Jesus speaks many times in Scripture about loving your enemies.  Turn the other cheek.  Treat the least of these like kings.  Man it sounds great.  It sounds hard but it sounds great.  It's pretty cut and dry.

I was listening to the Mars Hill podcast today on my drive from Jacksonville to Pensacola.  For Lent, Mars Hill was going through the story of Jonah.  I honestly had never read Jonah in that way.  I'll let you listen yourself to hear the whole story, but one thing in specific stuck out to me.  Shane Hipps talked about the anger that Jonah felt because God spared the people of Nineveh.  Most times I simply passed that over.  But Jonah 4:1-3 says, But it greatly displeased Jonah and he became angry.  He prayed to the Lord and said, “Please Lord , was not this what I said while I was still in my own country? Therefore in order to forestall this I fled to Tarshish, for I knew that You are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abundant in lovingkindness, and one who relents concerning calamity.  Therefore now, O Lord , please take my life from me, for death is better to me than life.” Jonah would rather die, than live in  a world where God forgave the people of Nineveh.  He pointed out that Nineveh was the capitol of Assyria, a vast empire at the time.  They had enslaved and intermarried with Israel.  And that was the worst thing that Israel could have happen.  When Jonah got to Nineveh, he was wanting God to over throw Nineveh as justice for what they had done to Israel.  But God forgave the evil of Nineveh and showed Jonah truly what it meant to love his enemies.

In our culture, I think most average people don't have true enemies.  Sure Seminoles don't like Gators, but sports teams aside, most people strive to be liked by most people.  People will act in certain ways to allow others to like them.  Sure sometimes, people don't like each other, but rarely do we come across a life or death situation.  Rarely are we in America oppressed.  So the hunt for me is for an enemy.

I had a rough week.  I had an experience that I believe may have created a situation where I can love on someone I normally wouldn't, someone hostile to me and my belief.  The truth is, we don't need to find an enemy, or someone hostile to our faith.  In this postmodern society, hostility toward faiths is mostly a thing of the past.  What true for you is fine, but it's not true for me.  It's time to love in a way that changes the world.  We are to be a beacon of God's love.  That's why we are to love our enemies.  Because, as Shane points out, God loves indiscriminately, even those who enslave and destroy his people.  And if He can do it, we should too.

So I've been doing a lot of research on the new hottest thing in social networking: geo-location.  The fact that smartphones are in more and more pockets, all enabled with GSP, makes the possibilities of these networks interesting.  I have currently been trying out many of these services, both on the web and their respective iPhone apps.  I'm going to give you a little bit about each one.

All of these service center around checking in at locations.  You can link pictures, comments, and send them to Facebook, Twitter, and other social sites.  The popularity of Twitter drives these services.

Foursquare: Started in NYC, this is an awesome friend locator.  When you check in, it's going to let you know.  When you check in, you get points.  Points get you badges.  The game is to be the "mayor" of a location.  Some businesses are using Foursquare for promotions, such as the "mayor" of a coffee shop gets a free drink each time they come.  The possibilities for businesses and foursquare seem to be primed and ready to explode.


Gowalla: Gowalla is beautiful.  The design is catchy.  Right now, I would say it is my favorite.  When you check in places, there are patches and stamps you can collect.  They have also started building relationships with businesses to award players. Recently they partnered with inCase and Apple and gave away virtual and real iPhone inCase cases to people who check in at Apple retail stores.  I currently am using Gowalla as my network of choice.

Loopt: Loopt was one of the first networks I saw.  It would locate you on a map and allow you to say what you are doing.  It's interesting that they have evolved along with Gowalla and Foursquare to include check ins.  I like the map you can look at and see all the location of friends who have checked.  Again, this only works if your friends are actively opening the app and checking in regularly.

Yelp: What differentiates Yelp is the ability to leave reviews of the locations.  This is awesome for finding new restaurant, shops, coffee, in your area that rocks.  As a business owner, you can control the information available on your business's Yelp page, something like an online phonebook page.  You can edit information and release updates and promotion that show up on your city directory.  They have also started to add checkin so you can see what your Yelp friends are doing.

Brightkite: Another graphically well designed site. Check in and searchable to see what others are saying.  They also have a nice featured that allows for mass group text message conversations.   It seems like just another check in, conversation place, basically geolocation Twitter, which Twitter can do.

There are some draw backs to these services.  First is the people that use them.  I currently live in Pensacola, FL.  And not many people use these services.  Also, many locations don't have spots set up.  In the case of Gowalla, that makes it hard to collect items, because there are not any.  People who live in big cities will have a lot more to do with these services.

The other concern is the privacy issue.  Most friends I have think it's a great way to get stalked.  There is also a website that's called PleaseRobMe.com that is really just a wake up call.  The fact that telling people where you are can allow them to know where you are not.  The goal is to be aware of over-sharing.

I think that only one or two of these will really take off.  They are aiming at the exact same markets.  The two front runners now and Foursquare and Gowalla.  I think if you are interested in some of this, check one out.

My overall advice would be to find what your friends are doing and everyone use the same thing.  The point is to connect to people you know, meet people who like similar places as you, and share pictures and comments and reviews.  Do it where people will hear it.  If you want to see what I'm doing, I'm on Gowalla.  Friend it up.

I'd love to hear what you think.  Feel free to leave some comments.

This transition has been a little bit tough.  Moving, not as much.  But my brain has had to transition from "church" think, "church" speak, kingdom all the time, to a business mindset.  I mean, I'm trying to raise awareness now for a brand, where as before I was raising awareness of Jesus.

It's a little bit of culture shock too.  Pensacola is a small town.  And "church" is something that everyone has just always done.  I feel a weird sense of complacency all around me.  I don't feel a sense of urgency.  I want to figure out why that is.

I think this points to a larger issue in America.  Our lives as Christians cannot be lived in the a rigid framework.  It can't be when we are only at "church."  And "church" can't just be a another thing you do in your week.  Sunday shouldn't mean "church."

As my friend told me today, "We are the church, no matter where we are."  It is time for everyone to live like that.  Paul says that what ever we do needs to be for the glory of God.  Let's start living for the glory of God.  I'm going to spend time finding what it should look like.  I want to point us to a new way to live, totally centered on Christ.

I'm ready to get serious. I know I blog about serious stuff a lot, but now I need a place to interact with what God is doing. Moving from the ministry as a profession to ministry as a life. So over the coming weeks, I'm going to blog about some of the things I'm doing and some of the things I am seeing.