I tell my wife everything. I have absolutely no secrets from my wife. None. When people confide in my about serious things and they say “don’t tell anyone.” I always reply with “I tell my wife everything. So I’ll tell my wife, but I won’t tell anyone else ok?”

Well apparently this was a one sided agreement. For my wife is not being true to our “agreement”. She’s keeping secrets. R1 and Jess have some sort of code that they’ve kept secret from me. When they talk on messenger they always start off with The Code so that I can’t trick R1 anymore into thinking that I’m my wife. (Ok, so maybe sometimes I’d talk to R1 under my wifes login and R1 would think she was talking to Jess when in reality she was talking to Jess’ awesome husband.) So naturally I ordered my wife to tell me the code based upon our marriage vows that said we’d keep no secrets unless they were related to a gift or a surprise party/date of some sort. But she refused. She refused to tell me her secret. She chose R1 over me. Ouch.

Well guess what? Guess who’s got a secret that he’s not sharing with his wife now? If you want to know my secret feel free to email me and I’ll tell you…that is, unless you’re my wife or my wifes coded buddy friend. My secrets a good one too. It’s juicy and very very secretive.

I’ll be honest, we’ve screwed up at Renovatus…well, duh. I’m pretty sure the nature of church planting is that you try just about everything, do everything wrong, and eventually get led to what works for you. But I think somehow we’ve missed morality. Maybe it was because we oppose the type of Christianity that is pretty much only about being a good person (haven’t we all fallen into this one at one point or another?), for so often we defined our faith and our God based on what we do rather than in who he is and what he’s done. We (Renovatus) didn’t really swing the pendulum the other direction, we kind of just forgot to talk about the pendulum. We were too caught up in grace, love, beauty, hope, and all that other stuff (I guess that’s not too bad! And I hope you sense some sarcasm here).
Anyway, what I’m getting at is that I had a surprising revelation the other day that not all Christ Followers think the same as me! I know right, crazy isn’t it? I took for granted that people who followed Jesus knew certain things about the type of life Jesus wants us to live. I won’t get into specifics, there’s no reason to. It was just a shock, that’s all. And don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that I’m perfect or that I perfectly understand what a Christ centered life looks like. It’s just that there are some things that I took for granted as obvious unhealthy or destructive choices for Christ Followers to make. That’s all. And its not that I’m shocked that Christ Followers make poor choices. Please, we all screw up. No, the part I am hung up on is that some don’t consider it a screw up, or at the very least they’ve justified it enough in their minds to push the guilt way way back into the coat closet of their brain so as to leave them free to do what they want.
Anyway, I guess I should spend more time evaluating my own life to see if or where I’m doing this same thing. Maybe I should read the Bible some more and see what JC has to say about it.

While I was preparing for my message on Sunday I was impressed by one overwhelming thought that a lot of our shortcomings in faith have to do with us telling the Holy Spirit of God to shut the hell up. We hear his/her/its voice whispering something to us and we instead choose to act out of fear. We hear that voice and instead choose to act out of passion, lust, or greed. We silence the voice of God so we can do what we want, when we want, and however we want. Training ourselves to disregard God’s voice is a scary road to go down, it’s a scary habit to form.

Thank you Anthem Park. Thank you for the two years we spent under your shelter. It was in your cover that Jonesy learned to walk and talk. India was born while we lived there too. Many of my most precious moments of my marriage are associated to the time that we lived in those apartments. You treated us well. Your carpets were easily stained and there was that whole bird poop thing, but besides that you treated us with respect and honor. I miss you a little bit, not much, but a little bit. I’ll always hold on to those memories.
But the real honor goes to the management of Anthem Park. If it wasn’t for you I’d still be living there. If it wasn’t for you we wouldn’t be in this amazing house, living in center of the very community that we hope to plant a church. If it wasn’t for you we wouldn’t be worm composting, growing a garden, watering our garden with rain collected from the roof, meeting little neighbor kids, and working on projects with my son in our little garage. Thank you. You raised our rent by $150 in one fell swoop and thus forced us to move on. Thank you. God works in mysterious ways (quite an understatement actually). Oh management, dear management, why don’t you get recycling? You pay for it, you have space for it, but you don’t offer it. Oh management, why did you give us $200.00 back from our deposit when we only gave you $185? Oh management, how is it that you’re only in the office two hours a day when your office says you’re there from 12:00-4:00? Oh management, dear management, how come it took you a month to find a parking space for my friend who cannot be spoken of in this blog until she gets what’s not deserved? Oh management, dear management I won’t really miss you, but thanks for the cash.

Sorry, it’s been a month. I’ll just chalk it up to an overflow of my lent commitment. Anyhow, similar to the history communicated so well through that strange old tinker of how Willy Wonka’s factory all of a sudden began to churn out new and exciting candies one day after being dormant for so long. So too I will begin to churn out new and interesting blogs unlike no other period in history. The only difference between myself and Mr. Wonka is that I shall do all the work on my own. There won’t be any midgets behind the scenes on this blog. Incidentally, that’s my new blog mission statement…

What ever happened to:

• Jonathan Taylor Thomas (or JTT as I knew him)
• Patrick Swayze
• Swiss Army Knives
• Richard Lewis
• Emilio Estevez
• Love.

Have you visited Renovatus yet? If you’ve been meaning to come check us out, do it this week. This Sunday is our first BFF Sunday (if you’re looking for a definition of what that is you won’t find one here. Sorry). It should be a pretty rockin’ Sunday. First we’re having a celebration service. Next we’re doing lunch together in the gym. And finally for anyone interested, at 2:00 we’ll be playing soccer in the field. We’re going to start playing soccer every week after Sunday lunch. It should be fun. The whole day will be great.
So if you’ve been wanting to see what happens at Renovatus on a Sunday morning, this week, our BFF Sunday, would be a good one.
See you there!

If you have any questions about directions or details feel free to check out www.renovatus.com