FREE AT LAST

My sixteen year old is sadly addicted to dramatic love stories. She is the Chick Flick Queen of the Brewer household and quite often I get pulled into two gut wrenching hours of her theatrical showground. It all starts with her saying “Daddy, you have to watch a movie with me tonight”, and before I know it I have set through 120 minutes of love lost, romantic tears and passionate pursuit.

It always ends up with us talking about what’s real and how selfishness makes a five minute story into a two hour drama but it’s her night and I don’t want to ruin it. In just a few years from now she won’t be in my arms any more and I want to redeem the time I still have with her as my little girl.

But know this, through the entire duration I quietly pray the Lord Jesus would send just one healthy hand grenade into the movie. I privately envision John Rambo swinging onto the set of The Way We Were or even John Bulishi yelling “food fight!” right in the middle of Terms of Endearment. Instead of female banter I hear Lucky Ned Pepper say, “Well Rooster will you give us the road?’ and John Wayne replies, “I aim to kill you in one minute, Ned, or hang you at Judge Parkers convenience, which will it be?”

NICE SURPRISES

However, sometimes I am really surprised. In fact every so often a DVD goes into my collection instead of back to the rental place. I hate to admit it but I have learned there are some chick-flicks that are in fact great movies. Legends of the Fall, Father of the Bride, Always and P.S. I Love You, are some of my favorites.

It just makes my day when I think I am going to hate a movie and end up loving it.

I really enjoy surprises in life, especially when it relates to better things. Unexpected blessings always get my attention.

As a Christian, I get to be ridiculously optimistic all the time. I mean when you follow, and are in filled with the Spirit of a guy that slapped death in the face, it’s hard not to have confidence. The magnitude of attitude can’t be underestimated but I am often stunned and caught off guard with things way better than what I thought they would be.

What happened last week takes the cake.

TREASURE IN THE TRASH

For more than ten years my ministry team has been committed to reaching the families who work in the dumps of Matamoros, Mexico. Most of them victims of outrageous interest rates and loan scams, they are forced to mine mountains of filth for any form of value.

The dump was controlled by the Mexican Mafia or Cartel and the only choice these families had was to pay the money they didn’t have, prostitute the women to border brothels or work everyday as a group in the worst environment imaginable. Slavery did not end when Lincoln was President.

Over the years we have actually bought whole families, redeeming them and setting them free. In more than eighty trips, we have seen the farthest extremes of both victory and defeat. 12 years ago I looked down and saw what I thought was a doll and was shocked to see it was a newborn baby boy only hours old. He barely survived but lives today as a happy kid in the orphanage we support down there. The brother of the Pastor we support who works there everyday was shot in the head and murdered in that dump. There have been a lot of blood sweat and tears invested there because we love those people so much and have a desperate hatred for their slavery. More than 1500 people, less than ten miles from Texas, with no hope to ever leave such a terrible place.

Imagine my shock when I drove into the dump last Friday and no one was there.

The Mexican Military is at war with the drug Cartels right now and through several gun battles, actually killed the main overlords of the trash dump. The rest of them have either fled to Texas or are in hiding somewhere in Mexico. In an unprecedented act of Jubilee, everyone who owed money was actually set free and sent home to where they lived before coming to the border.

We found about sixty people living in the village because their homes are there but not slaving as they had before. They told us what had happened and we just stood there and wept. Its one of the greatest miracles I have ever seen. I never thought I would see it happen in my life time but I saw it last Friday with my own two eyes.

People being set free from tyrannical hopelessness and despair. Free to live life more abundantly and to dream again. It reminds of a story I heard about this man named Jesus and what He did for everyone who believes in Him.

John 8:36
So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.

Contact the Brewer @ www.FreshFromTheBrewer.com

Under the INFLUENCE

I saw a police officer pull over a guy in Joshua and had him walking the line for a sobriety test. He was obviously under the influence and it wasn’t the Holy Ghost. I felt sorry for him knowing how much trouble he was in, yet grateful for the police officer at the same time. That’s a paradox and I like that. There are lots of paradoxes in Christianity.

I do a lot of prison ministry, in fact my band Joshua Rising, is recording a live CD in the Eastham Unit next month. I love those guys behind bars. Yet, at the time I always leave those units saying, “Thank God for prisons.”

You love justice for your society yet you love the individual offender as a human being that needs help. To me, its not confusing, it just a little funny.

Since seeing that brother under the influence, I’ve been thinking about that word. According to Webster, influence is the power or capacity of causing an effect on someone.

Jesus said something about influence when he said; whoever is the greatest servant has the greatest authority. Because of this, I often say, “The way to the throne room is through the servant’s quarters”. You gain powerful influence in people lives by serving them in a way that is valuable. Value is everything when it comes to influence.

Feeding For Influence

Last Saturday our food outreach to the poor fed 139 local families (about 550 people) with over 12,000 pounds of good groceries. Like every week, there was a lot of hard work involved. The groceries are not free, yet we freely give them away. The event only lasts for a couple of hours yet there are hundreds of man-hours involved with every outreach.

I point blank tell people up front why we are such radical givers to them. Number one, because Jesus loves them and number two, because we want an opportunity to influence them towards something much better.

The church lost its influence in America when the church lost its value in our society. We have been moved to the margins because we are no longer about serving those around us. God help us to stop building our personal empires and be about building the Kingdom.

The Offer Of Influence

The Mafia’s way of gaining influence is through making you an offer you can’t refuse. Islam is marching through the world doing the same thing. Their way is through terror and Jihad. In both extreme and mainstream cases of Islamic ruled cultures, women are treated worse than animals and children abusively taught to hate and to fear.

We Christians point out how horrible that is, yet tend to use some of the same tactics and have the same mindset. No, we are not making women wear burkas and forbidding them to be educated, but many of us try to gain influence through being combative and overbearing. Our tactics of intrusion and invasion simply don’t work.

Kris Vallotton says that many times we believers become combative instead of “honorably confronting” and we should be demonstrating the benefits of a superior kingdom. When we combat instead of demonstrate, he says, “We reduce our influence to the small pond of the church and render ourselves powerless to the ocean of humanity.” Preach it Kris.

The Brewer takes influence as a very serious issue. If good people don’t have the influence in our culture, then I promise you someone or something else will.

Silence of the Lambs

In the mid eighties, I knew a part time preacher that made a living by working in a slaughterhouse in Cleburne. He loved the meat market and the trade of cutting meat. Out of the blue, Weldon called me one day and said, “Troy you’ve got to come down here and see something.” It was something that would impact my life.

When I pulled up behind the processing plant I saw a pen with about a hundred bleating sheep and they were totally freaked out. The door to the processing plant and to their death was wide open and all the sheep scurried to stay away from it. They huddled together on the opposite side of the pen careful to not go anywhere near that chute. Somehow they knew what it leads to.

My friend told me that unlike cows, when sheep get to the plant they have an awareness of impending doom. He said, “Isn’t that something, how they know better than to go inside?” then he confidently said. “Now watch this.”

A moment latter he released two goats into the same pen. They ran to the herd and mixed in with the sheep. After a few minutes they seemed to calm and Weldon rattled a bucket with feed. At once the goats jumped from the herd and into the chute of the slaughterhouse. To my surprise, one by one, all of those sheep that earlier wouldn’t have anything to do with going inside, followed the goats and with the last one in, Weldon closed the door. It was a big metal door and made a dramatic sound that sent a chill down my spine.

Weldon smiled. “You see that? Be careful of goats in your life, Troy.”

That’s a sermon on influence I would never forget.

You can reach The Brewer at www.FreshFromTheBrewer.com