Why I Don't Go to Church Anymore

This article is for anyone out there that considers "grubbykupp" or "Just Some Jesus People" their church.

First of all, there is almost no such thing as "grubbykupp". That's just a word that we got years back that said, "you can only be loved by me as who you actually are, with wounds and lack and sin and all the mess of who you are, so be the cup and get filled and washed and just go go go and walk with Me!" Jesus seemed to be saying...

I got that word prophetically when I preached Jeremiah 31 about the New Covenant at a Methodist Church in Loveland OH in 2001 or 2000 or something. They've got the tape... Judy came up to me after and said she was getting that word and that the Lord was calling us to be vessels, as we were, with the good news of Jesus, the lover of sinners... Jesus, loving us and telling us to tell you he loves you... what? so simple, yet far too rare...

and we're a mess and he loves us...

But grubbykupp isn't a "thing", really. the Thing is JESUS! He really does love you, now, today, as you are, and he's calling you out of your guilt and to know the indescribable Father-Love of Abba... What? so simple... soooo... simple...

And "Just Some Jesus People" is a little trick i play on people who need a label in order to start a friendship. I mean, look at that... enjoy...

But the linked article is goood. For anyone there who thinks that by meeting together or living together, or whatevs, that they are "joining a church" or a "community"... you joined the only church there ever has been when you first realized that the Someone you need is Jesus! all those years of loneliness and brokenness and here's Jesus, arms open, loving you and speaking HIMSELF as the final message on how God feels about you.

You know what else?
any time you joined a church before?
No you didn't.
Some of the people at the meetings may have been the church, but they weren't behaving in a full understanding of the true definition of church--the reality of church (forget just defining it: it's there to LIVE IN)
that wasn't behaving like what Jesus calls a church, if you had to join it like that...
sorry, dude.
the church Jesus started doesn't name itself after itself and do like that. seriously... what? Does that indict something dear to you? something you may have confused for something else??? hope so.

I really do.
I'm not here to make you comfortable if you've set your hope on some wack imitation of the reality of the gifts of God. God has LOVED US and has given us such immense GRACE, and the imitation stuff kinda gets stinky! really.

God is hardly who we have imagined him to be... He is in LOVE with you.

Now go read the book of Hosea. Go. Read it. Why did God put that in there? What the heck is that? Yeah. Goood. be perplexed now. and go with that...

Winter Vine Pruning

sam and i are at the dinner table this morning, enjoying a cup of coffee and talking about the book of John, chapter 15. I pulled up this clip of pruning. I don't understand a lot of what he's talking about, but the point is that the guy knows what he's doing, just like Our Father knows what He's doing when he gets down to pruning us... and that's good news.