Deep dark truthful mirror

There was a young man attending our Sunday night Sr High gatherings last spring who I can’t seem to shake from my mind. He began coming as a sort of favor to his mother who had recently begun attending worship on Sunday mornings with our congregation. After speaking with the mother over the phone and over the course of a few Sundays, I had formed an inkling of what to expect from him the first time that I met the boy. I’m sure we all know what happens when we form expectations of people. It often hinders us from seeing through our expectations to the person who Jesus sees. I don’t know about you, but I’m guilty!

When I first met him, I really wasn’t too surprised. He was a high school freshman, small and thin in stature, much like my self. He wore all black, was very quiet, and I had prior knowledge that he was not a believer in Christ. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to notice that this kid was new, different from most of our kids, and quite uncomfortable. Over the course of the evening, he slowly opened up more and seemed to enjoy the time hanging out with the group. At the end of the evening, my wife and I volunteered to give him a ride home as his mother was working that evening. During the car ride home, he told my wife and I about his broken family and how he was an “atheist”, and was apologetic to us both as if he were going to offend us or say something to us that we’d never heard before. When we finally arrived at the front door of his mother’s house, he offered his hand in thanks to both of us as we said our goodbyes. My wife and I spent the long ride home praying for the boy and his family. For about four consecutive months, he continued to show up on Sunday nights until last summer when his “agreement” with his mom supposedly ended.

The thing that single-handedly both blew my mind and frustrated me about him that night and over the course of the next four months was how sincere and bold he was in his conviction that there was no God. He was only a freshman in high school and was more bold in his denial of God than most of us are in living out the amazing, life-changing revelation of the God who loves us the filthy, wretched and unlovable! So why did this young man stop coming to our youth gatherings after four months? Wasn’t he hearing about this God who loves? Wasn’t he hearing the too-incredible-for-words news of this Jesus Christ who saves? Absolutely! So, what happened?

I believe that where we often fail as the church is not in presenting the life-saving gospel of Jesus Christ, but in “being” the life-saving, embracing good news of the God who became flesh and was broken for our sake. I believe that after Sunday night, outside the confines of the “church grounds”, this young man was never visited, phoned, or invited by anyone claiming to know this very same Jesus. You see, we’re too busy, too comfortable, and too self-righteous to reach out and in to a dying world and touch those who, like ourselves, need to feel Jesus Christ. If we are compelled by Christ’s love, should we not make it our mission to spend time with those regarded as scum? Should we not go out of our way to touch those deemed filthy? Should this not be the purpose of our existence? If we are it’s a sin, then friends I’m the chief! All praise to our Father that we’re free from sin’s bondage and free in the life of Christ! But it’s critical that we ask ourselves these questions? How many of us have a neighbor, a co-worker, a friend, a teacher, a doctor, a parent, or a child who doesn’t know that God loves them? Brothers and sisters, if we are to be friends; if we are to be disciples of Jesus; and if we are to be world-changers, then we must be compelled by Christ’s love as the church to be in the broken, hurting lives of others, living out the hope, grace, and love of the God who saves.

“If we are out of our mind, it is for the sake of God; if we are in our right mind, it is for you. For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that One died for all, and therefore all died. And He died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for Him who died for them and was raised again." -2 Corinthians 5:13-15 (NIV)

Following a homeless man

Selling a home is a big task. Nay, a gigantic task! I mean, if you want to do it right, you’ve got to get yourself a good realtor, an appraisal on your house and then start deciding just how much profit you want to reap off of this beautiful abode which you’ve put hours of days of work into. Then come the open-houses… The place you come for sanctuary, to relax, to not worry about what you look like, becomes a high-maintenance department store window for the whole world to see. The carpet must be eternally clean enough to eat off of. The splash guards must be perfectly aligned with the gutter spouts. Piles of underwear upon the floors and nose clippings around the bathroom sink are no longer acceptable living conditions. After all, people are going to be walking through your house… people you don’t even know! This is where anxiety finds it’s breeding ground. Who knows how long this masquerade of Better Homes and Gardens® living could go on?

Then, days later, after only one person looks at your home, it sells. Your house is now sold as if God were beating you over the head with a steel rail engraved with the word “MOVE” all over it! You were hoping you’d be able to sell eventually for somewhere near what you were asking, but never did you imagine this quickly! A month ago you hadn’t even considered moving any time soon… Where are you going to move to now?

This is the scenario of the past few months for my wife and I. Amidst a summer filled with weeklong trips, day trips and VBS, we’ve been boxing up all the stuff we’ve somehow managed to accumulate over three years of marriage. We topped it off by moving out of our lovely home of two years on my birthday! (If you haven’t had the SHEER JOY of moving out of a home on your birthday, I really do suggest you try to arrange it.) We now find ourselves homeless and having a hard time either finding a repo-home that we’re happy with or are being out-bid by others on homes that we really like! It’s been a bit frustrating. Especially when you consider how obvious it seemed that God wanted us to move yet we’ve yet to find a place to move to.

But this is the God we serve. He doesn’t number the dots for us so that we can complete the puzzle on our own. He asks us to surrender and trust Him as our Leader and our Provider. That’s something that I’ve had a really hard time doing through all of this, yet I can see Him. I see my Provider in the countless people who have offered to put us up in their homes. I see my Provider in the fact that we’re not having to make payments on a home while we’re gone on trips this summer. I see my Leader saying “foxes have dens and birds have nests, but I, the Son of Man, have no home of my own, not even a place to lay my head.” It’s time to filter our own desires through the truth of Jesus Christ.

“Your heavenly Father already knows all your needs, and he will give you all you need from day to day if you live for him and make the Kingdom of God your primary concern.” –Matthew 6:32-33

Who among us is a big stinkin' failure?

I’ve been a little unfocused lately… a little out of my game… Come to think of it, every time that I turn around, I seem to find myself coming up short, failing at something or other on a daily basis. You might say it’s become a bit of a routine. Why can’t I be consistent in my Scripture study? Why do I find it so incredibly hard to get alone, be still and just be in conversation with God? Why do I find it so difficult to be sacrificial with my time? Will I never be able to put my wife’s needs and desires before my own without her having to tell me? WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME?! Probably the same thing that was wrong with Simon Peter. I’m a miserable failure.

Peter was as impulsive and enthusiastic as a follower of Jesus could get. But when Jesus informed the Twelve that each one of them would abandon Him, Peter’s reaction was, “Jesus, I don’t care what you say, there is NO WAY that I will abandon you! I’ll go wherever you go even if I have to die!” Jesus turned to Peter and said, “I tell you the truth Peter, that tonight, before the rooster crows, you will disown me three times!” Sure enough, soon after Jesus was arrested and put on trial, Peter denied even knowing Jesus not once, not twice, but thrice. Despite his best intentions, Peter failed Jesus. Kind of reminds me of myself.

I could stop right there, but the incredible thing is… That’s not the end of the story! Three days later, after a long night fishing, the disciples spotted Jesus walking along the shore. Peter jumps out of the boat into the water and swims to the shore to be welcomed by the God whom he had failed so miserably! That’s the hope that we have today. We have the unchangeable promise of an unchangeable God of grace who knows every disgusting thing about us and yet holds us in the midst of our failures. He already knows us and yet he’s calling us deeper in to service and relationship with Himself. We may be failures, but we are victorious failures!

“I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is like the working of his mighty strength, which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms.” –Ephesians 1:18-20

Fiction family

I was watching an episode of Everybody Loves Raymond last night (a show I never really appreciated until I was married). The episode, as usual, revolved around Ray, his wife Debra, his brother Robert and their meddling parents Frank and Marie. After Ray’s 11-year old daughter Ally asked her father, “If everybody goes to heaven, why does God put us on earth?,” hilarity ensues as the five “adults” ponder over the meaning of life. Of course, God tells us in the Bible that the only road to salvation for any of us is through a relationship with Jesus Christ. Sitting on the sofa, watching this fictional conversation take place on our television, I became sad at how hopeless and ultimately meaningless a life outside of Jesus is. This was by no means a new revelation to me, but in that moment, I found God reminding me that I was created to know Him, to love Him, to experience His love.

It is only through actively seeking Jesus that we come to experience life in the fullest (“I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full”—John 10:10). Are you knowing Jesus? Not just knowing about Him, but intimately KNOWING Him?

Ought three

A new year begins. Who notices? Besides the brief excitement during the few minutes following the stroke of midnight at the end of December 31st, what difference does it make? Sure we’ll make plenty of New Year’s “resolutions”… Promise ourselves to do or not do a lot of things that we’ll do plenty of regardless. It’s a chance to put a past behind us that will catch up with us anyhow. It means that we’ve got three hundred and sixty-some-odd days to start planning next year’s Christmas festivities. What difference does a new year make really except that it adds another year to our lives?

The difference is that we are loved by a Creator who incredibly unchanging. He remains the same this year as he did the year before and the years ahead of us. He doesn’t need a new year to start something new in our lives. He calls us NOW! Jesus approached Peter, Andrew, James and John, four men whose very livelihood existed in the fact that they were fishermen. Jesus approached them saying “Come, follow me and I will make you fishers of men” (Mark 1:16-20). He didn’t say, “Go get yourselves clean, get right with God and then, a year from now, maybe you’ll be ready for what I’ve got for you.” No sir! Jesus approached them and said, “Right here! Right now! When the only thing you know is being fishermen, I want you to drop your nets and follow me! I’ve got something bigger and better for you. I’m gonna change your life and build my Kingdom through you!” We don’t need a new year to get our lives clean brothers and sisters! We are LOVED by the Lord of the universe who approaches us in all of our filth and wretchedness and says, “Follow me. I’ve got somethin’ better for you.”

Shalom.