i picked up this book tonight by donald miller, a million miles in a thousand years. it was recommended to me by a friend who i find amazingly more wiser and uncanny ability to just listen to you whine about your problems. every time i meet up with him i walk away feeling bad because i just rambled about myself and i vow to be a better listener next time. but he recommended this book and i didn’t read it then and probably should have but i’m a bad listener remember. now i’m reading it and i find myself tearing up as if i’m about to uncover the real me.

i won’t tell you about the book, you should read it yourself, but part one ends with this line, ‘she knows who she is. she just forgot for a little while.’ and i stare at the statement like i’m staring in a mirror. 

i don’t know if you have ever stared in the mirror at yourself for a long time. i mean really stared at yourself, looking yourself in the eyes. the whole experience is kind of creepy. i feel like someone is going to jump out a me and eat me. like i’m going to jump out and eat myself. but i did that the other morning and i just looked at myself. it really wasn’t that pretty of a sight. i’m fatter, look tired, and older too. and i just stared into my eyes hoping to see the real me. the me i want to be. the me God made me to be.

but i have these thoughts right now. sometimes dreams. people who have said hurtful things. really quite stupid things that aren’t even truth but other people believed. and it makes me angry. they just left like a tornado does. they didn’t stay to pick up the pieces. they didn’t care about the damage they left behind or to see or hear the truth. and they didn’t care what lost souls stayed lost. it makes me want to go buy a carton of eggs and go egg a house. i never done that. i’d feel bad after i did it and start cleaning it up. but i don’t feel very forgiving right now. i don’t feel very tolerant right now. i’m not sure how to get rid of the thoughts. and then i think worst things like no one likes me and i don’t really have any friends. which is not true. and i know it’s not true but these thoughts run through my head. and i start to think that everything i’m doing has no purpose and i’m just wasting time and eveyone else’s. and i’m a pastor. and pastor’s aren’t suppose to think such thoughts. my god, i had a friend visit our church recently and she ask christie what she should call me at church. call me a fool. call me selfish, unforgiving and a sinner. call me weak. call me insecure. she told her to call me j-bear.

and i’m over critical of my self right now. i think my sermons suck. at least last weeks and possibly this weeks coming up. but i don’t have time for everything and i feel bad about that too. and then i start to think what should i really be doing and where should i really be spending my time. and then the whole creative process starts monday morning ticking down to the next sunday. nothing like knowing that one day out of the week you get to stand before people and sound like crap. like i’m an artist who’s come with an empty canvas with nothing to show. i asked my sister-in-law if my message was bad on sunday. she said, ‘did you say what God wanted you to say?’ and maybe that’s my problem. i don’t know what to say. say about my story that God is writing.

another quote from the book, ‘sometimes we realize that great stories are told in conflict, but we are unwilling to embrace the potential greatness of the story we are actually in. we think God is unjust, rather than a master storyteller.’

so really i’m just feeling sorry for myself. there are people who have it far worse and harder than i do. i’m just feeling stuck in the story. trying to put all the pieces of working bivocationally again, creating a community that will be life-giving, and what that really even means for me.

i recently became an owner of an ipad. i’m working on becoming more paperless. already this past sunday i had all the music and message on it and it was great. but my problem now is what app do i use to organize with? i’m worried i will become an app junkie trying to organize my task. there are so many to choose from and i can’t make a decision. i have spent way to much time scrolling thru apps and reviews. although  the apps may be a cheaper addiction than a brand new notebook or journal. so if anyone as any suggestion please help a fellow out before i have twenty organizing apps on my ipad.

second. i’m adding some new pages. now this is not to confuse you about all that i do. however hopefully clarify it for you. and well me too. i’ve tried to keep the sacred and secular seperate but honestly it always ends up meshed together. the missional life. somehow those i work with always find out i’m a pastor. believe it or not most people at first are in awe like mother theresa just entered the room. i know hard to believe. then they realize i can swear. or that i will. and then they are not sure if i’m going to hell or they are. it’s not that i care they know i’m a pastor. it’s just been an awkward conversation up to now because in many ways i have had issues accepting that i am bivocational (i’ve wanted to create a t-shirt that says, ‘i’m bi-’ and then on the back ‘vocational pastor.’ i don’t think it would come off right though) and it’s not from those in the ‘secular’ workplace. rather it has been those ‘sacred’ colleuges that you feel an almost look down upon look, like ‘oh, you don’t do full-time ministry?’ quite the opposite actually. lately though i have been becoming more with terms about who i am in this unique role God seems to keep placing me in. i guess i am like the apostle paul in this manner than most ‘full-time’ ministers. so my blog is going to attempt to reflect this uncharted career as church planter and a people project manager. a multibrand jeremy if you will (maybe that would work for a t-shirt, ‘mutlibrand jeremy’ ok enough stupid ideas to try and sell on my blog). i’ll explain more about each role i’m playing on their designated pages. but not tonight. that would be too complicated. and now this whole explaination has become more complex than i meant. drifted from simplicity. oh my!

lastly, in blogging changes. no caps. and no grammer corrections from my wife. she wanted log in rights to correct and at one time i allowed. however, these are meant to be raw thoughts, no perfect thoughts. so a change in style. i guess if you can’t help yourself look at it like a word puzzle. print off. take red pin and corret. i did those last two on purpose. now my blog is interactive. cool. simple and cool.

in college I was persistent about who I was going to marry and outlasted my beautiful wife’s resistance to the whole idea and three break-ups, two kids, and a mortgage later, I am now finding how persistent she can be.

i have been persistent about realHope and its need to exist and survive. and I have outlasted the resistance of this idea from its inception in many shapes and forms to see that it stays on course. not without its bumps and bruises along the way. not without a testing of my own convictions. this persistent, as resistance gives way, has made me change. change in greater ways this year than even I expected.

some lessons I learned from a year of change;

persistence isn’t enough; you have to have guts to stand up for your convictions. otherwise expect the vision to be hijacked.

you make decisions every day – either to do something significant or to do nothing at all. it is the significant ones that actually make things happen.

we need more diversity in our lives, and quite frankly, the church should be the one organization where this is practice more often than any other place.

trees need pruning and so do communities. only then can new growth be experienced.

jesus changed the world and he ask us to follow him even if it is hard. but he also promised he’d never leave us even when it is hard. simply put, he has not forgotten me or you.

We’ve started a new series of messages at realHope asking the question, what are we becoming? Recent events have forced me to deal with the question in my own life. And if you are anything like me, I think most of us deal with it at one level or another. There is that moment we have stepped on the scale or looked in the mirror and thought, what have I become! There are the honest seconds of truth when we say or do something and realize, we’ve just become our parents. I did that Sunday morning before going on stage to speak. It was a little thing, very small in fact, but the way I put my papers in Bible, as soon as I did, I knew I had just become my dad. I’ve watched him do it the exact same way hundreds of times and there I was becoming just like him. Sometimes, we say words or take actions that we regret too and we wonder after we’ve caused hurt in another’s life and even our own, what have I become? An honest question that everyone has to answer at one point or another.

Someone once said that businesses are either growing or dying. I suppose the same is true with the church, with even us personally. Our actions are never neutral. I think this is why Paul who wrote the letter of Philippians wrote the words he did in Philippians 3:10. There was not the option in his mind to go back or to just stay put. If he was to grow, he would then have to become like Christ in all things, even death. There is the problem for so many of though, isn’t it? We like to go back on things (maybe move away from things is better here) We prefer to stay neutral if given the choice. We do it with leadership, friendships, business deals, relationship, and even our church community.

Becoming what God intends us to be always requires  moving towards Him. Never away. Never neutral.  Over the next few weeks we are discussing this thought, what are we becoming? If you’re a local I hope you come check out the community at realHope and join the discussion with us. If you are farther way, you can listen online, even download our discussion guide that our relational groups are doing for deeper thoughts on the matter. Comment here, stop by our facebook page and comment in the discussion there. I’d love to hear your thoughts as we take this journey together.

]]> http://navigationuncharted.wordpress.com/2011/10/01/not-without-you/feed/ 4 jtudor http://navigationuncharted.wordpress.com/2011/08/26/gods-faithfulness/ http://navigationuncharted.wordpress.com/2011/08/26/gods-faithfulness/#comments Fri, 26 Aug 2011 02:37:42 +0000 jtudor http://navigationuncharted.wordpress.com/?p=427 Continue reading →]]> I’ve been awe-struck this week by God faithfulness. A few verses and then a thought…

“Where is your faith?” he asked his disciples. In fear and amazement they asked one another, “Who is this? He commands even the winds and the water, and they obey him.” – Luke 8:25 TNIV

Then Job replied to the LORD:

 ² “I know that you can do all things; 
   no purpose of yours can be thwarted. 
³ You asked, ‘Who is this that obscures my plans without knowledge?’ 
   Surely I spoke of things I did not understand, 
   things too wonderful for me to know.  

After Job had prayed for his friends, the LORD restored his fortunes and gave him twice as much as he had before.

The LORD blessed the latter part of Job’s life more than the former part. - Job 42:1; 10 & 12 TNIV

Your love, LORD, reaches to the heavens, your faithfulness to the skies. – Psalm 36:5 TNIV

There are many verses on God’s faithfulness. Many examples of God demonstrating His faithfulness. Above are just a few that I’ve read and thought about this week about how God is and has been faithful. The entire Old Testament is a story of God faithfulness despite the people’s lack of faith many times. The entire New Testament shows how Jesus was faithful even when the disciples show little faith. So faithful in fact that He went all the way to the cross. I desire to be different than those stories yet too often find myself to be the same. Praying harder for God to take care of something when He has already taken care of it. Trying to make something happen when He has already done the work. I don’t think that means my prayers are futile however sometimes a loss of perspective on what I should really be talking to God about if I’d take the time to notice all that He is already accomplish.

Many events have taken place that as I sit on this side of them only now do I realize how faithful God has been to me…despite what little faith I’ve shown along the journey. Friend, I do not know what you are struggling with this hour, what thing you are holding onto and can let go, but trust in God because the sooner you can let go the sooner you can recognize His faithfulness at work in your life.

What I will mention beyond what she’s mention is that realHope has it’s first summer intern. Jaime Lisk attends Campbell University and I’m already plotting how do I keep this intern forever? I think it would be a little creepy for us to lock her in our downstairs hall closet but yet convienant. Seriously, though the closet could hold her…ok I’m kidding really. I have successfully handed off many administrative things to her and now she is working on her first ministry assignment. She will be leading the realKidz ministry during the month of July. I know she will do a great job.

This week I’ve started working through the untouchable stack. You know, that stack on your desk that keeps growing and you really start to wonder to yourself how and why do I even have all that there. Between church, pta, and regular life, it’s scary. I have a bad habit not to file anything. When I did youth ministry I ended up with a three foot stack of files. It’s still a big stack but I’m confident by end of summer there will be no stack. Well, better organized stacks prioritized and put in a proper place. Like a filing cabinet or the trash can.

Also, my August sermon series has already started to come together. I’m super excited! Watch for details during the month of July. I’ll give some sneak previews.

When I first read this I had a picture in my head of Homer Simpson being satisfied and say, hmmm, beer. But this was not the drink, this was just what the well was called. And is was satisfying because it was supplied through their praise to God. Now there’s something that I can honestly say I do not do enough. Praise God when I don’t have enough and wait for his supply. So maybe we can say when the rain pours, praise God, because the water will flow?

Some things are not accomplished in a day. This is the thing that I love about church planting and in particular about realHope. That what was started with just a few continues to grow into the diverse body of Christ that He intends. With each new step we are reminded that we have not arrived yet, but are just beginning. Each step reveals something new in the body that we could not have seen or realized until that exact moment.