Mark unearths problems the Church all too often keeps buried under dusty hymnals and pious jargon.  “Christianity has a perception problem. At the heart of the problem is the simple fact that Christians are more known for what we’re against than what we’re for” (6). We’ve been shaking our fists at the darkness while all along the world needed us to simply turn the light on.  And my generation has turned from the church for that and a hundred other reasons.  That’s a problem. And if we could stop plastering on our plastic masks and lip-syncing our praise songs long enough to notice, maybe we could do something about it. Now, before you think I’m spitting invectives at the church, know that I am the Church…and I am guilty.  So Primal brings a voice to the concerns I’ve had for many years. But more than that, it provides a solution.

We need to become great at the Great Commandment.

That may not be the best one-sentence summary of the book, but it sets our focus on where the solution lies. If the greatest commandment of all of scripture, then why don’t we spend all of our effort on loving God?  Perhaps we’ve never done a great job at asking the question, “How do we love God with our heart, soul, mind, and strength?”  And that’s exactly what Primal sets out to answer.

The book embarks on the adventure in four different parts, focusing on each of the arenas of life in which God calls us to love him. “Think of it as love to the fourth power” (7).

The heart of Christianity is primal compassion.

The soul of Christianity is primal wonder.

The mind of Christianity is primal curiosity.

And the strength of Christianity is primal energy.

The one qualm I have with the book is the missing half of the Great Commandment which I see, as Jesus put it, as “equally important” (Matt 22:39, NLT). That, of course is, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” It’s only in the past several years that the Gospel, indeed, all of Scripture has come down for me to simply this:  Love God and Love People. From what I’ve seen of Mark Batterson, I can’t hold this against him at all.  I know he holds the second commandment in high esteem.  He may simply be practicing the principle of teaching less for more.  I wouldn’t be surprised in the least if his next book reveals powerful insights into what it means to love our neighbor.  Still, if I must read Primal with a critical eye, this minor issue is just about all I can complain about.

Mark Batterson uses his unique insights and experiences to take us on a journey into the heart of Christianity. You will be moved to compassion. You will experience profound awe at the wonder of God. You will be given all the reason you need to explore creation and knowledge with the curiosity deep inside you. You will see your daily action as an opportunity to love God. And you will set down this book with a primal desire to love God more in every way.

So, let Primal strip away the years of mortar and clay that cover your once fully-alive faith, wipe away the perceptions that have clouded your sight, and take you down the stairway to “rediscover the compassion, wonder, curiosity, and energy that turned the world upside down two thousand years ago.” This is an invitation; an invitation to embark on a quest for the lost soul of Christianity. An invitation to be astonished again.

            When I was just a child and learning to walk, I was exploring the house as if I’d never seen it before.  I had to touch every little thing, often bringing a lamp or picture frame down to the ground with a crash.  One day I found the motherload—the button covered, knob spotted, flashing light, tower of technology—the home stereo system.  It was also one of the most expensive items in the house.  Thus, mom watched me carefully while I gazed at the gigantic gadget.  When I decided to go in for the touch, my mother was right there to slap my hand away.  But I was a determined little boy…I reached for it again…SLAP!  Denied again.  Another try and I began to equate the stinging feeling with my touching attempts.  But did that stop me?  Nooo… I closed my eyes, turned my head away, anticipating the slap, and reached out again…

            We as human beings often know what is wrong for us to do, yet we do it anyway.  It’s the same conundrum Paul encountered in Romans 7:15 when he said, “what I want to do, I do not do, but what I hate, I do anyway.”  We all, like Paul, have done what we know is wrong, or harmful, or stupid.  There seems to be something deep down inside each of us, like that little boy in front of the stereo, that wants to go against the rules.  We might call it a rebellious streak, or just plain disobedience, but each of us has experienced it.  We just don’t like living by the law, it’s too restrictive, too harsh, too “Old Testament, bro.”

            What would it take for you to love, and I mean REALLY LOVE God’s commandments?  Would the all-knowing God have to change them to fit into your idea of right and wrong?  Or would it take a change of your heart, a change of my heart?  For nearly eighty verses, the author of Psalm 119 asks the Lord to give him that change of heart.  He says repeatedly things like, “Open my eyes that I may see wonderful things in your law,” I have put my hope in your word,” and “I delight in your commands because I love them.”  Wow!  What would it take for us to have this kind of attitude?

            My challenge to you today is this:  Fall in love again with the Word of God.  Meditate on it day and night.  Chew on it until its flavor revitalizes you.  Search it like there’s gold in every word.  Soak in it like a warm bath after a day in the snow.  Drink it up like your life depends on it.  Why?  Because it does.  And as you do, as you fall deeper and deeper in love with the Word, you will fall deeper in love with the Word-Giver.  Then you will find yourself saying like the Psalmist, “I have put my hope in your word.” (Psalm 119:81b).

Finally, I leave you with the words of Paul from today’s New Testament reading:

Be cheerful no matter what; pray all the time; thank God no matter what happens. This is the way God wants you who belong to Christ Jesus to live.

Don’t suppress the Spirit, and don’t stifle those who have a word from the Master. On the other hand, don’t be gullible. Check out everything, and keep only what’s good. Throw out anything tainted with evil.

May God himself, the God who makes everything holy and whole, make you holy and whole, put you together—spirit, soul, and body—and keep you fit for the coming of our Master, Jesus Christ. The One who called you is completely dependable. If he said it, he’ll do it!

– 1 Thessalonians 5:16-24. (Message)

Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged.

They always say, “Do it again“; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead.

For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough…

It is possible that God says every morning, “Do it again,” to the sun; and every evening, “Do it again,” to the moon.

 It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike: it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them.

It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old,
and our Father is younger than we.

- G.K. Chesterton

This is one of those videos that just makes you sit in wonder and amazement. My jaw hung open for the majority of it. In fact, a lot of the videos from the RE:PLAY or F5 Film Festivals will do that to you.

RE:PLAY FILM FESTIVAL: Shilo “Still Run” from F5 on Vimeo.

Interpret this as you may, but let me ask you: 
Are you running toward creativity like this?  Or have you given up on moving forward with dynamic strides? 
What does this video emote in you? 
When was the last time you were truly inspired?

www.StuffICanUse.com

Check out this website and you’ll be blown away by some of the great stuff you’ll find there.  Now if only everyone could take on this mindset of sharing the love…

Here’s what they have to say for themselves:

StuffICanUse.com is a collection of resources, links, and other materials produced mainly for the student and college/young adult ministries at Southeast Christian Church in Louisville, KY. The idea came from us making sweet stuff for our programs and then it was sitting on someone‘s computer doing nothing, so we decided to setup vineresources.com in order to make our stuff available for you to use in your ministry. We adopted an open source philosophy and decided to give away free swag to you. We hope you can use these resources to help your ministry communicate the love of Jesus.

First of all, after picking on Adobe, I’ve got to give them props for offering the world their beautiful  (albeit reduced)software free to anyone online in the form of Adobe Photoshop Express at www.Photoshop.com.  In other words, photoshop can now be used anywhere on any computer with an internet connection and your work can be stored online.

1. GIMP

GIMP stands for “GNU image manipulation program”, and it is one of the oldest and most well known alternatives to Photoshop in existence. Although it doesn’t quite have all of them, you’ll find most of the features included in Photoshop somewhere in GIMP. GIMP is cross platform and supported by a large community.

If just having the feature set isn’t enough for you, there is an alternative based on GIMP known as GIMPShop. It’s the same as GIMP, except the layout has been structured as close to Photoshop as possible, so anyone making the transition should still feel right at home.

2. Krita

Krita has been lauded for ease of use and won the Akademy Award for Best Application in 2006. Part of the Koffice suite for Linux, Krita is slightly less powerful than both Photoshop and GIMP, but does contain some unique features.

3. Paint.NET

Paint.NET has grown out of a simple replacement for the well known MSPaint into a fully featured open source image editor with a wide support base. You’ll need Windows to run Paint.NET.

4. ChocoFlop

ChocoFlop is a design application designed exclusively for Mac, optimized for Mac architecture. It’s quick and fairly well featured. This program won’t always be free, but until a stable version is released (it’s currently in beta) they are allowing free use. The program works pretty well as is, and if you’re the type who doesn’t mind an occasional bug it’s certainly worth a look.

5. Cinepaint

Cinepaint is designed primarily for video often used to make animated feature films by major studios, but it is also a great image editor capable of high fidelity 32 bit color. Currently there is no stable version for Windows.

6. Pixia

Pixia was originally designed in Japanese but English versions now exist for this rich editor. Although the original focus was on anime/manga, it is a very capable editor in general. Some of the features are a little counter intuitive, but there are plenty of English tutorials available now if you want to give it a shot. The website seems to have changed recently, so be sure to use our link if you don’t want a Japanese error message. Pixia works for Windows.

7. Pixen

Pixen is designed as a pixel artist’s dream, but has expanded into a smooth and well featured overall editor. It’s definitely best at animation though, if that’s your style. Pixen is Mac (10.4x or later) only.

8. Picnik

Picnik is a web based photo editor that has recently taken off due to a partnership with Flickr. It has all the basic features plus a few advanced ones like layers and special effects. It is cross platform since you only need a browser.

The first one was created by one of my friends and fellow pastors, Nick Hauenstein.  This guy is a genius, especially when it comes to computer programming and he’s put together BibleShared.   This is a great resource for Bible studies, discipleship groups, couples, and other groups of people wanting to share what they’re reading and learning with others.

On a bit larger scale, Lifechurch.tv has put together YouVersion.  This is also a free resource founded on the concept of sharing what we’re reading in the Word of God with people around the world.  You’ll find pastors, leaders, and others on YouVersion, providing insights, links, photos, videos, and other resources to go along with what you’re reading. 

Check out both of these great resources and begin to dream big.  What is the next area of innovation you might be able to provide to the global community?  How will you share the Gospel in new ways in the years to come?

This month’s free resource is a great 5 min countdown you’ll love.

Get it here

Also, throughout December, they put up one free resource each day as their gift to us for Christmas.  Enjoy!

One of my favorite leaders out there right now is Mark Batterson.  He is Lead Pastor of National Community Church in Washington, DC.  He put out a great blog with a powerful resource linked to it.  Here’s what he had to say:

My friend, Todd Wilson, along with the Exponential Team has put together a really cool resource for leaders. They surveyed thousands of posts from a handful of leadership blogs. The end result is this free eBook.

For what its worth, the posts they choose from my blog are the ones I would have chosen myself. Whoever read all of our 2008 posts deserves a special crown in heaven!

Here are a few of the contributers. Some of my favorite people and favorite bloggers! By the way, this is probably the most links I’ve ever had in a single blog post.

Ben Arment
Chris Elrod
Dave Ferguson
Mike Foster
Seth Godin
Craig Groeschel
Alan Hirsch
Scott Hodge
Gary Lamb
Brad Lomenick
Shawn Lovejoy
Tony Morgan
Perry Noble
Ed Stetzer
Tim Stevens
Tullian Tchividjian
Jud Wilhite

This is an amazing resource and I’m enjoying everything I’m reading.  In case you missed it, here’s that link again:

Free eBook

On a weekly basis, downloadable content, links, ebooks, blogs, media, and many other resources will be posted right here…FREE! 

Doesn’t get better than that!