Our Object of Need

The plot of every movie advances because of one thing – the object of desire. Sometimes it’s a pretty girl, sometimes it’s a map to hidden treasure, and sometimes it’s a medallion that tells the location of a lost artifact. Whatever it is, it’s always one step away from being the object of NEED. You want the map, but you need the treasure; you want the medallion, but you need the artifact; and in more serious dramas, you want the pretty girl, but you need to discover the beauty of single life. In the Bible, we want righteousness, but we NEED the Holy Spirit.

In Exodus, God gives Moses the object of desire – THE LAW (The Ten Commandments on a very cinematic stone tablet.) For the rest of the Old Testament, everyone is pursuing the law in order to be righteous. But of course, the law is one step short of what they all need – The Holy Spirit. Are you following me?

So what does Jesus do? He FULFILLS the law (Matthew 5:17). He’s the one perfect man in all history, and the only one who is fully righteous. How is he the only one? He has the Holy Spirit within himself (Mark 3:29-30). But what does he do? He willingly sacrifices his life so that we can attain the object of need. Sound familiar? It’s because you saw Obi-Wan Kanobi do the same for Luke in STAR WARS: A NEW HOPE, and you saw Bumblebee do it for Sam in TRANSFORMERS, and you saw Gandalf do it for Frodo in THE LORD OF THE RINGS. Thanks to Obi-Wan, Luke has the force; Thanks to Bumblebee, Sam has the Allspark, and thanks to Jesus Christ, we have the Holy Spirit. Pretty freaky, huh? And guess what – all of these characters resurrected in some way or another.

(As a writer/filmmaker/novelist, you ARE a prophet, whether you know it or not).

What’s my point? My point is (and always will be) this – the Word of God is sharper than we can imagine. Everything within it has profound meaning, and God wrote every word. More than that, we are still in the story, and the road ahead has a little plot-point known as "the climax". So live your life with the full armor of God…

...At the end of the day, you’ll either be a Jedi who helps the rebels defeat the empire, or you’ll be a Decepticon that is conquered by the forces of good (but is impossibly and impractically resurrected in the POS sequel that nobody likes half as much as the first one, but everyone goes to see because they didn’t know any better, weeding out the true fans of film and leaving the third installment to the dim-witted action-buffs who are vainly obsessed with the 2012 Camerro.)

-Phil

We Are a Diva Bride From Beverly Hills.

I’m so ashamed. There was but a moment that I was in waiting – a moment that I wasn’t so sure of God’s plan because it seemed that our resources had run out. That moment now is passed, and I am ashamed of my thoughts and my sins in that time. Brittany - my career and ministry partner - told me last night that we've been asked to make a documentary for the next couple of months. I need to start researching and writing for it right now already. It will pay and it will be quick, and it will do everything we want it to do, really.

I heard that, and instead of being elated over the new opportunity and God’s provision, I realized one thing – I was not content with my wedding engagement to Christ. He always gives me sweet engagement presents, and I get super anxious if he doesn’t. What kind of a bride is that? I’m like a freaking’ diva from Beverly Hills. He already put a fat ring on my finger, and yet I’m demanding to be pampered with stupid little gifts all the way up until the wedding. If I were him, I’d get cold feet. Isn’t he enough? Aren’t I ecstatic over just the anticipation of the wedding? Apparently not.

And that hurts me. It doesn’t anger me. It hurts me. It shames me. I can’t just spend time with my fiancé and enjoy it. I have to be wealthy and prosperous and comfortable and famous too. It makes me question my intentions. Am I a gold digger? Or am I in love?

I like that phrase here – a gold digger. I think lots of people around here are gold diggers with Jesus. That’s the whole reason they call themselves Christians. It’s the whole reason they took the ring. In honesty, lots of people don’t even have a ring; the whole engagement is just a big illusion, and what they’ll get when they die is far different than the wedding ceremony they’re expecting. Their lamps are going to run out of oil, and when their bridegroom comes, he won’t even take a glance their way; he’ll have his eye on his bride.

Britt and I continued the conversation over the phone as I lay on the bed in my parents’ room, away from the noise of the rest of the house. We both exclaimed how unprepared we are for our calling – how famous the both of us want to be, and how sinful that is. What a wicked thought: fame. I can’t wait until I get to Heaven and meet the martyrs that had been abandoned by their Muslim families, persecuted by their communities, tortured and finally killed because they wouldn’t take off their ring. They’ll be famous.

I watched a sermon that Paul Washer spoke at a youth conference in 2002, and the message he gave was painful; he knew that many in the auditorium would go to Hell, and he knew that Christianity in America is mostly wrong, and he knew that, as he read, many will come to Jesus and say, “Lord, Lord, did we not do so many things in your name?” And he will turn their foreign faces away, leaving the weight of their wicked greed on their shoulder to sink them to the depths of the abyss. The path is narrow, and we need to remember that.

Aaron Newkirk explained at Bible Study last night that Christianity started in the Middle East, then traveled up to Europe as Asia Minor turned it’s back. And when the Catholic Church had done its damage, the blessing moved to North America. For hundreds of years we have been blessed, but today, we are in a spiritual recession that I fear will never end, while the persecuted church in China grows at exponential rates with believers that understand what it means to marry Jesus.

We’ve got to stop putting God second and start producing ETERNAL fruit. We have to stop pursuing the American dream because it’s going to end when we wake up! If you have money, stop wasting it on pointless things, and start giving to missionaries. Start giving food and clothing to the poor and love to the destitute, because if you have Christ, love is abundant, and wealth, prosperity, and comfort are LUKE WARM WATER (Rev 3:16-17). Run away from those things – not to them; they're poison to our faith.

And I speak to myself as well, since I am such a favor-hungry gold digger for Jesus. Maybe I’m being hard on us. Or maybe we’re actually wealthy snobs. Just consider this – if you know one missionary who isn’t on the mission field because they don’t have the money, consider them while you Christmas shop the halls of Best Buy “celebrating” the birth of Jesus, who you aren’t proclaiming in your workplace let alone in a persecuted Church of the Middle East. Don’t know a missionary in need? Meet 18-year-old Amanda Kirchem http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100001203310948 who is doing her Discipleship Training School with YWAM in January and then traveling to one of four or five foreign countries for three months, spreading the gospel to the lost. She still needs a few thousand bucks for the whole thing, and her three jobs might not do it for her in time.

What a perfect time for Christmas to come. I need to remember just how RIDICULOUS it is that Jesus would manifest himself as a human just to propose to me. Merry Christmas everyone!

-Phil

God's Literary Geniusis

God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good.

I must confess - I have some pretty crazy ideas about who God is and what He's done. But I think it's better to develop crazy ideas about who God is than to simply swallow what you're told. My rabbit chases through scripture have led me to some of the most humbled and worshipful moments I've ever had with God. I've been a bit timid to "publish" them in fear that I'll be labeled a looney, but I feel like this is a good place to open up the can and hopefully enable more people to have amazing experiences with God and His Word.

Rule Number One: The correct answer is the answer that gives God the most glory.

One day I was reading the beginning of Genesis, as I often do, since the controversial parts are where I like to go swimming (you could say it's my extreme sport.) and I couldn't help but notice the strange transition from the seven-day creation account into the story of Mankind's creation. (Genesis 2:3-4)

³So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation.

The Creation of Man and Woman

⁴These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created,in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens. ⁵When no bush of the field was yet in the land...

Hold on a second. Why did the story start over after the seventh day of creation? What did God mean, "these are the generations... in the day..."? How could there be generations of man in a single day? Well I looked up the Hebrew word for "day" - YOM - and discovered that it is also commonly used in other parts of the Old Testament, and translated into "era", "time", "age", and other words of the like. So in Genesis 2, then it seems that God is beginning an account of human generations in the "age" that He created everything. And this word - yom - is the same word that the author uses in Genesis 1 to describe the seven "days" of creation.

Now I'd heard all this before...

"Maybe God spent billions of years on creation. After all, it takes 8 million years for the light of some stars to reach our planet, so they must be at least that old."

"But if we say that, then we're doubting God's Word and compromising God's glory (And that's breaking rule #1)."

"But science says so!"

"I don't care what science says! Science is probably wrong anyway!"

I wasn't interested in the battle between science and religion, and I wasn't about to pick a side. What I wanted to know was WHY?? Why did God start His book with a seven-day creation account? God's literary genius hadn't failed me before - using a boy to sleigh a giant, using death to conquer death, and establishing plot points that are remanufactured again and again on every movie screen in the world today. So what's with the opening scene?

I recently read the prologue of Shakespeare's famous tragedy, "Romeo and Juliet"...

Two households, both alike in dignity,
In fair Verona, where we lay our scene,
From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,
Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.
From forth the fatal loins of these two foes
A pair of star-cross'd lovers take their life;
Whole misadventured piteous overthrows
Do with their death bury their parents' strife.
The fearful passage of their death-mark'd love,
And the continuance of their parents' rage,
Which, but their children's end, nought could remove,
Is now the two hours' traffic of our stage;
The which if you with patient ears attend,
What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend.

In 12th grade AP Lit, I had never noticed that this prologue basically spoils the entire story. In fact, it's written so poetically that I'm sure many Elizabethan theatre-goers had also failed to catch the tragic fate of the play when they first heard these words. But that's the beauty of Shakespeare - "What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend." He told us everything from the very beginning, but we missed it. I couldn't help but think that God would write a similar prologue to His story. So I looked again at Genesis, wondering if God was waving something in our face that we just weren't catching. And sure enough...

Hebrews 4 mentions the creation account while explaining how the Israelites had failed to enter God's "rest" because they were disobedient in the wilderness, so nearly all of them died before ever reaching the promised land.

For he has somewhere spoken of the seventh day in this way: "And God rested on the seventh day from all his works."⁵And again in this passage he said,

"They shall not enter my rest."

And just four verses later, it says, "So then, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God." So God's rest, as spoken of in Genesis 1, is a rest that we, as followers of God, will one day enter. In fact, it's something we should "strive to enter" (Heb 4:11).

So after God made everything, did He kick back in His throne, throw off His shoes, and pop a Corona to a good work week while Satan snuck through the back door and deceived Eve? Was everything actually "very good" if Satan had already betrayed the angelic order and was fixing to demolish the human race? I don't think so. No, the scriptures seem pretty clear that the day of God's rest is yet to come, and until then, He is hard at work.

Now that started to make a lot of sense to me - God created everything, and everything was "very good" and so He rested. End of story. And why did He rest? Every 2nd grade Sunday school teacher will tell you that He wasn't tired - He was admiring His work. Well, teacher Stacey, where does it say that? Let's try looking at the END of the story - Revelation 22:3-5...

No longer will there be any curse. The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and his servants will serve him. ⁴ They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. ⁵ There will be no more night. They will not need the light of a lamp or the light of the sun, for the Lord God will give them light. And they will reign for ever and ever.

Now THAT'S what I see when I think of God resting. And ironically, this passage takes place in EDEN. That's right, the NIV heading titles this paragraph "Eden Restored", which means that, if God's throne sits in Eden, and we all worship Him as He rests, then we've come full circle, having ended exactly in the same place that we began (try counting the number of movies that do that). Now, I had begun to see God's literary genius.

So what? God makes everything in six days, but at the end of the sixth day, something goes horribly wrong, causing a revolt in Heaven, a curse on Earth, and a creation that groans for salvation, waiting for the sun do descend and the eternal Sabbath to commence?? Sounds like a pretty kick-ass movie premise to me. What could God possibly do to fix such an epic problem?? And we thought we knew the weight that Christ bore on his shoulders while he hung on the cross. Oh no, my brothers, God has not yet rested, and He will not rest until the curse is broken, until every knee bows and every tongue confesses, until His Son is worshipped and He is glorified and praised as the all-powerful, all-merciful genius that He is. Then, and only then, will He rest.

Don't believe it? Believe it! You say "the week is LITERAL, Phil - not a metaphor!" And I say, "Damn right, it's literal, and OUR week is a metaphor!" You say "It's all written in the past tense," and I say, "his works were finished from the foundation of the world" (Heb 4:3b). He's the AUTHOR of our faith; He already wrote it all down.

I don't know how long it took for God to create everything before us, but I do know that His creation is still waiting for rest, and His work is not finished. In fact, the best part of the story is yet to come; we are but characters in it, written to make Jesus look like an action hero. And whether we come against him, or we join forces, one day, he will reign victorious, and his people will hoist him onto their shoulders in a packed stadium of fans cheering for the home team. The defeated will sulk their way into the locker room, never to be seen again. And we'll pause there... on a freeze frame of Christ lifted high above the crowd, one hand holding the trophy, and the other pointing to the sky. And everything will be "very good."

Thanksgiving People

I've been reading friends' blogs, and thought them very insightful. So here's an update for all of my followers (thanks Hailey).

I met a woman of her late 40's named Carmella on Tuesday in Los Angeles. I was at Grace Church, heading for the Grace Grill when I saw my good friend, Joey Mejia. He introduced me to this powerful black woman with a pair of eyes that forced me to look back. She had a whole day's food for a camp-out at the church, just praying and talking with "Papa" as she calls Him. I never used Papa when I was younger. The word just seemed so juvenile and foreign to me, really.

We both went to the Grace Grill, her sandwich already in her bag. And when we found the doors closed due to the Thanksgiving holiday, she quickly offered half of her sandwich to me. We sat there as the clouds passed, tossing questions back and forth. She would always begin with questions that I've never been asked before - why do you love your father? What's the hardest part of being 22? Have you ever read the Bible to yourself out loud? And whenever I answered, she'd praise God, looking up to the clouds and saying, "Thank you, Papa. Only you could appoint this." I felt like a prince.

After all my answers, and once the clouds became just a bit too thick for our blood, she looked me in the eyes (so I had to look back) and she told me, "Young man, you need to read your Bible more." She told me it must be more to me than my food. That to me was very tangible; I could count my calories consumed and minutes spent consuming, and I knew she was right - I was starving myself.

Since Carmella, my prayer life has changed, my time in the word had changed. She prayed for me yes, begging Papa to change me, and thanking Him for this divine life of mine. I felt honored and humbled all at once. It's no small thing, being a son of God - that's something I learned. So I pray now like I'm His. I know this may not be forever - sometimes God will feel distant. That's not the point. The point is He's not. Carmella had no husband and her ministry was humble. She knew what it was like to be a complete loon - talking to an invisible person when visible people are around - and the crazy part was that I knew she wasn't talking to me when she was praying. It was like she really believed that God was just above those clouds, observing this divine appointment that He set up, and smiling down on it. Honestly, I think, He was.

That day in Los Angeles - the only full day I had in between a month in Phoenix and my Thanksgiving trip up to Portland - was packed with experiences. I drove a girl named Elysia to the airport after she came and sat next to me at Starbucks. She sat down beside me and said nothing. In fact, it all started when I received a phone call from Marcea Ennamorado - an old YWAM acquaintance really - about visiting her in Santa Cruz on my way up to Oregon. Surprisingly, she was cool with it, and so we made plans to guide me into Santa Cruz the very next day. And as this conversation took place outside the bustling Starbucks, which was too loud to hear inside, Elysia popped her head around the corner and stared at me. I smiled a few times during my personal conversation that she was dropping into, and then went back inside. And when she came and sat next to me, not saying a word, I wasn't very surprised. She pretended to know everyone in the café, laughing at jokes from across the room, and contributing even to conversations that were barely audible from where we were. She then used my computer and hopped onto MY facebook and sent her mother a friend request.

Over the next couple of hours (I had nowhere to be until Santa Cruz) I discovered and concluded certain bits of information, one of which was that she was heading to Australia for Thanksgiving. This, I later discovered, was false. In fact, I'm not sure how much was true, since her mother facebooked me, asking where she had gone. This was after I took her to LAX and dropped her off at the "Australian" terminal. The entire drive she sang a song she made up and answered 10% of my questions with as few words as possible. She was a very strange girl, and I couldn't begin to grasp what her motivations for anything were. My best conclusion is that she was trying to prostitute herself to me. She applied lipstick when she got into the car and everything. Joe Miller - my old roommate - concluded this after I told him the story.

I hit up Expression 58 church that night, and saw Troi Barnum, Annie DiGrazia, and Lindy Conant there - old YWAMers from my DTS back in 07'. They tipped me off to Adam Blakely - another DTSer who is taking the Chronoligical School of Biblical Studies at the LA base and happened to have a cot and a pillow for a transient like me. That night I spoke with him and his roommate Lane about this school, and decided that I too will one day spend nine months studying the Bible from beginning to end. It's really a must.

In the morning, I drove up to Santa Cruz in my trusty 91' Honda Accord. Marcea guided me in by cell phone, and I landed at about 2:45. She introduced me to a fraction of her massive family and took me around Santa Cruz. This was another one of those times where I felt special. Marcea and I weren't very good friends back in Kona, but we acted like it in Santa Cruz; we hopped from Latin American Christianity, to the Islamic religion and "social anthropology" like we'd done it all before. She made sure that I saw the good parts of her town and had a sack lunch for the road before I left in the morning.

On my way, my car turned 200,000, and I documented it on my camera.

I arrived in Oregon with snow gathered in the corners of the yard and smoke coming from the chimney. On the drive up, I lied to my father and told him that I was going to be late for Thanksgiving dinner. Turns out I was just in time. Four of us ate a humble turkey dinner at the table with jazz music playing from the radio in the kitchen.

I had very much to be thankful for. Thank you Papa.

-Phil