted the flow of exchange and sacrifices. He was angry at what he saw and burned with a jealous passion for his fathers house. 

Jesus had a right to be angry in that moment, the venders had taken up nearly all of the court of the Gentiles and the court of Women which were places meant for prayer not for selling of animals. They had turned that area of the temple court into a den of robbers and not into a place of worship. Somewhere over the years the religious leaders had stopped carrying about the court of the Gentiles and Women. They thought it was more important that people have easy access to animals for sacrifices then it was for people to be allowed to worship God in those places. We know Jesus cared for all people, and he cared about everyone’s relationship with the Father. He would die so that we might be in relationship with him so it’s no wonder that we would fight for the Gentiles and Women to have a place to worship. Jesus had to clear that space and stop everything for that to happen. 

That brings it back to us. There are times in our lives where we need Jesus to be jealously angry for us, for our time, and we need him to flips some tables over in the temple of our hearts. We need him to remind us it’s not about going to church or doing the right things or sacrifices its about a relationship with Him and his Father. Sometimes we need him to clear room so that HE can be King of our hearts again. When he is King of our hearts and our lives it’s much easier for us to throw down our cloaks and worship him with everything we got.

 

-Caleb Ross 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

When God Calls You to Hunt for Cars…

There are times in life that I think we get in our minds that we were meant to do something and we set out to do whatever that thing is and it ends up that that was just a small part of something else that God wanted us to be a part of. Over the course of the last few months I have been searching for a car, because the car I have been driving is my parent’s and they were hoping to get it back soon. So with the full intent of finding a car, I and one of the older men of the church, who I thought might know more about cars than myself set out one day a week to go to dealerships and test drive some cars. We drove a lot of different cars some a little to big, some way to small and a few that I thought I couldn’t afford. Every time we went out we would come back with a lot of new information, tired and a little discouraged because the cars that would work for what I wanted were to much. Honestly, it frustrated me a little that somedays it just felt like we waisted our time, but the more I thought about it and reflected on those days I realized there was a lot more going on then searching for a car.

The older man and I would spend the day talking and telling stories. I learned a lot more about his life because we just decided to go hunting for cars and it opened the opportunity to just talk. If you spend six to eight hours in the car with a guy thats three times your age your bound to hear about things you never knew about.  Those days of just driving along and listening reminded me of my passion for people and my belief that everyone has a story worth tell. I think sometimes we get so busy with doing things in life that we forget to stop and listen. We forget that the people around us have a totally different way they have experienced life and there is so much that we can learn and share if we just stop for a while and take it in.

On our trips to the dealers we met a lot of car salesmen, some of which were helpful and others who were not. But what was interesting to me was the conversations we had with some of them. Obviously there were a few times that they would try to sell me cars that I knew I didn’t want, but there were a few that were honest and open. There was one car that we took for a test drive that was pretty nice car until we went back to the dealership and the salesman pulled up the cars history and started to laugh. He said he couldn’t honestly sell me the car cause it had been in eleven wrecks and been totally rebuilt. For some reason growing up I got this idea that car salesmen weren’t always the most honest people and they would just try to sell you anything, however, I learned that that is not always the case.

The last day that we went out we met three pastors who had either retired or this was their side job or were just in transition looking for the next ministry opening. I found these conversations really helpful to me as one of the guys said he just felt like he was done with ministry which to me sounded weird because as a pastor I do not see ministry as a job but rather part of living life. Jesus didn’t call people to be pastors or elders he called people to be disciples and make disciples. Ministry is everything we do even if thats having conversations over our life stories with older men or the salesman who is trying to sell you a car. We communicate the gospel by the way that we live our lives. I believe that this was the way that Jesus carried out his ministry. He ate and drank with sinners, he called tax collectors (car dealers and IRS agents of our day) to come and follow him, he met people in their homes and on hillsides, he fed them with whatever they had, and he most certainly  did not settle to doing ministry within the bounds of the established traditions and institutions of his day.

For three hours we talked with one of the pastor/salesman about everything except cars. I found the conversation encouraging and

refreshing simple because we were sharing our passion for people and what we believe God has called us too. Being a car salesman was not exactly what he thought God had called him to do but out of that he was still finding ways to minister to others and start a

non profit to help children in africa. He and a few friends bought a coffee roaster and sell the blends they make as fair trade sending everything they make over to schools in Africa. Even though he may not be doing “traditional” ministry he is still doing what God called him to do for this time and place that he is in.

There are times in my life that I can be rather discouraged about where I am at or what I am doing, but when I stop and allow myself to center on what God is doing I start to see that he has this awesome way of using the places we are and the things we do. God used the simplest three hour conversation with a car salesman to remind me of the dream he has put on my heart for “Love Helps” and how there is no retiring from following Jesus and even when the place and the methods of ministry change the message is always the same, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind and strength and love your neighbor as yourself”. When we start to see our lives as a means to spreading the God news of God’s love for humanity our whole outlook on the way we live and what we are doing will change. It’s still a learning process for me and it takes time to really grasp that God can use everything.

I didn’t end up buying a car from any of the places that we went and checked out, however, maybe that wasn’t the point of the car hunting. Maybe God was using the time to remind me of what my calling is and how he can use conversations with salesman to encourage us to live everyday as the day he has given us to live for him.

-Caleb Ross Hunter

 

P.S. I did find a car and have since bought it with help from my parents up in Indiana.

Day 55 “A Year of Though”: If a Son, If a Daughter

If I were to have a son I’d teach him such poetic verse

That when he speaks his words flow like the clouds

Their shape and form are created by imagination before education

His numbers mer markers for lines that run their course

For unbound by the world of standards free to be thus loud

In spirit full he will live life a legacy of quotations

 

If I were to have a daughter I’d read her such stories

That move her heart to be bold and brave yet sweet

Those things that shape her beauty from the inside to the out

Her own apart from the rest a simply elegant master piece

With each stroke of abstract art in the people that she may meet

Comes to persist in compassion her love they will not leave without

 

Such love in words and form and art they learn

Not from their father for my heart be torn

But from grace, life, and experience all their own

There they speak and seek a world unknown

Now clear to us by them and them alone.

 

-Caleb Ross Hunter

Day 50 “A Year of Thought”: Places and People

“Places become important because of the people we share them with”

Do you know those places that hold special meaning for you? A place where great memories were formed and you can always seem to see that place even when your far away from it? One of those places for me is a tent outside the dinning hall, the fall of my sophomore year of high school, I recommitted my life to Christ and shared that moment with one of my best friends Luke Russell, that night at camp. That moment is a memory tattooed in my mind and I was able to share it.

In front of my parents house there is a flower bed where there use to be bushes but thanks to Luke and I’s discovery of a tunnel under the bushes they had to be taken out from our jumping in them to many times. Another shared moment for Luke and I, though we got in trouble it’s a memory all the same. Every time I think of that place I think of our adventures as kids. That place though now a small flower bed holds such meaning for me.

Today at church Pastor Stephen Wing talked about how Jesus shared his transfiguration with his disciples, his friends. It wasn’t just the moment at the top of the mountain but more of the long hard climb up the mountain that would enable Peter to remember this moment for years to come. The hard climb up the scruffy unkept mountain side. This is often life for us, a long hard climb up a mountain but sometimes we get to the top to see the transfiguration. Those awesome moments and we forget what we went through to get there.

Peter saying in Matthew 17 “it’s good for us to be here”, it’s good for us to not only share the mountain top experience but also the climb. Though it’s hard it’s worth sharing. Though life is hard it’s worth sharing. When life is shared with others thats when it has meaning.

Who do we shard these places with?

Who do we share this place with?

When we live life with others life has meaning. For those who never understand this place will become meaningless because they haven’t shared it with anyone. When we share life an ordinary scruffy place becomes holy and full of meaning.

The path we climb may wear us out but it’s not about the path, it’s about who we follow and who we share it with. Share life.

When we look back we remember we were there and we shared those moments. There are a number of places that hold a lot of meaning for me right now and are forming memories, like a dirt road outside of town, a bon fire, a path in the park, a picture we painted that hangs on my wall, and Amarillo, Texas. Just an ordinary kind of scruffy places and things but all of them and so much more that I share with my best friend Megan. Those all hold meaning because of who I share them with. They are memories because they can be shared.

Who are you sharing your life with?

Your Climb? Your Story?

I was introduced as the Youth Director at the Pratt Presbyterian Church today and am walking, hiking, climbing a new mountain with them and experience and a journey that I get to have and share with them. I was warmly invited in as if I were a part of their family. I know the place I share with them will be full of meaning.

-Caleb Ross Hunter

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P.S. Sorry for the delay on updating the blog. I have not missed a day but have not been able to move the writings from my journal to the blog, but slowly and surely I will have them for you to read. God Bless.

Day 40 “A Year of Thoughts”: For Fun

 

When your having fun life is really enjoyable. Tonight I went and played indoor soccer. It’s been a while since I have played but it felt really good to go and kick around a soccer ball. It really didn’t matter who won or how many goals were scored. It was all for fun. I really believe life was meant to be enjoyed, meant to have a little fun and lots of laughter.

 

Sometimes for fun I just like to laugh.

 

To relax a little and take in the moment.

 

While in chapel today the speaker was talking about how as a Chaplin of a prison there are many people that have lost all joy and hope, inmates kill themselves because they don’t believe when or if they get out that they will be able to enjoy life. I’ve never been in prison and I hope not to be, but I have been in places in my life where there seemed to be no joy and no hope. My sin was deeper than I could see and thicker than prison bars. BUT GOD, he has restored my joy, he has given me hope for a future, and he has been walking with me, or is it I with him? For fun stop and think about the joys, find hope in that fact that you have life. For fun laugh and enjoy each moment.

 

-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 6 “A Year of Thoughts”: Packing up and Moving on

This place I once saw as home is fading from being my home. As I have spent the day packing to move back out to Kansas for my last semester of college I’ve looked around to the many things that I have hung on my wall and decorated what use to be my room. Now it’s just going to be a room of books and a study for my dad… It’s been good to grow up here in Indiana but I feel like I have moved on while it has just sat here.

 

It’s a long drive back out to Kansas but I’m looking forward to what this year has in-store. Last year at this time I was heading to Brazil, South America for an adventure in learning how to teach for six month. But Brazil was only sorta home. For me home is where my heart is, where I can pour out life to the fullest, I can love people more… Home is with some very special people or person… Home is no longer this house or room that I lived in.

 

I’m moving on and this house and much of the community will stay the same… I though have packed up and am adventuring on.

 

-Caleb Ross Hunter

Day 5 “A Year of Thought”: Searching Eyes and Beating Drums

Yesterday I was working on my photo for project 365 and I took an old National Geographic magazine and after flipping through the whole thing I used the cover for part of a picture. However, from flipping through the magazine I noticed some portraits of some people from Africa. It struck me as I took some time to look at all of them. In each picture their eyes seem to catch mine and hold them, as if they were speaking to me… I know that sounds a little weird and out there, but if you look into their eyes they are all searching.

The eyes are searching?

Searching long and deep.

Searching for something.

Anything.

But how can we give them what they are searching for?

A few years ago I started writing a poem that I thought might turn into a song, but it still sits somewhere under a pile of uncompleted lyrics and from time to time I find it flowing back through my mind.

Can you hear the beat of the drums

echoing through these plains

as children dance and sing a song

show me what it means be alive

fill it up, fill it up again

spark my heart to love

every nation that cries out to you

as God wipers louder

in your ear

take heed and listen

and hear

can you hear the beat of the drums

as hearts turn to the healing one

blind see and a people redeemed

show me what it means be alive

It’s a poem about Africa, I wrote it shortly after hearing Caleb Bislow speak about how he was chasing this crazy dream that God had given him about going to Africa and serving the people there. One of the things that Caleb said that night has really stuck with me, he said when he was fighting with himself about going he just came to this point where he said “I’m tired of being inspired and I’m ready to do something”. That quote hung on the wall in my room for years and has been an inspiration to me when I’ve been trying to figure out what to do.

Finding inspiration is easy, doing something about it is the hard part.

Each of those faces that I tore out of that magazine was searching, their eyes are like those of the next generation that I’ve dreamed about. They are searching. Searching for love, for healing, for grace, forgiveness, nourishment, and Life. They are searching for everything that God can give them. That God can give them through us.

When the world stops and looks at the face they ask why?

Why the searching?

Why the tears in their eyes?

Why the scares on their faces?

Why the fear?

When the world asks why we answer with Love.

Love when the world asks why?

Can you hear the drums?

I hear the drums of a changing generation that is learning to live life to the fullest every single day. It sounds much like the beating of my heart, sparked by my own searching for healing and finding it in the one place that I can, I want to learn to love those with searching eyes. I want to keep the drums beating so we can dance and sing with the children of the world, Jesus loves me this I know for the bible tells me so, little ones to him be long they are searching and he is found!

Next time you look into someone eye, ask what are they searching for?

How can I answer with Love?

The world is waiting for us to stop being inspired and to start doing something…

-Caleb Ross Hunter

Mass Society (Broken Prose)

Mindless masses revolt as they reflect human change the canvas of inspired striving on earth for betterment of souls by society.

The great idea of community could exist had everyone felt like it.

The public increase of thought and freedom apparently does go on.

Society now human will be unhappy in life about material betterment.

People deny that they are alone.

The universal western picture leaves that mass in specialized competitive status-hungry privacy.

Friends rather of norms and standards controls a single group.

Put movement to light…

-Caleb Ross Hunter