Tenth Avenue North : Journals

The Inside and In Between

September 10, 2009

Well hello everyone. So I am sitting on the bus in Oklahoma City waiting for an available shower to cleanse myself of all the dirty road scum you aquire and I thought to myself… “self, let’s let everyone know how the tour is going.” So here I am ready to give you the inside and in between on the Inside and In Between Tour. I must say, BRAVO. We have really been blown away by how many of you really like us. The first 3 shows have been sold out and more people have came than we ever would have thought. And to top that off, so far we have had over 50 compassion children sponsored. That’s exciting! We really have had an awesome time with Brenton and Audrey. It just seems to be a great group of people doing this together. We just ask that you continue to pray for us and the tour. It is very easy for people to put us up on some pedestal as if we are more important than others. On of our goals on this tour is break that illusion and to really just have a conversation about the gospel with you… from one screwed up person to another. We pray that God is using us in that way. Thanks again for your support and be looking out for some video content. It’s coming soon I promise.

Jason

Tags: thank you tour

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What I Want

August 22, 2009

“Delight yourself in the LORD
and he will give you the desires of your heart.”
-Psalm 37: 3-5
How often do I use this passage to get what I want?

“What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? You want something but don’t get it. You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want. You quarrel and fight. You do not have, because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.”
- James 4:1-3

With Psalms 37: 3-5 I must say that I am often guilty of James 4:1-3.
A long time ago a friend revealed a stunning revelation in delighting myself with the Lord. It goes like this: God is a jealous god. You delight yourself in Him (he’s your joy). So, shouldn’t God give you Himself? He’s what I want right?

Wow. Never thought of it like that.

Dwell on these passages. But not on these lyrics of an old Janis Joplin tune:

Oh Lord, won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz ?
My friends all drive Porsches, I must make amends.
Worked hard all my lifetime, no help from my friends,
So Lord, won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz ?

Hasta la pasta
-j

Tags: God life questions scripture

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Over Thinking It.

June 28, 2009

As some of you may know by my few twitters and text messages to my close friends I was greatly dissapointed with Transformers 2.

Growing up, I was a Transformers dork. My brother and I had all of our personal drawings of each character taped to our bedroom wall like crayola’s ode to robotic wallpaper. I have not lost touch with my roots since that time. I thought the first movie was pretty good. I thought the love story was worthless and shallow. It would have been much better if Megan Fox didn’t exist in the movie but were replaced by nerd girl that had that innocent, helpful, and dorky class about her as they both realized through their out-of-this-world experience that they were both fond of each other. The transformers had that crass dialogue about them, some of them were just as hot-headed as I remember, and there were many old characters I fondly remember back in front of my popcorn bucket and myself.

Alas, I was drawn into a packed theatre for the sequal. Without exhausting your reading skills on here, I’ll just say I was greatly dissapointed. Not only with the film, but with the audience as well. As a once childhood cartoon brought to modern film, it wasn’t handled well. The advanced robots from another world came and most of them chose (the good guys, mind you) to assimilate the characteristics and syntax and crude discourse of unintelligent earthlings. As a child I just don’t remember my heroes cursing and making sexual gestures or comments. I would even argue that robots are asexual beings to begin with, so their lust for humans wouldn’t be plausible or possible. Am I being overly conservative? I don’t think so, I just thought the self-aware robots and the writer would have better taste. Where’s the class? The heart? I had no connection to any character. If they died, I wouldn’t be sad. If they took a stand, I wouldn’t support them. Outside of screenplay preference, there is a deeper moral issue that was a rude awakening

When Megan Fox first appeared straddling her motorcycle there was a vast cheering like a male chorus throughout the room. One fellow even stood up clapping like a proud mother at her son’s first piano recital. Throughout the film, there where many comments behind us from men oogling about her as though she were a feast to be taken. It were as though we were in the theatre when the Gremlins take over the city and are all watching Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1984’s “Gremlins.”

I suppose I just didn’t realize how lustful some can be. I hadn’t considered that a television show of old could lose it’s innocence when adapted for the screen. I guess I’m just sad. I love art, elegance, excellence. Not pop culture, but I suppose it sells.

Autobots- roll out.

gremlins4

Tags: disappointment life movies

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Chapter 9 Beloved

June 19, 2009

The disciples must have thought Jesus was crazy.
Seriously. I can only imagine their faces.
So confused, so perplexed, uncomfortably glancing back and forth between each other,
wondering if they had misheard, wondering if someone could help them understand.
Meanwhile, you got Jesus, unnerved, unfazed, just sitting there cooly,
looking them dead in the eyes, asking them to marry Him.
Yes, you heard me right…marry Him.
With nothing more than a cup of wine, no less,
the Lamb of God was proposing. So you can imagine their confusion right?
“Wait. What? Come again? Jesus, you feeling alright brotha?
I mean, I don’t think that I’m exactly what you’re looking for!
You want to think about what you’re saying for a minute?”

Of course, we don’t see it that way, because we’re not Jewish.
But they were, and they did. See it that way, I mean.
“Drink from it, all of you. This is my blood of the covenant,
which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.”
We hear these words and we think Communion, Eucharist, Last Supper.
The disciples heard this and they’re thinking wedding bells.

Apparently,

“In those days,” when a Hebrew man decided to take for Himself a Hebrew woman,
he’d go to his father and say, “Her, Dad. I want to make little rabbis with her.”
So then the dad would go to her dad and they’d talk camels, or sheep,
or whatever the payment was going to be, and after they’d settled on a figure,
the groom would call in all his friends and family, set a table in the middle of a room,
set the aforementioned girl down in front of said table,
break out a cup, fill it with wine, and set it in front of her saying,
“This is my covenant with you, take and drink it.”
And if she did, that was her answer. With a simple gulp and swig,
she was saying, “I do,” and that was it. No rings, no fancy songs or dinners,
just a cup and an invitation.
And oh yeah, all their relatives sitting in the room watching.
I mean, talk about pressure. But yeah, that was it.
Her lips to the glass was the same as saying,
“I accept your life, and I give you mine in return.”

Now, If the girl said yes, “in those days,” she would then go immediately back to her home,
where she would be known as, “one who was bought with a price.”
It’s true. That was her name. Kind of long and tedious, and extremely hard to shout out in
a game of soccer, but that was it. And with her new identity, she would go back to her town,
and start preparing for the wedding. And really, she’d just start waiting
for future husband to finish what he had to do and come and get her.
What was he doing? Well, during the engagement, the groom’s primary responsibility was
to build a mansion for him and his bride to be.

Now girls, before you get too excited, let me explain. “Mansion” in Hebrew means, “apartment.”
And what’s even better is that this apartment was actually more like an addition,
because the groom would build it onto his parents pre-existing house.
Yes. You heard me correctly. Their first home would be with the in-laws.
And right now, I can just imagine how many girls are thinking,
“oh please don’t let me marry a Jewish boy.”
It’s true though. He would build his “mansion” onto the family “insula,”
which is what they would call the family dwelling.
You see, the entire family would just keep building on and building on
until you had what was basically a city block, all comprised of one big bustling Jewish family.
(And you thought My Big Fat Greek Wedding was bad) Crazy, but also true.

Well, as you can imagine, this process could take quite a while.
I mean, it’s a house for crying out loud.
Some scholars say it was six months, or even a year before the poor guy was finished.
And get this, the only one who could decide if it was finished was the father.
So he’d be working and working and working, and every day looking to his dad,
saying, “Are we done yet?” And I can just imagine the father messing with him.
Taking his time, looking it over, and then just saying, “Almost.”
Could you imagine? Oh, the agony!
And to top it all off, the groom and the bride weren’t even allowed to talk to each other.
Nothing. Nada. Zip.
They couldn’t see or speak to one another during the entire engagement, except for one outlet.
The best man. He’d be the instant messenger if you will. Taking notes back and forth between
the doting couple. And those moments were probably pretty funny.
“Here’s your note, ‘one who was bought with a price.’ Check yes, no, or maybe.”
Unbelievable.

But you know, how much more beautiful would that day be when the father finally approved?
That day when the groom was finally finished, and he could gather up his homeboys,
or ‘groomsmen’ as we westerners would say, and imperiously march into his fiance’s town?
Oh it was sweet.
And that’s just what he’d do. He’d get his bridal party together and they’d come to her house,
and without any prior announcement or advanced warning, they would blow a shofar,
which was a ram’s horn that served as a trumpet,
and upon hearing it, the pining bride would come bustling out her front door and practically
straight down the aisle, and into her beloved’s arms.
The period of waiting and wanting would be over,
and the two would be united at last to consummate their long-awaited union.
Joy. Happiness. Little Rabbis… You know, all the good stuff.

So then,
Back to the dinner table with the 12. Can you sense where this is going?
Jesus breaks into this marriage proposal,
cup out, wine-filled, offering his covenant with them. They accept.
“I do” to Jesus. Gulp, gulp. “I accept your life, and I give you mine in return.”
So then, what does Jesus do? He explains how they have to spend some time apart.
Naturally. Only this is going to be longer than a year. However, the best man was coming.
His name? The Holy Spirit. So when Jesus leaves,
off to get busy preparing a “mansion” for them, (“in my Father’s house there are many rooms”)
He doesn’t leave them alone, but instead sends His own mediator, the Holy Spirit,
to keep the messages going between Himself and his Beloved.
Meanwhile, the bride is left behind in her town, keeping watch, day and night,
not knowing the day, time or hour that the bridegroom will appear.
Until finally, after a long-awaited return, and we’re talking seriously,
long awaited; centuries and milleniums waited people,
after this much awaited consummation,
the Father alone will announce that the time has come,
and Jesus will be coming back for all His faithful, all who are His bride.
With a posse of angels and loud trumpet call of their own, He will take us home,
to the marriage supper of the Lamb!
And we will share in ever-increasing joy and intimacy with Him forever and ever.
As C.S. Lewis so brilliantly articulated, “Further up and further in!”

And people still want to insist that Christianity is no more than a religion.

I don’t know about you but in light of this information, it puts Jesus in an entirely different light.
He’s no longer an ideal, or a belief system. He’s a person.
And to put it more precisely, He is a groom in love with his bride.
And not just any bride, but a wayward, adulterous bride.
A bride who is half-hearted at best, chasing other lovers and other interests more than Him.
And still, He keeps on loving. He keeps on being faithful,
He keeps his promises.

In the Old Testament,
He tells his prophet Hosea to marry an unfaithful woman,
to show everyone the way He loves his people. (see Hosea 3)
In the New, He tells us that divorce will never be an option for Him. (Phil 1:6)
Over and over and over again, From Isaiah, to Ezekiel, to Ephesians,
He tells us that we are not just his children, but we are his bride.
Faithless though we might be, we are His, and He is ours.

And like I said before, this changes everything.
It changes the way I view prayer.
It changes the way I view marriage.
It even changes the reasons that I obey.
As Donald Miller once said,
“it’s a far different thing to break a rule, than it is to cheat on a lover.”
I only pray that it changes things for you.

Tags: Jesus love

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Don't Go To Your Church

June 10, 2009

Don’t go to your church if one of these three things are present:

- The sermons don’t include scripture. What MUST be in it is sound “walking through the text” understanding the authorial intent of the author and making it applicable to the people. Expositional proclamation of the Biblical Text

-They preach that they are the messenger. Wrong! Christ is the messenger. Don’t be deceived by preachers who put themselves where Christ should be.

-That YOU are the main agenda. Wrong again! Christ is the main agenda.

1 John 4

Test the Spirits

¹Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. ²This is how you can recognize the Spirit of God: Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, ³but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard is coming and even now is already in the world.

⁴You, dear children, are from God and have overcome them, because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world. ⁵They are from the world and therefore speak from the viewpoint of the world, and the world listens to them. ⁶We are from God, and whoever knows God listens to us; but whoever is not from God does not listen to us. This is how we recognize the Spirit of truth and the spirit of falsehood.

2 Timothy 4

Preach the Word

¹ I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus,who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom: ²preach the word; be ready in season and out of season;reprove, rebuke, andexhort, with complete patience and teaching. ³For the time is coming when people will not enduresound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, ⁴andwill turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths. ⁵As for you,always be sober-minded, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist,fulfill your ministry.

Selah!

Tags: church

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