There is no spoon

"All in all you're just another brick in the wall."
-Pink Floyd "Another Brick In the Wall"




"Fear has with it the thought of punishment"
1 John 4

"What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world (all that the world has to offer and it's lies) and forfeits his soul (who he essentially is)."
-Jesus

*Fear keeps me from being who I am and becoming who I am. It fleshes out in a variety of different ways, but at the end of the day...it's fear.

*We often evaluate the risk of doing (fill in the blank "risk"). We rarely, if ever, evaluate the risk of doing nothing.

*Give me any person that life is working for them and you will see someone who walked through fear recently. Maybe it was 1 month...6 months...1 year ago. That person got to a place in their life where the dissatifaction of their life was louder than the lies keeping them stuck.

*I was sitting with Jerry and Steve recently talking about this topic over coffee. My latte was bumped and spilled a bit on the table. My thought was to put something over it...cover it up. Eventually, I cleaned it up. There is a difference between cleaning up and covering up. In order to really walk through fear...to clean up things in my life...I have to acknowledge that it's messy. I have to acknowledge that it's there and it's influence. If I just cover it up...I don't want to acknowledge it. Denial....is fueled.......by fear.

*The real question is what is the magnitude of fear in my life? Relationships? Job? Addictions? Life Choices?

*What would my physical life, emotional life, relational life, financial life, spiritual life look like if I pursued what God had put on my heart to pursue? What keeps me from pursuing it?

*Imagine being out in a field and seeing in the distance a large wall. As you walk closer, you notice more and more people camped out on this side of the wall. The wall seems endlessly high and long. As you get closer, you feel that it's a big deal. You hear voices whispering things that are specific to you and make you hesistate to go further. What would those voices be for you? You get closer the voices get louder...but you keep walking. There are so...many...people...who quit walking. Strangely as you get closer to the wall....it seems to fade. The voices are really loud. The wall seems to be disappearing.

"As long as you're struggling, like the Pharisee, to be alive in your own eyes--and to the precise degree that your sturggles are for what is holy, just, and good--you will resent the apparent indifference to your pains that God shows in making the effortlessness of death the touchstone of your justification. Only when you're finally able, with the tax collector, to admit that you're dead will you be able to stop balking at grace.

It is, admittedly, a terrifying step. You will cry and kick and scream before you take it, because it means putting yourself out of the only game you know. For your comfort though, I can tell you three things. First, it's only a single step. Second, it's not a step out of reality into nothing but a step from fiction into fact. And third, it will make you laugh out loud at how short the trip home was. It wasn't a trip at all: you were already there. Coffee, anyone?"

-"Between Noon and Three" by Robert Farrar Capon

Dr. Paul Fitzgerald Speaking at DC this Wed Night!

Dr. Paul Fitzgerald (check out his blog on the right) of Heart Connexion Ministries is speaking at DC this Wed Night. We're in the middle of a series called "Freedom From Fear". DC meets each Wednesday Night at the Henry Home. Details are below.

When: Wednesday Nights (7-8:30 PM)
Where: Henry Home
14606 S. Alden
Olathe, KS 66062

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Anyone is welcome.

Bumper Sticker...

Had a friend give this bumper sticker to me at DC last week. I'm thinking about making t-shirts. It makes me smile!

Freedom From Fear

We're starting a series this Wednesday at DC called "Freedom From Fear". What are the real fears I have? How have those fears limited my life? How have they impacted how I see God, how I think God sees me, and how I think God sees everyone? When we deal with fear...we deal with the "why" of things. When we deal with the "why" we can begin to understand and heal and change in the direction and heart of Christ. At DC, we use a variety of tools to help people engage and discover God's heart and theirs in life-changing and community-oriented ways. Music, teaching (me, Paul Fitzgerald, etc.), video, questions, processing, experiential exercises, communion, and other tools are avenues that we might use to help us understand and experience the heart of the message of God's love through Christ. Anyone is welcome. A children's room is provided. Check out the details and e-mail me with q's at pbhl@yahoo.com. Exemplary coffee and snacks will be provided as well.

When: Wednesday Nights (7-8:15 PM)
Where: Henry Home (map below)


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Honest Roads

"The more you see, the less you know.
The less you find out as you go.
I knew much more then, than I do now."

-U2 "City of Blinding Lights"



"God: Grace. You want her back?
Bruce: No. I want her to be happy, no matter what that means. I want her to find someone who will treat her with all the love she deserved from me. I want her to meet someone who will see her always as I do now, through Your eyes.
God: Now THAT'S a prayer."

-"Bruce Almighty"



"I wish to talk to you today not about technical matters of law. I wish to talk to you about something more important. I wish to talk to you from the heart. Because today ... for the first time in my life ... I stand before you -- naked ... vulnerable ... and in love. Love. It's a word we matrimonial lawyers avoid. Funny, isn't it? We're frightened of this emotion which is, in a sense, the seed of our livelihood. Well, today Miles Massey is here to tell you that love need cause us no fear. Love need cause us no shame. Love is ... good. Love is good. Now, I am of course aware that these remarks will be received here with cynicism. Cynicism: that cloak that advertises our indifference and hides all human feeling. Well, I'm here to tell you that that cynicism that we think protects us, in fact, destroys. Destroys love, destroys our clients, and ultimately destroys ourselves!"

-Miles Massey(George Clooney) in "Intolerable Cruelty"

"Beloved, let us love one another, because love comes from God and everyone that loves is born of God and knows Him. The one who does not love, does not know God because God is love....This is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us."

1 John 4

"Where we're going, we don't need roads."

-Back To The Future (Doc)

What I know to be true about God, gives me the freedom to pursue what I don't know.

God's love is bigger than my understanding of grace.

This season (2 years) of my journey is quite fascinating for me. For the first time in my life, I'm feeling the freedom to pursue and deal with questions that have been stirring in my heart for quite sometime. We can suppress those questions and pretend that they will go away or we can find safe places and people to process them. I don't think that most of us necessarily need answers to the questions...I think for the most part we just need to know that our questions matter and they are valid. We didn't "miss the boat" on some things. The very fact that we are created by a mysterious and incredibly loving God dictates that questions will be there. I think many of us have grown up in religious communities that don't enable or validate questions. We "figure it all out" because we trust the people who "figured it all out". The problem with this so often is that doesn't enable us to own our journeys. "Don't ask questions, just do it." The beauty is embracing my journey and embracing the mystery of it all.

Is God really omniscient(all-knowing)? Is He really omnipotent(all-powerful)? Is He really in control of everything? Does He have a perfect plan? Really? All valid and good questions that I'm feeling the freedom to journey on these days. If God knows everything, then He either creates people that He doesn't choose or He creates people that He knows won't choose Him. Interesting. Stretching. If He's in control of everything and He already knows what's going to happen in minute detail.....why pray? If God is something other than love, I doubt few of us would take or feel the freedom to journey down some of these honest roads. More and more I'm learning to embrace the mystery while enjoying the journey.

It's interesting to me that we have so many questions when we're young and often we are so enamoured with life. Somewhere along the way, we lose that journeying heart I think. We think that the more answers we get the more problems will be solved and the more of life that will be explained. Some of that is true. We get God "figured out" and then life happens. Our perspective of God doesn't fit reality and when we really feel free to think through things , it doesn't work....there's a crisis...and often we get a new box...maybe a bigger one, but still a box.

Here's my hope for you this season. I hope that you take and feel the freedom to journey and ask questions and think and process your heart. I hope that you know that in and through and from it all is a God who is madly in love with you. I hope that you know that literally "nothing can seperate you from His love which is in Christ". I hope you think of days in youth when you had more questions than answers....and were okay with it. I hope you have honest conversations with people in safe places with people who don't throw stones. I hope you embrace and dance in the journey.