I think I’ve confessed on my blog before that Angi and I watch way too much HGTV.

But I don’t think I’ve explained that a lot of my fascination with its shows is faith.

That’ll take a little more explanation.

On a lot of HGTV shows – just as on the granddaddy of them, ABC’s Extreme Makeover: Home Edition – a family, couple or individual steps out in faith. Out of their own home. Having faith in their designer/design team. Having often never seen much more than a sketch; on some shows, not even that.

Then they return after a day or two, or a week.

And a truly lost room or suite of rooms or house has been redeemed.

(Well, most of the time.)

David Bromstad’s ColorSplash is the newest entry into the field. The homeowners always have total faith in what he will do for their room(s). They hug him – without exception, so far.

Last night, the wife of the couple expressed the redesign as “life-changing.”

Okay, that would be an exaggeration for me. It would certainly be “house-changing” or at least “room-changing.”

Still, I admire her faith.

Would I have such faith, to turn over my house to strangers and let them imprint it with their design sense and preferences?

I like the way my house is decorated.

It’s the same way with my life.

Is it any wonder that it’s difficult persuading people to turn over their entire lives to a Jesus whom they hardly know?

Is it any wonder that it’s difficult persuading ourselves to turn over our entire lives to a Jesus who wants us to step outside our homes, outside our comfort zones, outside ourselves to reach them?

Somewhere in a Hollywood prop room, the Quaker Oats Guy is engaged in a staring-down contest with the Burger King.

(Just thinking about this will creep me out enough that I will have difficulty getting to sleep.)

We spend a fair amount of time praying during our worship together. Hopefully, we spend a fair amount of time praying during our times alone and with our families.

We often pray for things that are out of our hands: a decision that others will make; a healing we want to take place; the success of something attempted; a particular thing that is wanted or needed.

But how often do we pray for things that may seem impossible?

How frequently do we pray for God to be glorified?

How many times a week do we pray for His will to be done – through us?

For His good news and good will to flood the world? For hearts to turn back to Him? For the growth of His kingdom?

How often do we pray for what God wants?

… illuminated the well-robed forms of Michelangelo Buonarroti and Leonardo da Vinci backing into each other at the napkin bar. Growling apologies at each other, they nodded in recognition and agreement to share a table. They were not morning people – but they were gentlemanly enough to tip the lute player as they passed.

Finally, after coming to terms with half a mug of java each – Leonardo’s was his own uncredited invention, cappuccino – they began to mumble greetings at each other.

“Lenny.”

“Mike.”

“How’d the monastery fresco come out?” Michelangelo queried.

“What, that ‘Last Supper’ thing? Finished it ages ago. Turned out nicely, I thought. Maybe not my best work, but okay. How about your ceiling gig at the Sistine?”

Michelangelo snorted. “It took forever and wasn’t worth the paint. Now, give me a couple of tons of stone, a hammer and chisel, and I will discover the soul of the subject!”

“Perhaps,” Leonardo shrugged. “But it is more accurately portrayed with the colors God created …”

“Color is overrated! And God created in three dimensions, not two. You of all people …”

Their discussion was interrupted by a quarrel that had turned ugly at a table nearby. Martin Luther leapt to his feet, brandishing a wide butter knife dripping with the melted stuff, shouting: “Hymns, I tell you! They are all that God hears! The Creator needs nothing of your next-century innovation!”

George Frideric Handel rolled his robust form out of his chair to face his breakfast companion: “Oratorios, Marty, are within His aural range!”

The lute-playing ceased.

Whereupon Luther slapped Handel across the cheek with the buttery flat of the knife. The café’s bouncer – the lute-player, who looked remarkably like the Apostle Paul – intervened immediately, telling them both to take it outside.

“What, outside the café?” they chorused.

“No,” replied the bouncer firmly. “Outside the Gates of Heaven entirely.”

They quieted, and grudgingly sank back into their seats. The lute-player began strumming again, and conversations slowly resumed.

“What a couple of horses’ patooties,” Michaelangelo sniffed.

“Agreed,” Leonardo nodded. “As if God could be worshiped by something as mundane and secular as music.”

If you’ve been blessed as I have with music from The ZOE Group, you’ll understand why I’m excited to tell you that their most recent albums are now available as MP3 downloads from the new MP3 Downloads aisle of The ZOE Group Store.

They’re only $1 per song, a competitive price in a world of 99c iTunes and 88c Wal-Mart Music offerings. But you can’t get them there.

On each song’s page, there’s a little control panel you can use to listen to a short (about one minute) sample of the song. That’ll help you figure out whether you want to buy “All the Heavens” from Closer or “All the Heavens” from Ancient Future … or “Holy is the Lord” from Closer or “Holy is the Lord” from Look to the Hills. (Four different songs, there … see, wasn’t it fun listening to the excerpts?)

The most recent three albums are already available: Closer, In Christ Alone and Desperate. I’m adding more as quickly (and carefully) as I can to the site.

And, as nearly as I can tell, The ZOE Group is the only a cappella Christian worship team making their songs available by MP3 download on the Web (though you can find Keith Lancaster & The Acappella Company songs on iTunes. Still, it’s hard to convince an AAC-format iTunes song to play on your MP3 player, isn’t it?)

So, what are you waiting for? Go listen! Go buy some!

The quotes emboxed below are from an article in the January edition of a printed publication which has wide readership among members of the fellowship (the “brotherhood”) in which I worship – though many of them would no more fellowship me than they would Osama Bin Laden. I republish them without permission or attribution. And I intersperse among the selected quotes my own commentary. I do this because there are folks who are blessedly unaware of the rhetoric that I have protested in a previous post or two. I think I owe them an explanation.

Headlines on some of the papers throughout the brotherhood give the shameful details: “Nations largest church of Christ adding instrumental service and serving the Lord’s Supper on Saturday night.” “Leaders say there was little opposition to the announcement.” Brethren, where’s the fight which we entered when we took that “oath of office” to serve the Lord, and became a member of His army?

In 1994, 1,490 children died from abuse and/or neglect in the United States among 3,503,000 cases investigated by child protection agencies.

At one time not too many years back, the church of Christ was known as a “fighter.” Members were known as “people of the Book” — “walking Bibles.” The church was growing faster then than at any other time in recent history, but, we have changed and the “fight” is not in us now. We wonder what has happened and where is that fight. It does not take too long to find the answers. The Book has been replaced with words which were not so harsh and the desire to please ourselves and be entertained and to be at peace with the world, being thought of as a “group which fits in with the world” has nearly done away with that fighting spirit which Jesus Christ and the apostles wanted the Christian to have.

In the county where I live, 797 child abuse cases were filed last year.

How does that fit with the scriptures and its teaching? Let that “inspired word” from God speak to mine and your hearts. “Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him” (I John 2:15). “Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword. … And a man’s foes shall be they of his own household. He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me” (Matt. 10:34,36,37). “And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God” (Rom. 12:2). “Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus…he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross” (Phil. 2:5,8). “Brethren, be followers together of me, and mark them which walk so as ye have us for an ensample. (For many walk, of whom I have told you often, and now tell you even weeping, that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ: Whose end is destruction, whose God is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things)” (Phil. 3:17-19).

In the church where I attend, three foster families have looked after four children of a race different from their own in the past six months, bringing them into their homes and families as their own. Two more families are gearing up to meet that challenge.

Those words from Almighty God have been perverted, twisted, smoothed down, forgotten willingly and otherwise neglected to the loss of our fighting spirit which each Christian should have. We have “loved this world and its pleasures more than God.” We have not humbled ourselves as servants of Christ — but to our own bellies. We have traded God’s word for “smooth sayings” and loved to have it so. We have become “friends” with this world and an enemy to God. We sit idly by and let the “chaste virgin” become a spotted and blemished “social club” which fits in with this sin-sick world. We refuse to fight the good fight of faith. We will pay the price except we repent.

Each of us is called upon to do what we can to heal this world and to preach good news to the poor. That is the doctrine of Jesus. It was His mission in Luke 4, Luke 6, Luke 9, Luke 10 … you get the picture. He shouldered that ministry because God so loved the world. We should too. We should love each other. We should be forgiving toward each other. We should not be spoiling for a fight over what we may see as doctrine, but what Jesus calls the precepts of men.

People are poor and hungry and sick and dying all over the world.

And lost.

If our legacy to our survivors is only that we fought for pure doctrine concocted by our own inarguable logic and infallible research at the cost of pursuing the doctrine of Christ – to seek and to save that which is lost – men shall not rise up and call our generation blessed.

The real fight will be lost, and we will be lost in it.

We were riding home from school, my two kids and me, when 14-year-old Matthew suddenly deviated from talking about Ferraris and Lamborghinis and asked,

“Dad, what would you do if you had five billion dollars?”

Before I could even stop and think, I heard the words come out of my mouth:

“I’d feed a lot of hungry people. I’d make sure that a lot of poor people got medical care. Africa would look a whole lot different.”

“Really?” Matthew said. “I mean … five billion dollars. Wouldn’t you keep some of it for yourself?”

“I have everything I need. I don’t have so much money that I think I can do everything for myself and not need God. And I figure, if you have that kind of money and don’t do some good with it in the world, what’s the point in having it?”

He seemed to consider it.

“You wouldn’t even get that sky-blue 2000 Thunderbird?” (He knows I lust after the metal when it comes to that kind of car. Or a pre-1997 British racing-green Miata. Or a really expertly-assembled classic hand-made Lotus Seven.)

“Okay, I might get the T-bird.”

Matt seemed relieved. Dad was human after all.

I wasn’t relieved.

Why would I have to keep any of it for myself?

Isn’t that what Ananias and Sapphira did? (Then lied about it?)

I don’t know why that answer came out, to the five-billion-dollar question. Maybe because I’ve been thinking more and more about kenosis while fasting from soft drinks during Lent. I haven’t been doing very much about kenosis in my life, other than drinking water, and as a result, I’ve been feeling … empty, rather than full. Parasitical, rather than generous. Greedy, instead of blessed.

The whole idea of five billion dollars is just so huge that all I could think about was having to deal with financial advisers and people begging for money and taxes and nuisance. When the amount is unrealistic, you can be generous.

But what about when the amount is five hundred bucks? I could scrape that together and do a lot of good with it for someone who wouldn’t make that much in a year. That might dig a well in a third-world village that doesn’t have one. What about fifty? It might buy medicine for someone who doesn’t have it. Or five? Several cups of cold water – and maybe even some food.

Yet I can burn through fifty pretty fast, hardly thinking about it where it’s going, what it’s buying and whether it’s glorifying God … or me.

Why is that?