LRC, Houston - the weekends-free church in Houston, Texas

I know I am being changed: have been, and pray it will continue because I am so far from BEING who I was called and created to be. But aren’t we all?

Why is that?

N.T. Wright makes a lot of sense when he said in his most recent book, The Last Word, “People usually do not want to hear anything they don’t already believe so that they can go on thinking what they have always thought.” I agree, but I shake my head in wonderment as to WHY we would want to do that if we consciously comprehend it; especially if in so doing, the results are bad for us. I guess it all goes back to the ego: that false self that so wants to control our lives.

Friedrich Nietzsche had a grasp of this more than a hundred years ago when he commented, “All statements about the way things ARE turn on variations of the WAY I SEE THEM, or worse, the way it SUITS ME TO SEE THEM.” Now, getting the ego to agree to those truths is not going to be easy. We’re so good these days at justifying ourselves, when only ONE can justify us. There are so many things that we know in our heart of hearts that are not true, others that are true, and yet to admit them means painful changes for us. We’re fully aware of what submitting to God means.

A life of DENIAL is a bad fix even if briefly.

I’ve been in those troubled waters for long past a year now. I’ve let the Spirit steer my ship of state into storms that I could only beg God to keep me safe as the journey seemed to take way too long. I would make it through though, but only so briefly, and then into another storm. I’ve lost not only my cookies, but much of my ego, a lot of my pride, and whatever I thought was rock-certain, isn’t. I am gaining Him though. Funny how all of that works.

So, where are YOU?

My story, my journey isn’t just about me and for me alone. We’re all in this together. It’s because others have been there, done that, that I can dare follow. Who were, are, those people that journeyed before me and beckoned me to follow? Wright, Borg, Miller, Sandras, Dodd, Goodspeed, McLaren, Bell, Crossan, Ehrman, Throckmorton, Murrow, Goldsmith, Tolle, Piper, Pearce, Hartmann, Goll, Rabey, Talbot, Merton, Finley, Toon, Underhill, Weber, Roberts, Perkins, Rohr, Bourgeault, Meier, Brown, Vance, and Montague to name just a few in the past 15 months.

They are a part of my story, my journey. I have been changed by their lives. WHO are you allowing to CHANGE YOUR life- besides Jesus Christ? And who are you sharing the journey with as you travel?