Tony Wheeler dot Net

I am up at the crack of dawn again…been up since about 4am again. I could attribute it to working nights or I could attribute it to God. I think I would rather attribute it to the latter. I decided to redeem this time and finish up some homework, all the while listening to a little music. The song that just came on was Creed’s “What’s This Life For?” I have been literally on the verge of tears for about the past 24 hours and this just about broke the dam. I can’t really say that anything that was said at the conference was earth shattering, but I can say that God has been working on my heart and mind through the stuff that was said.

Big Idea: Be who you are. This applies not only to the church, but also to me. The mix of dudes and chicks that were here was simply amazing. From goofy Mark Batterson jumping in the dirtiest river in America to chase after a goose to Harley riding Dean Johnson to Ed Young d/b/a Bishop T.D. Jakes and Joel Osteen. Be who you are. Be you. I wrote to my lady and said that I finally feel free. Honestly, I have struggled with ministry because I felt that I am too unconventional for ministry. I am off the wall, I have a lot of fun, I don’t say things like normal church people say them ( I don’t normally say nads though like some dudes I know. hah!) I think the huge takeaway for me is freedom to be who I am, unappologetically. I am pumped about what the coming days hold…it will truly be AWESOME!

I will post some stuff about Buzz day two when I get a chance. It was a good day as well…Lots of info about Branding, which was cool. We do that at Journey, but the next level is calling. Pastor Rich on a goose hunt at Silver Lake? I am pretty sure that if anyone dived into that lake they would die. (For those that have never been to Rochester, MN..we have one of the largest populations of Canadian Geese at this lake that is heated with waste water from the power plant. All year round we literally have thousands and thousands of geese around. Thousands of geese in one spot = lots of goose poop. I will do pretty much anything for the gospel, but I don’t think that I would jump into that lake. Props to Mark!)

Blessings…..

I have had a recurring thought running in my head for about a week now. This thought stemmed from something I read about Steve Jobs, founder of Apple and Pixar. When Jobs was romancing the then head of Pepsi, John Scully, to come work at Apple he did many things that people do when trying to woo someone to work for/with them. The clincher for Jobs was when he took Scully up to a penthouse and posed this question, “Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life or do you want to change the world?”

Several things strike me about this question. First, the guy was the head of a very successful bottling company that operates in countries around the world. To boil all that down to selling sugar water, which is really what it is, is simply amazing. Think about how Scully must have felt at that moment. A guy at the top of his game basically has some nut job tell him that all of it is based upon sugar water. Second, Jobs asked if he wanted to change the world. Who doesn’t want to change the world? Every kid dreams of being a superhero or a doctor or a teacher..those people change the world. Unlike the commercial that was heavily played during much of my formative years, very few people want to grow up to be a junkie or a drug dealer or a murderer. I would bet that those people too wanted to change the world…they ended up changing the world, at least their part of it, in some way..probably not a good way.

So I got to thinking about the root of Jobs’ question…Do you want to change the world? What a question. I think that today many of us are tied to jobs that we hate or schooling that we don’t know what to do with that we are unable to even approach this question. One thing that I have decided for myself is that I am unwilling to allow my occupation to define who I am. I work at a world renowned Clinic doing Security. Is there pride in that, to a great extent I would say yes. Am I a Security Officer? No, I am a child of God! Some of you that know me well know my history with indecision regarding my chosen career….the preceeding is my answer to this. (Disclaimer: I like my job, so don’t get all crazy on me. It is a God send in more ways that I even realize yet! It is good for me and the future of my family to be). I am not what I do. Jobs, for the most part, are what we do for money. Passions are what get us out of bed in the morning. World changers, history makers, earth shakers…They give up their sugar water for a chance that they might do something that will change the world.

So all of these ramblings to say: What do you want to do? Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life or do you want to change the world? Take out sell sugar water and insert whatever you like. I am a minister and an entrepreneur at heart…for me that setence would read “Do you want to work for someone else for the rest of your life or do you want to change the world?” Emphatically I respond I want to change the world. It is one of my goals to be self employed in the next three years so that I can more fully be used by God to do His work. My job really is great but I am not a career man.

I challenge you to take a deep look inside your heart and see what lies within. Do you want to change the world?

The following is about my state of mind right now. Started my new job working from 6p-6a and have only worked three days so far. Still kickin my butt.

Baby Got Book

Lots of cool stuff going on overall. Church is rockin, excited about the upcoming DaVinci series, outreach ministry and especially Good Friday this week. School is off and running. Gotta do a little catch up, but that is all good, my current Prof. rocks.

Going to D.C. for a conference the first weekend in May…that is going to be sweet.

If you can read any of this in a coherent fashion, I give you kudos.

Shalom.

In my daily blog reading I ran across a great post on Mark Driscoll’s blog, Resurgence, that totally blew my socks off. Click the link to read the whole post by Gary Shavey and Anthony Bradley.

When asked what the biggest problem facing the church today is, Bradley sounds off with the following:

“Fear, pain, passive men, and love. We fear the power of the gospel story, we fear the implications of the Missio Dei, we fear the Enemy, we fear transformation, we fear change, we fear questions, we fear doubts, we fear new leaders, we fear new realities, we fear people not already like us, we fear culture, we fear the Truth, we fear liberation, we fear healing, we fear mission, we fear living like Jesus lived, we fear being the people of God in a broken world, we fear facing our fears, we fear the healing of our fears, we fear risks.

Christians can be some of the biggest posers in America. We have failed to communicate to the world that being a Christian does not mean that “you have it all together.” We are all broken people following Jesus on a journey to figure out what it means to live lives that truly have meaning beyond the mundane. Many traditions have reduced sin to rebellion and have skipped over the fact that people have been sinned against in ways that have left people living as the walking wounded often acting out sinfully as a way to self-medicate pain. As Jesus does, we need to bring the gospel to both pain and sin. We need the gospel to heal the whole person. The fact is that, we’re all on a journey of becoming the kinds of people Jesus is making whole and living lives that matter in full harmony with God. We need to embrace the pain of others as if it were our own because Jesus meets people amidst there pain as well.”

WOW!! I encourage you to read the entire entry as this was only a small snippet, emphasis mine. I particularly like what he said about being a Christian doesn’t mean you have it all together. I am pretty sure that the world has figured this out already, how come the Church has not? The Church is a place for broken people to find restoration, not a place for pious, self-righteous people to compare how many activities they are involved in. It is rehab for sinners. The addiction is ourselves.

If it takes a bunch of jacked up punks to change the world and proclaim the Kingdom of God, how fortunate would I be to be found guilty of being a jacked up punk?

I find myself more and more amazed at the secularization of a secular holiday. Where did Easter come from anyway? It started as a secualar “spring festival” that was adapted by newly converted Christians because it coincidentally fell around the same time as the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. First and foremost my response to this idea is, What? I know that there are a lot of things that we have taken from pagan society and vice versa, but who knew that Easter, the Superbowl Sunday of Church, was a pagan holiday first? (Thanks to Gary Lamb for the idea of Superbowl Sunday, mad props yo! Hope to meet you at Buzz!) The secondary idea that I get from this origin of sorts is that early missionaries thought it easier to accept the cultural norm than to change the beliefs of the newly converted. While I understand contextualization, to start a worldwide holiday because you were scared is unbelievable!! They were basically scared that these once pagan people would kill them or at the very least commit apostasy. How often are we guilty of the same thing. In our society it is very easy to get caught up in PC and all that crap (if you can’t tell, I am not really into that!). I hope and pray that as a person first and foremost and as a Church leader that I NEVER take that easy road and twist my beliefs and Scripture to fit culture. (Granted there are some things that are not primary issues and therefore not worth dying for, but I would conside the death, burial and resurrection of our Lord and Savior to be a primary issue.)

I have long held that Jesus never commissioned us to remember his birth, but yet we spend countless hours, days, months and even years preparing for what we know as Christmas. While I don’t think it is bad to remember the birth of our Lord and Savior, I do think it is bad that often we worship the almighty dollar and the god of Visa. While not every Christian falls prey to these, many do, myself included. It is very easy to get caught up in the frenzy of the season. But once again, Jesus did not say remember that I was born, He said remember that I died. (I realize that these exact words were never spoken by Jesus, I take the institution of the Lord’s Supper to be a commemeration of Jesus’ death, burial and resurrection. I also draw from I Corinthians 11 where Paul is instructing the church on how to conduct the Lord’s Supper.)

“Wait a minute”, you might be thinking, “I thought this post was about Easter?” It is.

What is the big idea? The big idea is this: Easter is about preparation. Pastor Rich talked about this at church this week, although I must confess that I didn’t remember what the sermon was really about until Monday night Life Group when I read the passage that Rich preached on. (Sorry Rich, it really wasn’t a swing and a miss, just my short attention span…when I don’t do something with the info, it creeps into the recesses of my brain.) Mary got the idea of preparation…she annoited Jesus with perfume that costs more money than I make in a year. She was readying Him for the grave. How many of us have the dispensible income to give to Jesus and not even think twice about it? I am not saying that Mary was inordinately wealthy, but she was all out, full on in love with Jesus. The monetary cost was nothing compared to the “surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.” She got it. She lived it. She modeled it. On the contrary, Judas didn’t get it. He was hung up on the monetary issue. Why not give the money to the poor? Jesus says that the poor will always be with you, but I won’t. Seems like ol’ Judas didn’t even get what Jesus was saying. He was probably more infuriated that he wasn’t able to sell the perfume, which interestingly enough contained Nard (I just think that is funny, who says the Bible doesn’t have funny parts?!?!). He was ticked that he couldn’t get his grubby little hands on the cash.

Which one are you? How are you preparing for Easter? Are you buying chocolate and Cadbury Eggs? (I already bought my Cadbury Eggs…mmmm!) What is your focus as the commemeration of Jesus’ death, burial and resurrection approach? I urge you to undergo preparations for death. We are called to die so that we may live. I don’t encourage anyone to actually die, but to die to ourselves. To take up the Cross of Christ. To follow with reckless abandon. To repent, because after all is said and done the entire reason for Jesus coming to earth was for the forgiveness of sin. The Son of God on the Cross, in the tomb and resurrected is THE link between us and God for forgiveness of sins. If you haven’t taken the step to enter into relationship with Jesus by asking for forgiveness, I encourage you to pray a simple prayer right now, it might go something like this:

“Lord, I recognize that I am a sinner separated from you by my sins. I know you sent Jesus to save me from a life apart from you. I ask for your forgiveness of my sins. I accept Jesus as my Lord and Savior and from this day forward I will live for Him and not myself.”

It doesn’t have to be some ornate prayer, just something from your heart. God is always ready and willing to have a conversation with you, all you have to do it call. If you would like to know more, please feel free to contact me via email, I would be more than happy to talk about all this with you.

It is truly my prayer that we would all prepare for Easter with a new spiritual frenzy. I pray that daily we would seek to find ways to annoint Jesus in this prepatory stage. Amen.