I don’t really hear voices in my head in the audible sense. Mostly, I just hear music all the time. Sometimes, I catch myself singing the most random songs from out of nowhere that have nothing to do with anything in my life and that I haven’t heard on the radio in years. Where do those come from?

I do know voices in my head, though. I have plenty of experience with that. You know, the voices that tell you you’re really not good enough. That you don’t have anything to offer anyone and the world would be better off without you. That one day the people will find out what you’re really like and bail on you. Those are a few of the many voices out there.

I think the devil can speak into your head and make it sound like your own thoughts. Like you’re the one who’s down on yourself, when really it’s not even you speaking. Or worse yet, the devil can sometimes sound in your own mind like the Holy Spirit, but instead of convicting, he condemns.

No matter how many voices are speaking, only One matters. That voice belongs to God. He alone has the right and authority to speak into your life. And what does He say? Is His voice any different than the multitude of others? I answer with a most emphatic YES!

If you are in Christ, God says that when He sees you, He sees Christ. He is telling you right now that you are covered in Christ’s blood, and that makes you pure and righteous and holy. He sees perfect obedience, not your own shameful record of screwing up. He sees you not as messed-up and broken, but as a beautiful masterpiece that He created. He’s not angry with you or waiting for you to fall so He can smite you. He is perfectly pleased with you. All because of Jesus.

Listen to that One voice. In the night, He will sing over you. In the day, He will speak to you through sunrises, soft breezes, texts from friends, unexpected calls, smiles from strangers, and most of all through His Word. All the condemnation that you once deserved fell on Christ on the cross and now you have been made worthy through the blood to be an co-heir with Christ– that is, to share in His blessings and privileges.

When the other voices try to drown out His voice, you speak the blood against them and remind the ones speaking that they no longer have the right or authority to speak into your life anymore. Only One does. The One who is singing and rejoicing over you right now. God.

Amen and amen.

He came to Nazareth where he had been reared. As he always did on the Sabbath, he went to the meeting place. When he stood up to read, he was handed the scroll of the prophet Isaiah. Unrolling the scroll, he found the place where it was written, God’s Spirit is on me; he’s chosen me to preach the Message of good news to the poor, sent me to announce pardon to prisoners and recovery of sight to the blind, to set the burdened and battered free, to announce, “This is God’s year to act!” He rolled up the scroll, handed it back to the assistant, and sat down. Every eye in the place was on him, intent. Then he started in, “You’ve just heard Scripture make history. It came true just now in this place” (Luke 4:17-21, The Message).

I love the idea that those who are in Christ are set free and released. That’s what it means to be forgiven. To have that awful weight lifted, to have that sentence of death hanging over your head removed once and for all, to have the jail cell door opened and to walk through it, never looking back.

You never have to be a slave to fear and doubt again. You never have to worry about your standing with God anymore. He looks at you and sees all the purity and righteousness and blamelessness of Jesus in you, because He sees Jesus in you. He sees the blood of Jesus over you.

If you are truly set free and believe that you are set free, you won’t go handing the burden of rules and moral codes down to others. You won’t look down on them or condemn them or nitpick them in their struggles. You proclaim to them that liberty has arrived and freedom is here. You show them by your own lifestyle and testimony what that liberty and freedom look like. You encourage and bless them and rejoice for them when they find that they too have been set free by Jesus.

Can you feel the weight lifting? The fears losing their grip and the doubts fading? If you are in Christ, you are a new creation, and that new creation is just as holy and righteous as Jesus, because the blood declares it! You don’t have to understand it or grasp all the nuances of it. All you have to do is believe it and receive it. That’s all.

Amen and amen.

Whenever people talk about life on other planets, they almost always assume that whoever (or whatever) lives there must be smarter than us. Why? I mean, really. Who says that just because they’re not from Earth, they’re automatically of a higher intelligence? Maybe they’re like that John Belushi character from Animal House and are just out crusing for the next big intergalatic kegger? Maybe they have a 0.0 GPA. Ever thought of that?

And this idea that life got started by seeds from aliens. Where did that come from? Did some really bored aliens start looking for a planet to impregnate? Did they have to pull out the ol’ GPS to find us (’cause with their hyper-intelligence, they would have invented it long before we thought of it)? I can imagine them looking at some giant map and saying, “Hey, look at that little blue-green planet. No, not Mars, the blue one. Down there. Yeah, that one. Whaddya say we go down there and start a new species?”

I don’t know. Probably not. It just seems that if there really is life on other planets, maybe they’ve screwed up just as bad as we did. Maybe instead of a snake tempting Eve with forbidden fruit, it was a spider tempting someone with pasta primavera. ‘Cause I’d be much more tempted by that personally. Or some planet where chocolate was the cause of original sin.

Is there a point to this? No. I’m just thinking weird thoughts. Like maybe what we need more of is not more rules or a different President or a better ethical and moral code. Maybe what we need is more grace, mercy, and love.  To love each other, whether we are white, black. . . . or green. Love covers over a multitude of sins and love is the force more powerful than any weapon or group or ideology.

So until someone produces a hi-def photo of a UFO and not some blurry image taken in the 50’s, I will remain a skeptic when it comes to life on other planets. But never about God or about love. I know both of those are real because I see the proof in my life every day.

Amen and amen.

Tonight at Kairos, we talked about what the Gospel is and what it is not. We talked about the dangers of adding to it as well as of taking away from it. There are some out there who say we can never know what the Gospel is. I say we can, and here is what the gospel is: good news. Like my favorite radio host said, it’s not advice or self-help, it’s news and news is something that’s already been done.

The news starts off not so good. We are all messed-up sinners born crooked and wandering away from God the moment we can move. We are enemies of God and selfish. We need help and we can’t help ourselves or each other. It has to come from somewhere outside of us. It has.

The news gets a whole lot better. God came down and became a helpless infant, born of a virgin and without the sinless nature that the rest of us carry. He grew up and lived a sinless life and perfectly fulfilled the law that we could not even begin to keep.

He took our sins and died on a cross, punished even though He was completely innocent. He rose again, forever defeating death and and force that would seek to destroy us or hold us down. All disease, sickness, failty, death, addiction, stronghold or any other powers were defeated by Jesus on the cross and that defeat was sealed for ever when He walked out of the tomb three days later.

The best part is that no matter what you’ve done or how badly you’ve screwed your live over, you can start over. If you admit that you are a sinner who can’t save yourself and deserves at eternity in hell separated from God, believe that Jesus died for you and took all your failures and mistakes on Himself and paid for them, and confess that He’s the only One strong enough to save you and that you are His forever, He will save you.

Being forgiven is the best feeling in the world. To know that God sees you now as pure and righteous and holy and blameless, as if you had never sinned. This news is so good, in fact, that you and I should be beating down people’s doors to tell them about it. To love and forgive people radically because we’ve been radically loved and forgiven.

This is the Gospel, good news. It’s the best news the world has ever heard or will hear and I for one can say that it has changed my life and set me free and made me alive! I hope and pray it will do the same for you.

Amen and amen.

A few thoughts I had on the way home from the Mindy Smith concert.

1) Jesus is far better and far more trustworthy than I ever dreamed He could be.

2) He loves me way more than I ever thought anyone could love me and has made me into someone worth loving.

3) He may not go the way I want or take me where I think I should go, but He knows the best ways to make me more like Him and He will not fail to get me Home on time.

4) Every day without a toe tag is a good day. Every moment with breath in my lungs is a good moment. Every second Jesus gives me to live and love and be loved is one I don’t deserve, but one I get anyway– all that is called grace.

5) See 1-4. Keep reading 1-4 until you finally see how good God is and how wonderful Jesus is and how amazing grace is.

I learned tonight that the word integrity derives from the same word for integer, a whole number. If we have integrity, we’re not fragmented, one way around a certain group or on a certain day and another way with a different group or on a different day. We’re always the same. Who we are in the spotlight is the same as who we are in the dark when we think no one sees. Who we are matches what we profess to believe and how we live matches what we say we believe.

I think that only love that is radical and unconditional will change the world. Not the generic love of Hallmark or those sappy movies on Lifetime. Only love that lays down its life and serves the beloved will grab the world’s attention. Only love that blesses the ones who curse and goes the extra mile and turns the other cheek will cause people to notice.

That kind of love can’t be self-generated. I can’t possibly love like that. All I, or anyone else, can do is receive that love from God and let it flow through me. The best kind of love is when God loves His people through His people. When I am filled past what I can receive and the overflow reaches those around me.

If we are already victorious and the battle is already won in Christ, why are so many living defeated lives? Where is the joy? If we’ve been shown grace, why do we turn around and give people a bunch of rules to follow? I wish I knew.

I do know that fellowship and community are beautiful things to behold. Believers gathered together in the name of Jesus and loving each other are a powerful witness to the transforming love of Jesus. No other force or power or personality could bring people together like that.

So what? The more we give Jesus room to work, the more amazing things He will do in and through us. All He needs is a place to start, as Mike Glenn once said. Let our hearts be your starting point in the days to come.

Amen and amen.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about grace. But when it comes to defining grace, I’m unable to come up with an answer that truly encompasses all of what grace means. I’ve heard grace stated as “God’s riches as Christ’s expense” or “God’s unmerited favor” or “Getting what you don’t deserve.” All well and good, but none seem to really capture all of what grace is.

I do know that I need grace. Not just me, but anyone who professes the faith and is truly seeking to go beyond surface, shallow Christianity to the faith that Jesus lived. We all desperately need grace on a daily basis.

For me, grace is the means by which I am saved through faith. Grace is what allows me to wake up every morning. Grace is the reason that I can claim the peace that passes all understanding. Grace is what keeps me believing and grace is what will finally get me Home.

I may not have a tidy definition of grace, but I know grace. I know the Giver of Grace who calls me friend and who has declared me pure and righeous and holy and victorious for all time. It’s His grace I’m talking about, after all.

So maybe that’s all I need to know. I certainly don’t have to understand all the different aspects of gravity for it to work. I don’t have to understand all the properties of wind to feel it in my face. And I most definitely do not need to completely understand all that encompasses the character of God to know Him. As if I could even begin to do that.

All I have to do is be like a little child and receive Him and His grace. To take Jesus at His word and follow Him. To make myself a surrendered and willing vessel for Him to use however He wants. To believe that it is only by grace that I can do any of these things.

Amen and amen.