Christianity

Needtobreath and Other Nonsensical Matters

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If you get the chance to see Needtobreathe in concert, go. They are amazing live.

If you get the chance to see anything at the Ryman, even if it’s your Aunt Judy playng the tub bass, go. It is a stunning venue, both visually and acoustically.

Put them both together and you have the makings of a very fine night.

On the heels of such a glorious night, I find myself easily irritated by little things and short-tempered. The danger of any mountaintop experience is always that we’re more prone to temptation afterward.

I’m so beyond glad that tomorrow is Friday. As tired as I am, I’d hate to think I still had a whole week to trudge through.

The truth of the matter remains that I am always in need of the grace of God. Whether I’m in the middle of an awesome concert and riding a high or coming down to earth afterward, I need grace.

I need grace when I am the life of the party (which is rare, but always fun to see) and when I feel like a social leper.

I need grace when I had the best quiet time with God and when I didn’t even have one.

Simply put, I need Jesus. Every morning I pray something like, “Jesus, I need you. Without you, I will fail at my job and in my relationships and especially in my walk with You. Come inhabit every moment of my day and come fill me up with You. Anoint and empower me to live this life Your way.”

So at 11:18 pm, I close the day and this blog with this: I have never leaned on Jesus and not gotten the support I need. Not ever. Jesus is completely and totally reliable, trustworthy, and dependable.

By the way, I’m hoping for one of those “life of the party” moments any day now . . . .

Something “Borrowed”

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Like the title says, I am “borrowing” this one from tonight’s Kairos, featuring guest speaker Thom Wolf. He spoke about how God has provided the answer to how we are to live in the 21st century. The syllabus for life is found in Micah 6:8: “He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.”

The three parts are justice, mercy, and faithfulness (see Matthew 23:23-24).

We must seek justice. Justice means that where you live never determines whether you should live or not. Justice means that no child should ever go hungry or die of preventible diseases or be sold into slavery or sex trafficking. Justice means that Jesus has come not to turn the world upside-down, but to turn an upside-down world the rightside up again.

We seek mercy. Not just to those who deserve it, for by its very definition mercy is always for those who don’t deserve it. By the love of Christ, we love our enemies into friends and then into brothers and sisters in Christ. We turn the other cheek and lay down our rights, looking to God to defend us. When someone close to us falls, we don’t extend a pointing finger, but a helping hand.

We seek faithfulness. I love the illustration of unfaithfulness as a step that looks outwardly sound, but is eaten away and has no real substance. You can’t depend on it or put any weight on it. Faithfulness means we don’t talk humbly before our God, we walk humbly. We live out what we profess and our actions and attitudes line up with our confessions.

If we live these things, we won’t ever have to con anyone into the Kingdom of God. We won’t have to ever trick someone into praying a prayer or manipulate anyone into a decision. If we do justly and lover mercy and walk humbly before God, we will show Jesus to the people around us and they will want to know Him.

I for one have been challenged to broaden my thinking and seek God’s heart for the world. If God has a special place in His heart for the poor and needy, outcast and forsaken, then why don’t I?

 

Choose This Day

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Every single day that I am blessed to wake up is a day that I must choose whom I will serve.

Every day I can choose to serve myself and chase after fame and success and pleasure and money, or I can choose to serve the Lord and find blessings upon blessings, too many to contain.

I can never coast on what I chose yesterday. If I chose the Lord yesterday, that was yesterday. I can stll choose to serve myself today. I have learned that lesson the hard way many times.

Who will you choose to serve today? Who will you choose to glorify?

When people look at the words you speak and post on facebook, who will they be drawn to, you or Jesus?

When people look at the way you live, will they think how cool and great you are or how great and marvelous is this God who saved you?

Most days, I choose to serve me. Most days, I seek after what I want when I want it. God gets my leftovers, if there is anything left.

The beauty of it is that even after those selfish, self-serving days, I can still choose the next day to serve the Lord. I still get new mercies and fresh grace for that new day.

There are a lot of options to choose from these days. You will wake up to a thousand voices telling you to serve them or their cause or their belief system. You will never lack for choices of who to serve.

But for me, if I’m honest, there’s only ever been one choice as to who to serve. Only one voice who has always backed up His claims and made good on His promises.

As for me and my house, today I will serve the Lord. I pray that tomorrow that by the grace of God I can say the same, but for today, my choice is final: I WILL SERVE THE LORD!

Who Looks Out for You? For Whitney: Part II

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I got to thinking more about what Kevin Costner said at Whitney Houston’s funeral. Something else he said resonated with me on more than one level.

He spoke of how he decided to cast her in the leading female role of The Bodyguard. He not only chose her, but he fought for her when the bigwig studio execs wanted another actress with more experience than Whitney (and who was white, although they never explicitly said so).

Kevin was even willing to wait a year until she finished her concert tour. He believed in her for the role to the point that he made her believe in it for herself. The result is history– a mega-blockbuster movie and a soundtrack that sold a gazillion copies.

Do you have someone that fights for you like that? Do you have someone in your corner willing to speak on your behalf with that kind of tenacity? One that won’t quit even when you have?

When the Bible calls Jesus your advocate who goes before the Father on your behalf, that’s exactly what it means. He fights for you– not against God– but as God in human skin.

When the devil claims you because of your past, Jesus points to the cross and says, “That’s taken care of. This one belongs to me now and you have no more claim over my child than you did over Me at the cross or the grave.”

When the world says you’re beyond saving, Jesus says, “I have called you by name and redeemed you. You are never beyond My reach and never, ever gone for Me to be able to save. It’s never too late for Me to step in and transform you into My image.”

When the voices in your head say that you’ll never amount to anything and that you are a waste of space and effort, Jesus says, “I know what plans I have for you and I won’t ever stop until I’ve finished what I started in you.”

When your failures and mistakes tell you it’s hopeless and you are nothing more than all your worst sins, Jesus says, “You are not what those other people says you are. You are not the names you call yourself in your darkest moments. You are who I say you are, and that is Beloved Redeemed Beautiful Transformed Child of the King of Kings.”

I wish someone could have spoken up for Whitney in the last days of her life. When all she was hearing was how the drugs would finally kill her and she was hopelessly spiralling out of control, I wish someone could have told her, “I believe in you. I believe you can beat this. I believe that God in you is stronger than anything you’re facing right now and I will stand by you, no matter what.”

Maybe you can speak for someone right now. Maybe you can be the voice for those who have no voice and take a stand for those the world has forgotten or discarded. Maybe you can believe good things for someome when they can’t believe for themselves.

Remember above all that Jesus speaks for you always. His love trumps your greatest fears and failures. He has already defeated anything you have or will ever face in your life.

That’s Who looks out for you.

 

Thoughts on St. Jude and Stepping Out in Faith

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Today, the radio station I was listening to had a marathon fundraiser for St. Jude. It was a gut-wrenching, tear-jerking experience as they played all the saddest songs in their arsenal interspersed with audio clips of parents talking about watching their children get sick, suffer, and sometimes die.

I heard about Danny Thomas, founder of St. Jude’s Research Hospital for Children. His vow was that no child should ever have to miss out on a cure for an inability to pay. The hospital we have today is the living imbodiment of that vision.

But what if Danny Thomas had said something like, “That’s a real shame that kids can’t get treated because they don’t have the money. Someone should probably do something about that. I’m sure someone else will step up.”

More than likely, there would be no St. Jude. Probably, many children would have not gotten treatment. Many more would have died. Many forms of cancer would still be untreatable.

History shows what can happen when one person steps out in faith to make vision a reality. When one person says, “I won’t wait for someone else to step up. I will step up.”

What burden has God placed on your heart? What breaks your heart and keeps you up at night? What is one tragedy or trauma that you went through that you would want to spare anyone else from having to go through?

Now, what are you willing to do about it? You may not be able to cure cancer or solve world hunger, but you can do something. You may not be able to change the world, but you can change one person’s world.

I love the illustration of an older man walking on the beach littered with starfish. He found a young boy picking up the starfish one by one and throwing them back into the ocean.

He said to the boy, “Son, you know you can’t possibly hope to make a difference with all these starfish laying around.”

The boy replied, “Maybe not, but I can make a difference for this one,” as he threw another starfish back into the ocean.

May we each make a difference in someone’s life today.

The So-Called Greener Pasture

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“And don’t be wishing you were someplace else or with someone else. Where you are right now is God’s place for you. Live and obey and love and believe right there. God, not your marital status, defines your life” (1 Corinthians 7:17a).

The media tells you that you can’t be satisfied where you are. Our entire economy is based on the idea that for you to be completely satisfied, you just need a new car or a new house or a new 100-inch 3D plasma TV.

So many single people are so pre-occupied with getting married that they lose the beauty of being single. Some will get married to the first person who shows interest back and find out the hard way that being alone in a bad marriage is worse than being alone and single.

Even married people are tempted daily that what they have isn’t enough. There are myriad oppurtinities for you to find comfort and solace in someone who is not your spouse. No one starts out looking to wreck his or her marriage with an affair. It starts innocently enough with confiding in that co-worker and opening up emotionally to the friend of your spouse.

We miss so much of our lives waiting on the next big event. For single people, it’s marriage. For married people, it’s having children. For married people with children, it’s having the kids grow up and leave the house so they can go back to the way it was when they were first married.

Only you can’t ever go back. You can’t live in the future. The only life you have is now in the present and if you are so focused on what comes next, you will miss what God has for you right now.

God is outside of time and in every moment of your life. But He is only speaking to you in the present. You can only commune with Him in the now. If your mind is envisioning possible futures and rehearsing future conversations and imagining what 5 years from now will bring, you will miss the precious word that God is speaking to you right now.

The best place you can be is where you are right now. Where God has you is the perfect place for you to learn and grow and become the person who is ready for what God has for you in the future.

That’s where I want to be. I hope and pray that’s where you want to be, too.

So take a deep breath. Look around and smell some roses. Enjoy where you are. If it’s a difficult season of life, look for the proverbial silver lining.

The best thing you will find is God there, ready to speak a word into your soul that will change everything about the way you see yourself and your situation.

All that greener pasture? It’s not so green when you get there.

Singleness of Purpose and Action: A Confession

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It’s time for another one of my soul-cleansing confession blogs where I ‘fess up to messing up. Better that than me eventually winding up on Jerry Springer right after the gay, cross-dressing nympho Quakers. That would be awkward.

Lord, I confess that I’ve spent way too much time and energy striving to be noticed and liked and appreciated. I haven’t spent nearly as much time trying to be faithful and righteous and God-honoring.

I confess that I’ve attempted to impress others with my Bible knowledge, yet I’ve hardly picked up my Bible except to parade it around so that others think of me as oh-so-very-super-spiritual.

I confess that I’ve been trying to knock down the doors that You closed on me for a very good reason. I’ve been fighting You for something I don’t really want rather than taking what You give that I need (to borrow from the great theologian Rich Mullins).

I confess that You’ve become a means to my own ends instead of my Ultimate End and Joy.

I confess that I’ve trusted in what I think and what I feel instead of trusting in what I know to be true of You and Who You have proved Yourself to be to me over and over. I’ve listened to my fears way too many times instead of waiting for the Still Small Voice that says good things about me and speaks peace into my chaos.

I confess that I have put myself in the spotlight that only You deserve and my goal has been for others to make much of me instead of making much of You.

I confess that I am weary from chasing rabbit-holes and dead end paths and roads that go nowhere but lead back to themselves. I confess that I have lost my first Love.

Help me to hunger and thirst for Your Word more than any meal and to seek You with all my heart and soul and strength and mind.

Help me to have a singleness of purpose and of action so that people see in me what it looks like to truly honor God and they find out the greatness of this God and are drawn not to me, but to Him.

Chances are, this is your prayer, too. Chances are you’ve fallen into the same trap of self-worship that I have. I hope you know that you’re not the only one who struggles with this from time to time.

My hope is that we can encourage each other to follow hard after Jesus and to seek purity of heart in everything we say and do.

Amen.

Death and Taxes

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Today’s blog is by a special guest, Dietrich Bonhoeffer. As far as the taxes are concerned, good luck. I got mine done early this year and I’m grateful to have that behind me.

Here’s what Bonhoeffer had to say about the subject of death, expressed better than I’ve ever heard it or read it before:

“No one has yet believed in God and the kingdom of God, no one has yet heard about the realm of the resurrected, and not been homesick from that hour, waiting and looking forward to being released from bodily existence.

Whether we are young or old makes no difference. what are twenty or thirty or fifty years in the sight of God? And which of us knows how near he or she may already be to the goal? That life only really begins when it ends here on earth, that all that is here is only the prologue before the curtain goes up – that is for young and old alike to think about. Why are we so afraid when we think about death? … Death is only dreadful for those who live in dread and fear of it. Death is not wild and terrible, if only we can be still and hold fast to God’s Word. Death is not bitter, if we have not become bitter ourselves. Death is grace, the greatest gift of grace that God gives to people who believe in him. Death is mild, death is sweet and gentle; it beckons to us with heavenly power, if only we realize that it is the gateway to our homeland, the tabernacle of joy, the everlasting kingdom of peace.

How do we know that dying is so dreadful? Who knows whether, in our human fear and anguish we are only shivering and shuddering at the most glorious, heavenly, blessed event in the world?

Death is hell and night and cold, if it is not transformed by our faith. But that is just what is so marvelous, that we can transform death.”

Gone With the Wind: Some Observations on a Classic

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For starters, I was at the Franklin Theatre to see Gone With the Wind, date-less and under no duress. I was probably the only single dude in attendance. And I was in the front row. We’ll save the discussion on how sad that is for a later blog . . . maybe.

Gone With the Wind is a classic for a reason. It has everything: intense drama, epic romance, witty comedy, heart-rending tragedy, and just plain good ol’ story-telling. Sure, it shows its age a bit. It is not the most politically correct movie with its depiction of the happy slave mentality, among other things.

Both Scarlett O’Hara and Rhett Butler are fairly selfish characters throughout. Rhett is honest enough to admit it, but Scarlett spends most of the movie manipulating others for her own ends without ever so much as acknowledging it. At least at the end, she has a change of heart (or so I’d like to think).

Melanie Wilkes is the true north of the movie. She is the only one that circumstances can’t change. At heart, she is a fundamentally kind person from start to finish. She’s the one all the rest turn to in times of trouble and tragedy. She always knows what to say.

I love the fact that she always thinks the best of others. She gives Scarlett the benefit of the doubt. Maybe she’s a little naive, but I’d rather chalk it up to grace instead.

The world looks at kindness and calls it weakness. To be meek is to be a pushover in their eyes. But I believe kindness and meekness are true strength, power under control and directed at a better purpose. When you find real kindness in someone, you are drawn to that and you remember that person and their kindness shown to you and you are never the same. You want to pay it forward.

There’s a quote I’ve posted before about that goes along these lines: to be yourself, your true self, when everything around you is trying to force you to be something other, is the most courageous thing you can do. To keep being you when a thousand voices are screaming at you to be like them or to be stronger, prettier, thinner, richer, more popular, or more powerful takes strength. The kind of strength that Melanie Wilkes had.

Yes, I really liked the movie. All 4 hours of it. I will probably see it again in the future, as I own it on blu ray (nerd alert). I love the cinematography, especially the sunset shots. The acting is spot-on and the story is compelling.

I give it two thumbs up and recommend it highly. That’s my lame ending to this blog, because I’m too tired to think of anything witty or clever to end on. Other than I hope you have a good night and may you have eyes to see all the kindness of God lavished on you in the days to come.

Thank you and good night.

Thoughts on Job

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When I was little I used to pronounce the book of Job like it rhymed with rob. For Psalms, I made the s silent and called it Palms. I did some goofy things back then and it’s a good thing I’m past all that now (said with very heavy tone of sarcasm).

I read through Job again last night (and now I know it’s pronounced like Jobe as in Kari Jobe, the singer). It was not an easy read for me and most of the time, left me feeling more uncomfortable than uplifted.

In case you’re not familiar with the story, Job is a righteous and wealthy man. Satan taunts God and says that Job is only faithful because God has blessed him so much. “If you take all that away,” Satan told God, “your so-called servant Job will curse You to your face and be done with You.” So God allows Satan to take away Job’s possessions, then his children, and finally, his good health.

True, Job never curses God. Job never abandons God. But Job questions God’s motives and comes very close to maligning God’s character. That’s the part that makes me uncomfortable. Because I have asked some of the same questions and made some of the same accusations toward God.

I never bad-mouthed God in front of anyone or even out loud to myself, but in my head, I would have rants against the seeming unfairness of God’s ways. In my heart, I sometimes felt that God was not really for me and had something other than my best interests at heart.

The truth I have been learning is that God is big enough to handle my questions and accusations. He is not obligated to explain Himself to me. His ways are higher than mine and His thoughts way above mine. That comes with a finite mind trying to grasp what is Infinite.

I love Job’s final response, because it’s what I want to be able to say to God and what I’m striving toward in my daily walk of faith:

“Job answered God: “I’m convinced: You can do anything and everything.
   Nothing and no one can upset your plans.
You asked, ‘Who is this muddying the water,
   ignorantly confusing the issue, second-guessing my purposes?’
I admit it. I was the one. I babbled on about things far beyond me,
   made small talk about wonders way over my head.
You told me, ‘Listen, and let me do the talking.
   Let me ask the questions. You give the answers.’
I admit I once lived by rumors of you;
   now I have it all firsthand—from my own eyes and ears!
I’m sorry—forgive me. I’ll never do that again, I promise!
   I’ll never again live on crusts of hearsay, crumbs of rumor.”

God, I know that You are for me, with me, and in me, even when everything I see and feel and think says otherwise, because You promised You would be. If You say it, that settles it– whether I believe it or not.

I do believe. Help my unbelief.