God loves a grand entrance!

I read a book by Mark Batterson this past year. Actually, I’ve read the book a couple of times, and finished it up again toward the end of 2014. In the book, Batterson has this great line about God’s timing. He talks about how God loves to make a grand entrance into our lives, showing up in “just the nick of time...” in order to display His grace, His power and His divine sense of timing. When it comes to our struggles and questions, we usually have a vastly different timeline than God does. We want answers now, we want His provision well-ahead of time, and we usually want miracles in our timing, not His. God sees the big picture, though, and He knows the exact best moment to provide, bless, answer or show up. So as Batterson writes, “Rarely is God early...but He is NEVER late!”

Have you ever found yourself in God’s waiting room? Have you walked thru a health difficulty and wondered if God would step in? Maybe you’re going thru a job change like Traci and I are right now, and you’re wondering how to pay the bills or find a place to live when you don’t have any income? Are you experiencing heartache in your marriage right now, and you’re asking God to step in and “fix” it? Do you have a child that’s making some really poor decisions? Are you worried about your education, wanting God to intervene as you look to the future? Is your job situation lousy and do you find yourself asking God to give you another option so you can leave? Do you have more going out then coming in to your checkbook each month?

We’ve all been there at one time or another, waiting on God to show up and do His thing. Waiting for Him to intervene in our lives and to take a hurt and mend it, turn a wrong into a right or just plain help out when we don’t know where to turn next. I’m there right now, asking Him to clearly reveal the next step in our lives as Traci and I embark on this unexpected new chapter in our lives.

This one thing I know while I wait: God loves a grand entrance.

Overboard Ministries was forged out of a message I prepared for camp, from Matthew 14. After Jesus has preached an all-day message and performed a miraculous feeding of over 5,000 people, he ends the long day by dismissing the crowds, sending his 12 disciples home on a boat, and then heads up a hillside to spend some time praying to the Father.

While He is up there, and while the disciples are lazily crossing the Sea of Galilee, a storm comes charging over the top of the mountains and crashes hard on the water. A reasonably tranquil trip is suddenly thrown into chaos and the 12 disciples become fairly concerned about their own safety.

Think about how God could have handled this:

1. He could have prevented the storm from the beginning.
2. He could have stopped the storm shortly after it formed.
3. He could have made the disciples fall into a deep sleep, and slept through the storm.
4. He could have teleported them to the shore and boycotted the storm all together.
5. He could have provided better seats, in-boat food service and a large bucket of ice cream.

Instead, what does God do? He sends His Son to make a rather grand entrance!

When Jesus finishes praying on top of the hill side, He heads down to the water and takes a stroll across the lake to see how the boys are doing. In John’s Gospel we find out that He actually wasn’t going to visit the boys in the boat, He was walking to the other side to meet them at the shore. Suddenly the disciples see a figure walking on the water and their night has just gone from bad to worse, because now there is a ghost walking on the turbulent lake!

Matthew 14 says they “cried out in fear” [translation: screamed like little girls!] believing the end was in sight.

And isn’t that where we sometimes find ourselves? We look around at our circumstances, the storms in our lives are raging at full scale, nothing seems to be going our way, and we’re fairly certain that we’re at the end. We cry out in fear. You ever been there? Are you living there now? Are you living at that point where you’ve hit the end of your rope and you feel like there is nothing left to do but cry out in fear/anger/disappointment/confusion and hold on for dear life?

Suddenly God makes a grand entrance into the Matthew 14 story as Jesus reveals Himself. Peter miraculously walks with Him on water. Jesus calms the storm. He climbs in the boat and then takes it to the other side of the lake. Life continues with the dawn of the next morning.

If you’re in one of those seasons right now, let me encourage you to keep your faith rooted in the One who loves to make a grand entrance. Let me encourage you to trust the One who says, “All things work together for good, to those who love [me]...” and is quoted as saying, “[I] will supply all your needs according to [my] riches in glory...” and was even once quoted with these words, “[I] can do anything you know, fare more than you could ever imagine, guess or request in your wildest dreams...”

Believe me, I wish God would more frequently show up early (according to my schedule)! But when everything is said and done, I’m always glad He showed up on His schedule because I know, that He knows, the very best timing for me -- the time/place where my faith will be extended, my character will be forged and where I will become more of the man He wants me to be, better prepared for what He wants me to do.

I’m learning to trust Him more and more each day, even as I’m awaiting His grand entrance onto the stage of my story. If you’re in a pinch today, will you reaffirm your trust of God and His timing in your life? Will you pray like crazy for answers/money/miracles/jobs/children/spouse/health but be willing to wait for God to answer on His schedule? It’s not an easy task but the future will be best after God makes His grand entrance!

Go ahead and take the plunge, life is always better on the water!

Birth and other messy things

At 3am on May 24th, 1974, I started making my wishes for an appearance, known. While they didn’t often do ultrasounds in those days to determine a child’s gender, my mom had that motherly instinct that assured her I was a chunky boy. And a few hours after I started plotting an escape from my maternal holding tank, a doctor facilitated my release and all 8+ pounds of me emerged.  

My next oldest sibling had tortured my mom for 33 hour of labor, so despite my size -- “the biggest of the brood” -- the time reduction was welcomed by my mom. And as they played the birthing song in the hospital lobby (dad’s didn’t often join their wives in the birthing room in those days), my father knew he had a third son and the name had already been chosen: Joseph Aaron Castañeda.

Birth is messy. If you’ve ever had the experience of seeing new life enter in this world, you know the mess of which I speak. Sitting bed-side while my wife gave birth to all three of our children, I had a front row seat to the natural carnage. I’ll spare you the details, but there is nothing glamorous about birth.

And yet, birth is incredibly beautiful. After my wife had labored for over 15 hours, our firstborn emerged reluctantly. In an instant, the pain of child bearing disappeared, tears of joy replaced tears of pain and in the majesty of the moment, both Traci and I turned our attention to the baby boy nestled in a blanket, resting on her chest. There are few things more beautiful than watching a mom hold her new born baby after enduring labor.

I don’t think it’s an accident that birth is messy and beautiful -- it’s a metaphor for the life that will be experienced by the new child. Life is messy. Read the paper, watch the news or follow the top online headlines for a week and you’ll know just how messy it can be. Since Adam and Eve chose to disobey God in Genesis 3, the messiness of life has followed humanity like a haunting shadow.

Messiness is the reality of a busted up world. Yet intersecting with the reality of messiness is the fact that beauty is emerging all around us. Just as Adam and Eve experienced God’s grace and forgiveness following their moral failure, that same grace and goodness shows up in the greatest darknesses of this life.

Just as the pain and mess of childbirth fades when the mom holds her new baby, the messiness of life pales when God’s grace shines through. Paul said it this way in 2 Corinthians 4: “Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.” The big-picture of God’s grace makes the messiness of this life worth it!

Have you experienced the messiness of this life? Maybe you are enjoying a break, or maybe you are living in the muck right now! Let me assure you that life starts messy, and stays messy until it ends. What makes it worth living is the grace that God provides -- the hope that only He can give as we follow Him.

I’m glad my parents brought me into this messy world. I’m thankful for how they raised me and taught me to live in the mess but not be overcome by it (more on that in the blog posts to follow). But more than anything, I’m thankful for a God who knows the big-picture, and provides grace sufficient for every moment of every day so that I can enjoy the beauty that this life offers.

2 down, 38 to go.

Go ahead and take the plunge, the beauty of life is seen clearest out on the water!

I'm glad I caught this cold.

After I preached Sunday, I started feeling the early signs of a cold coming on. By Sunday night I was pretty wiped out (preaching always does that to me, anyway), and a full day driving/sitting/driving on Monday left me ready for an early bed time. 10 hours of sleep Monday night did me wonders, and I think I’ve turned the corner on this little cold. I do my best thinking in the shower. And this morning, as I pondered my cold, I thought about how small the cold virus is. In fact, check out this web site to get some perspective on size:

http://www.cellsalive.com/howbig.htm

Those nasty little viruses aren’t very big, but they sure are powerful! Think about it, an organism that is just 20 nanometers in length (a pin head is about 1-1.5million nano meters, so you could fit 50-75,000 flu viruses on the head of a needle!) has the ability to knock out a 200lb, relatively healthy human being for a few days. It’s incredible. Those ugly little bugs got some “Wuh-pam!”* to them.

This got me thinking about something Jesus said: “If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there’ and it will move. Nothing will impossible for you” (Matthew 17:20).

The reason that cold virus is so powerful is that it multiplies itself in the body. It’s not that one 20 nanometer virus does all the damage, it’s that one 20 nanometer virus multiplies to millions in the body. You see, that one virus (although rarely do you just inhale or kiss your way into one virus!), attacks your cells, sends in a new code that then produces more of the virus, that then attacks your cells that then produces more of the virus that then attacks your cells… It doesn’t take long for you to become a walking, talking virus dispenser.

You see, it’s not the size of the virus that does you in, it’s the power of multiplication that wipes you out.

I think that’s Jesus’ point about faith. It’s not the size of your faith that matters, it’s the size of your God that matters, and His ability to multiply your faith. It’s not that you and I inherently have enough faith to produce anything good in our lives, it’s that our God, no matter how “big” or “small” our faith is, multiplies it according to His power. Trusting God with your life is like putting your faith on steroids…but in a good way. (that analogy worked a lot better in my head.)

When Peter was in the boat and Jesus called him to walk on water, Peter didn’t have enough faith to do anything! As he hopped out of the boat and took a few steps, it wasn’t Peter’s faith that made the water suddenly firm. It was God’s power. Peter’s faith was the engine that got Peter out of the boat; God’s power firmed up the sea. Peter wasn’t believing in his own ability to walk on water, he was trusting God’s power to make it a reality. God multiplies our faith.

What is God asking you to do, today? How can you flex your faith and watch God multiply your efforts? I’m glad I picked up this cold over the weekend, it’s given me a great new perspective on God’s power to multiply change and Kingdom impact in my life.

Go ahead and take the plunge, life is always better on the water!

*Wuh-Pam: Condensing verb, adjective or adverb. Combination of the words "Whoopin" and "Slam". As in, "I handed you a whoopin and you went slam on the floor" can now be condensed to, "I Wuh-Pammed you to the floor." Can be used in past tense. Frequently used, and in fact invented, by my daughter BJ, and quickly spread through the family. Eg: "I was running into the kitchen and forgot to open the door. I hit it, 'Wuh-Pam' and fell on my rear end in the family room." Also can be used to suggest aggression: "AJ, if you touch my DS again, I will Wuh-Pam you into next week."

Overboard at any age

This is a story I wrote three years ago when AJ, my ten-year-old son was just turning seven. I discovered it in my last blog. (The demise of which happened when I quit writing for over a year after I posted an entry declaring my triumphant return to blogging.) This story just reminds me that living the Overboard Life is for all of us, no matter what age.

By the way, before we go any further, you should know that all the cool kids are hitting the subscribe buttons over on the right side of this blog. The top one will subscribe you to the blog so you know the very second a new post is released. The second subscribe button allows you to subscribe to all things Overboard. The really super cool kids do both. Just fyi.

I digress.

[cue dreamy music...start ripple effect...begin flashback dream sequence...]

[June, 2008]: If you haven’t heard yet, let me brag about my kid for a minute (I know, it’s annoying when people brag about their kids, but let me annoy you for a moment, it’ll be worth it!)  Last Winter, AJ came with me when the Crosswalk students and I held our CW Christmas party under the bridge in down town Salem.  We fed about 50 people (over 100 hamburgers) most of whom were jobless, without money and without any kind of home or shelter.  That night, it was cold -- VERY cold -- and my poor six year old son was miserable and frozen.

When we got home later that night and he had finally warmed up, Traci and I put him to bed and I began to tell her about the night.  A few minutes later he called to me, “dad...” I went into his room and he was almost crying as he asked, “are those people going to sleep outside tonight?” I thought for a moment and then replied, “yes”. He then asked a very deep question for a little kid, “will they die because of the cold?” He was genuinely heart broken over the condition of the people he had met and he was genuinely troubled by them being outside in sub 20 degree weather. We prayed together and AJ went to sleep.

A couple days went by and then AJ stunned me when he asked if he could hold his next birthday (June 19th, 6 months away) party under the bridge for the homeless. He asked if we could do a BBQ, serve chips and even give them birthday cup cakes (AJ prefers cupcakes to cake)! I was totally speechless and very emotionally touched. We talked about it for a while and agreed to a plan. After I told Traci, she and I agreed to sit on it for a while and see if he’d bring it up again.

Sure enough during the weeks and months following that event, he kept reminding us about his plans -- and in the interest of full disclosure, he also made sure that he could still have a regular party with his friends, he was a little worried about not getting any gifts on his birthday! His heart for those people overwhelmed me as we felt we were beginning to see the work of God in his life demonstrated through a tenderness towards others.

Well last night was the culmination of six months of planning, and what a night it was! We fed over 70 homeless and less fortunate people downtown under the Marion St. Bridge. 120 dogs rolled off the grill and over eight dozen cupcakes were handed out. Chips were crunched, soda cans emptied and one little boy brought a lot of joy to a lot of people.

While standing in line waiting for their dogs, one young man (in his early 20’s) asked me, “why you guys down here tonight?” I told him about my son and his desire to serve and all he could say was, “No way....no way.  That’s so cool.” Others were blown away and so many of them wanted to make sure and give him a Hi-5 or knuckles or just shake his hand and say thanks. One teenage homeless girl who we’ve seen in several of our ministry outreaches over the past few years must have thanked him five or six times before she left. Everyone was touched (and truth be told, the kid wasn’t too pompous about it, which was another blessing). One of the last people of the night came through, got his dog, asked about the dinner and then said to me, “you must be one proud father.”

Gulp. Indeed, I am a proud father. I’d like to take credit for AJ’s heart of gold but I’m sure most of that belongs to his mom more than to me. But even she can’t take much credit because truth-be-told, AJ’s heavenly Father has shaped him to be the kind of boy and future young man that He wants AJ to be. According to Psalm 139 it is God who stitches us together in the inmost parts, the hidden place where only His eyes see. It is God who assigns our personality and gives each of us our unique and beautiful identities. It’s when we respond to that work of His and act according to His will that we are able to do anything good or praise worthy. Yes, AJ made me proud last night, but he had another Father who was even more pleased, his Heavenly Father. Last night AJ had two proud fathers.

My prayer is that AJ’s tenderness for people will grow as he does, and that he will choose to serve the Lord in whatever capacity God leads. (I can’t lie, selfishly I am praying that God will lead him to full time Christian ministry.) I also hope that his example will motivate others to love and good deeds and that in the end -- most importantly -- he will please God by being the boy, young adult and man that God wants him to be. That he will continue to live exercising the God-given nature of his make-up bringing glory to the Father in all that he does. That kind of life is one that ends when the Father says, “well done good and faithful servant, I am proud of you!”

[cue dream music...fade out of flashback...bring blog into center-view...]

Whether you're six, sixty or one hundred and six, God is calling you to live your life for Him, out of the comfort of the boat and out on the water where Jesus is building His kingdom. Sometimes that means celebrating your birthday under the bridge with 70 homeless people. Other times that might mean making your family vacation a mission trip to the inner city somewhere in our nation. It might mean walking across the street to a neighbor and sharing a meal, helping with a project or just offering an ear to let them chat. Let God move you out of the boat and into his service.

Go ahead and take the plunge -- life is better on the water!

New blog...take 2

A few years back I had a regular blog rolling. I was faithfully putting up new posts (at least annually, sometimes monthly, and for a short season -- 7 days -- weekly) and starting to attract a small following (my mom, wife and almost two others...plus or minus two). Then something tragic happened. I took a vacation, I didn't blog the entire time I was gone, and the next time I logged in, 12  months had passed. 12 months?! I discovered what few before me had known: 12 months between posts kills your following, even one has substantial as mine. My own mother wouldn't check back in.

Today I'm turning over a new blog-shaped leaf. I will use this site to update my readers (come on mom...give me another chance!) with the latest information from Overboard Ministries. Overboard Ministries represents the heartbeat that my wife and I try to live by. It comes from a story in Matthew 14 where Jesus is out walking on the water. Peter and the other eleven disciples are in a boat when Jesus comes strolling by and Peter says, "If it's you, tell me to come to you on the water". Jesus confirms his identity and Pete is the only other human being in history to walk on water (sorry folks, Chris Angel's water walking was just a trick!).

As the story goes on, Peter looks around at the wind and waves surrounding him and he loses faith -- he sinks. Jesus saves Peter and when the two get safely into the boat, Jesus rebukes him for taking his eyes off of Christ and putting them onto the storm. Most of the time when I've heard sermons, read commentaries and listened to people speak about this, they focus on Peter's failure. Obviously that's a big part of the story. But I like to remember that PETER WALKED ON WATER! Jesus' rebuke was a reminder that with faith in Him, Peter could accomplish anything and Ol' Pete got a small glimpse of that while walking on water during a stormy night on the Sea of Galilee.

However, it's not Peter that's the focus of Overboard Ministries; it's the other eleven men still in the boat. They sat and watched Peter walk on water while they themselves stayed where life was -- at least for that moment -- comfortable. They knew the boat. They trusted the boat. They felt secure with their friends who were also in the boat. But Jesus wasn't in the boat.

Overboard Ministries exists to help people live their God-designed life out of the comfort of the boat, and out on the waters where Jesus is building His Kingdom. I hope that this blog will serve as a mouthpiece for that message and that through the ramblings, information and general musings of this site, you also my grab the sides of the boat and jump out in faith. You will learn about great resources from Overboard ministries including authors, books, speakers, teachers, curriculum, artists, blogs, musicians, performers, preachers and anyone or anything else that helps promote the Overboard life.

Make sure you subscribe so that you can receive notices when updates occur. If things go well, that should be more than once every 12 months. [polldaddy poll=5113434]