I am an Anglican!

A friend asked me why I stay an Anglican.

The answer is that I believe that Anglicanism best weaves together the major strands of Christianity - Catholic, Charismatic, Evangelical, and Liberal - together.

Simply put:

Catholic - An emphasis on Tradition and a high view of the Church
Evangelical - The centrality of Jesus' life, death, and resurrection
Charismatic - The Holy Spirit and his gifts
Liberal - The human element

It should be noted that if you lack a Charismatic or Liberal component, you have a Christianity that is incomplete. If you lack the Evangelical or Catholic components, you have something that is not Christian at all.

The American Anglican church has almost entirely lost the Evangelical part while the Liberal piece dominates. This is not good! This leaves you with an identity that is completely determined by a human perspective (It is ironic that in places that are dominated by the Charismatic perspective, while being theoretically God-centered, they often become just as anthropocentric as the Liberals!) .

Anglicanism has gone through periods where each part has been in the ascendancy, but on the whole, Anglicanism can hold these together. I contend that this is the true "via media." I pray that we can return to a place there all four are included.

Unconditional

Did you know that God loves you unconditionally? That is, he loves you with out conditions - there is no standard and no qualifications that you have to meet before God can love you.

Many people have trouble with this. We think that any thing that is free must not be worth much. So if God's love is worth having, then we have to pay for it somehow. Or we don't think God could love us - for whatever reason - because we don't measure up or are so beyond his love.

If either of these apply to you, I urge you to change your mind. For the first, God's love is truly free and you must come to believe it. God's love is worth having, but is so great that we could never afford it. It is a gift - open your heart and receive it.

For the second, you might need for God to first heal you of some hurt. Strictly speaking, none of us are worthy of God's love. That is why God's love had to come in the form of of Jesus' Cross. Our worthiness is not the primary issue. The issue is that God made us and we are his. His loves his Creation - including you! Ask God to heal anything that keeps you from opening to his love.

There is a funny thing about God's unconditional love: we have to accept it unconditionally. This might be the hardest thing of all - because of Jesus' Cross. Many of us want to say that we are basically good. But to accept God's love unconditionally means we have to accept the form it comes in - a cross.

At the intersection of God's love and who we are, we find the Cross. It may be a paradox, but accepting God's love unconditionally means repentance. Repentance is the only possible response when we see the vastness of God's love and our true condition.

I pray that you will be enveloped by God's love!

Body Worship on a rollercoaster

Romans 12 says an amazing thing: "Present your body...which is your spiritual worship!

We think our bodies have nothing to do with us. Even CS Lewis said we were souls with bodies. But we are whole people. And God calls us to "present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God..."

Acceptable to God! Wow!

I had a taste of this riding "Wild Thing," a roller coaster at Valleyfair, an amusement park near us. It has a 200 plus foot first drop. When we got there in the morning, I went straight to Wild Thing. I rode in the back (the best place to ride a coaster). On the way up, I felt a bit nervous (it is a long way up!).

But when I got to the top, I put my hands up (standard roller coaster position) and I realized that that was exactly the posture I was frequently using to praise God! So the whole ride I was yelling at the top of my lunges, praising God!

Don't wait to ride a coaster - you can praise God with your whole self right now. But the next time you ride one, remember: Arms up!

And go to my Facebook profile, too!

Here!!!

Go see Andy Crouch's video!

Here!

Repentance

Nancy and I have long had an intuition about why Lutherans have so much trouble with calling people to repentance and faith. Any thing that looks like it is a "good work" is suspect.

The problem can be traced to the Lutheran emphasis on God's grace. Now in general, this is a good thing! God's grace is sweet.

But to center on grace is to get stuck on the question of how God reaches out to us. The more important question is the question of why.

And the answer of why God reaches out to us is because He loves us! Just bask in that for a moment. He loves YOU!

You will find that if you do that, you will find yourself asking how did God show his love. And the answer to that question is that God sent Jesus to live and die for us. And why did Jesus have to die for us? Because we are sinners.

It is the central paradox of Christianity: God loves sinners. The holy, righteous God loves us who are sinners. Amazing love, indeed!

There is then nowhere to go except to repentance. Because God loves us, we repent of our sin. We turn to God and He cleanses us from our sin.

We are deeply thankful to have had grace baked into our bones. But we are thankful that God loves us and has brought us to repentance.

No more rubber grapes!

Jesus tells his disciples in John 15 that if he abides in them and they in him they will produce much fruit.

It is not clear what that fruit is. Is it the fruit of the Spirit or is it the fruit of new lives in the Kingdom? Both, probably.

Ever seen a bunch of rubber grapes? They can look just like the real thing. Makes a nice table decoration. You move them when it is time to put out the turkey the 1st grader made at school for a Thanksgiving decoration.

We spend much of our time making rubber grapes in our lives. By ourselves, that is all we can do. But that is not what Jesus wants. Rubber grapes can not produce real wine. Our efforts are not enough.

I don't want to make any more rubber grapes. I want real wine. I want the power of God to flow through me, a branch, and produce real fruit. Real fruit that will nourish me and those around me. Real fruit of changed lives, people brought into the Kingdom of God.

I won't settle for anything less.

Not anymore.