THE MANY CYBER REALITIES OF KEITH GILES

Besides my main blog at www.KeithGiles.com I've also set up several other blogs and websites to provide free online resources on a variety of topics.

For example:

PovertyInTheOC.com
This website includes statistics on poverty in Orange County, California where I live and also links to various articles on "How To Start a Ministry to the Poor in Your Community" as well as links to other non-profits and organizations that serve the poor.

OCHouseChurch.com
This website links to a handful of other house churches in the Orange County area and also includes links to articles on house church, links to other voices and blogs in the house church/simple church/organic church community and provides info on how to find a house church, or start one of your own, in the Orange County area.

MissionHouseChurch.com
This is the offical blog website for our house church which we've been hosting now for over 3 years. It includes links to our vision and values and a Flckr page with photos and other fun stuff.

Subversive Underground
From December of 2005 (roughly) to March of this year I published a free, weekly e-newsletter called [Subversive Underground]. The archives are still up at this link and you can read articles on spiritual formation, the early church, discipleship, God's heart for the poor, Christianity in culture and more.

NutInTheShell
This blog is where I post my sci-fi, comicbook and "less spiritual" thoughts. It also contains links to my previous life as a comicbook industry journalist, and my brief attempts at writing my own sci-fi graphic novels.

PlasticAnimalStudios.com
This is a museum site showcasing all my great sci-fi story concepts and sample pages on a handful of projects I had going long before I shut it all down and started this blog.

ParabolicJournal.com
This was a grand social experiment I conducted after being inspired by the 1000 Journals project. We even got a link from those guys to our travelling journal (and hosted another journal's pages) which gave us a lot of exposure.

The concept was to sign people up to receive the journal by mail. They would have a few weeks to add pages and scan them for posting online and then I would tell them who to mail the journal to next. It was great fun and my plan was to subversively communicate Kingdom truth to people in an "under the radar" fashion.

There are some really amazing pages on here but be careful around Journal #7 when you get to the pages of Dutch Smiles. They're not very work-safe...but they're quite thought-provoking, I think.

I have no idea where most of these actual journals are now but I do have the first one and the "Random" journal is in my friend Lito's hands (who was also our web-monkey).

Non-Con
Back in March of 2008 I put together a one-day event called the "Non Conference" with Jackie Pullinger and David Ruis. It was a small gathering of just 100 people. We shared meals, enjoyed simple worship times, and engaged in dialog (rather than monologue) with one another. It was better than I could've imagined thanks to God showing up in a big, big way.

You can download MP3's of our sessions here or on the Non-Con site and there are a few testimonials on the site too.

Will I ever do another one? Only if God really, really wants me to.


**
As you can see I often get ideas and create websites to provide information and resources for people on subjects I am passionate about.

Other than here I mainly hang out online at Facebook and Twitter.

Hope to see you in cyberspace.

Peace,
kg

MY BOOKS ARE FREE!

Last year I self-published two books and gave the PDF's away free of charge. So far I've given away 656 copies of "The Gospel:For Here or To Go?" and 541 copies of "Nobody Follows Jesus (So Why Should You?)"

Some people have asked me why I give away my books for free like this. The answer is simple: I feel that God has called me to write and to teach about the Kingdom, the Gospel, and what it means to follow Jesus. These truths are essential and so I feel that it's important that everyone should have the opportunity to read and understand these things.

For those who do purchase the print version I am grateful, although I only earn about $2 per book sold so no one is getting rich over here on the sales of my books (except Lulu.com maybe).

I am currently working on my third book which (so far) is called "Becoming the Church God Always Dreamed Of" and hopefully it will be published later this summer.

My plan is to give away the PDF download version of the new book as well.

You can download my books, or purchase the actual print versions at my online store:
HERE

Thanks for your support and encouragement.

FOLLOWING THE PRINCE OF PEACE

Over the last few days I have been thinking a lot about how following Jesus affects our actual lives. Specifically, I’ve been thinking a lot about what it really means to love our enemies, and turn the other cheek, and overcome evil with good. If I take the words of Jesus seriously, they have strong implications for me when it comes to war, and violence, and torture.

Last week an article was published that revealed a disappointing trend for church-going Christians to support the torture of our enemies. This lead me to respond here on this blog and a dialog was started in the comments section that continues to challenge my ideas of sincere discipleship to Christ and how it collides with my ingrained sense of patriotic pride.

You see, I am a good Republican Christian. Or, at least, I was raised as one in my Southern Baptist church back in Texas. These radical ideas of actually following Jesus and putting his words and teachings into practice are only just now beginning to churn within my heart and mind. I hear myself saying things I never thought I would say, and part of me bristles with the sound of my own voice and the inflection of these anti-military, pro-peace concepts.

Beyond my own internal struggles with these radical ideas of peace and love for enemies, I have an additional challenge to wrestle with. My father-in-law spent most of his life in the military and civil service. Several of my dearest friends are either in the military now or have served overseas in the Gulf War. I do not speak of these things lightly or without full realization that my words here may have emotional consequences. Let me apologize in advance to those friends of mine who are confused by what I’m suggesting here. My intention is not to offend or to insult you or anyone else in the military. But, when I honestly ask these questions and investigate these issues, I am troubled by what I see and hear and learn.

Jesus answered, "My kingdom is not of this world. If My kingdom were of this world, then My servants would be fighting so that I would not be handed over to the Jews; but as it is, My kingdom is not of this realm." – John 18:36

What does it mean to be part of the Kingdom of God? What is the true cost of following Jesus?

Am I willing to follow Him even if it means giving up my identity as a good American citizen?

What do I do when the Gospel and the Constitution collide? Where do my allegiances lie?

How do you obey Jesus in the command to love your enemy and still take up a weapon and kill him with it?

How do you obey Jesus in the command to turn the other cheek and drop bombs on his children?

How do you obey Jesus in the command to pray for those who persecute you and forgive those who hate you and fire rockets into their cities?

For anyone serious about following Jesus you have to start, as you might have guessed, with Jesus. What did Jesus teach? How did Jesus model our practice of faith? How did those first Christians walk out the things that Jesus taught them? We can look at how they walked and lived and practiced following Jesus for a clue as to how we (you and I) should also follow Jesus.

Those early Christians (for over 300 years) were put to the sword, thrown to the lions, had property confiscated, were imprisoned, burned alive, etc. and not one single Christian (not one in all of our recorded history, whether pagan or Christian in origin) - not one of them took up a sword in self-defense. Not one of them killed to protect their property. Not one of them killed to save themselves from being imprisoned or tortured or burned or eaten alive.

Is this compatible with the American Dream? Does this behavior have any correlation with the founders of American independence? Hardly. Although we’re always told that our founding fathers were focused on creating a nation where religious freedom was paramount, it seems incongruous for a follower of Jesus to fight for his right to love his enemies peacefully.

How did we get to this point? After about 300 years of enduring oppression and persecution, Emperor Constantine not only lifted the boot from the necks of Christians, he put their leaders on the payroll of the Empire, handed them ornate marble temples to worship in and elevated their pastors to high positions within the political arena.

What’s more, Constantine was allowed to re-define for the entire Church what it meant to be a Christian. Before this, a follower of Jesus was defined as someone who put the words and teachings of Jesus into practice every day of their life. After Constantine’s influence, the definition of "Christian" was changed to: "Someone who believes a set of doctrines". This definition still dominates our imaginations today, in fact. And I believe it’s why Christians today can claim to be “followers of Jesus” without actually, you know, “following” Him.

The effect on the Christian community of Constantine’s day was devastating. Within just one generation we have those same peaceful, formerly-oppressed Christians taking up the sword to go and put to death and oppress and persecute another group of people who disagree with their religion. The oppressed become the oppressors. Those under the sword now take up the sword and fight for the very Empire that once put them to death.

This same paradigm shift is what allows Christians in America to support torture, and to cheer military victory, and to participate in the killing with little or no reservations about how any of this might be anti-Christian behavior.

I have to ask, can you honestly picture Jesus allowing or endorsing or supporting torture? Really? Can you honestly picture Jesus blessing his disciples to go out and kill people? Seriously?

I can't. I'm sorry.

As Lew Rockwell, author of “Christianity and War and Other Essays Against the Warfare State” asks:

“Can a Christian smash someone against a wall in the name of the Lord Jesus? Can a Christian heartily lock someone in a dark box for hours at a time? Can a Christian deprive someone of sleep to the glory of God? Can a Christian give thanks to God while he hangs someone from the ceiling?

Sure he can, but not without violating the whole tenor of the New Testament.

Christians are told to put off anger, wrath, and malice (Colossians 3:8), to not render evil for evil (1 Thessalonians 5:15), to not give offense (1 Corinthians 10:30), to abstain from all appearance of evil (1 Thessalonians 5:22), to not be a brawler (Titus 3:2), and to abhor that which is evil (Romans 12:9). I think this rules out waterboarding.”

I must agree.

If we are serving a king and a kingdom from this world, then let us take up arms against our oppressors and kill every last one of them. However, if our king and our kingdom is not of this world, then let us not fight. Instead let us obey our King and love our enemies, pray for those who persecute us and do good to those who hate us.

Let us live a life where practicing our faith and actually following Jesus with our everyday life defines our Christianity, no matter what.

**
Keith Giles

WHO WOULD JESUS TORTURE?

I've been saying for a long time now that being a Christian in today's culture does not equate with being a "follower of Jesus" and once again we have more proof of this sad fact.

Today's top story on most internet news pages is that a majority of regular, church-going Christians are more likely to support torture.

Read the full story
HERE

What really saddens me is that we live in a world where those who claim to follow Jesus are completely divorced from what it actually means to love and live as Jesus would.

Instead, we have Christians in America who believe that if they vote the right way and belong to the right political groups and read the right books and watch the right TV shows and listen to the right kinds of music that they are "Christians".

How can someone who claims to be a disciple of Jesus turn around and say that it's alright to torture another human being? For any reason?

More and more I find that there is a blurred line in American Christianity between "The American Way" and "The Kingdom of God".

The Kingdom of God and the American Dream are not the same thing, and in fact, they are two opposing viewpoints which are in conflict on many levels.

The American Dream is founded on the concept of every person's right to the pursuit of happiness. Whatever you can imagine would make you happy you are free to pursue it with all your heart. That's your right.

The Kingdom of God is founded on the concept of laying down your life, your idea of what will make you happy, in favor of receiving what Jesus knows will really make you happy.

Following Jesus involves laying down your life and giving up your rights. It means full and complete submission to God because you recognize that His perfect will for your life is a million times better than anything you could ever dream up, or pursue, on your own.

Jesus didn't ever instruct any of his disciples to fight for their God-given, "Inalienable Rights", and neither did Paul the Apostle. In fact, they both encouraged their disciples to live humble lives, serving others and not demanding more because they deserved more. Paul even specifically told those followers of Christ who were slaves to remain slaves, even if they were being mistreated.

Historically, the early Christians didn't fight for their rights as citizens, they took it on the chin, and in the Lion's den, and in the arena. They literally would rather die than to take another person's life.

Simply put, they followed their Lord and Savior, Jesus and they followed His example of non-violence and submissive service to those who hated and mistreated them. Does that sound like the American Dream to you?

STAY FOCUSED
We cannot afford to become distracted by nationalism or led astray by politics.

As followers of Jesus, He must be our one and only priority and influence. This is what it means to make Jesus our Lord.

As Christian pastor and activist Jim Wallis has said, "God is not a Republican or a Democrat. God is not partisan. God is not ideologically committed to our Left or Right. God's politics challenges all of our politics. It includes the people our politics regularly leave out; the poor and the vulnerable. That's God's politics."

OUR WITNESS
It would have been virtually impossible for an unbeliever living in those first three hundred years of Church History to ever reject Christianity on the grounds that it lacked compassionate people or failed to teach loving kindness.

In fact, we have testimony from many of the most hostile pagans who lived during the first three hundred years of Christianity who were put to shame because of the overwhelming generosity of the Church. Julian, the Apostate wrote of this frustrating situation when he said, "..The godless Galileans feed not only their poor, but ours also."

Christian philosopher Aristides (125 AD) wrote about the radical charity of the early Church also, recording the fact that, "…if there is among them a man that is poor and needy and they have not an abundance of necessities, they fast for three days that they may supply the needy with their necessary food."

For a Christian, killing our enemies is not acceptable. If being a good American citizen means you need to cheer on a war that kills innocent people then you must lay aside your Christianity.

If being a faithful member of a political party trumps over 2,000 verses in the word of God about caring for the poor, then you need to make a choice.

A few years ago I had an opportunity to speak to Jim Wallis on this very subject and his response has stayed with me ever since. He said, "The Church today is more American than Christian. The Kingdom of God is not the same as the American Empire. When we are more American than Christian we confuse the meaning of the Body of Christ with any nation state. This notion of the Church as a counter-cultural movement is Biblically obvious. There's no doubt about that. We're in the world to transform the world for the sake of this new order that has come in Jesus Christ. If Jesus' vision of the Kingdom was so threatening, why is our vision of the Kingdom so safe?"

The Gospel of the Kingdom is not the American Dream.

It saddens me to see Christians more passionate about their political party than they are about the Kingdom of God.

-kg
**
(some of the above post was taken from a previous [Subversive Underground] article)

THE LEAST OF THESE?

CLICK TO EXPAND IMAGE

BIGGER ISN'T BETTER

Seth Godin is my favorite marketing blogger. His ideas shape the bleeding edge of social marketing and social media today.

This article from today's blog really hit me. Keep in mind he's talking about businesses and marketing, but the application to the Body of Christ is also very relevant:

Infinity--they keep making more of it
by Seth Godin

If you had a little business in a little town, there was a natural limit to your growth. You hit a limit on strangers (no people left to pitch), some became friends, some became customers and you then went delivered as much as you could to this core audience. Every day wasn't spent trying to get bigger.

There's no limit now. No limit to how many clicks, readers, followers and friends you can acquire.

I don't think this new mindset is better. It shortchanges the customers you have now (screw them, if they can't take a joke, we'll just replace them!) and worse, it means you're never done. Instead of getting better, you focus obsessively on getting bigger.

You're at a conference, talking to someone who matters to you. Over their shoulder, you see a new, bigger, better networking possibility. So you scamper away. It's about getting bigger.

Compared to what? You're never going to be the biggest, so it seems like being better is a reasonable alternative.

The problem with getting bigger is that getting bigger costs you. Not just in time and money, but in focus and standards and principles. Moving your way to the biggest part of the curve means appealing to an ever broader audience, becoming (by definition) more average.

More, more, more is rarely the mantra of a successful person.

There are certainly some businesses and some projects that don't work unless they're huge, but in your case, I'm not sure that's true. Big enough is big enough, biggest isn't necessary.

What I love about this article by Godin is the paragraph about how "growing bigger costs you, not just in time and money but in focus and standards and principles"

As our house church is growing; in both quality and quantity- the temptation is to remove the obstacles to this numeric growth and continue the sprawling of our Body. However, the health of our Body is adversely affected by our "weight gain" (as it were).

If we were to continue growing larger (gaining weight) we would eventually have to compromise our core value of giving 100% of our offering to the poor. We'd also have to give up our value on transparency, community, and making disciples because as already know, once a group starts getting to be 50 or 100 or 200 people the ability of that group to really know and interact and love one another deeply diminishes or vanishes completely. Soon the focus is only on getting larger and the sea of people become strangers to us.

What our Body needs is to give birth to a new Body of Believers so that more churches can be established in the community, more new people can find a safe place to be themselves and enter the fellowship of Christ, and so that we ourselves can stretch and grow in our practice of making disciples.

I'm praying that we can hear God's voice and step out to plant new churches as He leads us. I am not going to manufacture this. I am not going to set a date or coerce people to plant churches in their homes. Instead, I am going to continue to pray that God would lead us and that Jesus would be allowed to reign as the head of our church.

-kg

The Gospel According to Philip K. Dick

In case you don’t know, Philip K. Dick (PKD) is one of the most prolific and unique science fiction authors of the 20th century. He's also one of my favorite authors of all time. His novels (36 of them) and short stories (121 of those) explore philosophical themes and metaphysical concepts including the nature of reality, and the questions of sanity, perception, identity and spirituality.

Several of his novels have been made into films since his death in 1982. Most notably, “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?”, (which became the basis for the film “Blade Runner”), and “Minority Report”, as well as “A Scanner Darkly” and “Total Recall”. However, his body of work has yet to be fully discovered by Hollywood just yet, and that is fine with me seeing as most of his ideas have been ruined by film and not particularly enhanced by it.

As a resident of Orange County, California, I am also interested in the fact that PKD lived and died here. His novels include streets and restaurants that I am familiar with. The library near my house includes several first editions of his books with authographs on the inside front cover. This is the very place that PKD lived his life and wrote most of his stories.

I recently read (and reviewed) his book “Radio Free Albemuth” (HERE) which was discovered and published after his death. In the book, Dick incorporates many of his own spiritual, political and philosophical views into the story, even going so far as to include his own personal experiences as well.

The book is about PKD himself as a main character and also a fictitious person named Nicholas Brady who begins receiving messages and visions from a being who may, or may not, be God Himself.

At one point near the end of the book, PKD encounters a former pastor while he is imprisoned for crimes against the fascist dictator of America. The pastor, Leon, and PKD engage in a dialog about several of their friends who have died and entered a better, spiritual reality.

“Did believing that, about a heavenly father, get them anywhere?” Leon asked presently.

“Not in this world, maybe,” I said.

“Then I’m going to tell you something you maybe don’t want to hear. If your friends were here I’d tell them too. It’s not worth it, Phil. It has to be in this world.” Leon nodded firmly, his lined face hard. Hard with experience.

“They gained immortality,” I said. “It was conferred on them, for what they did, or even what they tried to do, and failed to do. They exist now, my friends do. They always will.”

“Even though you can’t see them.”

“Yes,” I said. “Right.”

Leon said, “There has to be something here first, Phil. The other world is not enough.”

I could think of nothing to say: I felt broken and feeble, my arguments used up during all that had happened to me. I was unable to answer.

“Because,” Leon continued, “this is where the suffering is. This is where the injustice and imprisonment is. Like the two of us. We need it here. Now.”
I had no answer.

“It may be fine for them,” Leon said, “but what about us?”

“I—“ I began. He was right and I knew it.
Later on Leon concludes this conversation by saying:

“I’m sorry,” Leon said. “I can see you loved your two friends and you miss them, and maybe they’re flying around somewhere in the sky, zipping here and there and being spirits, and happy. But you and I and three billion other people are not, and until it changes here it won’t be enough, Phil; not enough. Despite the supreme heavenly father. He has to do something for us here, and that’s the truth. If you believe in the truth…well, Phil, that’s the truth. The harsh, unpleasant truth.”

While the rest of the novel is anything but an endorsement of Biblical Christianity, I read this section above and marveled at how close PKD came to the Kingdom. This is exactly what Jesus was proclaiming when he preached the Gospel of the Kingdom – “the Kingdom of God is at hand”, “the Kingdom of God is within”.

If even a sci-fi writer in Orange County, California can see the Kingdom and understand that it must happen here or it doesn’t matter, then perhaps there’s hope for the people of God to get it too?

“…thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, on Earth as it is in Heaven..”

The Church, the Body of Christ, the ambassadors of Jesus, the citizens of the Kingdom, must become agents of change in this world, in their own neighborhoods, in their actual workplace, so that people can see the love that defies logic and the peace that passes understanding. The followers of Jesus must not only proclaim the Gospel of the Kingdom, they must (like Jesus) demonstrate the compassion of God for the poor, the broken, the outcast, the lonely, and the marginalized.

“Blessed are the drugged out, poverty-level science fiction writers in Orange County, California, for they shall see the Kingdom of God and publish it in their writings for people to read long after they are dead.” – kg

THE NEW TESTAMENT CHURCH

The New Testament church did not collect money to be spent on salaries, programs, buildings or itself.

The New Testament church was primarily concerned with making disciples and caring for the poor, the orphan and the widow.

The New Testament church did not elect a separate “clergy class” to perform special religious duties, instead everyone was “in the ministry” by default.

The New Testament church did not attempt to follow an old testament code of worship.

The New Testament church affirmed the priesthood of the believer and allowed every member to share, participate and take an active part in the regular functioning of the church itself- including baptism, sharing communion, preaching the Gospel and making disciples.

The New Testament church did not keep a bank account, instead it gave away all the funds laid at the Apostles feet in order to plant churches and care for those in need- both within and without the church body.

The New Testament church leaders were humble servants who waited on tables, washed feet, served others, laid hands on the sick, encouraged the persecuted and understood that true greatness was found at the feet of men, rather than at the top of the ladder.

The New Testament church did not segregate the body based on age, sex, race, music preference, ethnic background, or any other criteria. Everyone who named the name of Christ, regardless of age, sex or race, was immediately a fully functional and valued member of the Body of Christ.

The New Testament church did not verbally, politically or physically oppose the oppressive Roman government or pagan religions of the day. Instead they simply lived extravagant lives of love among their neighbors and served anyone in their path as Jesus commanded.

The New Testament church was not in favor of violence, nor did it participate in armed conflict, not even in self-defense. Instead, the early followers of Jesus quietly imitated their Lord and gave up their property, submitted to prison and went to their deaths peacefully.

The New Testament church allowed every member, male or female, slave or free, Jew or Gentile, to preach the Gospel, plant churches, teach the Word, and lead worship every single day.

The New Testament church had no one single location where “Church” was located. Worship was not seen as something that happened in a particular location or on a particular day or with the assistance of particular people. Instead, worship was seen as a life continually submitted to Christ as a living sacrifice for the good of others, to the glory of God.

The New Testament church understood the Gospel of the Kingdom to be about God’s Kingdom (rule and reign) being released in the heart of every follower of Jesus, not something that would come one day after the death of the saints or the return of Christ.

The New Testament church did not consider the work of the Holy Spirit to be weird or strange. Instead they accepted the moving of the Holy Spirit within the Body as the natural and continual ministry of Jesus being released in the Body to heal, teach, instruct, correct, rebuke, inspire, encourage and empower the people of God to carry the Gospel of the Kingdom and live a life of love for others.

The New Testament church was always being taught to love one another and to imitate the love of Christ and to humbly serve others as Jesus did. They were not concerned in any way with amassing wealth, getting healed, gaining status in the community, becoming politically powerful, being respected, changing laws, picketing the funerals of homosexuals, speaking out against pagan practices, or selling products with their church name, cross, or scripture verse attached.

The New Testament church did not have a name.

The New Testament church did not brand itself.

The New Testament church did not provide a salary or ongoing stipend to those within the Body who acted as Elders, Teachers, Pastors or Facilitators. The people who performed these functions within the Body did so out of love and were only compensated by the Holy Spirit with joy.

The New Testament church did not have a Bible, or even a copy of the entire Old Testament, yet this Body managed to preserve the teachings of Jesus, the doctrines of the faith, the creeds and Gospel of the Kingdom with only the empowering presence of the Holy Spirit to guide them.

The New Testament church did not market itself or the Gospel. Instead the original followers of Jesus concentrated on loving as Jesus loved, giving and sharing as Jesus did, and concerned itself with the welfare of others in need; both inside and outside the Body.

Anyone else in favor of a return to a more New Testament form of church besides me?

-kg

THIS IS MY BODY, BROKEN FOR YOU

My good friend Charles Pike shared something with me a few weeks ago that has continued to speak to me regarding our calling as the Body of Christ to suffer and serve others.

What my friend shared with me was how we are called the Body of Christ in Scripture and also how Jesus took the bread in the Passover and said to his disciples, "This is my body, broken for you".

Of course, we understand that to be "broken" meant that Jesus would have to suffer on the cross for the sins of the world. However, we also, as the Body of Christ in the world today, need to be "broken" as well. We need to be broken for others around us. We need to see those in need and experience their pain, we need to experience true compassion. In fact, the word "Compassion" actually means "to suffer with".

We are called "bear one another's burdens" and as another friend once pointed out, for me to bear your burden it must actually be a burden to me. This isn't about convenience, it's about love that is expressed in our actions.

We are also called to be broken so that the Gospel can be scattered. Right now, our house church, "The Mission" is growing; both numerically (outwardly) and spiritually (in depth). This is great news. Nothing could make me happier than to see people really loving the community, sharing their lives, experiencing the love of Christ and the Koinonia of the Spirit together.

But, as we grow in size we slowly begin to limit our ability to grow deeper. As more people decide to visit, or as more people desire to invite their friends and neighbors to experience this same joyful life in Christian community, we will soon reach a saturation point where no one new can come and participate. We will simply run out of available space in my den.

Some have asked (even today) if I would ever consider taking this group into a traditional church structure and allow it to grow numerically. My honest answer is "No. Not ever." Why? Because as we grow numerically we outstrip the ability to experience true fellowship. We make it easier to wear masks and "play church" and I will not sacrifice the core values of "being church" for anything like "going to church."

Not only this, but the very reason my wife and I felt called to start a house church was so that we could give 100% of our offering to the poor. Without this core value and practice of our faith we would cease to be who we are, and that is not something I am willing to compromise upon.

If we remain in one large group, week after week, we cannot truly branch out and reach more people, take more territory, invite new friends, meet new people, invest in more lives. In order for our church to grow, and to fulfill our God-given calling as the Body of Christ we, like Him, need to be broken.

I think that brokenness of the Body (the Church) is accomplished in compassion for the lost, the poor, people around us, our neighbors, etc. and it's also accomplished when we, the Body of Christ, are broken (in half) for the sake of others, and for the sake of the Gospel to spread like seed.

That final breaking is in the form of our Body being broken in multiple pieces so that we can multiply and continue the life of Christ in other homes, other neighborhoods, other lives, etc.

I'm praying that this happens in God's timing.

Pray for the Mission as we grow larger that we can also grow deeper and, eventually, outward.

Peace,
Keith

FADED CHAMELEONS

The other night I couldn't sleep so I went into our den to pray. It was around 3am.

As I sat there talking to God, I had to admit that lately I am more of a spy than I am an ambassador for Christ. I am a chameleon who changes depending on who is in the room rather than being exactly who I am every single day, no matter the situation.

This isn't a new revelation for me. I've had it before. In fact, I wrote a song about it called "Faded Chameleons" that appeared on the Elysian Skies Cd "Exquisite Whisper".

Here are the lyrics:

Faded Chameleons

This is the flesh that makes your spirit weep
I took the blame when it wasn't mine to keep
The one you created is falling apart
The one that you love just keeps breaking your heart

The shadow will never return to the flame
And I am forever reminded of shame
Like faded chamelons tired of change
Resigned to conform to the color of gray

Chorus:
With pencil and paper and wire and string
All of us tangled and dying to breathe
Coffee and silence and letters from home
I know I don't have the strength to be alone

Bridge:
One day to suffer my final disgrace
One day to enter and rise from the grave
One day to melt in your Holy embrace
I was the servant who was not enslaved

**
So, after being reminded of this truth, and this song, the other night I went back to sleep and the next day at work I get a call from my friend John Wahrmund, the guy who wrote the music for the Elysian Skies album.

When he told me that he had been re-working the music on that exact song lately, I couldn't believe it. Talk about being on the same wavelength.

John and I never really thought the overly upbeat music on the original version of the song quite fit the darker, more introspective tone of the lyrics. So, it appears that John has nearly finished re-working the music for a new version of the song.

He played it for me, over the phone yesterday. I listened and I knew it was God singing to me through the static.

As I was remembering those lyrics that night, God was helping my friend John to write new music to those familiar words. The music changes but the words remain the same.

I'm ready for the death of my own status quo. I'm tired of being a chameleon. I'm ready to have the reptilian skin peeled off my frame once and for all.

-kg

AMAZING LOVE (not me)

My dear friend Lolita is a gift from God. She has a rapport with Jesus that I envy.

This week she sent me an email that I wanted to share with all of you.

Trust me, I know this woman very well. This is not a fake. This is as real as it gets.

-kg
**
Hi you all,

Our dear Lord was glorious in His love and care to rescue a family in need yesterday and I want to share this with you for a few reasons. First, so that you will keep this family and us in prayer in what else He would like to do in His bringing us together, if anything. Second, to thank you all for keeping Freedom Ministries in prayer and to bring you a praise report of : He is answering your prayers!! Third, this story is an absolute lovely testimony of His Love, Intimate Care, and of His Divine Provision on earth.

Yesterday morning, I was in Wildomar visiting with friends and was so blessed as we spent time together over lunch after church. As I was leaving I made the decision to drop an item off to a friend in Corona which would require me to take the 15 Freeway. As I embarked the freeway ramp, the Lord prompted me to not go this way and instead to go to the next freeway down the road which is the 215 Freeway. I knew we (He and I) were going on a mission, that He wanted to touch someone. So, I continued down the road to the 215 Freeway.

As I was driving down the highway coming around a bend the Lord illuminated a car on the side of the road with the hood up. And He said, “Yes, this is who I want to touch.” I was unable to stop because of the bend and the speed of the freeway traffic and as I drove by them I saw a young woman holding a very young child in her arms next to the car…… It was close to 100 degrees, there was no shade, and as I saw this woman’s distress I heard the Lord say, “I want to rescue them.” So, I went up to the next off ramp a few miles down the road and exited to turn around on the freeway to their location. As this took time because the off ramps were several miles down the road on both sides of the freeway our dear Lord began to reveal His passion for this family and His desire for them to know His Intimacy, His Gentle Touch, and His Intimate Provision.

When I arrived I introduced myself and I asked the man if they would like to sit in my air-conditioned car until the towing company arrived. He went over to his wife. They talked a bit and he came back stating that they would very much like to do this, that they were very concerned for their little girl in the heat. She is one and half years old.

The mom and I got to know each other a bit as her husband was outside on the phone. He finally joined us in the car as they realized that they had given Triple A the wrong freeway location. We waited for about an hour before Triple A arrived which allowed us to get to know one another which I will share a bit about their lives so you can pray for them. And our Lord touched my car as we sat there with the engine running for the entire hour with the air-conditioning blowing full blast. My car temperature never rose above normal!

Additionally, our Lord asked me the night before to fill my gas tank to full capacity. I would have run out of gas out there if He had not filled the tank the night before! Isn’t He amazing, in His orchestrating each detail necessary to accomplish His purposes for His Provision in His Love and Care. He is so amazing and faithful!

During our conversation, the Lord asked me to share with them how I began to get on the 15 Freeway when He asked me to redirect to the 215 Freeway and He began to give me words for their hearts. He wanted them to know that He had heard their distress and cries for help and that He saw them and their need and He wanted to bring His Help. That He heard her, saw her, and heard her concern for her child’s distress and He was moved by His compassion for her and was adamant to bring His rescue. She began to weep in our Lord’s touching her heart deeply. She was very moved by Him and by His Touch as He was revealing His Intimate Heart for her through His words.

When the tow truck driver came we went out to meet him and it was discovered that the closest service dealership that could handle the car repair needed would be about 40 miles away and they only had basic towing coverage for seven miles. I had Triple A Plus (I thought, anyway) and stated that they could use my card.

The tow truck driver, Jason, was very touched by this and touched by Mike's account of the shelter a complete stranger gave them in an air-conditioned car. Jason just kept shaking his head in what he saw happening for this stranded family. I said to Jason that we are brother and sisters in the Lord. Jason was so overwhelmed by this, continuing to shake his head. The Lord was all over him and the Lord revealed His heart that His intention was to touch this man’s heart too this day.

Jason called his supervisor telling him this story and the supervisor was moved to authorize the use of my card to tow the extra distance which is normally denied. This couple and their little one rode with me as we followed Jason to a convenience store so Jason could get a cold drink because of the heat and as we were waiting for him he received a call that my Triple A account no longer had the plus coverage. I stated that Freedom Ministries (Lo's ministry) would pay for the towing fees as I knew that Mike and Kristy were in financial distress due to his being laid off and her hours being cut back at a private home schooling company. They are both teachers.

Jason was so taken back by this when I handed him the ministry bank card, shaking his head in amazement, saying this is unbelievable. I said this is Jesus taking care of God’s children. And then I said you must be Christian. He said he was not Christian, and I heard the Lord say to my heart that He loves him. So, I said to Jason, really the Lord is all over you and you seem to know who He is. Jason’s eyes grew large in awe of what he just heard and he looked at me and the Lord said to tell him He loved him, which I told Jason, the Lord loves you.

Jason shook his head saying that he had been saved a few years ago and guesses he was a Christian but he had fallen away into sin and that he did not want to be a hypocrite and say he was a Christian when he was not following Jesus. The Lord said to tell him again that He loved him and Jason bowed his head and began to weep shaking his head. Then he turned around to get in the tow truck.

As we followed Jason to the service dealership we (me and the family) continued to get to know each other. As Jason was unloading their car and Mike was in the dealership taking care of business the Lord told me that He wanted to touch Jason in prayer. During the prayer time our Lord touched this man’s heart in His mercy, grace, encouragement in how our Lord saw Jason’s heart in His love of him and in His invitation for Jason to receive His love and care.

I then drove Mike and Kristy to their home and we continued to get to know one another. Mike was laid off last year. Kristy hours were cut back and they are struggling financially. They say they are Christian but the Lord revealed to my heart that He desires to reveal more of His Intimacy to their hearts and that He desires for them to know more of His Love, very personal. Please pray for this. They occasionally attend a Christian church in Redlands. I understand in our conversation that this is probably the extent of their relationship/fellowship with our Lord.

Please pray for what the Lord desires to do next with us. We live 15 minutes down the freeway from each other, they are very close geographically! Isn’t this amazing, we meet as complete strangers on the freeway forty minutes away from our homes and we come to find out that we live 15 minutes away from each other, is that the Lord or what?!!

Kristy gave me her business card and I told her that I would be in touch Tuesday to find out what the repairs were going to cost and our ministry would help financially in any way we could. I also extended the invitation for help for anything else they might need and extended an invitation to get together if they would like to hang out a bit more.

She also asked if I knew of any home schooling families which needed support with their curriculum to please let them know about her expertise and her company. I said that I would put the word out that she is looking for more contracts as an education specialist. So, if any of you know any families that need this kind of support, please contact me and I will get you her contact information.

Both their biological families moved out of state over the last couple of years so they have no family in this area and from the conversation I gathered they do not have much friendship in this area either as they moved out to Yucaipa a couple of years ago.

Please pray for Jason (tow truck driver) too. I believe our Lord desires for me to contact him in a few weeks to see how he is doing.

Thanks for praying. And thank you Lord, for your precious love and never ending faithfulness!

Love, Lo
**

Confessions of a Selfish Mind

There are nights when I look into the bathroom mirror, really look, deep into my own eyes, confessing truths to myself that never come through my lips or over my tongue.

I am weak. I am powerless. I am completely unable to love as I know I am called to love. My selfishness consumes me. My pride, like gravity, pulls me to the ground and holds my feet to the cold, hard earth. I am unable to fly.

Deeper still, I admit my inconsistencies. I desire to be great in the eyes of men, and yet I know that true greatness is found at the feet of men, washing in humility.

I have a spiritual gift to teach others, but I fear the celebrity associated with the title of "teacher" and so I sit silently. I bite my tongue.

In my pride I secretly hope that one day I might be recognized for my expertise asked to speak at large conferences and join the spiritual giants on the big stage, and yet at the same time I loathe the empty hype of events and the vanity of religious experts.

I am torn. But not yet in two.

So, now, God has asked me to allow His Holy Spirit to probe into my dark, sinful heart. The Great Physician has me on the table, the gleaming scalpel in his hand, and He is asking me to lay back and relax and trust Him as the surgery begins.

Oh how I need this circumcision of the heart. Oh, how I need to be made more like Him.

To do only what I see the Father doing is to love others, because that is what He is doing every moment of every day. Yet, I realize that I am powerless to love. Love is not my native tongue. Selfishness chokes on my best intentions. Only Jesus can make me like Himself. There is no good in me. None.

So, I lay back. I close my eyes. I whisper a prayer that God's hand would move swiftly and cut deeply and remove the rotten, infectious flesh from my heart.

I have tried to make these cuts myself, but my hands are not steady enough. My sympathy for my own comfort restrains my ability to fully complete the surgery. So, I nip here and tuck there. I choose a careful section of flesh and slice around the sensitive nerves where pride and selfishness thrive. I hold up the small tumor and wave it like a trophy. Look at what I have learned to live without. Look how I am willing to sacrifice.

But I know it is a lie. Better still, God knows it too. And when I look into those eyes in the silent mirror I cannot pretend any longer.

Only God can make these necessary incisions. Only the One who loves me more than He loves His own life can find the place where I hide my selfish dreams and drive home the knife and cut away the infected flesh and remove every last ounce of pride from my heart.

Only God can heal the wounds, sew me together, wipe my tears away and kiss me where it hurts.

Let it begin.
-kg

"Only love, only love can leave such a mark
But only love, only love can heal such a scar" - U2, "Magnificent"

"...circumcision is circumcision of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the written code." - Romans 2:29

Re-Post: Raging Against Your Own Machine

It was nearly 15 years ago that Shepard Fairey began his subversive, counter-cultural sticker campaign based on the face of Andre the Giant and a single word, "Obey".

The original vision he had was to create an underground movement designed to provide a counterpoint to the thousands of corporate advertising images assaulting us on a daily basis.

Fairey wanted to create a logo for a company that didn't exist and plaster it all over the city (and eventually the Nation and now the World).

Essentially, Fairey wanted to help people see advertising and media as propoganda aimed at our pocketbooks. He made his image imposing, like "Big Brother" looking down on society and commanding everyone to "Obey" the messages on billboards and in the media.

His message was meant to be ironic. His hope was that when people saw the overt command to "Obey" there would rise up within them a sense of individualism and personal identity that might make them say, "No. I will NOT obey!" and perhaps people would begin to think for themselves.

In a recent issue of PRINT Magazine (Jul/Aug, 2006), there is an article about Fairey and other street artists who have a desire to send a counter-cultural message via stickers and posters posted illegally on the sides of buildings and the back of street signs.

One book, "The Design Of Dissent" by Milton Glaser, makes the observation that today's society is immune to outrage. We read the newspaper, we watch atrocities on television and we move on with our lives.

This social apathy, in the opinion of Glaser, calls for an escalation of social protest "..to overcome the endless assault on our sensibilities by the official voices of the government." In Glaser's mind, what is needed is "..100 times more dissent that appeals to people's intelligence."

This may be true, or it may not be true. What I find interesting about this theory is that most modern advertising appeals to the lowest common denominator of intelligence, at best. At worst, the overall tone of advertising seems to pander to, and even to encourage, the ignorant majority.

Even more ironic to me is that Fairey's creation, "Obey", has now evolved into a full-blown corporation. The Obey logo can now be found on t-shirts, hats, skateboards and toys. Recently a $60 coffee-table book of Fairey's art was published to chronicle his exploits and rise to fame and fortune.

Here is a lesson for us. A single person has a vision to subvert the system, and in time his success lures him to join the enemy and to become exactly what he was raging against in the first place.

Now the Obey Giant logo is trademarked and used to sell products, not to make a commentary on the media-saturation of our times and the consumer-oriented society we have become. Now the symbol is used to promote consumerism, not to rebel against it.

I wonder if the Church has fallen into the same trap?

Have we been lured into thinking that, to be effective in society we must become exactly like the world around us?

The Church began with a single vision. Our founder, Jesus, was a revolutionary with a subversive message that we could all begin to live in The Kingdom of God today. His message was a threat to the Pharisess and the Roman Government. It threatened their authority structures. It called into question their defintions of righteousness, equality and holiness. It was a message that got our founder arrested, tortured and ultimately put to death.

From the earliest days, the followers of The Way continued this subversive, counter-cultural movement. They met quietly in homes. They re-defined family. They called one another brother and sister and loved and cared for one another as if they truly were of one family.

The early Church was persecuted for such counter-cultural behavior. People saw them as strange and treated them with disdain. Yet even though followers of Jesus were met with harsh persecution, hundreds of people continued to join their ranks. The radical lifestyle of these "Jesus People" caused people to wonder, "How can they give so much to strangers?", "What makes them so different?", and they wanted to know more.

Even the message preached by these people, that their founder Jesus had actually come back to life, seemed to be proven true by the radically changed lives of His followers.

In time, the followers of The Way actually did "turn the world upside down" (Acts 17:6-KJV). They endured horrific persecution and preserved the teachings of Jesus by living them out and sharing them with their new spiritual family for over three hundred years. That's longer than America has been a Nation.

Today, the Church looks an awful lot like the world around it. We do not stand out from the crowd. We are not known for our acts of kindness, love or compassion. We have aligned ourselves with a politcal platform and allowed figures in the media to speak for us.

In many ways, we have become the machine we intended to rage against. We have joined the system we were created to subvert and overthrow.

How this happened is another issue (and another article), but the solution for us is not to justify our slow transition into a more palatable option. The solution is to return to the way of life modeled by our founder, Jesus. The solution is to embrace, once more, the loving, yet counter-cultural, way of life modeled by the early Church.

Maybe the place we need to begin is to repent of our blindness and to return to the teachings of Jesus Himself.

"If you love me, you will obey what I command" - JESUS (John 14:15)

-kg

50 Ways to Love Your Neighbor

Call to Action: 50 Ways To Love Your Neighbor

A compelling list of tangible ways we can love others as Christ has loved us.
Read it all
HERE

Some highlights from the list:
13. Look up the closest registered sex offender in your neighborhood and try to befriend him.

26 Organize a prayer vigil for peace outside a weapons manufacturer such as Lockheed Martin. Read the Sermon on the Mount out loud. For extra credit, do it every week for a year.

29. Go through a local thrift store and drop $1 bills in random pockets of the clothing being sold.

32. Go to an elderly home and get a list of folks who don´t get any visitors. Visit them each week and tell stories, read the bible together, or play board games.

34. Create a Jubilee fund in your Church congregation, matching dollar for dollar every dollar you spend internally with a dollar externally. If you have a building fund, create a fund to match it to give away and by mosquito nets or dig wells for folks dying in poverty.

35. Become a pen-pal with someone in prison.

41. Cover up all brand names, or at least the ones that do not reflect the upside-down economics of God’s Kingdom. Commit to only being branded by the cross

43. Eat only a bowl of rice a day for a week to remember those who do that for most of their life (take a multivitamin). Remember the 30,000 people who die each day of poverty and malnutrition.

49. Serve in a homeless shelter. For extra credit, go back and eat or sleep in the shelter and allow yourself to be served.

BONUS: Come up with your own list of ways to love your neighbor. Do at least one of them before the end of the week.

-kg

Someone in Norway (and in France) loves me!

Thanks to the people at Google Analytics I can see who is reading my blog on a daily basis. One of the most surprising things to me is that, for some reason, I have a very large following in Kristiansand, Norway and in Noisy-le-Grand, France.

If you're reading this blog from one of those places, or near there, please leave a comment below and let me know how you found this blog and share a little about yourself and your walk with Christ.

-kg

RESURRECTION SUNDAY 2009

Once again we met in El Camino Real park near our home with our Mission House Church family to worship, share and read God's Word together in celebration of our Risen Lord.

It was a bit sad that Mary Anne wasn't with us this year, and a few other families were out of town, but for those who did gather together, it was a blessing to be together.

I'm reminded of how we are called to be the ambassadors of Christ to the world. I'm not so good at it, frankly. I'm still learning how to love as Jesus loved and give and forgive as He has forgiven me.

This is the journey, I guess... and I wouldn't want to be on this journey with anyone else but these awesome people.

Shalom,
kg

KEITH'S TWEET OF THE DAY

keithgiles: Peace is subversive to our culture. Forgivness is radicalism. Selfless Love is foolishness. Jesus still uncool.

RISEN?

We as Christians have an unusual fascination with the death of Jesus. I know that what Jesus did for us, on the cross, is an astounding act of love and sacrifice. Without this, none of us would have any hope, and yet Paul the Apostle declares that, "..if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins." (I Cor.15:17)

I wonder if our fascination with his death has something to do psychologically with our view of what it means to be a Christian?

For instance, the modern church, especially in America, can't seem to go on enough about the death of Jesus. It seems that all the television preachers can talk about is the fact that, "Jesus died on the cross for your sins".

When a Christian person is interviewed on television or stands to talk about Jesus, inevitably the only thing they can find to say is that, "Jesus loves you and he died on the cross for your sins".

At times it all starts to sound monotonous and cliche. I can almost hear the lost saying, "So what?"

The message we send most loudly to the world is the idea that Jesus died.

Even the most prominent media message in our lifetime, Mel Gibson's mega-evangelistic "Passion Of The Christ", which was dubbed "The Greatest Evangelical Message in Two Thousand Years", was all about the death of Jesus. The resurrection scene at the end was so vague and quick that most of us, even those of us who know the story, were left going, "Huh? What just happened?"

At Easter this overt focus on the death of Jesus is most noticeable. For me, when we spend those two weeks before and after Easter talking about the irrefutable fact of the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, it almost seems strange. Like, "Oh yeah! He DID rise from the dead, didn't he?", as if this most historically provable event is something we need to be reminded of, but only once a year.

This has got me thinking. Why is it that we focus so much on the death of Jesus and very little on the resurrection of Jesus? I mean, why isn't the resurrection the main thing we talk about? Why don't we go around proclaiming that "Jesus is Risen!" and argue with people about the fact that there's no refuting the fact of Easter?

Here's my theory:

We, the Church, are the Body of Christ. We are the physical representation of Jesus in the world today, and I think we're more comfortable being the "Body at Rest" than the "Body in Motion".

As the Body of Jesus, we're more comfortable in the dark of the tomb, wrapped in our own shroud, meditating on this death of our Lord, with the stone rolled shut across the door.

We ignore that what we are called to do, as the living Body of Jesus, is to go out and proclaim, demonstrate and testify with our lives the awesome miracle that "Jesus is Alive!" and that we are living examples of this fact.

What I long for is the day when we are bold enough to declare, as one people, with one voice, that Jesus is Alive, and that our conduct in the world would bear witness to this fact.

Our inactivity, our apathy, our aversion to serve others and live out the compassion of Jesus, sadly proclaims that Jesus is dead.

It's when we live for Him, when we continue to love the way He did, when our lives are in sync with His, that we proclaim by our actions that, yes, indeed, Jesus is really alive!

Is Jesus really alive? Has He really come to live in your life? And how would anyone know this to be true if you never actually demonstrated the life and love and ministry of Jesus in your own life?

Do we, as individual followers of Jesus, feel safer within the quiet of the tomb? Or are we willing, even eager, to roll away the stone and begin to live the truth of the power of the Gospel?

If we, the Body of Jesus, do not act as a living Jesus would, within this world, loving those He loved, sharing with those He spent time with, continuing His ministry of transformation, then we do not demonstrate that Jesus is alive, we simply testify that He has died.

What we must do is to wake ourselves from our slumber, shake off the apathy, and begin to proclaim, with our own lives, that Jesus is truly alive.

"I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing."- John 14:12

"Whoever claims to live in him must walk as Jesus did."- 1 John 2:6

He is Risen! He is Risen indeed!

Peace,
Keith
www.keithgiles.com

**
Originally sent to the faithful subscribers of the [subversive underground] newsletter on Monday, March 20, 2006

THIS IS HOLY WEEK

Last night we gathered to celebrate the Passover Seder. It always amazes me that God instructed the Israelites to observe Passover on a specific date every year, and on that date to blow the shofar at 3pm when the passover lamb was slain, so that roughly 6,000 years later when His Son was hanging on the cross, ON THE SAME EXACT DAY, and they blew the shofar at 3pm, Jesus would say, "It is finished."

On Friday we will celebrate Good Friday together in my home. We will enter quietly and move silently from station to station as families to tear cloth, drive nails, taste vineagar, touch a crown of thorns, tumble dice, and leave our red handprints on the same paper curtain.

Afterwards, we will sit around a low table and light our candles, sing worship songs, share communion, and one by one voice thanksgiving for what Jesus has done for us, blowing out our candles as we go. When the room is dark we will leave as silently as we have come, or perhaps revisit one of the stations to reflect more on the love of Christ for us.

On Sunday morning, we will meet in the morning, on a grassy hill, under a tree and surrounded by passing cars and sunlight we will raise our voices to celebrate the resurrection of our Lord, read scriptures of the events and experiences of that first Easter, and share our thoughts and open our hearts to one another on resurrection and what it means for us.

Aftewards, we'll return to our home and help the children create resurrection rolls and continue to share and worship and love one another as Christ loved us.

I love Holy Week.

Discover the Journey

My friend Jonathan Olinger and his friends have started an amazing non-profit ministry called "Discover the Journey".

Jonathan is a talented film maker who has documented the suffering of child soldiers in the Congo.

I'd like to ask you to take a few moments to watch this beautiful, yet brief, video clip of Jonathan's work which is online now.

WATCH THE VIDEO
HERE

After you've watched the video, if you feel compelled to help in any way - make a donation, purchase a t-shirt, or post their info on your own blog and share this with your family and friends, I know they'd be very blessed to have the help.

DISCOVER THE JOURNEY exists to:

SPEAK UP for those who cannot speak for themselves by creating story, media and art about children in crisis around the world.

ENSURE JUSTICE for those who are suffering by engaging people across cultures through education and advocacy to respond together in Love.

Find out more at
http://www.discoverthejourney.org/

Read their blog
HERE

SIMPLE

I woke up this morning in Orlando. It's my third and final day here. In a few hours I will catch my shuttle to the airport, pass through security in my socks and (eventually) line up to board the first of two flights back home to California.

It was my hope that, while on this business trip, I would be able to relax and take time to hear God's voice. Specifically, about what I might do with my time, talent and energies now that I've laid down my weekly e-newsletter after over 3 years. My cry has been, "What's next?"

So far I've been able to watch a lot of cable television, eat some great food, and meet a lot of new people. Yesterday afternoon I had about 40 minutes time in my room to power down and seek God's face. I sat in the darkness of the room and waited. I listened. I waited some more. Then I got dressed and went back downstairs to keep working.

Maybe, I wondered, maybe all I needed to do here was to take a break? Maybe all that I needed to do was to rest and cleanse the pallete and take a deep breath? Maybe...

This morning I laid in bed, the early morning light barely softening into the room, and I heard this simple thought: Being about the Father's business and doing what the Father is doing is simply about loving people wherever you find them.

Hmmm...

I got up before the alarm went off. Got dressed. Packed my bags and went downstairs to grab some coffee and a doughnut.

Maybe it really is that simple? Maybe my next big project is actually just a simple, daily decision to look for people who need to know the love of God and attempt to show them that love, or encouragement, or hope, as best I can? Maybe...

So, today that's my goal. I will do my best to keep my eyes open for what God is doing wherever I am. In the general session of this corporate conference, in the shuttle on the way to the airport, in line at security, on my flights back home, and in my own home and family when I return home tonight.

God is always doing something, and the main thing He is always doing is loving people and blessing them and encouraging them. If I am to be about my Father's business, if I am to "only do what I see the Father doing", then this is also what I will be doing today.

It's pretty simple, in theory. Let's see how it works out in practice.


Peace,
Keith

Healing

I wanted to publicly thank God for healing me. Last Saturday my wife Wendy rushed me to the Emergency Room at 3:30am. I was breaking out in cold sweats and nearly lost consciousness before we could leave the house.

After an ultra-sound the Doctor released me and said that I would either get worse (and then need emergency surgery) or it would get better on its own and I would be fine.

My biggest concern was having to take a business trip to Orlando for four days. What if my problem flared up while I was halfway across the country?

I asked our house church to pray for me the next day. They laid hands on my wife and I and prayed for healing and for God to increase His favor over our home. I was reminded that God had already opened so many doors for this trip to be a blessing to me and I was suspicious that the Enemy was trying to fill me with fear before I even left.

The next day I felt better. On the morning I left to fly out to Orlando I was feeling ok. The next day, and today, I have felt back to my old self again.

I wanted to praise God for healing me and for removing my pain and for allowing me to take this trip. After stepping away from Facebook and Twitter and laying down my weekly e-newsletter and even fasting from this blog I felt that God really wanted me to seek His face. This is part of what I believe the Enemy wanted to prevent.

If you get a chance, please continue to pray that I would be healthy and that I would have time to really listen to God's voice during this sabbatical time.

Thanks for your prayers.

Peace,
Keith

Stop. Shut up. Move.

No more conferences with the hottest bands and the biggest name authors who will lead us through eloquent, dynamic speeches about how we should live better lives where we will take notes and go home and stay the same.

No more endless books to choke the shelves about how we should change the word and live better lives where we will underline and highlight and close the final page and do none of it.

No more Bible Studies. No more sermons. No more worship conferences. No more Christian Concerts, comedy shows, events, gatherings, seminars. No more shows.

If you stopped learning today you would never live long enough to put most of it into practice anyway. Loving your neighbor as yourself will take the rest of your life if you start now.

Stop.

No more blogs. No more debates over the nuances of the Kingdom or the correct inflections of dogma and doctrine. No more articles by experts who pretend to have the answers or hope to draw a crowd or sell their books. (Myself included).

Let the websites fall silent. Let the noise die down. Shut down your blog, your Facebook account, your Twitter feed, your MySpace page. Silence the endless blah, blah, blah. Be still. Be quiet.

Shut up.

Listen for the voice of the lonely crying in the darkness. They are there. They are living a few miles from your house. Perhaps even right next door to you or down the street. They have not heard the Gospel. They have not seen the love of God in action. They have not experienced love that was pure and holy and true and without strings attached. You could show them. You could demonstrate. You could speak. You could give. You could share what you have with them.

Listen to the voice of God. Begin to live a life of purpose. Let your actions declare the Glory and Mercy of a loving God. Love extravagantly. Serve passionately. Become an expert at servanthood.

Turn your face towards the Gates of Hell and start moving forward. Live a Kingdom life. Jesus is coming back, sooner than you expect him to. Be found doing His will, with your hand to the plow and your eyes set on the Kingdom of God.

Put all these countless sermons, conference notes, books and articles into practice. Do something that the local news can't help but talk about.

For example:

This

or

This

or

This

or

This

Stop. Shut up. Move.

"We know that we have come to know him if we obey his commands. The man who says, "I know him," but does not do what he commands is a liar, and the truth is not in him. But if anyone obeys his word, God's love is truly made complete in him. This is how we know we are in him: Whoever claims to live in him must walk as Jesus did." - 1 John 2:3-6

-kg
**
P.S. - I'm not trying to start a debate or a conversation here. Comment if you like but please know that I will not be participating in any comments. Right now it's all I can do to start walking out my faith in my actual life. I'm tired of talking. I have resolved to do more "walk, walk" than "talk, talk" by the Grace of God.

Don't look for me on Facebook or Twitter or even here for a while. My hope is to do more serving and loving and practing my faith than I spend time talking about it.

Thank you for your prayers.

WE'RE ON ABC WORLD NEWS TONIGHT

Homelessness in Orange County
Over 35,000 people in Orange County California are homeless and 80% of those are families with children. Most of these live in motels because they cannot afford first and last month's rent, and a security deposit. They are faced with the choice of food on the table or a table on which there is no food.

ABC WORLD NEWS TONIGHT recently did a report on the "Hidden Homeless" living in OC Motels:

ABC 7 News - "Hidden Homeless In OC Motels"
(Features interview with Jim Palmer of the Orange County Rescue Mission)
WATCH HERE

ABC WORLD NEWS TONIGHT - "Motel Homeless" segment
WATCH HERE

The segment mentions that church groups have been helping with food and resources and Jim Palmer, founder of the Orange County Rescue Mission, is interviewed in both the National and the local segements.

-kg

THIS SUNDAY: LOVE IN ACTION

This Sunday morning, from 9:30am to 12pm, our house church will join with a sister house church in Yorba Linda to help 66 year old Sandy Maitlen of Yorba Linda.

We'll repair, clean, paint, and make her home beautiful again.

This is what "being the Church" and putting our faith into practice is all about.

As one brother in Christ told me once, "Jesus Is A Verb" and our love should be demonstrated, not merely spoken.

Can't wait!
kg
**
"Little Children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action."
- 1 John 3.18.

THE KINGDOM REALITY

THE KINGDOM REALITY
by Keith Giles

The Kingdom of God is the present reality which breaks into this illusion of ours intermittently, like very bad cell phone reception. It's God's way of saying, "Can you hear me now?"

In fact, experiencing and living in this Kingdom Reality is, in itself, an exercise in the Kingdom principles of "Letting Go" and "The Power of Weakness". When we give up on our strength and wait for God's power to come and to move it's a testimony of our trust in His promise to us that "Those who wait upon the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar like Eagles", resting and gliding under the power of the wind of the Holy Spirit.

Waiting and trusting in His power, not our own, taking confidence in His strength, not ours, is a demonstration of The Power of Weakness in action.

For us, this coming, advancing, intermittent reality is counter-intuitive. We’ve been born into this illusion – falsely labeled "Reality"- and have been immersed in this do-it-yourself mentality all of our lives. We need to learn to "Re-Think" everything – or as Jesus said, to "Repent," (Metanoia = Rethink), "for the Kingdom of God (Heaven) is near" (Or, "It is within our grasp, our reach, and close enough to touch.")

It is very much like taking the red pill and finding ourselves wide awake in a reality which is upside down and backwards from the world we have been born into. At first we reel with the vertigo of a world where up is down and the first are last. Those who humble themselves are exalted, the greatest is the servant of all, and those who lose their lives find everlasting, eternal life, even though they die daily. This is the Kingdom of God.

Welcome to reality. Because this upside down world, we quickly discover, is NOT upside down, it is right side up. We have lived so long, head over heels, immersed in an illusion of selfish fulfillment and a pursuit of more, more, more, that we need to detoxify our minds and hearts and flesh in order to remain in God’s Kingdom Reality.

Jesus announced this Kingdom, told us how to see it, how to walk in it and remain in it, and gave us the best news possible: We could enter and begin living in Reality anytime we wanted to.

In the Kingdom of God there is just one King; God Himself. He is a good, loving, kind, and wildly, unpredictably, sometimes uncomfortably intimate, inclusive and wonderful King, and Father, and Friend.

His Kingdom is a place where His perfect will is always done and those who rest in His will are refreshed and delighted and fulfilled and at peace and overjoyed. They are children born into the poverty of excess wealth and selfishness who have been adopted into a new Family of the unending wealth of generosity and the joy of always having enough to share and give away.

This is reality. Before God made this vast oasis called "Space and Time" there was no space or time. Everything was perfectly “Now” and Eternally present with Him. This is the only reality there has ever been. God’s Kingdom was, and is, and is to come.

Our temporary stay in this unusual experiment called "Time and Space" will eventually expire and the temporary Kingdoms of this Earth will soon fade away. The Kingdom of Pleasure will fall to the ground. The Kingdom of Greed will perish. The Kingdom of Exploitation and Oppression and Excess and Fashion and Wealth and Flesh, will all crumble and burn and disappear into oblivion. Only one Kingdom will remain and that is the Kingdom which was here "In The Beginning" – which has even now come, and which we can enter today. And, one day, soon, this Kingdom will break forever into this illusion we drift through for the moment, and overtake all we see and know.

Are you ready to enter this Kingdom? Are you ready to begin living under the awesome rule and reign of The King? There's just one thing, before you take that leap, before you swallow the red pill, that you should know, so that you can count the cost. Those who enter the Kingdom can only step across the threshold if they pay the price. It's really nothing when you think about it, when you compare the amazing riches of God's Eternal Kingdom with the tokens and trinkets of our counterfeit reality. The price of admission, the way to step across, is to let go of this world.

Just as you were born naked and weak and vulnerable and empty-handed into this world, so you can take nothing with you into God’s Kingdom. It's called being "Born Again".

The things of this world are not truly treasures. When you die they will stay here anyway, and just as you can take nothing with you beyond the grave, you can take nothing with you when you step into God's Kingdom.

Jesus only asks for one thing- It's called Everything.

But what you gain, what you receive in exchange, is beyond anything you can dream of or hope for or imagine. The Kingdom of God, when you see it, when you really understand it, you will gladly rush out to sell all that you have, as quickly as possible, to step across the threshold into Heaven.

This is the moment where many people stop and turn back. Their grip on this world, or its grip on them, is so strong that they can never let go of their tiny, petty lives in this place in order to receive real life and treasure in God's Kingdom.

If we have really seen the Kingdom, if we really understood and believed that this Kingdom was real (in a way that nothing else can ever be real), then we would rush quickly to surrender all that we have and all that we are in order to receive the treasure that does not rust or face or disappoint.

"For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it." - Luke 9:24

"The Kingdom of God is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field. Again, the Kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls. When he found one of great value, he went away and sold everything he had and bought it." (Matthew 13:44)

All God wants is all of you. All He asks is that you Trust Him and Believe Him and surrender your meager treasures and petty personal kingdoms in exchange for His Kingdom. God wants to be your God. He wants you to be one of His People.

"If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me" – Jesus (Luke 9:23). There is no other way but the Cross.

Jesus says it is very hard for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God. "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to enter the Kingdom." Who then can be saved? His disciples asked. "With man this is impossible," Jesus replied, "But not with God; all things are possible with God." (Mark 10: 23-27)

Will you let go? Will you surrender it all? Will you seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness? This is the only question we need to answer in order to step across the threshold into the amazing reality of God's Kingdom.

You can stay here, on this side of reality, where you are safe and miserable, in your tiny kingdom where your will is what matters. Or you can sell it all, exchange the handful of crumbling mud for real treasure which lasts forever.

Is your kingdom so wonderful? Aren’t you tired of wearing the crown? Haven't you suffered long enough under your own rule and reign?

When you are ready to set fire to your kingdom, and surrender your lordship, and dance as the flames consume your empty way of living, He is ready to invite you to experience Reality, today.

There is only One King, and He is good. He really wants what is best for you, and He can, above all, beyond any other, be Trusted. His Name is Faithful and True.

"I am the Way, the Truth and the Life and no one comes to the Father but by me" – Jesus (John 14)

*Originally posted here March, 2008.


-Keith

ADVICE ON STARTING A HOUSE CHURCH

Today I received an email from an old friend who is seeking advice on how to start a house church group among college students. He asked me, "What would Keith do?"

This is an intriguing question and I realized I haven't published a lot of my ideas on this anywhere so here's a bit of what I said to my friend.

Honestly, I lean towards a "less is more" approach and I'm usually reticent to give people step by step instructions. However, I'd basically suggest gathering those who are interested in this together and sharing a meal together (potluck), sharing communion together, and sharing from their actual lives what God has been teaching them in their daily walk with Christ.

Our house church follows this general pattern based on 1 Cor 14:26 - "What then shall we say, brothers? When you come together, everyone has a hymn, or a word of instruction, a revelation, a tongue or an interpretation. All of these must be done for the strengthening of the church."

So, our assumption is that everyone in our house church is already a follower of Jesus. Most of them, like me, have grown up in Church and have heard thousands of sermons and bible studies and can fill in the blanks on any discussion on the Scriptures. What we're not so great at is actually putting all of this into actual practice in our daily lives.

The purpose of our house church is to encourage and motivate everyone to live out their personal mission and calling according to their individual gifting. It's different for all of us. So, we don't tell them what it is, we help them to discover it and then we encourage one another every time we gather to continue living out that personal mission.

When we gather each week we all bring something to share - food and encouragement. During the share time I try to keep my mouth shut and allow people to talk. I also try to make sure that everyone is given equal time to speak and I try to keep us on target with encouraging one another in our walk with Christ. (This means re-directing complaints, gripes, politics, etc. to the end for prayer, or for another time).

In general, I'd suggest empowering people and not attempting to control or direct people.

For me, one of the most amazing things has been discovering that when Jesus said that the Holy Spirit would lead us into all truth, and when Paul and Peter said that we were the Temple of the Holy Spirit and the priesthood of believers, they were all dead serious.

In our house church we have kids who open their Bibles and their mouths and speak such words of simple truth that only God could have revealed it to them. Sure, we have to safeguard the essentials of our faith, and there are times when I may have to speak up and correct a misconception theologically, but most of the time I'm the one who is learning from the Holy Spirit through everyone else in the room.

It can be very challenging for someone like me (and maybe you as well) with a gift to teach and a heart to preach to actually shut our mouths, invite the Holy Spirit and then just wait quietly in the uncomfortable silence for Him to speak. But, I'm telling you, if you can, and if you will, He actually does...and it's pretty amazing.

I've written a few things about my philosophy of house church at the links below. Take a look over at www.OCHouseChurch.com

So You Want To Plant A House Church?
"House Church 101" by Keith Giles
House Church Q & A

Any more questions? Hit me back at "elysiansky" at hotmail.

-kg

FROM ETERNITY TO HERE

Frank Viola (author of "Pagan Christianity" and "Reimagining Church") has a new book out called FROM ETERNITY TO HERE.

Full disclosure: Frank sent me the book free of charge and asked me to mention it here on my blog so that readers could find out about the book.

I haven't read the book at all. Not even the first page, although eventually I will get around to reading it. It's in a pile right now with books like "The Scandalous Gospel of Jesus" by Peter J.Gomes, a short story collection by Philip K. Dick, "The Prehistory of the Farside" by Gary Larson, and the second "Dark Empire" book by Dark Horse.

My friend Kelly has read the new Viola book and this is what he told me: "The first third was kinda ok. The second third was better and the final third was seriously awesome." So, I can't wait to read the final third of this book.

Just FYI, the new book isn't about house church or church history or anything that you might commonly associate with Viola's name. This may be a good thing, or it may confuse people. Those who already equate his name with the "anti-traditional church" movement will steer clear of this one, even though they might actually love it, and those who rabidly follow Viola because of "Pagan Christianity" will be slightly disappointed that he doesn't toss them a reload in their war against the IC (Institutional Church).

As promised, here's a link to go and purchase Frank's book online for a great discount.
GO HERE

*Note: If I seem a bit like I'm under-promoting this book it's because:
A) I'm not a fan of selling stuff on my blog.
B) I haven't actually read the book but I feel obligated to provide a link to help Frank spread the word.

I must say that Frank has been very accessible to me via e-mail and he's helped me with a few things recently. For that I am grateful and I sincerely hope that God continues to allow him to speak to more Christians about what it means to follow Christ and discover their identity in Him rather than in religious activity.

Peace,
Keith

[Subversive Underground] - RIP

Well, it's done. After 3 years, and 180 articles on discipleship, the Gospel of the Kingdom, compassion for the poor and the New Testament Church, the free, weekly e-newsletter [Subversive Underground] is laid to rest.

I started the weekly newsletter as a way to send weekly ideas and articles to about 30 of my friends. Originally the intent was to create a motivation for me to write something of substance each and every week. Over time I began to focus on the concepts that were most important to me.

Over the years the newsletter grew to 272 subscribers. Most of them found me via my articles over at theOoze.com, Ginkworld.net, SeedStories.com, Next-Wave Magazine and other online sources. Many of them I didn't know and will never meet this side of eternity, but several of them took the time to contact me directly and encourage me or ask for advice. Some took the time to leave angry comments, attack my character and insult me. Others left comments that inspired me and directed the conversation into more productive directions. I'm very grateful to all of these people for their insight, their passion and their honesty.

When I first heard God's whisper about starting this newsletter I was working on a little sci-fi and comics project called Plastic Animal Studios and I felt that God wanted me to lay that aside in order to focus on more Kingdom-centric things.

Now, three years later, I am hearing God whisper to me again. This time He is asking me to lay down the [Subversive Underground] so that He can lead me somewhere new.

I have to let go of this thing in order to receive the next thing He wants to place into my open hands.

It's a little bit scary. A little bit sad. But it's also exciting to find out what God has next for me.

I'm sure I'll blog about it here when the time comes. For now, I'm looking forward to taking a few weeks off and listen to His voice.

"I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds." - Jesus (John 12:24)

For many years now I have been inspired by the phrase "Conversatio Morem!" which the early christians meant as "Constant Conversion!" or "Death to the Status Quo!" Now I think I understand this phrase even better than before. My status quo must die. I must be in constant conversion in order to allow the Holy Spirit to change me and for God to have His way with me.

Here we go...

kg

FAITH IN ACTION - SATURDAY, MARCH 21

*I received the email below from my dear friends Noel and Julie Cruz. They are leading a new house church fellowship in Yorba Linda, California and have started helping a dear old woman on their street. Read the email below and if you're in the area and want to lend a hand, I can't think of a better way to spend a weekend.
-kg
**
[Here's the email I received from the Cruz' family today]--

We need as many able bodies as possible to help the Extreme Makeover that we are doing for a lady down street from us.

Our home group has a senior friend who attends our group and who’s house was in a complete disrepair. Our home group has come together and has begun the work 4 weeks ago and during the first weekend of our work we removed 7 tons (yes tons) of debris and took it to the dump! We have done some of the hardest work there is to do on the house, but much more remains to be done.

Sandy told us that not long ago she was pray/crying to God and reminded him what His word says about being her husband…. She said "So, God, if that's the case then here is my Honey-do list. I just cant get any of this done myself!" and voila! Here we are.

We still have several projects that are priority to do. Our Part II is painting the house. We are working on a all volunteer basis so the more bodies we have the better.

On March 20, 21, 22 we will be scraping, sanding, filling, and painting. Most of the grunt work will be on Friday and that is where we hope to get a large contingency of strong people blowing through this. We can use people all three days but we want to be sure that the house is ready to paint on Sunday. The paint has all been donated and we will each bring our own tools, ie orbital sanders, sand paper, putty knife, roller, gloves, paint brushes etc.

If you are available or know someone who is, please respond to this email (cruzthiz@sbcglobal.net) and I will count you in. Let me know which day(s) you can be here.

I have included the link to the blog that was published on the OCRegister.com site and a couple pictures of Sandy/project -
HERE

Thanks to all of you who can give any time at all for this project! I guarantee you will be blessed! You’ll never get back the time that you give but aint that what God’s economy is all about?

God is blessing this woman more than anyone could ever imagine.

Hugs,

Noel and Julie Cruz
Email: cruzthiz@sbcglobal.net

MAGNIFICENT - LIVE ON LETTERMAN

*See lyrics below

Magnificent

Magnificent

I was born
I was born to be with you
In this space and time
After that and ever after I haven't had a clue
Only to break rhyme
This foolishness can leave a heart black and blue

Only love, only love can leave such a mark
But only love, only love can heal such a scar

I was born
I was born to sing for you
I didn’t have a choice but to lift you up
And sing whatever song you wanted me to
I give you back my voice
From the womb my first cry, it was a joyful noise…

Only love, only love can leave such a mark
But only love, only love can heal such a scar

Justified till we die, you and I will magnify
The Magnificent
Magnificent

Only love, only love can leave such a mark
But only love, only love unites our hearts

Justified till we die, you and I will magnify
The Magnificent
Magnificent
Magnificent

Lyrics by Bono, Music by U2 (from the album "No Line On The Horizon")

THE GOD WHO TOUCHES US

Last week, during worship time, as we were singing songs to God about our desire to reach out and touch him, I realized something.

While it's normal for us to want to touch God, we know that we cannot ever do this. However, even though we cannot touch God, we have a God who touches us.

Maybe I'll write a song about that?

Just a thought.

kg

TWITTER THOUGHTS

I've discovered Twitter and I've found that being forced to encapsulate your thoughts into 140 characters or less can be quite liberating and inspirational.

Here's a bit of what I Tweeted about this last week:

"If our language is love, and if our message is love, let us speak love in its native tongue; Actions & Truth."

"The world needs more poetry and prophets who speak truth poetically."

"Everyone is in process. There is a season for everything. Grace is requirement 4 life."

Plus this gem from Mr. Rogers:
"When we look for whats best in the person we happen to be with at the moment, we're doing what God does."

Just thought I'd share...

Peace,
kg