Let me make things very clear, I am not being pious and I am certainly not holy nor anywhere near being a saint. I have the same joys, concerns and struggles, as usual, but right now I am discovering so much about God’s kingdom here on earth as it is in heaven. Praise God!

What I want to share is that as I read scripture like Matthew 21:31, 43 (ESV), books like “The Secret Message of Jesus” by Brian McLaren, listen to bands like Third Day, Audio Adrenaline, Switchfoot, Building 429, etc., observe the radical rantings of real Christians like Shane Claiborne, Chris Haw and friends (whom I was blessed to hear speak in person last night during a stop on their Jesus for President tour), I realize that I MUST transform to become the kind of me who God intended for me to be at the point of creation.

This new me, a new kind of Christian me, is still a sinner . However, this sinner is one with Jesus in spirit as I transform into someone who is suddenly concerned with real inner change and outwardly demonstrates the effects of the risen savior Jesus Christ living within me. I am the new kind of me who now loves people…all people. This demonstration of love begins with unconditional love of those closest to me, my beautiful family and extends to those who I formerly thought of as un-lovable or forgettable.

As mother Theresa said, “Being unwanted, unloved, uncared for, forgotten by everybody, I think that is a much greater hunger, a much greater poverty than the person who has nothing to eat.”

If I am a new kind of Christ loving Christian, I am a new creation in Christ, who is concerned with his fellow laborer, so I am loving all of the people whom I work with.  In my case, as a teacher, I am also a better kind of teacher, who demonstrates love, kindness and patience with students, parents, faculty and administrators.

This also applies if I am a cab driver. I am a better cab driver to my boss, co-workers and to all the fares that I pick up. As a better cab driver, I find a way (the Jesus way) to listen to people, make them smile, laugh, think or most importantly feel cared about. I might even help make them feel (dare I say)… loved.

This new me, a new kind of Christ follower, cares about social justice. I don’t just talk about the homeless, the poor, the needy, the oppressed, the suffering, the alcoholic and addict, but I love them enough to do something about moving my lazy butt off my chair and do more than write a check. The new kind of me now dares to move in the direction of serving the needy and suffering in soup kitchens, food pantries, homeless shelters, downtown, next door, while on vacation, at the mall or at the grocery store.

I am not there yet and will probably be on this journey for the rest of my life, but what excitement comes from awakening to the reality that I have been completely wrong in terms of what I thought it meant to be a Christian, a follower and lover of Jesus.

That’s it for now. I’m sure I’ll have more rantings and ravings to come in the near future.

POST UPDATE: I have been gone for a while and am now back at this blog site. This reflects my journey from the last time that I wrote here. I’ve definitely had my ups and downs in my walk with Jesus and I will share these sometime soon. However, for the moment, I wanted to share that after spending some time in a self created personal hell, and having to recover from the fallout,  I am back with a determination to never go back to my old ways. God has spoken loud and clear to me and in His name and with His strenghth, I claim today that there is no turning back for me.

…Where can you run to escape from yourself?

My only comment here based on the Switchfoot song and video for Dare You to Move is that we ALL, at some point in time in our lives, need to make a decision to be brave enough to dare ourselves to move in one of 2 directions. The directions are either towards God, which means making a decision to accept Jesus Christ as Lord and master of one’s life, or to move in the direction of the world which is to deny God’s grace and redemption for everyone through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, his one and only son, on the cross. However, it does’t end there, we must “pick up and carry our cross” daily and move towards living a transformed life as the person that God created and intented for us to become.

This book points to everything being in and about Jesus. The text makes you uncomfortable, convicted and at the same time full of joy because of the glory of uncovering  who Jesus is and the deeper message that he brings forth. It allows for each of us to un-cover, dis-cover or re-dis-cover our thoughts and knowledge about Jesus and to re-visit our relationship with him as our Lord and Savior. 

Its seems that at the core of this text is the essential question of what it means to have “life on earth as it is in heaven“. I love it!

This book facilitates the discussion on the topic of “kindom living.” It has this essential and vital teaching found in the message of Jesus  come to the forefront as you are forced to confront and wrestle with the thought of having a kindom life…NOW, if “you have ears to hear.”

I’ll have more to say once I’ve finished the book, but I highly recommend taking a look at this challenging and life transforming work (if one allows it to be so)  by Brian McLaren.

While most of this nation is currently focused on deciding between the political parties and their candidates for the 2008 presidential candidacy, it struck me that there is a decision that WE ALL (Christ believers and/or followers and Not-Yet-Believers and/or followers) make daily, hourly and might even be making presently.

That decision is whether or not to live in freedom and love of Jesus Christ or to live in the brokenness and sin of this world. We have a choice of either living in the world and in Satan’s dark kingdom of lies or living a life in Jesus, in His kingdom of truth and love, which begins right here on Earth,  just as it is in Heaven.

Sadly, we often choose (and I am DEFINITELY including myself here) to live in brokenness and destruction. We often choose to live according to our own desires, plans, earthly thoughts, compulsions and urges. We also choose to live in the bankrupt thoughts of this world, which tell us that obtaining certain things (fortune, fame, good looks, romance, etc.) is what we need to be happy. 

We are obsessed with such things as money, appearances, the opposite sex and material possessions instead of living a life of sacrifice (where we SHEMA Jesus and love our neighbor) just as our Lord and Savior, Jesus,  sacrificed for ALL of US.

IT’S TIME TO GET A CLUE. YOU DON’T BELONG TO YOU!

1 Corinthians 6: 19, 20 states “do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.”

 What a thought! We don’t even belong to ourselves?! How different would we all be if we understood and truly lived this reality?!

We were bought at a price. Whether you are a believer, a follower, a seeker or a doubter of Jesus, Jesus died for you. Even if we choose to trample on His sacrifice by continuing to live in sin, we need to realize and accept that WE WERE BOUGHT at the price of Christ’s precious life at the cross, where He took on every one of our sins!

So, what’s left for us to do? How shall we respond?

Shall we continue to put ourselves first by being self serving? Is God’s creation, US,  so insignificant that we choose to continue to gossip; to lie; to lust others and thereby commit adultery; to cheat; to envy; to covet; to steal; to put our friends, loved ones and spouses last; to mistreat our children and siblings; to hate our neighbor (the homeless and the working poor), to prostitute our bodies – not just by selling our bodies, but by actively engaging in the sad and lonely act of pornography, by engaging in premarital sex, by being intimate with another who is not our spouse or by misusing our bodies for OUR personal pleasure or by allowing others to misuse our bodies for THEIR pleasure!

If anyone out there is listening, are you willing to join me in saying “I’ve had enough of my sinful selfish nature and I desire to change and turn my life over to the life that He desires for me. His plans are so much better than our own, and if we can just get a hold of this reality, then we must seek His purpose and will for our lives?

If  you are with me, speak out here or just pray about this, BUT make yourself accountable to another person for this committment to change. WE ALL, no matter how ‘good’ we think that we are or how mature we ’pretend’ to be or how far we mislead ourselves into thinking that we’ve arrived, MUST CHANGE. EVERYTHING MUST CHANGE!

As for me, I will not only committ to making myself accountable to another person, but to anyone reading this blog, I confess my sinfullness right here. I am a sinful, broken, selfish man who wants to be self serving by lusting over and coveting the things of this world. I am selfish, prideful and impatient. I am broken and I DESPERATELY NEED JESUS to restore me and to bring me to the redemption that He so perfectly died for on the cross. I desire to be His follower and not to just believe in Him, but to be obedient and to seek to be like Him. I, at this moment, have determined to give my all to being his follower and to discover His will for me.  IMPOSSIBLE? I say POSSIBLE for me and for everyone else who puts their trust, faith and belief in the living words of our risen Lord Jesus in Luke 17:21, which states: “the kingdom of God is within you.” After all, Christ himself tells us that “with God all things are possible.”

MORE THAN JUST A DO AND DON’T LIST!

We are not put on this Earth just to “get saved” and to help “save” others! 

WE are constantly being fed the lie that if we just do this or don’t do that, then we are good with God. Remember, its not by works that we are saved. God loves us so infinitely more than we are aware of. This last statement goes way beyond well known scripture like John 3:16-17 and Matthew 28:16-20.WE belittle God’s unconditional love for us and His perfect sacrifice of allowing His son Jesus to die on the cross by making lists of things that we can and should do vs. can not and should not do for our lives. WE ARE MEANT FOR SO MUCH MORE. We were created for more than just accepting Jesus as a “personal savior” and then sharing Jesus with others. These things are just the starting point towards the long journey of arriving at kingdom living.

 We need to begin by dying, EVERYDAY, to those things, as mentioned above, that enslave us and keep us distant from the being one heartbeat with the living God of the universe – JESUS! We live in a county that proclaims freedom, yet, we become slaves of our own sinful nature. There is only liberty in one place and that place is in TOTAL obedience, with humbleness and resolution, to be one with our risen Lord Jesus.

I pray in Jesus name that any one who reads this (including the author) will be willing to make a complete turnaround and walk in the light and truth of JESUS CHRIST by denying his/her sinful self and taking up our crosses at every waking moment of the day.

It is in the precious name of Jeus Christ that I make this prayer for all of us! AMEN!

1) We have received a great power, the Holy Spirit, when we have accepted Jesus as Lord, Savior and master of our lives.

2) Because of this great power, we have a great responsibilty to change EVERYTHING about ourselves.

Christ’s Sacrifice Once for All!!!

Hebrews 10: 26 – 31 (English Standard Version)

For if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, 27 but a fearful expectation of judgment, and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries. 28 Anyone who has set aside the law of Moses dies without mercy on the evidence of two or three witnesses. 29 How much worse punishment, do you think, will be deserved by the one who has spurned the Son of God, and has profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has outraged the Spirit of grace? 30 For we know him who said, “Vengeance is mine; I will repay.” And again, “The Lord will judge his people.” 31 It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.

The scripture above scares me. Yet, it doesn’t stand alone! There are more scriptures like this one found in 1 Corinthians 2 and 1 Corinthians 3.

So, as a Christ follower, what am I to do with these scriptures? What are they saying to me?

Was I not “good to go” in terms of going to Heaven by virtue of knowing Christ as savior? Am I not the model Cristian by going to church and Sunday school every week, paying my tithe, belong to fellowship and reunion groups and doing missionary work whenever possible? Do I not do what God wants of me by providing for my family, working hard, helping my childen and loving and treating my wife as best as I can?

So, why worry or be concerned?

Well, there are some more verses. These are in Ephesians 2, which state the following:

Ephesians 2

By Grace Through Faith

 1 And you were dead in the trespasses and sins 2 in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— 3 among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. 4 But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, 5 even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ— by grace you have been saved— 6 and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, 7 so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. 8 For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, 9 not a result of works, so that no one may boast. 10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

WOW! And if this verse doesn’t convict me and let me know that I am a fool everytime that I spew out self pride and boast about my own accomplishments, there’s a verse where God just drop kicks me into the reality of how great He is and how small I am. The verse is found in 1 Corinthians 1. Here it is: 

1 Corinthians 1: 18 – 31

Christ the Wisdom and Power of God

 18For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. 19 For it is written,

   ”I will destroy the wisdom of the wise,
   and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.”

 20 Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age?Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? 21 For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. 22 For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, 23but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, 24 but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. 25 For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.  26 For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. 27 But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; 28 God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, 29 so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. 30And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, 31so that, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.”

So, what should I do with all this information that God has put infront of me with His word?

Anyone out there?!

Please, let me know your take on all of this. I ask you to pray first before responding. Pray for yourself, especially if anything here has spoken to you. Pray, if you know Jesus, that God may lead you and transform you though His word and spirit in a mighty way! If you don’t know Jesus, I pray that you would release your doubts and come to know Him. If you’ve been seeking God, I pray that you find what you’ve been seeking right now and accept who Jesus is. Also pray for me, the sinner that I am, to become the person that God wants me to be and NOT to continue to be the person that I am.

I pray that God will reveal more of his message, so that you and I can do His will here on earth, just as it is done in Heaven.                                                                                         Peace,                                                                                                                                       Carlos

The scripture from 2 Peter 1: 2-4 comes to mind when I think of kingdom living.

That scripture states:

 2 May God give you more and more grace and peace as you grow in your knowledge of God and Jesus our Lord. 3 By his divine power, God has given us everything we need for living a godly life. We have received all of this by coming to know him, the one who called us to himself by means of his marvelous glory and excellence. 4 And because of his glory and excellence, he has given us great and precious promises. These are the promises that enable you to share his divine nature and escape the world’s corruption caused by human desires.

 I’m thinking about Jesus’ teaching us to pray and saying, “on earth as it is in heaven.”

I believe that God is telling us that we aren’t supposed to wait until we die to have this “holy” life, but that its available here and now. Christ said that the kingdom is here now, and I believe that God is telling us that we need to begin living a Godly life right here, right now!

How???

1 – Prayer.

Obviously, for the best discernment we need to get on our knees or better yet fall on our faces and ask Him to guide us. However, I’d like to suggest beginning with the Jewish prayer of ”SHEMA.” 

Truly putting God first in our lives, as our obession and Christ as our lover, and not our vocation, women, men, the internet, relationships, gossip, sports, food or drink, cars, or even our own family…will guide us towards the goal of kingdom living here on earth now, as it will be in heaven. Let’s give God our all and let Him complete the rest. He will teach us, move us and shape us through the “helper.”

2 – Community

We need community to accomplish a Godly Life. God does not intend for us to do this alone. We were meant to live a Godly, holy and Kingdom life among fellow believers in community. I believe that this extends beyond Sunday mornings. God intends for us to “love one another” by serving, caring, and lifting each other up. In doing so, we prepare ourselves for eternity by living a Godly life.

- Carlos

Acts 2:42-47 (NLT)
The Believers Form a Community
42 All the believers devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching, and to fellowship, and to sharing in meals (including the Lord’s Supper), and to prayer.
43 A deep sense of awe came over them all, and the apostles performed many miraculous signs and wonders. 44 And all the believers met together in one place and shared everything they had. 45 They sold their property and possessions and shared the money with those in need. 46 They worshiped together at the Temple each day, met in homes for the Lord’s Supper, and shared their meals with great joy and generosity 47 all the while praising God and enjoying the goodwill of all the people. And each day the Lord added to their fellowship those who were being saved.

May the Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face to shine upon you, and be gracious unto you; the Lord lift up his countenance upon you, and give you peace. Amen.

After reviewing the link above, my question is about Emerging Worship and the United Methodist Church.

What are your thoughts about the exsistence of  emerging worship currently within the realm of the UMC?

NOTE: I’m not talking about UM churches who have “contemporary” worship services. There’s a difference between having a contemporary worship service and having an emerging worship service.

To learn more on how the UMC views emerging worship go to this link: http://www.gbod.org/worship/default.asp?loc_id=1062,1063&act=nav_loc