Laundromat Evangelism

Isaiah 6:8 (ESV) And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” Then I said, “Here am I! Send me.”

Let's get evangelical!

Here's the plan:  We'll call it laundromat evangelism.  Exciting right!?  I used to be editor of my college newspaper.  And we wanted to take the paper outside the school.  But we didn't have any of those metal bins.  So we left stacks of our newspapers at laundromats.  My washing machine broke a few months ago, and being broke in more ways than one, I've been having to take my laundry to the coin operated facilities about town.

This brought about an interesting idea, why not leave some spiritual supplies at these facilities?  People sit there for hours, with very little to do, why not leave some reading material.  Very simple.  And what bothered me was I found some Jehovah witness material there.  Uh oh.  I don't want that to be their only input regarding Jesus Christ and the Way. 

So I'd like to encourage you, wherever you are, in whatever part of the world you happen to be: Hit up some local laundromats.  

First, go to google.com and search for "laundrymats in -thenameofyourcity and state-"  a list will come up right on Google, with a map of names of laundromats and their addresses.  Stop in at those laundromats, one by one!

Leave a few free Bibles for people to grab.  Or leave some good books like "Mere Christianity" by CS Lewis or something by Ravi Zacharias, or any of the great Christian authors.  Check for a pin up board, and tack an invite to your church services wherever you regularly attend!  

Sometimes what I'll do if I don't have any Bibles or good books to leave is I'll stop at a nearby Goodwill or consignment shop.  Those places always have tons of books, and they are quite cheap too.  Pick up a few Bibles or Christian books, or CDs and leave them at the laundromat.  Sometimes I'll write on the cover "free, take me!"

This is just one of those little things we can do.  Before you leave the laundromat, say a quick prayer that God lead people to the materials, and that they be saved as a result.  Very simple, non-confrontational and you're dropping supplies at a place where they are needed.  If there is a pin up board, I will also leave meeting lists for alcoholics anonymous, narcotics anonymous, and celebrate recovery.

It doesn't take long, and it's one more thing we can do to advance the kingdom!

Reflecting on 18 months of Recovery by the Grace of Jesus

As many of you know I do some work in the recovery community, and I am a recovering alcoholic addict.  I host an AODA group at my job at the Salvation Army homeless shelter of Wausau Wi.  I recently celebrated 18 months of recovery thanks to Jesus Christ.  I was asked by a friend of mine to write a short piece on my recovery story thus far, for inclusion on her website.  This is what I wrote, enjoy:

A new life began 18 months and two days ago, and it began on November 1st of 2012.  Do you know, I was hoping for the world to end, December 2012, you know that whole business with the Mayan calendar and so on.  But it didn't of course.  Though maybe the tribulation began.  But that's just speculation.

Let me tell you about 18 months and two days ago.  This journey through recovery, and reassembling the shattered pieces of a broken person began with three simple words that changed everything: "Jesus help me!"

I tried recovery with a vague spirituality, it fell apart after 7 months.  I couldn't want it.  I hadn't surrendered.  I wasn't willing to change.  But with Jesus Christ, my motives are changed.  I balked at the idea of Jesus Christ so many times over the years.  But I was finally fresh out of balks.  I was sick and tired, of being sick and tired.  That's a fact.

I came into the rooms a broken and shattered shadow of my former shadow. I kind of sputtered about, with tattered shoes and smelly clothes.  Meetings and more meetings, and step one was a serious utter fact.  I had become hopeless and helpless and really what was left was a cruddy kind of half wet bon fire left over night.  A few embers burning, and meetings tossed some sticks on the pit and smoke started pouring out, and eventually hope was kindled.  Really what happened in those first 3 months was learning what powerlessness was (step 1) and without even realizing it, starting to work step two, and what that meant was, I was starting to have hope.  These people around here day in and day out are staying clean and sober, so that means.. I can stay clean and sober, and I am too, so how did they do that?

They kept saying get a sponsor, work the steps.  And I was at that point where I was desperate, tell me what to do, now I'm serious about this, I want to be ok.  I'll do anything, anything.  So there was this raspy, big, mean, old, old timer who always sat in the corner of the room and barked truth.  I recall thinking that he reminded me of some sort of grizzly bear, or polar bear.  He was big and wide and tall and hairy and grayish and had big arms.  And I recall one of the first things he said to me was, he raised his big bear claw arm and pointed to the door and growled, "The first step is done out there!"

We met everyday at 8 am at his apartment and listened to Joe and Charlie tapes, pausing intermittently to discuss and read chapters of the book.  He scared the crap out of me.  I was so tired everyday, because I never got up that early in the morning.  But God must've been with me, because I kept waking up and getting over there.  The inventory was super important, and telling it to my sponsor took a grand total of 12 hours over two days.  I saw my character defects, asked for their removal, and worked at my amends, and also looked at ways to grow daily in the program, which was practical to me, 10, 11 and 12 were practical growth steps.

I pray to God the Father through his son Jesus Christ every morning humbly requesting another day of recovery from drugs, alcohol, and cigarettes.  At the end of the day I thank God from the bottom of my heart for another day of the new life.  And I did that today too.  Everyday.  And God forbid the day that prayer falls out of my recovery process.

Within those first few months of recovery, it was also completely natural to walk into a church.  I don't know how exactly that happened.  It just became clear that I was not just being sent back to recovery groups, but I was also being sent to regular church attendance.  Church and Recovery have really paralleled each other powerfully in my recovery program, and I grew in both areas simultaneously.  Many cautioned me against a dual approach such as that, but I was careful to make sure I never abandoned one for the other, but kept myself firmly planted in both.  It was a stern conclusion of my mind to never let myself drift too far in either direction; at least to the cost of losing the other.  

Remaining alive and well in recovery, on the new path was and is about a total lifestyle change.  Together recovery groups and the Bible provided to me a complete design for living.  Every area of my life has been affected and altered.  That was extremely difficult and very uncomfortable at first.  But I just allowed myself to step way, way outside my comfort zone.  Way, way, way outside it.  Those first few months of action, the first 6 months of action, growth, step work, inventory, and a beginning in amends were absolutely crucial.  I'm so glad I had a sponsor who sat me down five days a week, for at least 3 hours a day to pound the program into my head.

After the initial first six months of strain, fear, anger, depression and death grip on the program I started to relax a bit.  I found myself loving meetings.  I loved talking at meetings about spirituality and reflecting on the past.  And I brought my questions and pains to meetings, requiring myself to be desperately honest about them.  I went to tons and tons of meetings.  I would go to two on Tuesday and Friday, and hit one a day the rest of the week.  At the same time I was spending more and more time reading the Bible.  I made sure to pray everyday.  I started to love the Bible, and love Jesus more and more, and realize that Jesus was a real person, alive and well with Father God.  I started to understand that Jesus Christ made recovery possible all together, by changing my internal motivations and desires.

I went to meetings during the week, church on Sunday and I attended several Bible studies at churches around the area to get varying perspectives.  I was falling in love with meetings, with recovery truth, with Biblical truth, and with the person and work of Jesus Christ.  I was still in shock for the first year, amazed and just completely blown away at what was happening in my life.  It seemed far too good to be true.

It was in that time that I began writing my blog, A Lifestyle Change for Peace blog (lifestyleofpeace.blogspot.com) to journal and reflect on the things I was learning and the thoughts I was having.

After the first year many things changed in my life; I won't go into too much detail.  But I started at Liberty University majoring in religion.  I was hired as a caseworker and AODA group facilitator at the Salvation Army homeless shelter in my town.  And I became highly involved at my local church serving in several ministries there.

It's been an incredible journey, by the grace of God.  If I could give any advice to someone just starting: follow the advice given closely.  But more so, trust in the Lord Jesus Christ.  He's the secret to a lifetime of recovery from drugs and alcohol.  Get on a mission to have recovery.  And work hard, while remaining humble and remember, your only chance relies on a power greater than yourself.  Your higher power can be anything that you want, this was my starting point, but I'm telling you the truth, there is only one God, and his name is Jesus.  Good luck and God bless.

Related Links:
http://lifestyleofpeace.blogspot.com/2013/12/journey-of-christian-through-great.html
http://lifestyleofpeace.blogspot.com/2013/12/paradox-of-willingness.html
http://lifestyleofpeace.blogspot.com/2013/12/daybreak-examining-problem-of-pain.html

The Power of the Christian Soldier

Our power as Christians is the power of the truth in a world full of lies.  

A single prayer of yours, a few words whispered on your knees, in humble submission to the God of our fathers, and a firm belief that what you ask will in fact be done... and the entire world changes.  

Believe my brothers.  Jesus Christ is indeed risen.  He is alive and well my friends.  He rose from the grave.  He is fully and completely resurrected.  Just as the scriptures say.  Just as so many testified.  And just as all the evidence points to.  

He is risen, he is risen indeed.  

The things the Bible says, they're all true.  The teachings the Bible tells, they all firmly stand under every manner of scrutiny.  

Find new ways to fall in love with Christ.  Conform your mind to adore the hard truth, rather than the comfortable lies.  

I've always said, Christianity is the perfection of American principles.  Christianity is the perfection of democratic party principles of civil rights, protection of the environment, equality, women's rights, and peace.  Christianity is the perfection of republican party principles of economic freedom, conservative spending, freedom to pursue happiness, and generosity to the poor.  

Our faith gathers and slings together all the best and most altruistic principles into one set, utterly perfect in measure, and utterly potent in it's defiance to the wickedness of this world.  

You can tell the Bible is true because at first it's so offensive.  What it claims sometimes at first appears to be untrue, yet later is revealed to be empirically true.  Or it ends up revealing itself as paradoxically true, where all would point to the opposite conclusion yet suddenly it comes together as a paradoxical fact.  

So very offensive the gospel is, and of course, it's pointing out where I was so sure of being right but in fact was so very wrong!  At first I turned so hard against it, but now I find myself so in love with it's blunt honest truth.  We need more of that in this world where everyone plays pretend and puts out an image of how they want to seem, rather than who they truly are.

What was more offensive than the Gospel was the way the depravity of society cried out all around, day and night, claiming innocence, but so very diabolical in it's painful impact.  In a world where everyone wants to claim permanent victimhood to a plethora of disorders and maladies, Jesus Christ and the scriptures stand out in stark contrast, in a firm duet of perfect justice and perfect mercy.  And so we live in grace given by our wonderful Lord. 

There is much to love in our God.  Find new ways to fall in love with God.  No our minds don't slip into the righteousness of the Christian life like a smooth bubble bath.  Not at all, in fact it's very difficult because we're going against ourselves, against our own false belief systems.  But the Holy Spirit helps us.  And we are powerful.  Because God is with us.  Amen.

2 Timothy 1:7 (NIV) For the Spirit God gave us does not make us timid, but gives us power, love and self-discipline.

The Mainstream Media, Tolerance in American culture, and Christ-like Humility

“In the 1950s kids lost their innocence.
They were liberated from their parents by well-paying jobs, cars, and lyrics in music that gave rise to a new term ---the generation gap.

In the 1960s, kids lost their authority.
It was a decade of protest---church, state, and parents were all called into question and found wanting. Their authority was rejected, yet nothing ever replaced it.

In the 1970s, kids lost their love. It was the decade of me-ism dominated by hyphenated words beginning with self.
Self-image, Self-esteem, Self-assertion....It made for a lonely world. Kids learned everything there was to know about sex and forgot everything there was to know about love, and no one had the nerve to tell them there was a difference.

In the 1980s, kids lost their hope.
Stripped of innocence, authority and love and plagued by the horror of a nuclear nightmare, large and growing numbers of this generation stopped believing in the future.

In the 1990s kids lost their power to reason. Less and less were they taught the very basics of language, truth, and logic and they grew up with the irrationality of a postmodern world.

In the new millennium, kids woke up and found out that somewhere in the midst of all this change, they had lost their imagination. Violence and perversion entertained them till none could talk of killing innocents since none was innocent anymore.”
― Ravi Zacharias, Recapture the Wonder

You start to wonder, looking at the current state of our nation, the United States, just what happened to bring us here?  It feels like a stacked deck sometimes, like an internal enemy rotted the nation so incredibly effectively to leave it now in utter shambles spiritually.  

Systematically faith in God, Christianity has been ejected from the country.  In every arena it fell under attack.  I woke up, having been saved by the love of Jesus Christ, to a shocking scene.  All about the cities and suburbs it's at hand and it's utterly astonishing.  Yet oh so terrifying, as well.  

They ejected it from the government buildings and from the schools.  They called it separation of church and state, but they were always separate in the USA.  Freedom of religion became freedom from religion.  

The schools cannot teach morals, even basic ones, because they don't want to offend anyone.  And would any school teach morals, some family would quickly get sue happy, no doubt.  The result is children with no direction, cruel to one another and full of all kinds of sin and evil desires.

The media explores depravity of all kinds with stunning regularity and extreme pushing of the limits.  This in my view is the most powerful weapon that slashes at hundreds of millions day and night, pouring in depravity through magazines, radio, music, the internet, and most powerfully, the television.  This is the key it seems, with the media so incredibly depraved, feeding children, teens, adults and so on a constant diet of temptation, temptation, want, want, want, buy, buy, buy, sex, drugs, alcohol, food, etc there is just such a small chance of even a well formed, united, and powerfully lead church to make any kind of meaningful impact.  With all the negative input, how does 1 hour a week come to challenge that kind of onslaught?  It's like a propaganda campaign.

When I first became a Christian, I had to alter my inputs heavily.  The Holy Spirit helped a lot in that work.  The first thing that went off was the television.  As far as the internet, I filled my news feeds and email, and so on with everything Jesus and Bible.  I found Bible movies, Bible apps, and Bible everything to begin to break the false messaging system blasting my head with lies and temptation.  

We as Christians really need to understand the culture we live in and realize it is not Christian.  It's not even near Christian.  It has been systematically assaulted step by step, by Satan, by those who serve him, whoever, and it has become an atheist hedonist paradise.  

Yet people still long for truth and for causes to believe in.  They long to be righteous heroes.  Maybe that's why so many young men are playing video games where they get to fight epic battles and defeat the evil forces of darkness.  We still want to have adventures it seems, and fight for righteous causes, but we do vicariously through the television or video game console.  

In the area of love, well, there is a lot of pre-marital sex and lots of pornography addiction and lots of record divorce rates and in general lonely unhappiness.  I guess sexual compatibility isn't everything when it comes to a lasting relationship.  Funny how sometimes we think, well, maybe God is wrong about this one issue.  Maybe we should try it out, since it makes sense, you've gotta be sexually compatible right?  But oh my, in the results, God was absolutely right again!  So I want to obey him, and stop trying to find a better way.

There is a lot of confusion, and it's hard to tell what people can agree on anymore about such issues.  But there is one thing this culture does still agree on, and it's tolerance.  Well, sort of.  

I don't know if you've been watching the news lately, but the owner of the Clippers NBA basketball team was caught on audio making racist remarks.  http://www.cnn.com/2014/04/29/us/clippers-sterling-scandal/

The outcry was astonishing.  Racism is one of those few no-nos in the United States today.  Sex, depravity, all manner of evil is just fine, but get caught making a racist comment, oh you're in trouble.  Or if you won't step forward and publicly endorse gay marriage, you are in serious hot water.  That isn't really tolerance though.  Not at all.  That's one group of people forcing their beliefs on another group of people, and publicly attacking them and punishing them if they don't step into line.  Of course racism is an awful thing.  Of course I personally disagree with racism.  So does the Bible.  But banned for life, forced to sell his team, and fined 2.5 million dollars?  That's pretty intense.  

I'm not sure what to make of it really.  The internet has granted "the mob" an interesting power to force change.  Unfortunately it doesn't seem to be useful change.  It's just getting people fired who won't agree with certain principles.  Like when the CEO of Mozilla was forced to resign for supporting traditional marriage.  It's strange.  The mob, the people, whatever you want to call it.. they won't step forward to stop wars in the middle east.  They won't step forward and say certain principles are important and we need to teach our children morals.  They won't do any of that.  But what they will do is go after anyone who is racist, sexist, or against gay marriage.  

It seems to be the natural pull.  People want to play the victim of certain things, and we want to applaud them for doing so. It's a constant liberation from this, liberation from, liberation from rules, liberation from God.  Guess who spearheads these efforts?  Once again, the primary media outlets.  The mainstream media has this country by a strangle hold.  With the mainstream media carefully controlling what ideas get out there, what events and news receive primary coverage.. Jesus Christ will be carefully ignored and generalizations and stereotypes will be used to drive people away from the message of eternal life.  Think I'm wrong?  When is the last time you saw a news piece that portrayed Christianity in a positive light?

Inevitably though, very little has changed.  Christianity has always been marginalized and persecuted.  Since the very beginning of the church in the book of Acts, they faced constant persecution.  We've always been on the knife edge of destruction and we will be again before Jesus Christ returns.  We know that from scripture.  So very little has changed and we are called to be what the Bible calls us to be: Humble, loving, and caring servants of Jesus Christ in the world.

I'll leave you with Philippians 2:1-11 some of my favorite words regarding mimicking Christ in the world today.  Fear not my brothers and sisters in Christ, no matter what the culture does, no matter how depraved it becomes, we are powerful because we have the Holy Spirit working through us.  And we can pray on these issues, pray day and night to see things change for the better in our home country.  Be watchful, be wise in your decisions, and pray for the truth to shine through the blanket of lies our children and friends drown in today.  

Philippians 2:1-11 (NIV)

Imitating Christ’s Humility

2 Therefore if you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any common sharing in the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, ² then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and of one mind. ³ Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, ⁴ not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.

⁵ In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:

⁶ Who, being in very nature^[a] God,
    did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
⁷ rather, he made himself nothing
    by taking the very nature^[b] of a servant,
    being made in human likeness.
⁸ And being found in appearance as a man,
    he humbled himself
    by becoming obedient to death—
        even death on a cross!

⁹ Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
    and gave him the name that is above every name,
¹⁰ that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
    in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
¹¹ and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord,
    to the glory of God the Father.

¹² Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed—not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence—continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, ¹³ for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose.
¹⁴ Do everything without grumbling or arguing, ¹⁵ so that you may become blameless and pure, “children of God without fault in a warped and crooked generation.”^[c] Then you will shine among them like stars in the sky ¹⁶ as you hold firmly to the word of life. And then I will be able to boast on the day of Christ that I did not run or labor in vain. ¹⁷ But even if I am being poured out like a drink offering on the sacrifice and service coming from your faith, I am glad and rejoice with all of you. ¹⁸ So you too should be glad and rejoice with me.

(bold added for emphasis)