Saturday, October 07, 2006
Why Me? Why Now? Why This?
The Perfect Storm. A lot of things have come together all at the same time to make this study especially important and heart-felt for me.
I'm approaching 50 years old and I'm a new grandparent. I desperately want to pass along a faith in Jesus that is vital and vibrant and more about the heart than the head.- I’ve got this wacky half-brother (I'm sure he feels the same way about me) and the half that’s different from me is, in fact, Jewish! He's even a Messianic musician and worship leader.
- I have several Jewish friends who are people I deeply respect and care about.
- All my life I feel as though I keep clawing through the fog to see Jesus more clearly—and I’ve never seen Him with more clarity than I have in recent years. Even now, 50 years into this thing, Jesus is changing me in significant ways—the way I relate to family and friends, the way I spend my time and my money, the way I relate to the earth we live in, the way I relate to people who are not like me.
- I’ve enjoyed the great blessing of traveling to Israel 5 times now. And each time I learn more about the Land, its people and its culture—and about my Lord.
Studying the foundations of our faith hasn’t
changed my theology, but it’s changed me!
I have to give credit to two people in particular—I haven’t met either of these men, but I love what they’ve done for me by simply being exposed to their teachings. One is Ray Vander Laan, who is best known for his teaching videos on the lands of the Bible that are produced by Focus on the Family. He’s also written a book, Echoes of His Presence, and he has a wealth of material available on his website at www.followtherabbi.com. The second is a young pastor by the name of Rob Bell. He leads a church of 12,000 people in Grand Rapids, Michigan called Mars Hill Bible Church that started back in 1999. He has produced several incredible, short-format videos as part of what’s called the Nooma series, he made headlines across the country this summer in a traveling road show in small-to-medium sized public music venues where he gave a lecture entitled Everything is Spiritual and he’s the author of the book Velvet Elvis.
