The Vision?

The vision is Jesus: obsessively, dangerously, undeniably Jesus.
The vision is an army of young people.
You see bones? They are an army.

And they are free from materialism. They laugh at the markets.
They hardly care! They wear clothes like costumes:
to show and to tell, but never to hide.

They know the meaning of the Matrix; the way the West was won.
They are mobile like the wind; they belong to the nations.
They need no passport.

People write their addresses in pencil and wonder at their strange existence.
They are free, yet they are slaves of the hurting and dirty and dying.

What is the vision?

The vision is holiness that hurts the eyes.
It makes children laugh and adults break and cry.
It scorns the good and strains for the best. It is dangerously pure.

This is an army that will lay down its life for the cause.
A million times a day its soldiers choose to lose that they might win, one day
the great "Well done" of faithful sons and daughters.

Such heroes are as radical on Monday morning as Sunday night.
They don't need fame from names. Instead they grin quietly upwards
and hear the crowds chanting again and again: "COME ON!"

And this is the sound of the underground
The whisper of history shaping
Foundations shaking
Revolutionaries dreaming once again
Mystery is screaming in whispers
Conspiracy is breathing...
This is the sound of the underground.

And the army is disciplined.
Young people who beat their bodies into submission.
Every soldier would take a bullet for his comrades at arms.
The tattoo on their backs boasts "For me to live is Christ and to die is gain."


Sacrifice fuels the fire of victory in their eyes.
Winners. Martyrs. Who can stop them?
Can failure succeed? Can fear scare them or death kill them?

And this generation prays like a dying man with groans beyond
talking, with warrior cries, sulphuric tears
Waiting. Watching: 24 - 7 - 365.

Whatever it takes they will give: Breaking the rules.
Shaking mediocrity from its cozy little hide.
Laying down their rights and their precious little wrongs,
laughing at labels, fasting essentials.

The advertisers cannot mold them.
Hollywood cannot hold them.
Peer-pressure is powerless
to shake their resolve
Material clothes matter not

Would they surrender their image or their popularity?
They would lay down their very lives,
swap seats with the man on death row;
guilty as hell.
A throne for an electric chair.

With blood and sweat and many tears,
with sleepless nights and fruitless days,
they pray as if it all depends on God
and live as if it all depends on them.


Their words make demons scream in shopping malls.
Don't you hear them coming?
Here come the frightened and forgotten, with fire in their eyes.
Their prayers summon the hounds of heaven and invoke the ancient dream of Eden.

And this is the sound of the underground
The whisper of history shaping
Foundations shaking
Revolutionaries dreaming once again
Mystery is screaming in whispers
Conspiracy is breathing...
This is the sound of the underground.

A Kingdom Approach

One of the professors at Southeastern spoke in chapel on Wednesday and spoke of how each person should be willing to go overseas to share the gospel. While I have no problem with missions, or even the possibility that I could end up as a career missionary, it troubled me that he presented the missionary calling as the highest possible calling.
It seems to me, from my reading of scripture, that rather than telling everyone to go to a foreign country (though it is a legitimate need), he should have spoken instead of the missionary life of the Christian in the world around them. The missional life of the Christian then becomes the highest calling.
It is my firm belief that the missional calling of the Christian, is the only calling of the Christian. No matter your vocation, no matter your status, if you believe that Jesus Christ died on a cross to save you from your sins, than you will tell people about it.
While their are many vocations in life, there is only one calling for the Christian. We are called to go out and make disciples of all peoples. As far as i can tell, all the world is all around you. You and I are called to live the Christian life according to Matthew 28, no matter our vocation.
It seems that in order to understand the good news of Jesus, we have to understand the Doctrine of the Kingdom of God.
With the virgin birth, the Kingdom of God was at hand.
As a wise man once asked me...
"Is the Christian Life focused on the Kingdom of God? Or on telling people that 'your wrong and I'm right'?
In a Life lived in light of the Kingdom of God, it seems to be that the motivation becomes more about the lives of those in the kingdom and less about their specific souls. If you focus on redeeming the whole person, the soul goes along with the body.

More thoughts on the kingdom and the gospel soon.