danmastrapa.com » The Journey

GROW a little

admin — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 21:14:04 +0000

This coming year we have committed as a church family to grow together as disciples of Christ. We are embarking on a year long endeavor to read through the Bible. We are using the ESV Daily Bible Reading plan and I am encouraging every one to journal their daily devotionals using the R.E.A.P. (Read, Examine, Apply, Pray) Bible study method. Both of those items can be found on a special micro-site we have rolled out here.

Surfing the Edge of Chaos

Dan — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 14:38:49 +0000

Yesterday was one of those bittersweet moments in life as it concluded a chapter for my family and I. It was my last Sunday on staff at The Gathering Place. A place I have worked at and served for the past ten years. A place where my family and I received healing, new life, new relationships, new direction and vision. I don’t think I have fully absorbed the moment but I am sure it will hit me fully in the coming days.

This new chapter of my life following Jesus involves great adventure, risk, danger, chaos, uncertainty — and I am really excited about that! Starting a business in this economy when many established business are failing and a new church when many are shuttering their doors, sounds like lunacy. I would tend to agree if I hadn’t heard clearly from the Lord to move in this direction.

Some of my favorite church bloggers have taken a leap in to the unknown at this time. Ben Arment, Carlos Whittaker and Tony Morgan have all left secure positions with amazing organizations to follow Jesus’ call and their passion. The beat of God’s kingdom doesn’t march to the same beat as the one of this world. Jesus beckons us out of comfort, safety, security and our sanitized environments to follow him.

Alan Hirsch recently unpacked a series of posts dealing with Living Systems Theory, change and chaos theory and its correlations to the church and spiritual movements. He cited this on living systems:

Nature is at its innovative best near the edge of chaos. The edge of chaos is a condition, not a location. It is a permeable, intermediate state through which order and disorder flow, not a finite line of demarcation. Moving to the edge of chaos creates upheaval but not dissolution; that’s why being on the edge is so important. The edge is not the abyss. It’s the sweet spot for productive change. And when productive agitation runs high, innovation often thrives and startling breakthroughs can come about. This elusive, much sought after, sweet spot is sometimes called ‘a burning platform.’ The living sciences call it the edge of chaos.”

Surf the edge of chaos, follow Jesus wherever he leads you — that is the sweet spot! When we stay in our safe zones, we lose that which makes us most like God, our creativity. He is the Creator, and out of chaos he created inexpressible beauty.

I would ask my friends to pray for us for the following:

My wife and daughter who are on this journey as much as I am. Pray for wisdom and guidance during this time of shifting and transitioning.
Our business, SafetyFactorUSA. We deal primarily in the construction safety arena and will be bidding on some upcoming projects in our state. Would love to have a few of those!
The church we will be starting a few months down the road. I’ll be sharing more about that in the coming weeks.

Surfin’ the edge of chaos!

The Age of Immediacy and the Loss of Mystery

Dan — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 03:25:13 +0000

J.J. Abrams, mastermind behind the hit TV series Lost, Alias and Fringe and the reboot of the Star Trek empire, wrote a fabulous essay in the May issue of Wired magazine on the Magic of Mystery. You can read the article in its entirety here.

J.J. writes that we are in the middle of the “age of immediacy” where wonder and mystery are lost because of the instant access to information that will, at best, give us a satisfying understanding. Because information is ubiquitous, knowledge a mouse click away, true understanding has become bothersome. As he puts it, “an unnecessary headache that impedes our ability to get on with our lives (and most likely skip to something else).”

Kids don’t want to discover for themselves the hidden “easter eggs” in video games so they go online and get video game “cheats” and “hacks” that enable them to leap frog the experience of discovering those on their own. Want to know absolutely anything about anything, “google” it! The question is though, have we lost something in this “age of immediacy”?

This got me thinking a lot about God and spirituality and my role as a communicator of what I believe to be “truth.” In our quest to instruct, teach, impart wisdom and knowledge, communicate the deep truths about God, inform about doctrine and theology, have we inadvertently stripped away people’s desire for the mystery which is God? Have we robbed people of the experience of mining these deep truths for themselves? Have we eschewed the insatiable desires for easy answers and inspired people to explore, unearth, probe and uncover life changing revelation for themselves?

We live in an age where if you have a desire to learn about Jesus, a simple search will yield 223,000,000 results. However,knowing about Jesus is not the same as experiencing Jesus. That can only come through a careful examination of his teachings, embracing his way of life as our own, wrestling with the hard issues he confronts us with, dealing with our fallen nature in light of his resurrected one and living our lives with him at the center of our existence. A total experience! No easy answers, no “7 steps to knowing Jesus”, no shortcuts, no hacks and no cheat sheets.

I have been challenged to not strip away mystery by self-serving easy answers and savor the experience of discovery. Information is cheap these days. We must go through the process and not underestimate it.

J.J. closes his essay with this thought. “Perhaps that’s why mystery, now more than ever, has special meaning. Because it’s the anomaly, the glaring affirmation that the Age of Immediacy has a meaningful downside. Mystery demands that you stop and consider—or, at the very least, slow down and discover. It’s a challenge to get there yourself, on its terms, not yours.”

Savor the process, enjoy the journey, embrace the mystery! That’s life!

Cutting the lines…

Dan — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 12:55:04 +0000

Mark Batterson shared a brilliant post here, about the need at times to “cut the lines to the lifeboat” instead of playing it safe. Sharing from the story of Paul’s crash landing in the Island of Malta, the decision to throw everything overboard, cut the lines to the lifeboat and stay on the ship, saved their lives. That story rivals anything on this season of Lost.

Mark observes wisely, “we like backup plans. We all want a lifeboat. But there are moments in life when you have to cut the lines to the lifeboat. And the very thing that seems the riskiest is actually the safest and what seems the safest is actually the riskiest. The thing that could cost your life ends up saving your life and the thing that could save your life ends up costing your life.

I have been struggling, wrestling with and resisting, a decision that would require enormous personal risk for me and my family. Our human tendency is always to play it safe. Something about our fallen nature seems to revert back to the path of least resistance. Recently, as I have been reading through the life of Christ, I am convicted about how little Jesus played it safe. Unfortunately, sanitized, Sunday school Jesus is never presented this way. Following Jesus means we follow him wherever he leads. And sometimes, where He leads, will mean a shipwreck and a snake bite — and if we dare to follow — an island-wide revival. Acts 27:1-28:10

Can’t eat right now, I’m full!

Dan — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 21:53:27 +0000

John 4:31 I can imagine this scene in which the disciples are urging Jesus to eat because they got him the pita and hummus combo at the local fast-food joint in Samaria. They didn’t know he had been ministering to a woman while he was waiting for them and at that precise moment a mini-revival was starting in the town.

How funny that the things that we pursue in life apart from the will of God leave us empty, unfulfilled and unsatisfied. When we are in the arena of God’s purpose for our lives, there is a satisfaction that we cannot express and put fully in to words. Ministry has its ups and downs and for sure, some days I was wish I was doing something else. The consistent thing I do know, is that when I am about “my Father’s business” I experience that ‘fullness’ in my spiritual stomach that keeps my going.

Lord, I want to live my life doing your will and accomplishing your work. In that is the promise, not that life will be simple, easy, effortless and tame, but that there will be a ‘fullness’ to my life that I will never encounter apart from you.

Supersize Him

Dan — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 21:39:18 +0000

John 3:30 Got to love the confidence of John the baptizer as he was told that Jesus was baptizing and all of his congregation was going to Jesus. John understood his purpose and vs. 29-30 in The Message declares that John said “That’s why my cup is running over. This is the assigned moment for him to move into the center, while I slip off to the sidelines.”

Do we get jealous when others succeed and we don’t seem to have the same measure of success? This passage convicted me of several things. First, there is something competitive in me that doesn’t allow me to celebrate victories in other people’s lives or ministries as easily as I would like. Secondly, Jesus needs to move to the center of whatever that is in me that creates those feelings of jealousy or competitiveness. I’m sure John being human struggled with these same things but his recognition of his own purpose and that of the Christ allowed him to surmount that.

Lord, help me to overcome in this area and celebrate the successes of those around me, even when I don’t seem to have that same measure of success in my own life. Allow me to understand my own purpose with such laser-like clarity and that Jesus would be the center of this area in my life.

Positioning for the miraculous | John 2

Dan — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 14:16:21 +0000

John 2: 3-5 Big problem — the wine ran out! No problem — Jesus to the rescue! I love how Jesus responds to his mother when she asks him to troubleshoot the problem. His answer, “this has nothing to do with me, not my fault they didn’t stock up!” Yet she persists because she knows he can! She tells the servants to do whatever Jesus tells them to do. Her belief moved into action, she set it up for the miracle to take place.
We need to live our lives this way. That our belief always positions ourselves and others to be in the pathway for the miraculous to take place. Because Mary was positioned for the miraculous, vs. 11 says that “he manifested his glory and the disciples believed.”

Lord, I want to live with the expectancy that you can do what you say you can do, and position myself and others to be in the pathway for miracles.

To receive we must perceive | John 1

Dan — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 13:55:54 +0000

John 1:10-12 It’s amazing how those closest to Jesus did not perceive him to be the messiah. As a result they could not receive from him. My prayer is that I never become so familiar with God’s presence and His power that I lose the ability to perceive who He is and what He is doing that, I do not receive from Him. John echoes that sentiment in vs. 26 when he puts the smackdown on those sent by the pharisees, when he tells them that “among them stands one they did not know.”

Lord, help us perceive you correctly so that we can receive all that we need from you.

Hosting His Presence — 21 Days of Fasting and Prayer

Dan — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 13:42:54 +0000

Our church began 21 days of fasting & prayer themed, Hosting His Presence. Information on the corporate fast can be obtained here. We’ll be reading a chapter a day from the gospel of John. I’ll be posting my daily reflections. I really expect God to do a deep work in my heart and in our church throughout this time.

The Issachar Principle_part deux

Dan — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 14:15:59 +0000

1 Chronicles 12:32 (ESV) “Of Issachar, men who had understanding of the times, to know what Israel ought to do.”

In my previous post I shared about the importance of being able to hear the voice of God as the Holy Spirit prompts us. This is ever so important as the landscape of our culture has changed. Reference points of the past may or may not be there so it is imperative that we learn to live the Spirit-led life. As evidenced in the New Testament where the apostles and other disciples were led of the Spirit to speak, to act, to go in another direction and so forth. What confidence they possessed in what they knew to be the voice of the Spirit and they obeyed. I want that in my life – such clarity – such boldness – such audacity!

Of the Sons of Issachar it is chronicled that they not only understood the times, which we so desperately need to possess such understanding, but they also knew what to lead Israel to do. It is in that part that we must take note. When God leads, we must act. When He speaks, we must obey. Let’s get the Word in us so that when He speaks, we bear witness with that prompting, and then we DO! That is a mark of a true disciple.