back to basics: i am not, but i know I AM

Sunday July 5, 2009

Hey everyone, I guess it hasn’t been that long since my last post so either I’m getting bored watching TV/Movies... or I got something I feel like needs to be posted.

So I’ll get updates out of the way first:
Yesterday JULY 4th was fun, I went down to Irvine, CA - yea it’s just under an hour drive... but it was fun, I went to visit Kevin McPherson who is living in Irvine. We went to one of Kevin’s friends family parties, it was fun. It was really cool to see Kevin’s friend’s ENTIRE family there. They have this backyard with a pool, trampoline, and volleyball net. Showing up I was not sure who everyone was but as time went on someone would ask “Who is that?” and she would say “Oh that’s my cousin and her boyfriend” or “Oh that’s my grandfather” and she had a pretty big family with people of all ages. There was this five year old swimming in the pool with a float-y jacket on and he was just swimming... and he said “You know how far I swam?” I knew but said ‘no’ for the sake of conversation, he said “all the way from over there” as he pointed to the other side of the pool “you know why?” I said ‘no’ again, hoping for a response. “It’s cuz I’m five years old” and just kept swimming. Well that to say there were five year olds swimming around the pool.

So I showed up and hung out a little with Kevin, catching up (I hadn’t seen him since “The Quinns” concert over christmas break.) Find out that he is working through Ameri-Corps for Habitat for Humanity - I may have already mentioned this in the last post. Anyway- we start talking about churches and where he is going, he talks up Rock Harbor and his experience there, then remembers ”they are having a prayer and worship service today at five” I was like “oh yea, we should go”. So we go (Still damp from the numerous cannonballs and can-openers performed right next to us in the pool) but we drive over there and I got to tell you, it was a pretty cool place. It was set for probably 500+ people but there were only like 100 (max). But they played worship music and then had time for us to pray for our country, our leaders and our troops. It was really good. So good I am considering driving down there tonight for a sunday service. Well, back to the family party, more hang out. Meet people, Shannon and Shannon, (no relation), and then we break to meet up with one of Kevin’s other friends (Nando) to watch fireworks. We drive over to Kevin’s old place (where his friend lives still) and back to Kevin’s new place. Most of the fireworks went off while we were driving but we sat outside and watched the neighborhood kids play with the firecrackers they had. It was really cool. I got to talk to and spend time hanging out with Nando, he graduated High School and spent the entire year in Orange County, working for Habitat for Humanity. Yea, first year out of HS and he is halfway across the country (originally from... wow, was it Maine?) *all the way across the country* trying to figure life out. But we got to hang out, talk until like 11pm, I had a drive a head of me, which took extra long because everyone and their mom was trying to get from Orange County to I-10 (sorry “The 10” as it is called in Cali) at 11:00 at night. But I made it home by 12:30, not too bad for LA traffic.

Tribe this morning which is actually what prompted this post.

A few days ago I was wondering why I was in a kind of spiritual rut here in LA. I know to everything there is a season, but there was still something missing, that I needed, that I was striving toward a hole that was not being filled this summer. I gave myself some quiet time and started thinning about this blog’s namesake. “i am not”. I’m sure a lot of this is in the back pages of this blog but I figured it would not hurt to re-post.


“i am not” comes from a book written by... of course I didn’t bring it to LA, its in Houston. anywho Louie Giglio wrote the book, it is called “i am not, but i know I AM”, and it is the book we worked out of last summer for the Chapelwood youth internship.

The title seems like a contradiction, but it refers to how God named himself while talking to Moses on Mt. Sainai as “The Great I Am” so i (Cale) am not (insert most positions of power), but i (Cale) know “I AM” (the great I Am). Meaning that this world was not created for me, but I know who did create it.

So as I think about this concept, I remember a truth that is spelled out in the book (in my words of course):

When we are young (tiny, like that 5 year old), we are taught that everything in this world revolves around us, when we are hungry, we get fed, when we are tired, we are put to sleep. As we grow older we come to find out that most things don’t revolve around us, dinner time is when it is ready, not when we want food in our mouths, sleep time is at night, not during class when we are tired. These basic things are taught to us at a young age, try watching a 10 year old at a grocery store and see what revolves around him. When we get older (all growed up) we get into this same mindset we were taught when we were little, when I want to eat, I open the fridge and I grab an apple (or pudding in my case) and I eat. If I am tired, I walk into my room and lay down and sleep (or lay in front of the TV in my case). Yes, if I want money, I go to my job to earn money (but hey, if I don’t want money (or don’t need it at this point in my life) I don’t have to, my parents have taught me well but they are no longer able to make me wait for dinner as they could when I was younger. There are times when I see someone else and I help them, I give food to the homeless, or I help a friend pack when moving, or offer to mow the lawn, but lets face it... most of that is still at our disposal, our choice of weather to do it or not, the world still revolves around me, we seldom think about what is happening beyond our life. “i am not” discusses how the world did not start when we were born, nor will it end when we die.

I think it was Luke Withers last summer when talking about this took the toilet paper approach, he said “think about a roll of toilet paper, with like three or four hundred little squares on it. Now think about a single square a being our lives, physically how long we live, and the roll as time, the eternity (bear with me). If you unroll the roll and lay it out end to end, a single square is very small compared to the rest of the roll, and aside from two squares all of the squares are in the middle of the roll (something came before it and something comes after it), that is how we are, there is always something happening when we are born into this world.

My parents for example were in Florida, my dad working for Prat and Whitney, my mom teaching. When I came in it did not mean that they would stop what they were doing simply for me (no doubt they gave up quite a bit for me and my sister) but my dad is still an engineer and my mom is still teaching.- please not that this is a skeleton example, a lot more happened between my birth and now for my parents and myself but all this to say I did not come in at the beginning of the story, or any story for that matter - except my own.

When I die (long time from now) the rest of the people on this planet will not suddenly cease to exist, they will continue to experience the story of time (the roll of paper).

Two notes on this right now:
1. The roll of paper, even if it had 3 or 4 THOUSAND squares on it would not represent all of time. Time being eternity, the 3 or 4 hundred square roll would be like a square on an even larger roll of toilet paper.
2. Although it may seem that my little square’s worth of time in this infinite roll of paper is meaningless, let me give you hope. There is someone who looks at the roll of paper (the larger one, the one that represents eternity) as a single square, no there is not a larger roll that that square but to say one who sees the roll of eternity as a single story. That is God’s story.

God’s story encompasses all of time, from the creation of the earth (and before) to the end of time (LONG after this world, this planet Earth (and any other planet me might inhabit) is destroyed). The really cool thing is that God invites us into his story.

Not following? okay so the Bible is full of these people, Hebrews or The ‘Brews as Tim calls it, chapter 11 talks of tons of people who lived by faith, not in what they were doing but in what God was doing, and how God was inviting them to join in. 11:8 “By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went even though he did not know where he was going” and through Abraham’s line (just as God had promised) came salvation for the world (The Christ, Jesus). Remember, Abraham had no idea why he was being re-located, but God had been working before then and would continue working long after Abraham.

Moses was called by God to stand up to the Pharaoh to bring God’s people out of Egypt. God had been at work in Egypt long before Moses and would be working with HIS people long after Moses was dead.

Yes, God’s plan through these guys was to bring salvation to the world. -There were so many people who played parts in this, Joseph, not giving up his pregnant fiancee for one, taking her to Bethlehem.-

but just to show you that it still happens (this is my favorite one): there was a man who was called by God (by name) in a vision, he was called to go to a very specific house and look for a man (by name), this man was known for arresting and harming Christ followers. He was told to go up to this man and proclaim the risen Christ- directly to this “persecutor of Christ followers” Now very easily he could have said “No, I will be killed,” well he did say that but God was persistent, he could have refused to go. But this man knew that it was not about himself, the story was not about his life and weather or not he would be arrested or harmed, he knew that God’s story was far more important. So he went, he placed his hands on this “persecutor of Christ followers” and proclaimed the risen Christ to this man. Personally, I am very lucky he did this, the man’s name was Ananias, and he is the one who proclaimed the name of Christ to Saul (later Paul) who as God said in Acts 9:15 “This man is my chosen instrument to carry my name before the Gentiles (Gentiles= not Jewish people) and their kings and before the people of Israel”

So to sum it up, if Ananias had not seen the scope of God’s story I would not be a christian, and more importantly would not be invited to be a part of God’s story. (Okay, yes God would have made a way, his Plan and Will will always succeed but Ananias would not have been credited this by his faith).

--------------------------

I guess this is just a really long way of saying that what I have been missing here in LA is the realization that I am not in LA, so that I can have fun, or I can make contacts or I can see LA, I am not the center of this story, I am but a tertiary (or possibly a secondary) character to what God is doing here.

That is a majority of what we spoke about at Tribe today, the number of things we worship and how we worship and if we are worshiping our savior or not.

I hope this made sense (or at least most of it) please, if you want to talk about this I am super pumped about it. Call me or message me or something. there fore I leave you where I began: i am not, but i know I AM

-i am not