Archive - 2013

I am bursting with pride and shaking with trepidation when I announce, my big brother is officially a Memphis City Police Officer.

When we left the swearing in ceremony, Kevin remarked, “Was that a graduation ceremony or a Sunday morning service?”

The officer asked the recruits to turn and look at the many faces in the crowd. He explained that these people – spouses, parents, siblings, friends – constitute their support system. They are accepting a difficult job. In fact, the entire ceremony was in memory of an officer who was killed in the line of duty. They didn’t have to worry about a support system, those people and coworkers would always be at their side. They needed to evaluate their foundation. Without a proper foundation, the rest crumbles in on itself. The foundation needs to be God. Anything other God will fall apart.

I wanted to scream a holy hallelujah after that! What a great reminder for all of us.

God is not our leaning post or our crutch to get us through the day. His letter to us is not simply some book that looks great on our shelf. He is our very foundation – the cornerstone, Scripture tells us. Likewise, our families, friends, and even our jobs are not our gods. They may be the bricks of the building or even the roof. But they aren’t the foundation. Only God keeps everything tied together. Only God creates calm in chaos.

One of the recruits gave the commencement speech and reminded his fellow graduates that they trained as hard as they could for 21 weeks. But the evil, the bad guys, they are training even harder and even longer.

I am proud to proclaim that my brother is one of the good guys in uniform. And yet I fearfully admit that, daily, he will be confronted with the bad guys in the city who will use any means necessary not to get caught. We must remember to pray for our men and women in uniform.

And we must not forget that we are also waging a war against in the spiritual evil in this world. We may not be receiving radio messages with rescue 911 calls. But our foundation needs to be Christ as well. I may not be required to wear a bullet proof vest to work, but I do need to know where I’m going if I was to die today.

What’s your life founded on?

I suppose for weeks like this one, the ironic Bible verse should be Luke 12:32

“Sell your possessions and give to the poor.”

Or maybe a statement from Jesus when talking to the rich young ruler in Matthew 19:21,

“Go, sell your belongings and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow Me.”

Sure, we had a box of things to donate to RIFA and we even sold our old television to a friend.

It’s almost too bad God didn’t call us to sell our possessions and move to Africa. But then again, I wouldn’t have been able to spend the afternoon hauling boxes with this crew.

What have I learned about God, the church, or community today?

• Our church has some amazing middle school and high school students. A serious shout out to the young men who hefted our possessions into the trailer without complaining.
•  I was so excited that God was opening this new chapter of our lives that I forgot the old chapter was closing. And yet, He’s sovereign still. He provided a home for us in Hartland Apartments and is now allowing us to have a home in our house.
• My father would remind me during the shopping process that a house isn’t a home until you live there. And now my husband continues to remind me that this home isn’t where we will live forever. It may be our forever home on earth. But even minor repairs of rotten wood and falling limbs remind us that this house isn’t eternal. Only our Heavenly Father can prepare that house for us. We don’t need to get caught up in this one so much that we neglect our eternal home.
• God doesn’t call us all to poverty. We firmly believe He has called us to this house. Not so that we can have a house and a yard – those both are perks – but so that we have a new mission field called our neighbors.

We were able to walk up and down the street last night to stretch our legs and open our eyes to the families around us. We are thrilled to report that we have landed in a diverse area and hope to begin planting seeds of Truth soon.

More spiritual lessons to come from home ownership, I’m sure. But until then…

…Welcome to our earthly home.

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Shhh…Don’t tell anyone, but I’m going to miss this place.

Not the smell of dirty pit bulls after the rain, or walking my laundry across the parking lot to the machines, the barbed wire on the neighboring property, occasional cop spotting, or even that time they towed my car. I’m definitely not going to miss the reaction I get when people say, “you live there????

This place wasn’t our prison, project, or problem; this place was our home – our first home, in fact.

It’s the place we spent our first night as Mr. and Mrs., where I penned my first book, conducted “Adelsberger seminary,” mourned the loss of jobs and celebrated the new ones.

It’s where we’ve seen friends move in and move out. In fact, we’re now the longest residents of this building. And yet, we leave behind a tremendous friendship, friendly veteran, nurse, and the wonderful lady across from us.

As we close this chapter of our lives, it’s natural to ask ourselves, do we have any regrets? Or, if we lived the last 2+ years over again, would we do anything different?

Even if you’re not moving, that’s such a good question to ask ourselves: Will I look back on these days and wish I had done more?

Jesus tells us in the passage nicknamed The Great Commission that we are to “go and make disciples of all men.” That verb “go” in the original language implies “as you go” or “as you are on your way.”

Our living location is our mission field. This one we’re in for the next seven days looks very different from the one we’re moving to. But our command from God is the same. Make disciples. How can we make disciples unless they believe? How can they believe if we don’t speak the Words of Life to them?

This is a mission field where walking past people was easy since we have a building and a flight of stairs in common. But as we move into a house, we will have to intentionally seek out interactions.

What does your mission field look like? Are you using your living situation to bring glory to God or comfort to yourself?

“Wait, no, Mr. Kevin, you’re not serious…are you?”

Kevin was holding Bible study for a few of his high school boys and I could hear snip-its through the wall. I heard Kevin’s footsteps down the hall and he poked his head into the room I was hiding in.

“Renae, can I borrow your nerdy people Bible? They think the Bible was first written in English.”

I went to the bookshelf and pulled out one of my most prized possessions, my Hebrew/Greek Bible.

Kevin returned to the living room and the boys burst into commotion – “There’s no way THAT’S a language.”

I chuckled. That’s exactly how I felt the first day of Hebrew class.

Fast forward one week: I attended a city wide women’s Bible night with two ladies from my office. The speaker used The Message to make her points on Matthew’s recitation of “Come Ye Who are Weary.” One of her points raised my theological flag – I wasn’t certain if the meaning came from Eugene Peterson’s interpretation or if it came from the original language – that chicken scratch called Greek. So I pulled out my phone and opened my Greek app to fact check her.

The next day, one of the ladies asked me what The Message was. I told her it was a loose translation of the Bible created by a man named Eugene Peterson. We have used it on occasion with the youth group but that I don’t recommend it for person study. In 60 seconds, I explained what the above picture shows: that as a translator you have to decide where on this scale you want your version to fit. (Note: I’m not certain how accurate this depiction is…but it seems close enough for us to all understand the point.)

These were the statements made to me:

•  I only read the “paraphrase” Bibles because I believe that Christianity is a religion of the heart. We don’t need to get bogged down in word studies
• I don’t know why you needed to fact check the speaker. I just absorb what speaks to me and leave behind what doesn’t.
• You like the facts. I like the feelings. What’s right for you may not be right for me. And that’s fine.

After pondering this conversation all weekend, these are the three places in Scripture the Lord brought to my attention:

1. Acts 17:11 – The people here [Berea] were more open-minded than those in Thessalonica, since they welcomed the message with eagerness and examined the Scripture daily to see if these things were so.

2. Matthew 22:37 – [Jesus] said to [the expert in the law], “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.”

3. Deuteronomy 6:5 – Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength.

I struggle with an intellectual religion – that is – it is easy for me to accumulate facts and data from the Scripture and never transfer them into application. This is wrong.

But we must not forget that Christianity is not a feeling or a whim. It is a life-altering journey during which Christ demands all of us – our hearts, our souls, our minds, even our strength. The Bereans are not depicted as arrogant or smug. Rather, they were eager to receive the word. But they were also cautious. They understood that the Scripture contains words of life – and they weren’t willing to accept anyone’s interpretation – not even the Apostle Paul’s – without first making certain it aligned with Scripture. We should be the same today.

When I was a student worker at Union University, one of my “busy work” jobs was to flip through the Jackson Sun and the Baptist & Reflector (B&R) daily to see if I spotted any updates or achievements from our alums. Yes, that chore was as horrible as it sounds. It was even worse when we returned from summer break and they had saved weeks worth of papers for us!

After four years of flipping through the B&R for familiar names, never did I imagine that I would read my own.

I’m pleased to announce that Pedestrian God is officially a contributing writer to the Baptist and Reflector. You can check out the first article in the online edition. It’s on page 19.

Thanks to a wonderful friend in Jackson, I got my head shots updated just in time! I was tired of that same 2010 engagement picture posing as my head shot. (Just for the record, I am in fact wearing that same outfit today – coincidence or time to go shopping?)

I’m thrilled to be able to support our Tennessee Baptists through my writing.