Category Archives: Church

Old Ghost

Sometimes you sit in a sermon and it makes life appear so easy, just turn your face to Jesus. And it really is that easy almost.

This weekend marks 6 years of going to church and in those 6 years Leisha and I have pushed so hard for personal transformation as individuals, as a couple, as a family. We have experienced so much, I know a little bit about that life style now, metanoia. I just don’t think you get to where you need to be without facing your Old Ghost. In fact Leisha is in the throws of discovering and facing some Old Ghost who have hidden themselves so well she only has an inkling they are really there…  Sometimes it’s so painful for her and you have to know surely painful for me to watch from a near, from a far.  I am trying to be as good to her through this as she has been to me, its difficult, she set the bar high.

I am convinced it takes both facings, Jesus and Old Ghost, one lifts up, takes you to a place you should be, the other takes you down to a place you need to go.  If you don’t go there you probably won’t be able to hear or see where Jesus was and especially what he wants to talk about … about those Old Ghost.

Old Ghost
Haunt these halls and cross my lonely thoughts
Show up in the funny way I talk
Speak to me in records that I bought
Screamin at me for all the things I lost

Old Ghost
Lingerin by my old stompin grounds
They built them all and tore the old house down
I can’t go back and I can’t go around
The devils that live on that side of town

I believe in things that I can’t see
In my blood and in my bones
These old Ghost they all belong to me
They hurt me and they heal me
They hide and they reveal me
Remind me what I will be when I’m gone

Old Ghost
Sometimes in the Dark they hold me close
Whisper things I wish I didn’t know
About my self and every heart I’ve

I believe in things I can’t see
In my blood and in my bones
These old Ghost they all belong to me
They hurt me and they heal me
They hide and they reveal me
Remind me what I will be when I’m gone

Church is more

I recently learned something that is earth shattering to me and partly because it aligns up with my experience here IRL. Not that your life experiences are supposed to dictate what the Gospels are trying to say but you can’t ignore that part wholly and it is possible for both to align. In other words it is possible for your experiences to confirm what you are reading, no ?

Cluj-Cathedral

St. Michael’s Church, Cluj-Napoca Romania

NT Write is a pretty smart guy, his words are thick and hard to chew on at least for me but if you will work at him there are amazing gems in his understanding of the Gospels. So in reading or shall I actually say in swinging the wood chopping ax at the massive pile of wood he has laid down (Note I am talking about work here)… He used the phrase over and over: Load Bearing. This is kind of what I picture, big columns with ceiling engineering that carry the great weight of great structures for decades if not hundreds of years…

So his point was that in the gospels the load bearing message was family, unity, togetherness, standing up for each other as Christians, children of one Father, sisters and brothers as we move through this earthly experience called life.  The earth shattering part is the idea of load bearing and then this being the main load bearing idea, can it really be that simple ?????

It’s not the first time I have heard this kind of idea in fact it’s also a load bearing, core idea of my church what is so fascinating to me is that it is in fact not only load bearing but maybe the primary load bearing pillar. I could go on and on but NT Wright says it much better than I can and this is not my point anyway, it’s a load bearing part of my point.

So my church made some changes recently to their church service schedule. They dropped the Saturday night service, opened a new service on Thursday night. Leisha and I decided to make some changes in our attendance schedule and our place of worship from the Denton Campus to the Flower Mound Campus, we now go-to Thursday night. This was done for many many reasons and this morning as I wake up early… ahh very early (3:30 am) I am finding myself having the opportunity to begin to prepare my heart early in my day for my part of our Thursday night “church, family” experience. That is my point, I get to do this. Prepare early and spend all day preparing, spend all day in anticipation, spend all day praying and thinking about the worship that will occur, the message that will be presented, the friends I will see, the person Leisha and I might get to pray for post service, the experience of Leisha and I “Doing Church” together.

I would like to comment here on what spurred on these thoughts. After I arrived at my desk (I work from home) this early AM, not wanting to really work yet I have all day to do so, I opened up my bible study software and went to a course on Genesis I am working on. I opened some notes I had entered a few weeks ago and in the notes was the definition of Doxology. In that set of notes was a link to this.

I played it and everything else you just read took off from there. That is the purest essence of Bible study and is such an important part of preparing for Church, preparing to play your part in church… I hope you get the many other points hear without me saying them other than one last point, there is Freedom untold in this kind of lifestyle, at least my experience tells me this.