Zoom! Crash! Boom!

It's funny how we often try to minimalize the Christian life as mountaintop and valley experiences. I know, I’ve heard the analogy and studied Matthew 17. I’ve even used that description myself. It’s an easy explanation. That’s what we like isn’t it? Easy explanations? I know I do. I’ve been guilty of using this analogy myself. But it seems a little too easy doesn’t it? This mountaintop/valley perspective on the Christian life comes off a bit one-dimensional when I look in on my own life.

Mike Yaconelli used to say that the roller coaster is a much more accurate model of the Christian life: “You say yes to Jesus, and suddenly you are strapped in and you think, I’m going to die! Then you begin the long climb of growth—Sunday school, baptism, church membership—and you think, Hey, no problem. I can follow Jesus anywhere, and then—ZOOOOOOOOM—you crash into the twists and turns of life, jerking left then right, up then down, and fifty, sixty years go by and—WHAM!—you’re dead.”

The reality of that model strikes me to the core! In all honesty, half the time I don’t know which way is up and which way is down. Recently, it’s been brought to my attention that many of my good friends who have begun their college chapter of life are struggling. They are struggling with school, future decisions, being away from families who miss their presence, broken relationships which have never been reconciled, deeply connecting with others… I’m suddenly reminded that, while exciting, new, and liberating, this phase of life can also be confusing and scary as hell!

Too often, we can find ourselves riding this roller coaster with others who seem to be having a good time—their hands are in the air, they’re screaming with the rest of the passengers as life goes careening left and right—but the reality is, they’re lonely and scared to death, believing they’re riding all by themselves. I’m not so sure that the rest of life is any different. I do know that on this disorienting ride called life, God’s grace meets us at every twist and every turn. I also know that we don’t need to ride alone. When we expose our fears, confess our brokenness and pray for each other, God heals and He makes us whole. The prayer of a person living right with God is something powerful to be reckoned with.

New morning

This morning, awakened to the sunshine beaming in through my bedroom window, I was reminded that today is a new day… a chance to change… another chance at being and living to please Christ rather than wading in the puddles of stagnant filth that I often find myself in.

I spent some time in the book of Hosea—the story about a man who loved God and was married to a whoring, cheating wife. What’s more, it is a real life parable of God’s love for his people. As I crept in to the 3rd chapter this morning, I read that the prophet Hosea is told by God to “Start all over: Love your wife again, your wife who’s in bed with her latest boyfriend, your cheating wife.”

On this particular morning, I think the greatest message I heard in this passage was not necessarily from Hosea’s perspective, but from the perspective of the unfaithful wife—or the unfaithful Israelites—listening in and realizing that I have a chance to start over with my loving groom—or with my loving Father. God’s love is still perfect and true for you and I as much today as it was yesterday or the day before that… or the day before that…

It’s a new day… a chance to change. Most of that is up to you and me. Am I willing to be changed? I know that our Abba Father is the God of restoration and reconciliation. We can start over because God loves us—even as we “flirt and party with every god that takes our fancy.”

Life, lifelessness and other childlike thoughts

Don’t touch that! Quiet down! Grow up! Quit acting like a child! Even from the time that we’re very small, we are often discouraged from behaving like children. Whether it’s for our own safety or whether it’s so that we’ll fit in, we are constantly told that we need to grow up and act our age. While approaching maturity as followers of Jesus requires us to put behind us childish things, I think we need to rediscover following Him with childlike faith. There’s a fine line between acting childish and being childlike.

Jesus has something to say about childlikeness. Matthew 18:3 gives an account of Jesus calling a small child to Himself and then saying to the adults around Him, “I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” What would it look like for you and me to follow after Jesus like a child—with the wonder, the mystery, and the danger of experiencing life for the first time?

Faith like a child is the kind of faith honored by our Father in Heaven. It’s not a safe faith. It’s a faith that breeds curiosity and danger and astonishment. It is as Mike Yaconelli calls it in his book, Dangerous Wonder, a “gloriously treacherous” faith. There is no glory in a lifeless faith which simply finds us safely sitting in our pew every Sunday morning to enjoy our comfortable religious routine. Following Jesus is anything but comfortable or routine. Following after the unpredictable Jesus found in the gospels is flying by the seat of your pants. It’s having tables turned, curtains torn, and kingdoms flipped upside down. It’s never knowing what to expect Him to stir up in our perfectly mapped-out lives.

Treacherous? indeed! Glorious? Absolutely!

So how is the Church today, any different from those of the early Church who were martyred for their zeal in following after Jesus? The culture is certainly different in many ways, but what about us? What about the Church? The disciples of the early Church were not called to live safely, but were commissioned by Christ Himself to “go”. This going that Jesus had in mind didn’t have anything to do with going and hiding away in their comfy little feel-good steeple-adorned buildings so as not to be infected by the world. Instead, the going that Jesus commands at the end of Matthew is a charge to infect the world with Himself, making disciples, baptizing them, and teaching them! Nothing very passive about that kind of life. Some might even consider it “dangerous”, “adventurous”, or “risky”.

We’ve become satisfied with a life-enhancing Christianity rather than a life-changing Christianity. We’re often content with being “nice people” instead of radical followers of Jesus.

So what’s at the root of this very un-Christlike mentality?

Hmmm… That’s a list too lengthy to go into. But for the sake of this article, let’s talk about fear. Do you fear going to unfamiliar places? Do you fear people who look very different from yourself? Do you fear investing in other people? Do you fear rejection from other people? Do you fear the possibility of missing out on life elsewhere while you’re not there? Do you fear that you’re not good enough for God to use you? I sure am. It’s ironic how we can miss out on life because we’re afraid of experiencing life. But that’s often what happens. We turn our backs on experiencing life and in the process turn our backs on God, the author and perfector of life. We become the Church’s own worst enemy by saying that we believe in Jesus while we’re no longer astonished and amazed by Him. It’s a frightening notion. It frightens me even more to think that I could—or potentially already have—become that very person.

I want to live dangerously close to Jesus, in absolute awe, not knowing whether to laugh or cry. But I’m afraid… I’m afraid of having my life “ruined” by Jesus, because that’s exactly what Jesus does. He turns our lives inside out and upside down until the only way we know who we are is by knowing who He is. He invented life. He offers us to experience life and promises it to us abundantly. Often that means being violently thrown from our cozy four-walled religion into a wildly colorful and boisterous world.

I want to approach the throne of Grace with the wide-eyed wonder of a child, completely and utterly overwhelmed by the unflinching love of my Father.

This is it

“’For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the LORD, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.’” -Jeremiah 29:11

Over the past month, God has been stirring up a lot of things inside of me. For about a week in March I was going through a bout of emotional ups and downs as I often do (I’ve got my mother’s emotions—don’t tell anyone else that!) Just as I started questioning where all of this was coming from, my wife and I were blessed with a five day vacation at the end of the month. We spent our time in a place between Nashville and Knoxville called Fairfield Glade. The overcast, rainy whether which accompanied us most of the week only helped me to relax and start to unpack some of the stuff I was dealing with.

As the week progressed, and I gradually slowed down and got my heart quieter, I began to realize what was happening. I’m investing my life into kids who are gonna leave. It’s one thing that I wasn’t really prepared for when diving into youth ministry. I maybe experienced some of that last year, but the relationships which God has forged between myself and many of our Seniors this year have been on a deeper level. I’m simply really gonna miss them when they leave for college in the Fall! These kids aren’t just students of mine, but they’re brothers and sisters in Christ, partners in ministry, friends.

It’s been so exciting to watch these kids wrestle with their faith. Together we’ve questioned what it means to be a follower of Jesus. We’ve carried each others burdens, shared in each others joys, and have laughed ourselves silly in the process. Together we’ve come to the end of ourselves and have been met by the arms of our Savior who bids us come unto Himself for rest from the busyness we’re all so guilty of. I have been blessed to be a part of our Father’s nurturing as He continues to grow these kids into wide-eyed, radical lovers of God.

As I sit back and take all of this in, I can feel the gentle affirming voice of my Father reassuring me that this is what the Church should be about. This is what following Jesus is about. It’s about people. It’s about lives being shared and turned upside down and inside out as we learn to abandon ourselves and awkwardly seek fellowship with the same Jesus who has been all the while chasing us down and recklessly loving us into His arms.

I feel oddly like a parent—coming to terms with the fact that I’ve got to let go of my kids and entrust them into the hands of the One who brought them into my life in the first place. I love these kids, but it thrills me even more to know that the same Jesus who meets me in the broken places of my life is even more in love with them than I could ever imagine.

Can you relate?

I have been meeting one-on-one every week with a young man who is asking questions… Questions about truth… Questions about faith… Questions about life and eternity and a guy named Jesus Christ. Our conversations are often deep. Sometimes they are not so deep. Sometimes I feel uncomfortable when he asks questions that I feel inadequate to answer. But the amazing thing is that God always shows up and He doesn’t expect me to have all the answers. God expects me to respond to His love with compassion. God expects me to see my friend through the eyes of the One who saw me fit to receive forgiveness. But you know what? Sometimes, it’s really hard to see past ME.

If the world is to know we are Christ’s disciples by our love for one another, what then would the world have to say about us? Often, it seems like we, the church, are more concerned with pursuing our own agendas than we are about showing compassion to those who seem to “get in our way”. Jesus tells us to settle our disagreements and to be reconciled with each other quickly. Unfortunately, the church finds itself looking just like the rest of the world when it comes to bickering, back-biting, and bitterness. The outside of the cup can look neat and tidy, but means absolutely nothing if the inside is caked in bitter hearts, spiteful grudges, and selfish motives. I bring these things up as a sinner saved by grace who struggles with these very issues. I wrestle with myself and others over “serving God” MY way. But when I sit down with my friend over coffee and read about Jesus while he asks questions about why life matters, I begin to remember that it’s so much NOT about me. It’s not about doing ministry MY way or anybody else’s way for that matter. It’s about loving God and loving people.

Life matters because people matter… to God. He has created us and us alone in His own image. We are valued and loved by our Wonderful Creator. Understanding God’s love frees us to walk humbly with Him and to stop demanding more from Him and those around us. Walking humbly with God produces peace in our lives and enables us to engage a world full of people in need of forgiveness with compassion. We were created to walk humbly with God through this life, through death, and out the other side to eternity with Him.

Ready to jump

Well, here we are dangling our feet off the edge of another year gone by. As the wind of a new day sweeps between our toes and tussles our hair, we can imagine what it might be like to leap forward and free fall into that great unknown that is tomorrow, never looking back. Never wondering, “what if?” Never fearing that which awaits us.

Instead, most of us sit on the threshold of the New Year feeling beat up, exhausted, focusing on everything that we aren’t, the goals we failed to meet… on all the things we didn’t do, say, become, work on, or accomplish. Have you started setting goals for 2004 about all the things you intend to do, to say, to become, to work on, or to accomplish? Well give it up! How many Decembers have we done this only to end another year in disappointment before starting another year with new goals? STOP! Shut that voice up!

As you look out from that ledge upon the great big blue sky, be still. Breathe. Think back just for a moment and consider everything that has happened this year that was beyond you. For that matter, think of everything that happened despite you. Perhaps you were forced to look in the mirror and face some ugly things about yourself or your family… and survived. Maybe a friend or spouse who you thought would never attend a worship service with you showed up. Maybe you made a decision to stay in your marriage and really work at it… or maybe you finally found the courage to face an already broken marital covenant and had to make a decision about that. Maybe, in yourself or someone you love, you faced the pain of loneliness, sexuality, death, illness, infertility, shame, or addiction. Maybe you got a surprisingly favorable response after confronting someone on an issue… or perhaps you got the expected negative response and mustered the courage to move on. Maybe you received an obvious affirmation of your calling… or maybe you really know that where you are is not your calling at all.

Stop. Be still. Is this just “your stuff”… or is it God? Can you distinguish Him beyond the noise inside your head?

As you ponder that question, ask, “what is God?” Then strip it down to the bare bones and know that He IS. He IS and He chooses and has chose to come to us in the small, the unrecognizable, the difficult, the absurd, and the inconceivable.

So as you take that final breath as you stand on the ledge, will you choose to jump first and fear later? Will you—despite all your struggling—resist the voices of dissatisfaction and find Him there? Will you—despite yourself—accept that you have always been His child, His vessel, His instrument? Can you possibly allow Him to be that big? Because He IS and that is who you ARE… especially in the small, the unrecognizable, the difficult, the absurd, and the inconceivable.

Take a deep breath and take a huge leap off that cliff, not fearing the consequences, but resting instead in your Father’s embrace. He IS that big!