Jesus

What Kind of Christian Are You?

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I heard a pastor say that a lot of us are waiting for God to bring His judgment. We have certain people or groups in mind. God owes them what’s coming to them and they should get no mercy, but get the hell they deserve. Yet somehow, a lot of us think that God is obligated to show us mercy.

It could be “those homosexuals” or “those liberals” or “those pacifists” or whatever other group you’re not in. It could be those who struggle with sins that don’t affect us. Our sins are forgiveable, but theirs are not. Or so we think.

But really, who are good Christians and who are bad Christians? And do such distinctions even exist?

I say not. There are no good or bad Christians. There are only lost people who have been found, dead people who are now alive, sinners who deserved condemnation but found grace and mercy. We are all, as one of my favorite writers put it, beggers trying to tell other beggars where to find bread.

In other words, there is no one good enough to earn God’s love. No one who has anything of their own they can bring to God. There is no one that’s too bad to be saved. No one who God has shut off from any possibility of redemption or grace.

I’ve had to change my thinking a lot about “those” people. I may not struggle with the “big” sins, but my sins would have earned me just as much of death and hell as anyone who has ever lived. I needed grace and forgiveness through the blood of Jesus as much as any of “those” people.

A famous newspaper once submitted a question to many leading figures of the day. The question was “What’s wrong with the world today?” A famous writer, G.K. Chesterton had the shortest (and best, I think) reply of them all. He simply replied, “I am.”

One day God will judge the world. Some people will get what they deserve. But the only reason I won’t is because of Zephaniah 1:7. “Quiet now! Reverent silence before me, God, the Master! Time’s up. My Judgment Day is near: The Holy Day is all set, the invited guests made holy.”

In other words, those guests invited to the Kingdom of God aren’t the ones who have the most to offer God or who have the most sterling resumes. They are the ones God has made holy. Because we had no gift to bring, God sent His own Son. Because we had no sacrifice, God Himself became the sacrifice so we could get in.

So instead of choosing who God should judge, maybe we should be thankful and grateful that we’re no longer the ones who will be condemned. Maybe we should love “those” people as much as God loved us and show them as much grace as He showed us. Maybe, just maybe, we could be the the ones to show them how good and great God really is.

The Courtroom of Your Life

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I heard a pastor talk about how he has a courtroom in his head, especially after royally screwing up one too many times. He said he used to feel like he was being accused and felt like he had no one to defend him. But someone pointed out to him that he does.

Who is the one who accuses? Is it Jesus? Is it you? According to the Bible, the name Satan means “accuser.” He is the one who accuses the brethren, who brings up charges against you, sometimes true, sometimes not. As he accused Job before God, he now accuses you.

But the best part of this courtroom drama is that you have an advocate. You have One who sits at the right hand of the Father and makes intercession for you. The God-man, Jesus, looks at the charges brought against you and looks at the Judge and looks at you and says, “This one’s mine. I died for him (or her). I paid for what this person has done wrong.”

Don’t ever confuse your accuser. It’s only Satan who accuses and it’s only Jesus who defends and speaks for you. He more than anyone else– even you– knows everything you’ve done, all the lies you’ve spoken, all the temptations you’ve succumbed to, all the promises you’ve broken, all the ways you’ve hurt yourself, others, and God. If anyone had a right to condemn you, it would be Jesus.

Yet Jesus has no condemnation in His eyes toward you. He speaks for you. He is for you. He loves you with a wild, untamed, crazy love that won’t ever stop transforming you until you are all that God made you to be. A love that won’t let you go.

When my own heart condemns me, God is greater than that. His mercy and grace trump any self-accusation or self-incrimination. His word to you tonight is this: “Child, I am your Abba, and I am very fond of you. Live in that and believe that and live out of that.

Hear these words: “With the arrival of Jesus, the Messiah, that fateful dilemma is resolved. Those who enter into Christ’s being-here-for-us no longer have to live under a continuous, low-lying black cloud. A new power is in operation. The Spirit of life in Christ, like a strong wind, has magnificently cleared the air, freeing you from a fated lifetime of brutal tyranny at the hands of sin and death” (Romans 8:1-2, The Message).

No more condemnation. Ever. Only love.

My Idea of Heaven

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Imagine you’re walking down a lonely country road. The sun is dissolving into the east and gentle breezes are playing with your senses. You look to your left and there’s a gate framed by two stone posts. You enter.

You find yourself walking down a long gravel road and the only sounds you hear are the rocks crunching underneath your feet and the distant cry of crickets. On both sides are a forest of ancient trees with memories of many generations passed. Trees that stood long before the fathers of your fathers were born.

To your right, you see a clearing. In the clearing are old-fashioned folding chairs set up in a circle. As you walk toward the gathering, you hear the soft murmuring of voices. You realize you are not alone.

You step into the circle and the voices hush. They are all looking at you. You see familiar faces of people you have loved and lost, parents and grandparents, cousins, uncles and aunts, and sons and daughters. Only now they are no longer broken and frail and sick, but whole and strong and well, the way you remember them in the best of times.

Each one of them calls you by name. Even the ones who had forgotten now remember your name. It’s not the name you’ve taken for yourself or the one you had given to you at birth. It is a new name, yet it’s a familiar name that you’ve known all the time.

In the middle of the gathering stands a man with scars in His hands and feet. Though He looks far different than any painting or image of Him ever made, you know His face at once. The lovingkindness there is unmistakable.

You hear singing and realize that those around you are singing a hymn. You find yourself singing, too. It’s not a song you’ve ever sung before, but you know the words and the melody stirs within you at once a joy too full and a sorrow too deep for words. You feel alive as if for the first time and happy and content like you always longed to be.

You know this is home. This place that you’ve never been or ever even seen before, but the one you’ve been looking for your whole life without knowing it. This is home. This is my idea of heaven. Maybe not for you, but it works for me.

Going to Church vs. Being the Church

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As a kid, I went to church. Not much of an option there, really. My mother didn’t ask me if I felt like going, but told me we were going. After all, we’re Baptists. That’s what we do.

For most of my life, I talked about “going to church” as if church were a building or a place or an event.  In fact, until very recently. Then I noticed something in the New Testament. Nowhere in there does anyone talk about going to church or referring to church as a building or an organization. Churches in the New Testament always refer to a community of believers. A family.

If I go to church, then church is something I do once or twice a week (three or more if you’re a really good Baptist!) I will act and think differently when I’m in church than when I’m not.

But if I’m reading my Bible right and I am a part of the community called the Church, then I take the Church with me wherever I go. I am never not “in church.” That means that I act and think the same way all the time.

It amazed me that ever since I’ve picked up on this, I hear people all the time talk about Church as if it were a place or a building or a service. I hear myself talking about “going to church.” I guess it’s a part of the culture I grew up in. That many of us grew up in.

It’s not a sin to say “going to church.” But if we really believe what’s in God’s word, then maybe it’s time to shift our thinking and stop going to church and start being the church. Maybe we need to break out of the four walls of church buildings and start taking the Church, the koinonia or “the community”, everywhere we go.

A pastor I heard today said something like this: “What frustrates the world is not that we’re different, but that we’re not different enough.”  Maybe when the Church starts acting like the body of Christ, the hands and feet of Jesus, and not like brick and stone and mortar, they will start seeing the difference.

Another thing that irks me is the term “business meeting.” The church is not a business; it’s a family. But that is another topic for another blog someday.

Discovery

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I think I’ve established the fact over the course of the last year that I am one big music/movie/book nerd. I love me some good media. I think I could live at a bookstore like Borders, as long as I had a comfy hammock or sleeping back and a Chik-fil-a nearby.

I also love discovering new things. All the time at restaurants I am trying out new foods and new food combinations. One of my favorite things is to find a new author or artist that few people know about, one that hasn’t yet caught on or one that didn’t quite get there.

My latest musical find is a folk-duo group called The Story. They are (or were) Jonatha Brooke and Jennifer Kimball. Both have since gone on to more successful solo careers. I also really like The Sundays, a British group that probably very few have ever heard of.

There’s something grand about discovering new things. I think the life of faith is like that. Every morning are undiscovered new mercies and graces and fresh starts. Every moment is a potential do-over and a clean slate. There is no failure or even fiasco that God can’t turn into something glorious and victorious. Even you and me.

I am thankful for a God who doesn’t keep score or maintain a record of wrongs and broken promises and failed attemps at obedience. I’d be seriously screwed.

I’ve said it before many times, but I really love the fact that God looks at me and sees Jesus and is pleased. He not only loves me, but likes me, too! He’s not angry or disappointed or frustrated. He’s not about to give up on me (or you).

What would it be like if you and I could discover one new facet about the mercy, grace, and love of God every day? I don’t know how long it would take, but I’m sure it would be longer than the Oliver Stone’s director’s cut of JFK. I imagine it would take an eternity.

I guess it’s a really good thing we will have an eternity to find out, eh?

A Borrowed Prayer

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“Dear God,
I am so afraid to open my clenched fists!
Who will I be when I have nothing left to hold on to?
Who will I be when I stand before you with empty hands?
Please help me to gradually open my hands
and to discover that I am not what I own,
but what you want to give me.
And what you want to give me is love,
unconditional, everlasting love.
Amen.” (Henri Nouwen).

Lord, when will we be able to let go of rule-keeping and sin-management and live in Your free and abundant grace? When will we stop condemning the sins in others that we don’t struggle with and admit that we ourselves are always in need of grace and forgiveness? When will we realize that the greatest power for change is not in picket signs or persuasive arguments or correct morality, but in full-on, unconditional, unlimited agape love?

Lord, You have told us that because of Jesus You are pleased with us. You have told us that You love us and even like us just as we are in all our unholy mess. You said You would keep loving us until all that is unlovely in us is gone and only what is lovely, what is pure, what is worthwhile, will remain. In other words, until all that is in us is You.

Help us to believe. Help us to remind each other of Your grace and be living examples of what that grace can do. Lord, I don’t think the world needs another person telling them what’s wrong with them and with the world. They don’t need to be told how they will bust hell wide open.

They need to be told that You can save them. They need to know it’s never too late to turn away from futile and empty lives and find all the beauty and joy and contentment and peace they could ever hold (and then some) in You. They need to know You will find them and rescue them and never let go. Ever.

Help me to live in a way that shows them how good and great You are. Help us all to live that way. May our lives be the prayers that you answer to bring the lost sheep home. Help us to be honest and broken and messed-up and crazy and willing to go wherever you lead. May we remember that the gospel is, after all, good news. Not more rules to follow or guidelines to live by, but the announcement that the debt has already been paid and the righteous requirements met and the victory won.

That’s the gospel. That’s good news. That’s grace.

The 10-Year Old’s Fantasy

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I think there’s some part of me that’s still 10-years old. That kid still believes that all his friends will always be his friends and their parents will never grow old or get sick and die.

He thinks that pets stay young and healthy forever and all kids are safe and secure with good parents and good homes. He thinks all his favorite places will always stay exactly the way he remembers them. He thinks that the world is exciting and never dangerous, and that life always has a happy ending and the good guys always win.

I know better. A friend of mine whose daughter I went to church and school with said goodbye to his wife for the last time this side of heaven today. I know I’ve said goodbye too many times already.

The world is not safe. Many kids don’t have good parents or good homes. In fact, they are probably in the most danger in their homes. Many children die from starvation and preventable diseases. Many lives do not have happy endings. And sometimes it seems the wrong side is winning.

But the 10-year old in me still thinks there is still beauty and joy around every corner. He thinks that ultimately good wins and all those who said their goodbyes will one day be able to say their hellos again. That lost doesn’t mean gone. It just means “see you later.” The grown-up me agrees.

There’s a lot about life I don’t understand. There’s a lot I wish I could fix– loved ones I wish I could bring back to their spouses, their children, and their parents. Even pets I could make come back.

I wish I could ensure that every child ever born a good home and a loving family and enough to eat. That every child gets to grow up in wonder at the world and grow old and get a happily ever after. I can’t.

But my God makes all things new. My God will restore the years that the locusts have taken, what disease and old age and tragedy have stolen. My God will give back a thousand times what we have lost. My God will wipe away every tear from our eyes. My God wins and we win, too.

That’s my true myth. My real-life fairy tale. My “too good to be true but also too good not to be” story. My happily ever after.

Grace: What a Year of Blogging Has Taught Me

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I think I’ve been blogging for about a year or so. It was some time last July that I started this crazy venture. Ok, so I don’t have millions or even thousands of loyal followers, but I have readers. Tens of readers.

The idea was never really about numbers. It was always about an outlet for me to express myself. Especially when it comes to the grace of God. Cause when it comes to grace, I am the #1 fan.

Grace walks in the back door when friends walk out the front door. Grace comes in when I’ve failed again after I promised I wouldn’t. Grace is a good thing.

Grace has led me safely thus far and grace will lead me home, or so says the old hymn. Grace really is amazing, isn’t it?

Grace says that God is strong and He loves me. Grace says that love won’t ever go away, no matter what I do. Grace is a good thing.

The more I try to describe or define it, the more I realize how hard a job that is. I can’t tell you what grace really is or how it works; I can only tell you that I desperately need it and I find it available at just the right moments.

 The older I get, the more I believe in my heart that there’s no such thing as good or bad Christians. There are only those who were lost and are now found. There are only those who deserved to die and got to live. There are only those who deserved hell and got Jesus instead.

In the end, none of us measures up. None of us is good enough. None of us always does what is right and avoids temptation and never fails. We all fall short. We all need grace.

That’s why I have no patience for impatient Christians and I am judgmental toward judgmental believers. I guess that makes me just like them. Darn. I really wanted to have the superior high ground for once. Oh well.

What draws people in the end is not perfect doctrine (which no one has), or mastery of morals, or a vast intellect, or the gift of eloquence. It’s grace. They see what grace has done for us and they want it.

May we all be trophies of grace each day and help people see that it’s okay to be broken and messed up and not have life figured out or everything together, because grace will lead us home.

 

 

 

The Way of the Heart . . . So Far

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I think I’ve established the fact that I am a supreme book nerd. I pretty much start salivating when I walk into Borders. For some reason, I don’t get quite the same effect at Barnes & Noble. Not sure why.

Anyway. I’ve been reading a book by one of my favorite authors, Henri Nouwen, titled The Way of the Heart. The book is based on the teachings of the Desert Fathers of the 4th and 5th century. The idea is that in order to grow in your salvation you must “flee, be silent, and pray.”

Thus the three tenets of the book are solitude, silence, and prayer. We need each one to be able to tune out the distractions and tune into God’s heart for us.

Solitude keeps us from passively drifting along with society and its values and being conformed by the world around us. It takes us out of the world, so we can be in the world and not of it. We’ll never have time to get away to spend time with God unless we make time.

Silence is in response to what Nouwen calls the “wordy world” where we are constantly being bombarded with messages all day long. Silence means that the words we do speak have more meaning because they are fewer and more deliberately chosen. It means we avoid the pitfalls of words spoken flippantly or angrily or vainly. It allows us to hear God speaking to us.

Prayer is not so much finding out more about God and gaining knowledge of His will, but in immersing all of our being into God and being transformed by Him there. It is an acknowledged dependence on God in everything for everything always.

I am 79 pages in, and I am almost tempted to start the book over when I get finished. I can’t say that about too many books I’ve read, and I’ve read plenty. Remember me the uber book nerd?

I recommend anything by Henri Nouwen or Brennan Manning to speak directly to your world wherever you are. At least that’s what happens for me when I read either one of them.

I think I’ll close with a quote from Henri Nouwen:

“It is in solitude that compassionate solidarity grows. In solitude we realize that nothing is alien to us, that the roots of all conflict, war, injustice, cruelty, hatred, jealousy, and envy are deeply anchored in our own heart. In solitude our heart of stone can be turned into a heart of flesh, a rebellious heart into a contrite heart, and a closed heart into a heart that can open itself to all suffering people in a gesture of solidarity.”

A Beautiful Wedding

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I had the chance to be a part of a wedding of two of my favorite people in the whole world, John Engebretson and Michelle Stark. It was a beautiful wedding, more so because both are not only in love with each other, but with Jesus.

They chose as their first act as a married couple to take communion together. That was a sacred and sweet moment.

The pastor who officiated the ceremony had some really good words on what love in marriage looks like.

He said that the Greek had different words used for love. One is eros, which is basically glandular love. It’s something like “You meet my needs and make me feel good and satisfy my urges.” That’s not nearly enough to make a marriage work.

The second is philia, or brotherly love. He described it as an “I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine, but I’ll stab you in the back if you stab me in mine” kind of love. That’s not enough, either.

Agape love, God’s love, is what a marriage needs. It’s the love that says “I love you regardless.” The love that is unconditional, unlimited, sacrificial and selfless.

Agape is what send Jesus to the cross for a people who had rebelled against His Father and rejected Him time and time again. Agape is God saying, “I will love you no matter what, whether you love me or not, and My love will never stop pursuing your heart.”

The wedding cake had a normal front, but the back half had lego pirates, because everything is better with pirates. Duh. That’s kind of a given. Who didn’t like Jack Sparrow from Pirates of the Carribbean? Really.

I hope that if God blesses me with a woman who looks at me and my weirdness and still wants to be my wife, that I have a ceremony like that. One that honors God and honors marriage.

Society, culture, and the media have done everything to undermine marriage or to take the marriage vow lightly, or use it in vain. These days more than ever a man and a woman have to be intentional about living out a godly marriage that honors God and each other. One that demonstrates Christ’s love for His bride. One that really shows just how much God loves His people.

And yes, I really do still think God’s got someone for me. I also see that it’s no fairy tale happily ever after dream, but a lifelong swim against the current, but with hidden blessings and treasures that only God could have though of.

PS It’s good to be back blogging after a weekend in Ohio. Ohio’s good, but there’s no place like home.