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March 5, 2010
An American Golden Eagle over Charleston, SC on 3-5-10
I live in the last neighborhood in Charleston, SC along the Ashley River before entering the historic plantations and gardens of Ashley River Road. So we’re basically living on restructured swamp lands just like the plantations, and are therefore a natural bird sanctuary for all the scenic ponds and large wooded burms needed to conserve the wetlands. I’m a true egg head and nature lover so bird watching has always been a subconscious hobby. I simply love to admire birds. When I first read that Jesus also admired the birds, and even directed us to consider them for the spiritual lessons they can teach us, I believe I was moved more than most avid bird watchers because A) I was an atheist at the time and B) In the year leading up to that 1st reading I had several striking experiences with birds… small anomalies and unfolding stories alike… oddities that seemed supernatural compared to behavior I had previously witnessed in birds anywhere at anytime. Though that single connection paled to the larger revelations and the ultimate transformation that began the night of that first full Gospel reading, I will always marvel at the mysterious ways God sometimes chooses to speak us…. I pray for more every day. Maybe that’s why I’ve continued witnessing (for lack of a better term) bird signs… mostly casual winks of cool bird encounters, yet I don’t let them feel too casual… I still marvel at it. Today while working in our combined office area (our sun room) that looks across our yard and a scenic little pond, my daughter Amber and I noticed a bird way larger than a goose or buzzard swooping across the pond and over our yard. Realizing it was an eagle of some sort, I grabbed my camera and dashed out to see if he’d let me take his picture. Of the hundreds of varieties of birds that live on or migrate through our pond every year, over the 7 years I’ve lived here, I’ve never seen an Eagle fly overhead at any height… never mind 50 to 100 feet overhead. Suddenly I was part of a dance that involved not one but two eagles, two totally unrelated eagles, suspiciously turning up in my yard at the same time for the same reason. Here’s a shot I took of each bird. I have to dash, but I’ll be back to finish the story. There is a twist, and an interpretation.
A Bald Eagle over Charleston, SC on 3-5-10
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February 17, 2010
Amber sees God in the Snow
My beautiful, charismatic and hopefully romantic 19 year old daughter Amber Caparas recently wrote a compelling message and plea for the sake of virginity and the sanctity of the wedding bed in her blog post titled “Worth the Wait.” I hope you’ll read it and share it with your friends.
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January 31, 2010
I was reminded of a worship song this morning… through a brother in Christ whom God has often used to speak to me, and I hope to share this message with you today. You don’t need the music, you don’t need the voices… simply meditate on the deep meaning of this chorus and be blessed. I don’t know the writer, but I know the writer’s Lord.
Turn my heart oh God, like rivers of water
Turn my heart oh God, by your hand
Until my whole life flows in the river of Your Spirit
and my name brings honor… to the Lamb
Lord I surrender to Your work in me
I rest my life within Your hand
Turn my heart oh God, like rivers of water
Turn my heart oh God, by your hand
Until my whole life flows in the river of Your Spirit
and my name brings honor… till my name brings honor
until my name brings honor… to the Lamb… the Christ
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January 15, 2010
After a season away from the blogosphere I feel truly liberated to be back. Many of you already know my 19 year old daughter Amber is an anointed singer/songwriter who felt (and I concurred) that God wanted her to try out for American Idol… for reasons we have yet to learn. So we drove up to Atlanta this Summer and waited in line with 10,000 hopeful contestants and thousands more of their family and friends at the Georgia Dome where they methodically sorted through the “kids” until they finally worked down to just 25 that advance to Hollywood with the proverbial golden ticket, and Amber was gleefully in that number. Due to a confidentiality contract they asked me to sign (to protect the integrity of their reveals) I agreed to stay silent these 6 months since, which partially explains why I took a break from blogging here at JesusDNA. There’s more to my short sabbatical, and I hope to further explain once my contract expires. But now that they have aired her Atlanta audition episode and disclosed that she is one of the Hollywood finalists, I am free to discuss that much, (more…)
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July 18, 2009
Due to my prolonged silence here, several have asked if I’ve stopped writing, and while I’m grateful anyone noticed, that’s the furthest thing from the truth. I’m simply so deeply in the mission field right now (yes, our professional work can be a mission field, in fact, it MUST be so) that the time I might spend writing here is instead being spent on my face before God… praying, meditating, dreaming, and simply praising Him for the season I’m in now, and the one that is yet to come. So this is my time across the lake, to be alone with Him, so that when I return I will have a fresh new word to share… a new song to sing. Until then, I pray my past writings… especially my 3 part series on the “God Concept,” can serve as fresh water and manna for anyone in need of a non-religious, anti-dogmatic window to a life lived all out for the gospel of Christ. Until then… please read the Gospel of John, then Matthew, Mark, and Luke until the words in red are written more deeply on your heart than anything else you have ever studied or memorized or enjoyed. These are the words that are Life, and if anything competes for your attention or your affections more than these, you might want to jump right to the 6th chapter of John, verses 22-70 to see what that might imply, and I hope you find yourself, right now, standing among the very few who are willing to live solely by every word that proceeds from the very mouth of God. And if you’re already there, go find a child in genuine need, lift her up and suffer for her, for Christ’s sake, not for your own.
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April 10, 2009
In season’s like this, where fear and uncertainty spread like a virus through the masses, it’s easy to see why the words “do not be afraid” appear in the bible some 365 times (depending on the translation). Though I once questioned how “believers” can live in even the most mild state of fear, I realize now that I was sometimes attributing fear to other instinctive emotions that are not necessarily signs of doubt, but can actually be the activity of genuine faith in a time of danger. For that, I repent of my former arrogance and ignorance concerning this matter, and I simply pray through my own times of deep concern… and always find peace in the very moment I clear my my heart and mind and soul of all earthly matters and set my all back on Christ… asking Him not simply to take care of the issue, but far more… to take over all of ME, so that I never again return to a place where I had to reset myself. I pray the same for you. In a faith where His ways are all that matter, I pray for you that His presence in you is truly ALL that matters. From there, as the Beatles quoted mother Mary, “let it be.” Words of wisdom indeed.
I’m in a season of tremendous busy-ness right now… with lots to “let be.” Thus the low activity at JesusDNA over these past few months. Times like these remind me of how grateful I am for the Old Testament record… and for the epistles… and history books and archaeology that prove the incredible obedience through great hardships so many have endured to ensure we would each be blessed with the Gospel… to prepare for similar hardships of our own. So I press through, and thank God that I truly love the type of work I do, as any real artist should, as any true believer should. And I trust that soon — Like Paul during his post-Demascus Road years as an inconspicuous tent maker — God will move me out of this busy-ness into the full activity of preaching the Gospel… from rootops, from temple steps, from seaside boats, from grassy hillsides, from underground caves, and from devices of modern design. I know this work He has me doing now is His will, for reasons of His own, and though I believe I can see His threads weaving through my work, I know it’s far more important that I “live” the Gospel through this season of busy-ness… for the sake of my staff, and my partners, and my friends and family, and for anyone else who may be watching. I believe it was St. Francis Asisi who said (to paraphrase), “In everything I do I live only to preach the Gospel, and sometimes, I will speak.” I get it.
I’m working on a web project that should offer a “rooftop” for every person who lives in my little town of Charleston, SC. It is at GreaterCharleston.com. Give it a look, and maybe it will speak to you as a “proof” of His movement in me, but at very least it should prove that “considering the birds of the air and flowers of the field” are as much a Gospel effort today as they were when He compelled us to do so from that grassy hill at the sea of Galilee. For this, I simply do what He made me to do, and though I weave, I do not spin. Though I clothe, I do not dress up. His beauty is all that I see (see Paul’s words in Philippians 4:8). Cheers in your own season of busy-ness.
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March 11, 2009
I encourage everyone who breathes to read an article that was published yesterday in The Christian Science Monitor titled The coming evangelical collapse, by Michael Spencer. It is powerfully important, and worthy of some sort of response even if you disagree. For a sampling, consider these excerpts from Spencer’s essay:
This collapse will herald the arrival of an anti-Christian chapter of the post-Christian West. Intolerance of Christianity will rise to levels many of us have not believed possible in our lifetimes, and public policy will become hostile toward evangelical Christianity, seeing it as the opponent of the common good.
The evangelical investment in moral, social, and political issues has depleted our resources and exposed our weaknesses. Being against gay marriage and being rhetorically pro-life will not make up for the fact that massive majorities of Evangelicals can’t articulate the Gospel with any coherence. We fell for the trap of believing in a cause more than a faith.
We Evangelicals have failed to pass on to our young people an orthodox form of faith that can take root and survive the secular onslaught. Ironically, the billions of dollars we’ve spent on youth ministers, Christian music, publishing, and media has produced a culture of young Christians who know next to nothing about their own faith except how they feel about it. Our young people have deep beliefs about the culture war, but do not know why they should obey scripture, the essentials of theology, or the experience of spiritual discipline and community. Coming generations of Christians are going to be monumentally ignorant and unprepared for culture-wide pressures.
Despite some very successful developments in the past 25 years, Christian education has not produced a product that can withstand the rising tide of secularism. Evangelicalism has used its educational system primarily to staff its own needs and talk to itself.
The ascendency of Charismatic-Pentecostal-influenced worship around the world can be a major positive for the evangelical movement if reformation can reach those churches and if it is joined with the calling, training, and mentoring of leaders. If American churches come under more of the influence of the movement of the Holy Spirit in Africa and Asia, this will be a good thing.
Despite all of these challenges, it is impossible not to be hopeful. As one commenter has already said, “Christianity loves a crumbling empire.” We can rejoice that in the ruins, new forms of Christian vitality and ministry will be born. I expect to see a vital and growing house church movement. This cannot help but be good for an evangelicalism that has made buildings, numbers, and paid staff its drugs for half a century.
Please Click Here to read the full article. Then please, pass it around. I truly believe most if not all of Mr. Spencer’s essay to be a word from God. You be the judge…
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February 8, 2009
February 8th is my birthday, and though I’m not one to get all jazzed up about special days, this one deserves special attention not for me, but as a celebration of what my Mom endured to bring me into the world on this day (Thank you Mom)… and also because it “just so happens” to be the date of maybe the most important single page in Oswald Chamber’s My Utmost for His Highest, which — if you know me — is in my opinion the most God anointed writing of the modern era. If you search Utmost on my site you’ll find a larger post about the book, but I encourage you to go to Utmost.org and read the book for yourself, free online. For your consumption, here is the post for February 8:
The Cost of Sanctification
May the God of peace Himself sanctify you completely . . . —1 Thessalonians 5:23
When we pray, asking God to sanctify us, are we prepared to measure up to what that really means? We take the word sanctification much too lightly. Are we prepared to pay the cost of sanctification? The cost will be a deep restriction of all our earthly concerns, and an extensive cultivation of all our godly concerns. Sanctification means to be intensely focused on God’s point of view. It means to secure and to keep all the strength of our body, soul, and spirit for God’s purpose alone. Are we really prepared for God to perform in us everything for which He separated us? And after He has done His work, are we then prepared to separate ourselves to God just as Jesus did? “For their sakes I sanctify Myself . . .” ( John 17:19 ). The reason some of us have not entered into the experience of sanctification is that we have not realized the meaning of sanctification from God’s perspective. Sanctification means being made one with Jesus so that the nature that controlled Him will control us. Are we really prepared for what that will cost? It will cost absolutely everything in us which is not of God.
Are we prepared to be caught up into the full meaning of Paul’s prayer in this verse? Are we prepared to say, “Lord, make me, a sinner saved by grace, as holy as You can”? Jesus prayed that we might be one with Him, just as He is one with the Father (see John 17:21-23 ). The resounding evidence of the Holy Spirit in a person’s life is the unmistakable family likeness to Jesus Christ, and the freedom from everything which is not like Him. Are we prepared to set ourselves apart for the Holy Spirit’s work in us? ~Oswald Chambers
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January 27, 2009
I was speaking with a good friend tonight, Shanna, and she said something that moved me to tears. Her father is a missionary and former pastor who has proven himself to be the most legitimate/steadfast believer she has ever known. When she speaks of him it’s like listening to Mary the sister of Lazarus speaking of Jesus. (more…)
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January 14, 2009
I often work with freelance artists from around the globe. Many live in third world nations, but most live in impoverished areas of the large second world nations of Asia. Protectionists would say I should hire only Americans, and though I might if I could (there are many reasons why I can’t find suitable American artists), I’m grateful for these incredibly bright, amazingly gracious colleagues of mine. They’re beautiful people. They work tirelessly, they stop to praise God in pure un-contrived moments of honesty, and the way they express their appreciation for life and the humble blessings of good work from people like me who live on the other side of the planet is nothing less than inspiring… and often much more than that. Quantities of money that the average American teen would blow in one evening at the movies is enough to set up some of my global colleagues for a full week or longer. And when I send a bonus, no matter how small, they beam with gratitude (albeit across the internet). I’m humbled by their inherent intelligence and childlike modesty, and I’m moved by their genuine kindness and grace. These are good people, and today they reminded me… in Christ, every day is a Good Day, and so I too am grateful… and poor of spirit, and humbled at heart. It’s a good day.
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