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

A Funny Thing Happened One Sunday

This week’s confession from a highly caffeinated Christian comes brewed with controversial observations on laughter.

Where There Is Fire…

Rules are not funny to me but rules can keep you out of a world of hurt. If there is a rule, it is probably because something happened that somebody else doesn’t ever want to happen again. For example, we have “No Smoking” signs at the entrance of our church because Open Door Ministries tends to attract the “Marlboro man” to our services. Rather than run him off, we just want to keep him from firing one up during the announcements. You might think you don’t have to ask people to refrain from smoking at church but we have discovered signs are required in Johnson County.

Jesus, Wont You Light His Fire?

There is a good reason why we have one person in charge of calling the prayer chain instead of just handing out the long list of phone numbers for our church’s prayer warriors. We used to provide those phone numbers until one lady called through the entire church and asked us to pray for her husband’s apparent erectile dysfunction and asked that “the spirit would move” at around 10:00 pm on Friday. When her poor husband found out, he called through the same list insisting that there was no physical problem and that he would probably be asleep by 10:00 on Friday anyway. We don’t give out those numbers anymore.

Fire In The Sky.

When I was young, I used to let people in the crowd give testimonies but I quit handing the microphone over when one woman shocked the congregation in 1998. Her testimony was that she was in her back pasture when the “Mother Ship” landed not far from where she was standing. She wasn’t sure if they were angles or “fire aliens” but something came out and ran her back into the house. I don’t hand over the microphone anymore.

If you have church long enough, especially if you are an outreach church, your going to see things that you never thought would happen in a million years. Things that make you want to bust out laughing and make others want to run off crying.

Gun Fire

The first time I preached in Matomoros Mexico, Pastor Gene Izaguira told me the Mafioso had just warned him not to be preaching anymore to their drug runners because too many had been converted to Christ. When he refused, the bad guys told gene they would assassinate him behind his pulpit on that very night. Mind you, this was the first night I showed up down there to preach.

“So if somebody walks in and shoots you bro,” he said with his hand on my shoulder, “its nothing against you personally.”

That night an armed gunman was stopped at the door by the 2 new converts who had not yet learned the doctrine of self-control. Forrest Griffin would have been proud of their “ground and pound” technique. In the midst of the brutal beating, that young man decided to give his life to the Lord and is a big part of Gene’s church to this day. That was my first time down there and I’ve been back more than 60 times since. How can you not love a church like that?

Fire From Heaven

Just a few months ago, my band was playing at a motorcycle church in Chico, Texas. At the end of the service, a worn out practitioner came forward in his leather and long hair asking for prayer about his hearing. “I’m real scared and I need a miracle”, he said to the Pastor.

We laid hands on him and the Man of God broke out some olive oil and put it on both his ears. They whole prayer team rebuked the devil, shouted at Heaven and proclaimed a miracle healing as our band played upbeat worship as backup. After a good ten minutes of lively scripture quoting and charismatic breakthrough, the team got quiet and the Pastor asked him how his hearing was? The man, with a confused look and oil dripping off both ears stated, “perfect, I can hear perfectly”.

Just as praise began to bust out in the church, the man interrupted, “my ears are not the problem! It’s tomorrow’s court hearing I’m worried about.” I laughed so hard I had to leave the room.

A big part of having real victory in your life is being led by God to know what you should and should not take too seriously. If you are all wrapped up in yourself, you’re a gift everybody else could do without. I double-dog-dare you to ask the Lord to give you a heart that loves to laugh. After all, that’s His heart too.

“He will yet fill your mouth with laughter and your lips with shouts of joy.”

Job 8:21