Reveal Yourself

“God, your God, strolls through your camp; He’s present to deliver you and give you victory over your enemies.  Keep your camp holy; don’t permit anything indecent or offensive in God’s eyes.”

Deut. 23:14 (The Message)

My camp, Lord, is my family.  My camp is my church…and my camp is my life.  Show me the things in my life that I have failed to reveal to You.  How else will I better serve You and Your people unless my life is cleared completely of the wreckage.  If I have buried beneath my tent those things I wasn’t supposed to touch…uncover them.  I need a good spring cleaning Father.  I so enjoy Your word, but I often forget the face I’ve seen in the mirror.  But hey…You’ll always use the fool to confound the wise; the poor to upstage the rich.  I’m Yours God.

…and closer

   
” So don’t lose a minute in building on what you’ve been given, complementing your basic faith with good character, spiritual understanding, alert discipline, passionate patience, reverent wonder, warm friendliness, and generous love, each dimension fitting into and developing the others.”

2 Peter 1:5-7 (The Message)

Alert Discipline:   “I am sending you out like sheep among wolves.  Therefore, be a shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves.” Matthew 10:16

It’s not gonna ever be pretty out there.  In fact, the suffering is more likely and the battle…more intense as we draw nearer to Christ.  And though the victory is already HIS…our faith will only become stronger when we stand firm in it…no matter what.

Passionate patience:   “Be still and know that I am GOD.”

Reverent wonder:  This weekend me and some of the boys spent the weekend camping in Anza-Borrego…and I, the voracious lover of nature, found myself sitting atop a rocky hill just listening…and looking…and knowing it is all HIS doings.  HE is God…the name above all names…the lilly of the valley…the bright and morning star.  I can’t make heads or tails of these thoughts, but my heart skips a beat when I sense HIM.

I have a joyful heart tonight and yet, I have barely tasted and seen.

Closer

” So don’t lose a minute in building on what you’ve been given, complementing your basic faith with good character, spiritual understanding, alert discipline, passionate patience, reverent wonder. warm friendliness, and generous love, each dimension fitting into and developing the others.”

2 Peter 1:5-7 (The Message)

I’m on a quest to become the man HE made me to be; doing what it is HE called me to do. Do I know what either of these look like? No. Have I even a inkling of HIS calling for my life? No clue. But I do know this…God spells it out throughout the word on how I can get closer to HIM and become holy like HE asks me to be…and when I’m closer to HIM, I hear HIS voice much clearer. It is my responsibility to take action; to grow out of my spiritual “onesies” and bulk up into a Man Of God.

Good Character: Be that person whose life is an example of what a servant is. By following Jesus, we become like Jesus. May the world know me as HIS disciple by my actions…and let my actions speak for themselves.

Spiritual Understanding: Everything we’ll ever need to know about living…and dying and chemistry and history and zoology and geology and so forth…is in the Word. I want to know how to live and many things I needed were never taught me. But I want to know the supernatural reason HE is and why I am and when I seek HIS face…there HE is.

My little man is hollerin’ from his crib…seeking my face. I’ll finish this tomorrow.

HE knew us when…

   

I still trip on the idea that GOD knew us before we were in our mother’s womb; how HE knit us together into this amazingly beautiful being with a unique purpose…UNIQUE that is!  Meaning no other person in the history of mankind was designed to do what GOD designed good ol’ Phil Durgan to do.  What???  It’s quite possible my sole purpose for being put on this earth is to…besides constantly adoring HIM…is to happen into another one of HIS unique critters and share the love of Christ.  That’s it.  Or to tell a slew o’ HIS creations about the grace HE makes available to the most unlovable.  I don’t get it…but I dig it.

Today Lord…give me a small taste of Your love and make it spill out of me to those who need it most.

 

“But the wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure; then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere.”    James 3:17

I’m going through these motions…have been for a few years now where I’m wandering this vast spiritual desert, much like the Moses gang, and getting nowhere.  Two, sometimes three, steps forward where I’m riding high on this “feeling” that Jesus and I are frat brother-inseparable and love is a many splendored thing…then SMACK!!  I fall away…not far, but far enough to feel like I’m a huge let down.

FAITH WITHOUT WORKS IS DEAD

Yeah, that makes sense.  Since I was 6 years old, I have believed without a doubt that the Pittsburgh Steelers were the best football team on the planet.  To a point where I would confess this…out loud… in the midst of a horde of naysayers (Charger fans.)  I would even do this during a losing season.  Faith…works.  I believe Jesus is the Son of God who came as a man and died for my sins; giving me a eternity….better than the Steelers!  So where am I in the midst of those doubters or even the unknowing???

I wanna be that guy in James 3.  But first…I want to know Him.  Genuinely, passionately, lovingly…like He knows me.

A day off to reflect…

The wee one sleeps in his Graco swing to the white noise of a chain gang of amazonian toucans on amphetamines. The missuz tends to the marital dysfunctions of others and I pore over our holiday travel plans…ours and mine. See, me and some of the boys are gettin’ outta Dodge over the Thanksgiving weekend and takin’ the Jeep trails in and around Borrego Springs…roughin’ it with steaks, Sumatra coffee and sand bocci ball; ditchin’ the wives and chillins and doing what our ancestors did…kinda.

So this here is my first blog. The Pork Chop Palace and Gospel Revival is now open. The shingle has been hung. This may never be read by anyone more than myself, but that’s my intention…to openly speak to my alter ego and give him the mic. He and I have come a long way since growin’ up drunk and then gettin’ sobered up and ultimately comin’ back to know the Lord Jesus Christ in such a deep way that I long to know how much HE loves me and best of all why.

“HIS grace is sufficient,” but what does that mean? Unwarranted, undeserved love? Thank you, but I can’t live up any expectations. I screw up daily. Never nuthin’ real big…I just don’t have the ability to deserve that kinda love. I want it though.

I love you Lord. I delight in You. Like David, while hidin’ off in a cave…dirty, on the run…a man’s man, a sinner like any of us. A murderer, liar, cheat, thief…like any of us…you were so beloved by HIM that HE made your lineage last forever. Show me today…and tomorrow how much YOU love me that I can love myself and then love others even more. Give me confidence to grow…no matter what my past looks like…into a man YOU knit me to be. Show me the talents YOU buried within me and give me a boldness of a storm, the wisdom of a king and the the humbleness of a child to perform the part in the play you designed for me. Thanks…I really mean that.

This is pretty easy. Make it meaningful, Lord.