Nathanael Rowe

Today I Came in to Westside early, around 11am to write out my Sermon for this weekend on being flexible, and instead God decided to just show me what it really means to just sit back and let Him have control. The following is all the seemingly random things that happened today.

A man came to the church asking for “El padre de la iglesia.” I am not fluent in Spanish, so it took me a while to understand what he was saying, but I caught on when I heard him say, “confesión.” He was asking for the pastor, so that he could say confession, a practice we are not very familiar with in the Christian Church. None the less, I pointed him to Sean, and he went on in to his office for confession.

Then Prophet Alonzo came in, and started sharing with me what God had been telling him through his word that day, and if you have not gotten a chance to hear the Prophet speak about God, then you are missing out. Anyway, he shared with me some stories from his life some failures of the flesh, and some conquering moments of the spirit. And how God has raised him up to be the man he is today. His story was impactful to me, and very inspiring.

While in the midst of the Prophet telling me a story about how he found himself ministering in an underground gambling club, Sean walked in. And we all started talking about what we see God doing in our lives and at the church.

Before I knew it, it was time to start setting up for Skateside, but before I did that, a guy a know from Skateside, who is 20 years old told me about how his girlfriend is four months pregnant, and was just sharing with me the burden he feels to now provide for his coming child, and hopefully his future wife. So I tried to counsel him on that a bit, but I really don’t know what to say to someone going through something I have never been through.

Then I went to set up Skateside, and Mike Donnelon and Daniel Timtim showed up.  These are some really cool guys that are responsible for building skateparks all over Long Beach.  In fact Mike had a lot to do with the Silverado park being put in just up the street from our church, and Daniel is helping run skate contest and put in some new skate parks near Poly High School. They came to give me a deck signed by Tony Hawk and Chad TimTim (Two Professional Skaters) as well as some other BMX riders.

While I was talking with Mike and Daniel, a guy came in to the church office and ended up talking with Alonzo and Sean. I was not there for this, but apparently they both started just praying over the man who was struggling with alcohol, and what seemed like some blatant evil spirits in his life.

As halftime approached I met a friend of Robert’s named Mark, who has been saved and clean for 8 years now, but had a crazy testimony about being in gangs and in and out of prison that he wanted to share with the Skatesiders some day. So I started chatting with him, about talking with the students in the next couple weeks.

Joe told me he wanted to do halftime, which I was planning on doing, but he just kind of felt the Lord telling him something, so we let him do it.  He ended up sharing this really intense story about how he got arrested just for hanging out with two guys who had sold some weed, and he ended up spending a week in jail. It was crazy, but I think the kids really connected with what he was saying.

Some of the Skatesiders did this.

As I was taking Joe to the metro, we decided to stop and get some food. He started telling me all about his family, and the gang violence in his neighborhood and the abuse he and his mom went through from her last boyfriend. How he had to watch this guy put a gun to his mom’s head, and a whole bunch of other violent crazy stuff. So then I started sharing with him about how it is hard to see while we walk through it, but God uses our pain to help mold us into the exact thing person he is calling us to be.

It was a great day, and I pretty sure I left 50% of it out.

Here is a link the my sermon from today, as well as some of the images I used during the sermon.

What does God desire?

The doped up cholo raced through our skateside parking lot in his green Ford Explorer as fast as he could.  After almost hitting a couple kids, the skaters started yelling at him as he proceeded down the alley.  I walked up to see what was going on when I saw 2 women who apparently just got out of this car, walking towards us yelling at the kids.  Then the vehicle raced backwards almost hitting his own 2 passengers.

When he got back into our parking lot he jumped out of his car and started swinging at one of the kids at the park.  The man was about 5′8″ 150 pounds, and violently angry for some reason.  As soon as he started to swing my first thoughts were about whether or not this guy had some kind of weapon or not.  Once I saw he was only using his fists I grabbed him and threw him to the ground.  Somehow I landed on the ground with him, and I was trying to put him in a choke hold to keep him from attacking more kids.   As I was trying to get my arms around his neck, I felt him attempting to chew through my arm.  It was about this same time that a large shadow came over me, it was one of the ladies he almost ran over, and she was screaming “Get off my man!” as she started to swing at me.

I yelled back, “I’m just trying to keep him from hurting any of the kids.”  That distraction was all he needed to be back up and his car searching for a weapon.  He quickly turned around with a crow bar, and started running and swinging at the same kid he originally went after.  Turns out the 16 year old kid got quite a few good hits on his now bloodied face, and he was looking for vengeance.  I yell to all the kids, around 35 of them, “Someone call 911 now!”  I then try to take a mental image of the license plate.  One of the women from the vehicle sees what I am doing and stands in front of it.  I tell her “It’s too late, I got it, so you better leave now because the cops are coming right now.”

She yells back something about me being a big redneck, and then runs into her vehicle, along with the enraged thug. I couldn’t help but laugh at that comment.

I started to walk towards the kid making the phone call to ensure that the police were on their way.  While I am walking away the lady by the truck is yelling, “Lets just get the gun, Lets get the gun!”  I turn around to see one of the women right behind me about to swing a skateboard at me.  I step towards her quickly and clench my fist.  I was about to hit a woman for the first time in my life.  She dropped the skateboard once she saw I was about to fight back, and went back to their car and took off.

We brought the kids inside to wait for the West Long Beach Police, but something was taking them a while.  More than 45 minutes have passed and so I take a look outside, and ask one of the pedestrians if they have seen any police around.  One guy answers back that there are some cars just down the street.  My thought is that maybe they have grabbed this guy, so I walk towards them.  There are three police cars parked about 200 ft away from our church, all of which were responding to a traffic accident there.  I asked them if they had gotten a call about a man attacking some kids.  One officer looks and says someone should be on their way.  OK, I say disappointingly, and I turn to walk back to the church.  Why are there 3 cars for a traffic accident, and no one at our church in response to a crazy man attacking some kids?  It takes another 45 minutes before an officer finally shows up, over an hour and a half from the original call.

He takes the report, we send the kids home, and I head to the ER for my bite wound.  I spent 4 hours there, until finally I saw a doctor, had some tests run, got a tetanus shot, and got some antibiotics.  Turns out human bites are actually pretty dangerous.

In the end, just another typical night of ministry in West Long Beach.

During the trip I had a lot of time to think about what I want in life, I thought about future occupations, a future family, where I would want to live, and what I would want to accomplish by the time I die.  After much consideration, I decided I would like to get married some day, probably still some years off if it does indeed happen, but if it does, there are a couple of specific things I am looking for.  I know many people who want to get married and that is it, that is the end goal.  For me, I think I only want to get married if the conditions are right, that is to say, I see no need to dive into a life long commitment with someone unless they meet certain criteria.  The following is said criteria, which I share mainly for the purpose of being held accountable to my own current convictions.  It would be marvelously challenging if somewhere down the road, I am involved in a relationship where something from here is left out, and that is made aware to me by a friend or acquaintance who read it here some time before.

1. Although it may be obvious, I want to be completely in love with that person.  I want to feel for her what I read about it books, and see in the movies.  If I am not in love with a person to the point where I truly care about them, more than I do myself, then I really see no need to get married.  I want absolute love or nothing else.  Perhaps this is foolish, I really don’t know.  Its just that so far as I can see, marriage doesn’t seem worth it unless I am head over heals for her.

2. She would need to be someone who is in love God so much so that she is willing to follow Him wherever He may lead us.  Right now I do not see a specific call to anywhere but Long Beach, CA, but I want to remain open to wherever I can be used most.  I love adventure, and would hope that I could find that same excitement in a mate.  Again, if she does not share that excitement to follow God wherever, I hope that I would always prefer to stay wildly devoted to God and single rather than to settle for a dull safe life with a partner.

3. I am frugal, and would like a partner to be so as well.  This is not so much to save money, which is indeed part of it, but more so because I value good stewardship, and am passionate about being able to give generously.  I am not saying this should be true of everyone, but I personally feel guilty any time I buy something that is not essential.  I understand buying nice things every once in a while, but I would hope that my partner would feel the same desire and urge to give and support those who do great acts of charity, more so than she would see the need to spoil herself with luxuries.  Maybe I just sound cheap, but I find it incredibly attractive when women value the needs of others more than they do their own jewelry.

4. I have recently seen the need for a more healthy lifestyle, and I think I can thank daily stops at Mcdonald’s while traveling the US for that conclusion.  With that I would like to find someone who values their health as well as mine.  I think I would do well with someone who challenged me to maintain a healthy lifestyle, both in how I eat, and the activities I do.  It would be ideal that this person likes to prepare healthy food with me, and engaged in healthy activity with me as well.

5. The last thing is beauty, and this is something that roots itself much deeper than just one’s skin.  I have known plenty of sexually attractive women that were just down right ugly.  Likewise I have met plenty of women who I did not find attractive at first glance, but who grew in beauty as I discovered their elegance in how they treated others and myself.   I do want a woman who is physically appealing don’t get me wrong, but on top of that she needs to be someone who shows beauty in the way she interacts with people.  This can mean so many things, her sense of humor, her compassion towards others, her strength, her independence, and so many other things that make a woman beautiful.

I know some people who are concerned for me and my singleness, and have even mentioned this to me, as if there is something wrong with me for it.  However I am quite proud to be content with my independence.  I do not feel as though my life would be incomplete without a spouse, but it does seem like a pleasing way to live.  With that said I am in no rush to find a wife, and like I said before if I can not find all of the things I listed, then I would just as well prefer to stay single.  For me marriage is not an absolute, under the proper circumstances it would be most beneficial and pleasant, but outside of those circumstances it seems rather unnecessary and simply not worth the difficult effort involved in maintaining a relationship.

So I have recently started working at Skateside in West Long Beach.  It is an interesting job, Basically my job is to hang out with skater kids from the hood.  Anyway, in my first 2 weeks there, I heard twice about a kid who bought a board on credit from a local shop owner, one who donates frequently to Skateside, but out of the $55 he owed the owner, he had only paid $10 in the last 4 months.  The shop owner was of course upset, but the cool part is that after Sean the pastor heard about this problem a couple times, He decided it would be best to simply pay the shop owner for the kids debt.  The crazy thing about this, is that this wasn’t a good kid.  In fact the rumor is that he is using the money that he was supposed to be paying the shop owner to buy weed.  I mean someone might understand paying for a kid who is good, but just couldn’t come up with the money.  However hearing about a kid who got his debt paid even while he was in the midst of being kind of jerk seems a little weird, a little awkward, but yet that is the very thing Christ did for us.

“While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” – Romans 5:8

So now if this kid ever goes to pay off his debt, the shop owner will just simply tell him, “Oh, don’t worry about it, your debt has been paid.”  Imagine the feeling if your a kid and you go into a skate shop to pay off your debt and that is what the owner tells you.  Now who knows where this kid will end up, or if this will even help him in the long run, but the cool thing is the amazing connection this story has with the gospel.  My prayer is that this kid will hear that his debt has been paid, and that something will click in his head, that there is someone who loves him.  And yes for the sake of this story that someone is the pastor, but hopefully he will realize that there is a God who loves him too, and that he has paid an even bigger debt on his behalf.

I have this buddy Joe, who is about twice my age.  He goes to church sometimes at Parkcrest, but is an agnostic.  Tonight he called to talk motorcycles, but instead we ended up talking for about 2 hours about Christians and this guy named Jesus.  What

is funny, is that after talking to his agnostic for 2 hours we both realized that we had some of the same questions about Christianity.  The issues that he struggles and debates over in his own mind are the same ones that I do.  His frustration with that is, that we he talks to the average church goer about these issues, their response usually boils down to, “well God said it and I believe it.”  By the way this is not a very convincing argument to a non-believer.  So when he hears this he confessed that he assumed that this is simply a tenant of Christianity, Blind Faith.

So our conversation’s main theme was that this is not, nor was it ever a true tenant of the Christian faith, but for some reason this seems to be how we like to make our disciples now days.  Lets face it, it is much easier to lead a bunch of sheep that do exactly what you tell them without question, but I do not think this was the purpose of the shepherd metaphor.  The Hebrew culture and scriptures are full of people who did just the opposite, not granted there were many times where they were in the wrong for this, but still God’s chosen peop

le were a group that tended to disagree with him.  In fact, one of their fore fathers is said to have actually wrestled with God.

This afternoon, I had lunch with Al Siebert, who is a great thinker and leader here in Long Beach.  We were talking about how so many institutions whether it be churches or schools are very concerned with passing down certain aspects of their particular theological system.  And so I asked Al, “Why don’t we just teach all the valid opinions on an issue, and then let the students make up their own minds?”  Like for instance, instead of teaching Calvanism, or Open Theism, Or Arminianism, why not just teach all three, and allow the students to make up their own mind.  Their are plenty of smart and dedicated followers in all three categories, so why should we try and limit someone’s thought process on a non-essential issue?

Al’s response was this, “Because we are more concerned with creating people who think exactly like us.”

It was kind of a sad reality, we are more concerned with creating like minded thinkers than we are with creating people who can think critically and be challenged with these issues for themselves.  What was interesting to me, and something I shared with my buddy Joe over our phone conversation is that Jesus seemed to not concern himself too much with creating people who think the same as him, and a lot more concerned in discipling people to do the same things he did.  He didn’t seem to spend much time talking about the theology behind predestination and free-will, or the different theories of his own atonement, but what He did spend a lot of time on was showing them how to heal the sick, how to care for the poor, how to love the unlovable, and how to depend on God fully throughout all of those things.  Jesus cared about making proper doers, not proper thinkers.

All of this is to say, I realized my buddy Joe was somewhat stunted in any potential spiritual growth because any question he had didn’t really have an answer, let alone a thoughtful counter question like Jesus had.  And so as a thoughtful person talking to many blind sheep he can’t help but think that all there is to being a Christian is just blindly following Jesus.  The truth is this is the case for the majority of any line of faith or political ideology, there will always be a surplus of people who hold firmly to their beliefs simply cause they were told to.  But to reach the Joes of the world I think we are going to have be a lot more thoughtful in how we train up our disciples.  For one, they need to be OK with not having the whole theology thing nailed down, and be comfortable with the wrestling that can occasionally happen on this journey of following God.  And even more importantly we need to train the next generation to be doers because that is what Jesus did, and that is what changes the world.

So I just got out of the sequel to Boondock Saints, and while it wasn’t as good as the first, I was still pleased with its common theme of pure awesome justice delivered by the hand of God.  Its an awesome story of how two guys are called by God to eliminate evil, to literally kill off evil men.  It is a great plot line that makes for a fun movie, but it forgets some pretty common themes in scripture.  Themes I have recently been pondering.

For starters the film is right to assume that we are in a war.  I was just listening to the book on tape, “Let the nations be Glad” by John Piper, and in the second chapter he makes the very important point to say, we (Members of the Kingdom of God) are in a time of war.  The problem is that all too often fellow members of the Kingdom buy into the lie that we are in a time of peace.  This simply is not so, what better trick can the adversary play on us than to fool us into thinking we are not really at war.  With that kind of blindness, what soldiers are there left to stand for anything.

Jesus said it like this,

“Still others, like seed sown among thorns, hear the word; but the worries of this life, the deceitfulness of wealth and the desires for other things come in and choke the word, making it unfruitful.” (Mark 4:18-19)

I think we are unfruitful because we have forgotten that we are indeed in the time of war.  Evil must be fought against, it can not be allowed to continue in it’s present state, but our war is not against flesh and blood, our war is against the powers of this dark world.  See in the movie, they make it real easy to define the enemy as other humans, but that is not who our war is against, in fact that is who our war is for.  The very man who does evil is also the very man Jesus came to rescue, so our fight is for the lost and so called evil of this world, and that makes the battle a lot more complicated.

So I ask myself this question, how do we fight a war against powers that we can not see or interact with?  Even more how do we avoid the all to easy conclusion of hatred and anger towards our fellow humans, who we know we are fighting for, but all too often behave as though they are the adversary himself.  Satan fights his battles much like a coward who sends children to war, he sends humans to do evil against other humans, leaving us no choice but to fight against the very creation we were sent to rescue.

I do not know completely how this war is fought righteously, but I do know that part of it is to simply expose the evil and darkness all around us.  Paul says in Ephesians 5:10-11,

“Find out what pleases the Lord. Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them.”

So I propose this, that part of our jobs as members of this great Kingdom is to expose the wickedness and evil for what it is.  To stand up for what is right and let brightness overcome the dark and disgusting parts of this evil world.  We must expose evil before we can vanquish it, so where is evil in your city, in your neighborhood, in your home, in your own life?

I have seen it all to often within me, and it saddens me, but we all need to expose our own evil, to recognize that we are fallen, and to admit that we only have ourselves to blame, then the real fight can begin.