Hey Mountain friends,

 

This is a long enote.  But it's been awhile since I've written.  I hope you'll stick with me to the end. 

 

Our family has enjoyed some great time at the lake in northern Minnesota. We've had some time on the water and have loved goofing off as a family.  But there is never a shortage of work to do around the cabin. 

 

In front of our cabin are several old Norway Pines.  They are beautiful, tall, stately, reaching to the blue sky. Also known as Red Pines, they are the Minnesota state tree. 

 

One of them we use for hammock holding.  When you walk by, it appears normal and healthy. It's been around a looooong time.  

 

But it's dead. 

 

 

Yes, it looks fine from eye level.  If you never look up, you'd think it was the same as the other trees.  It's been a fixture and we're all accustomed to it.

 

But it's dead and has to go.  Dead trees become rotten on the inside. Then they topple over and mess things up. When a 75 foot tall pine tree falls, it's going to do some damage. 

 

So yesterday the boys and I cut it down. We lassoed it up high with a rope, notched it down low with a chain saw, and with a few more buzzes and cuts, down it came.  I was smart enough to send Nathan up the ladder with the rope.  

 

 

We hauled off the brush and " baloneyed"  up the lengthy log into firewood, which we stacked to the side.  

 

 

It's kind of sad to see an old, familiar tree go.  But the view is better.  And it was dead and needed to go.  Because you gotta get rid of the dead stuff or storms bring disaster. 

 

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It's a metaphor for the Christian life. In each of our lives there have grown up some long-held beliefs.  Some ingrained habits.  Some comfortable practices and attitudes which stand firmly like familiar trees in our life.  Stuff in our lives that is not in synch with the will of God. 

 

At eye level they appear harmless, simply part of who we are.  But though we have become comfortable with their presence, the truth is at their core they are rotten and dead.  Stand back to look at them and you will see they are not bearing healthy fruit for us.  

 

I have trees like that in my life.  I am stepping back to see some for the first time this summer.  I bet you do, too. 

 

They may have been with us a loooong time.  But they are dangerous to our spiritual health. 

 

They need to go. 

 

Every serious Christ follower must take the axe to the trees that need to be cut down. 

 

Don't kid yourself. There's a tree that needs to come down. 

 

Jesus' own death on a cross shows that real life comes only after there is a death.

 

So get the saw out.  Jesus taught that some trees need to be cut down. (Matthew 7:19).  Make the sacrifice. Something needs to die in you.  Before it does serious damage. 

 

And if you're not good with a chainsaw, ask God to remove what needs to be removed. 

 

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Speaking of long standing attitudes that have to go, this weekend we begin a message series that could not be more timely.  It has to do with race and ethnicity, and how we get along.  We can't control how anyone else thinks or acts about this stuff. But we are responsible for how WE think and act about it. 

 

The Bible has so much to say about how we are to live as God's people shaped by the good news of Jesus.  There are human walls that divide us. But Jesus' love for all of us brings a force that is powerful enough to unite people - IF it is allowed to take root in our own hearts.  There are attitudes that need to be cut down. 

 

The series is called Under Our Skin 

 

We know that under our skin we are all God's creatures who are more alike than we are different.  Our skin color differs, and our skin color colors our experience and perspective in life.  We also know the issue of race really gets under our skin.  It's easy to get riled up.  That's why there is so much anger, fear, mistrust, and dead-ended conversation on this.  We don't even know how to talk about it anymore. 

 

Are we doomed to live at odds with one another?  Is a comfortable distance the best we can hope for? 

 

The path forward is not to mimic what has been. There are trees that have been around a long time on this issue - in our families, in our tribe, in our minds, deep in our hearts.  But some of those trees are rotten inside.  They need to come down. 

 

Jesus calls us to be different on this issue in the way we think, feel, and act.  But we won't change a thing by being politically correct or attempting surface level approaches.  Only when we are affected by Jesus' message deep within - under our skin - do we stand a chance to bring change. 

 

 

Whoever you are, I'm absolutely convinced God wants to do something in you on this issue. You can't look at the current state of affairs and pretend for one second that significant change isn't needed. 

 

But we need to get beyond surface level.  There are longstanding trees that need to come down in the ways we have thought about this. 

 

We don't need surface level politeness. We don't need any more nastiness.  The answer is only through the love and power of Christ doing something to us at a deep level.  Under Our Skin.

 

We will do our best to handle this in a fair, biblical, sensitive way. It is likely we will offend someone along the way.  Probably we will offend everyone at some point.  This is not our intention.  But the alternative is to be silent, to pretend God doesn't care about this issue.  I have become deeply convinced that God DEEPLY cares about this issue.  So we will do our best to stumble forward, rather than freeze in fear.  We do so with the grace of Jesus all around us. 

 

The elders and staff have been praying and working hard to let God do something amazing at Mountain as we become a more fully multi-ethnic church.  A place where the thing that holds us together is not just because we are hanging out with people we are sociologically comfortable with, but because Jesus has saved us, loved us, brought us together, and given us a shared mission which is bigger than anything that divides us. 

 

So let's allow God's Word to speak to us, God's Son to lead us, and God's Spirit to change us at deep places of the heart - way down deep, under our skin. 

 

And that Norway Pine we cut down?  I left a stump that's being used to hold a slack line, a hammock and a Dr. Pepper. 

 

 

Ben