Trucker Drummer and a Sunday at Ihop Kc

Sunday at Ihop KC is unlike any other day of the week. Sunday is amateur day. And by amateur I mean all those on worship teams who rarely get a chance to lead. Now let’s be clear: An amateur at IHOP is probably more talented than most worship leaders around the country. At IHOP one could be sitting back row as the back up singer and still have led worship at their home church for several years. If you spend enough time here you will see a drummer who plays bass, then guitar, then piano and eventually they will be leading worship. This is just how it goes. The talent pool in this place is insane.

So Sunday is my favorite because anything can happen. And it usually does. I have a favorite drummer here. I first noticed him two years ago beating the drums, wearing a John Deere hat. I began to refer to him as “trucker drummer.” He honestly looks like Dave Grohl and just might be related. When I did sound at Southlands it was Trucker Drummer who taught me how to make a drum kit pop. I watched him and learned his set up and his sound settings. So if you liked my sound it was trucker drummer who gets the credit. And if you didn’t like it: still trucker drummer.

Last night trucker drummer got one hour, in front, on acoustic. Now this is not the first time he has done this. But last night, oh last night he played his acoustic with a twang and he sang old time hymns and I worshipped before my God who used to pursue me every Sunday morning as we sang these songs.

Church: three songs, announcements, sermon, alter call for the lost, exit song, shake the preacher’s hand on the way out the door.  I look back now and just smile, just think about how much He loved me, even then, when I was  young and stupid and didn’t know much about anything, including Him.

Oh but He is like this in that He is so kind to have trucker drummer sing, “To God be the Glory.” Hymn 33 for those of you with a 1970’s Baptist hymnal lying around. I sang it every Sunday for the better part of my young life. It was Levi Price Jr’s favorite song and we sang it every week before we went out to shake his hand. This God who loves me so much that He reminds me that He was faithful, even then, even when I was lost, in church, in the third row. Even then He knew. Even then He knew who I would be now so He taught me a song so that I could hear it one day at IHOP KC on a Sunday night. All that detail so I could look back and know He was always there, always wooing me, always after my heart.

“To God be the glory, great things he hath done! So loved he the world that he gave us his Son, who yielded his life an atonement for sin, and opened the lifegate that all may go in. Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, let the earth hear his voice! Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, let the people rejoice! O come to the Father thru Jesus the Son, and give him the glory, great things he hath done!” Amen.

Things you can learn on a Friday night. Part 2

Jesus does not turn into a conquerer while He is seated on the throne making intercession. He does not turn from lamb to Lion as He sits next to God. The truth is that He has been a conquerer from the first, from before the beginning. This is what He does, who He is. He conquers all things, the external and the internal. He can overcome what we do and what we think. He sets us free from the inside out.

The act of creation itself is the conquering of the what did not exist. He turns nothing into something. He creates people and gives them authority to subdue all things. He gives all authority to a nation and tells them to conquer all other people. This is at the heart of all He commands.

When jesus leaves heaven to come to earth He is not coming to be the lamb. He has always been the lamb. This is our Jesus. The truth is that He is not lion on some days and lamb on other days. He is in fact a lion-like-lamb on all days. He is always conquering, always sacrificing. He overcomes all things through his life and through his sacrifice. When Jesus walks the earth He is at all times lion-like-lambing. He is teaching with authority, healing with authority, casting out demons with authority. And all the while He is meek and humble and feeding others and forgiving sins.

This Jesus is broken hearted for the broken and He is strong with the strong willed. The same Jesus who feeds the masses is the same one who patiently forms a whip to clear out the temple. There is no difference, no two sides of a coin. This is who He is.

It is surely amazing that He lives a sinless life. But equally striking is that He never once puts Himself first. (perhaps the key to sinlessness) He never once thinks "what would Jesus do." He is so fully selfless that He only does what He sees the Father do or what would be best for men. This is critical. Make no mistake: He absolutely puts His desire to see us come into perfection before His own desires. Jesus is driven to see that we would have what would be best for us. Now that is crazy talk. He goes to the cross and cries out "not my will but Yours." He does it because He does what the Father says in all things and He wants to do what is best for man in that same instant. He conquers the cross. At any moment He could have come down, saved Himself and given us the hell we all deserve. He is not defeated by the cross to then conquer death. That is an absurd teaching. He conquers all things. That is what it means to be lion-lamb-like.

Things you can learn on a Friday night part 1

Beholding the Father is not in competition with making disciples. The entire purpose of disciple making is to free the unbeliever into the realm of beholding the Father. We so often want to sell a new and better life where what we are really offering is the sitting in His presence. What can be more transforming than an afternoon with God? What can be more shocking than sitting in the presence of the mighty God. Who is this God? He literally shows Himself to us. This God actually lets us sit in his presence. What?

This is shocking. The mighty God literally beckons us to sit in front of Him, to dwell in His presence. This needs to be our cry to the world. We need to cry out come sit before the mighty God of israel and behold His beauty. Solve the sitting in His presence problem and we won't have to worry about the what really is a sin problem. It is absolutely true that we are called to do, to go make disciples of all nations. My heart is an absolute yes for that but for most of us the sitting in His presence is a fully foreign concept, something one might do before he eats food or goes to bed, but not something one might do for 9 hours on a Friday. Without beholding Him we are not ready to sing about Him or to tell others about Him for that matter. How will we tell them of His beauty if we don't know it for real in our core?

Tonight was a call to return to our first love, to sit before Him and behold Him. Nothing staggering when you are at ihop kc. Alter calls are for everyone here. But this one, this one. . . May this God give you the grace to sit before Him for hours at a time.

Baptism part 2

Noah and seven others were seen as righteous, found worthy, when God looked down and decided He was going to cancel the project, end the experiment. It is interesting that instead of bringing the eight up to live with Him He decided to keep them alive. He keeps them and 14 of each animal and everything else must die. In Hebrew He is ending all existence. It sounds more extreme than destroying the earth.

In my bible this is page 6. It is just three chapters since the fall. Clearly the devastation caused by sin cannot be taken lightly. In genesis 6:5-6 we are told, "The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil, continually. And the Lord was sorry that He had made man on earth and it grieved Him to His heart."

In 6:9 we are told, "Noah was a righteous man, blameless in His generation. Noah walked with God." So Noah is righteous and the rest of the people on earth are evil. This is the situation. We have eight against everything else so God will save the eight and destroy the rest.

In 6:13 God says to Noah, "I have determined to make an end to all flesh, for the earth is filled with violence through them. Behold I will destroy them with the earth." Now this can be read several ways but I think it reads best that God will use the earth to destroy all things. Time for a quick lesson in microeconomics: There are 4 factors of production, land, labor, capital, and entrepreneurs. Now the factor we will focus on is land. You see land is everything on the land and under the land. Land is also water. In Econ water is land. So when God is saying he will use earth He is going to use the water part of earth to destroy the non water part of earth. Econ 101 free of charge.

Verse 17 reads, "For behold I will bring a flood of waters upon the earth to destroy all flesh in which is the breath of life under heaven." That right there is kind of a big deal because God is referring back to how all life emanates from His breath. He is killing off little pieces of Him so the depth of pain that this must cause Him can only be imagined.

So God makes it rain and completely covers all the land and even the highest mountains. Nothing is left visible except for the water. Everything dies except the eight and their crew of animals. Everything is dead . . . And then the water subsides and then it begins again.

1 Peter 3:20 says, "because they formerly did not obey, when God's patience waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is eight persons were brought safely through the water. Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a good conscience through the resurrection of Jesus Christ." Whoa with your crazy talk Peter. God baptized the earth, killed all the living things save the righteous Noah and crew, (the righteous don't need to die to their old man. He's already dead) and this was no one time event? God keeps doing it over and over again. God actually uses water still in this destructive way to kill off the old man inside of us so we can live in the resurrection of Christ. Baptism is a real event that God used to kill all existence not just a symbolic event in the the life of a Christian?

God kills us with the earth. He uses water to kill off everything that breathes in the days of Noah and He uses water to kill off everything inside of us that has been corrupted and then places in us Himself, again. He kills off all existence in us and then we start to live... Now that makes sense.

Baptism part 1

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Why I love baptism

Something has been lost in the modern church. Some time ago baptism became an optional extra, something symbolic and nice, but not really necessary. We have come to treat baptism as something one does to show the other folks at church that you are also now saved, that you have indeed become a Christian. Even more incredible is that some churches actually use baptism as a way to join the church. For these churches it seems that baptism is a sort of club initiation. And this was my view of it while growing up. In fact, while growing up, it became pretty clear that being Christian didn’t really mean much at all to most people I went to church with. So because we created a church that really was pretty vanilla, kind of non-confrontational and user friendly,it is no wonder then that baptism fell into the category of sideshow.

Baptism is not an optional extra. It is made clear throughout the Word of God that it is in fact the thing that we are supposed to do. Let me be clear. Baptism does not save you.  We know that the thief on the cross was promised eternitywith Christ and he was not baptized. We also know Jesus promised several others eternity for faith and other things and there is no mention that they were baptized.  However, what we also know is that there are many accounts that saying yes to following was associated with baptism. So while baptism is not a saving moment, neither are the other things that we often associate with salvation.  Clearly professions of faith do not save us. Sinner’s prayers also do not save us. Saying yes to an alter call also does not save us.In fact, most things that we associate with salvation are things of man, things that bring us comfort for death but not necessarily eternal life.

Paul was clear that there was a race to be won. John was clear that we must overcome and be faithful to the end. In fact the Word of God makes clear that while salvation is freely given and not earned, it is given upon completion of the journey, not upon beginning it. We must go on believing,not just start.

So why we are baptized is not symbolic at all. It is a very real transaction between us and God. It is a very real death. Those who will follow, will desire to be buried in that water, to dive in and stay under untilthe old man has died and the new man has risen. Oh how I long to scream and shout for all to hear that it is real, that the death we die in that water is not symbolic and that all who think it is have not died and therefore do not live.

Our Savior was baptized. He came to John and humbled himself and in some weird way that we cannot understand He had to die in that water so that He could then die on the cross. Jesus does not mess around and He certainly is not being symbolic on that day when He went under the water. God does not cry out from heaven with joy because His Son has given us a good example to follow. God is overjoyed because Jesus has chosen to die in the water and then walk the death out for three and a half years. In Matthew 3:16we are told, “And when Jesus was baptized,immediately He went up from the water, and behold, the heavens were opened to Him,and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming to rest on him.”You are kidding me that this is just some tender trinity moment. This is a moment of great joy and as such when we see baptism we should shout from the mountaintops. If God is moved enough to open up heaven we can also be moved.Jesus rises from the water and begins to transform the world. He does this after He is baptized and not before. Who will we transform with our symbolism?We transform because we die and live in new life.

In Acts 2:38 Peter gives his first message  “And Peter said to them, ‘Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.’” Repentance is the first step. It is the beginning of all things in Him. We cry out for mercy and repent of our old man and then we jump in the water and die. And when we come out we are so utterly changed that we are not who we were moments ago. We are transformed and ready to go on believing.

In Romans 6:1-4 Paul writes, "What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? ² By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it? ³ Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? ⁴ We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.” What are you saying Paul? Why is it that we quote the first two verses but not the rest. Why do we say go and sin no more without saying jump in the water and die. Here Paul clearly puts the two together, clearly says stop sinning because you died in the water, you are new.

Why do I love baptism? Oh because I know what it is to die. I know what it is to be someone before the water and someone after the water and I am convinced that the water kills off all the old man when you go under it. I will never be the same again. The water did not save me. On the contrary, it killed me.