life

Telling Stories

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I just finished watching The Descendants, a film I really liked. It got me thinking about why I love movies. It isn’t because they advance some social or even religious cause. It isn’t because they push boundaries and stir up controversy. It isn’t because of some elaborate CGI-driven special effects.

I love a good movie because at its heart it is all about a good story well told.

To me, a good story is one that I find my story in. I can relate to the characters and what they’re going through. Sometimes, I may wish my life were like that. Sometimes, I find myself empathizing with them because I’ve gone through similar circumstances.

There was no one better at telling stories than Jesus during His earthly ministry. He told stories, or parables, that each revealed a truth about God. The people who heard these stories could relate to them, because they could find their stories in them.

We are called to be witnesses for Christ. That doesn’t mean we argue for the validity of the faith or why Christianity is better than all the other religions out there. We don’t try to prove the Bible or creation or God. We simply tell our stories.

Not to say that these things aren’t important. We can defend the Bible and creation and God (although the last time I checked, He didn’t need our help defending Himself). But no one can argue with you about what God has done in your life and how you are different than you used to be. No one can refute a transformation or a new creation.

This blog is one way I choose to tell my story. Like yours, my story is a work-in-progress, an epic novel with the ending still unwritten. I happen to know the Author of the story and I’m convinced the ending is one you won’t want to miss.

The same goes for your story, too, if you let God write it.

 

I Don’t Know a Lot

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I will be the first to confess that there is a whole lot out there that I don’t know. Particularly when it comes to mathematics or statistics or anything having to do with numbers. I escaped Algebra my freshman year at Union University and haven’t looked back since.

Some days, I feel like I know less than I used to. That is, there are a lot more things I am a lot less certain about than I was ten years ago. Or even five.

I do know a few things with an increasing certainty.

1) My God loves me with a love that is radical almost to the point of being embarrassing. It is a love that is prodigal and liberal and generous and unending.

2) That I am as much in need of grace as I ever was. I truly believe that I love grace as much as I see my need of it. Those who think they are fine without it don’t really put much stock into it, but those who know they are lost without it embrace it with every fiber of their beings. I am one of those in the second category.

3) What will convince a lost world of the genuineness of our faith isn’t how well we can defend and prove what we believe or how adamantly we can argue our side or even the impressive number of good works we can muster. It’s about how much we love each other. That was turned the 1st century world upside down and that’s what will turn our world right-side up again.

4) I know for 100% certain that God is good and His plans for me are good. Period. What I think and feel may tell me differently. What my eyes and ears tell me may speak a different story. But I know in the deepest core of my heart and mind that while my feelings and thoughts and eyes and ears may deceive me and lie to me, God never ever will.

I think that’s all I need to know.

Takeaways from Kairos Roots and 2 Thessalonians 1

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Tonight at Kairos Roots, Aaron Bryant spoke from 2 Thessalonians 1 about suffering and persecution in the church at Thessalonica. Interestingly, Paul doesn’t advise them to pray for an end to it, but that it would be a platform through which people can see their patient endurance and love for each other and be drawn to the God they serve.

I am not a fan of suffering. I don’t really like pain all that much. Missing my Sunday nap is about as painful as I like to get.

But I also know that Romans 5:3 speaks of suffering building endurance, which leads to character, which in turn leads to hope. And hope does not disappoint. If I want character that makes an impression and hope that doesn’t fade or fail, I will have to suffer and undergo persecution.

I don’t have to run around yelling, “Hey! Here I am! Please persecute me and cause me intense suffering!” They make pills for that sort of thing. And suffering and persecution will happen if I am faithful to what God has called me to be and do. It’s inevitable.

When people berate and belittle your faith and speak words of hate at you, they expect hate in return. What gets their attention is when you respond with the love of Christ. That kind of love doesn’t come from a life of ease and comfort; it is born and grows in hardship and adversity, through trials where it is strengthened and challenged.

As much as I want all my stop lights to be green and everyone to be nice to me and always agree with me on everything, life doesn’t work that way. That’s not how God operates. He doesn’t want me happy nearly as much as He wants me holy.

I think that Americans can expect to see more persecution in the months and years to come. I think that we who are not ashamed of our faith and hold unswervingly to our convictions and values will face ridicule and being ostracized. Maybe even one day in the future, our beliefs will land us in jail or even lead to martyrdom.

All I know is that right now, I am called to be faithful where I am, no matter if the people around me like it or not. I am not called to please everybody, but only one. Only what God thinks of me matters.

 

My Favorite Psalm (As Of August 8, 2012)

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Note: I don’t always recommend The Message because it gets a little too loose with the translation sometimes. But in this case, it got it right (I think). I probably read this Psalm straight through at least three times. This is almost like reading my own diary.

“I give you all the credit, God— you got me out of that mess,

you didn’t let my foes gloat.

God, my God, I yelled for help

and you put me together.

God, you pulled me out of the grave,

gave me another chance at life

when I was down-and-out.

All you saints! Sing your hearts out to God!

Thank him to his face!

He gets angry once in a while, but across

a lifetime there is only love.

The nights of crying your eyes out

give way to days of laughter.

When things were going great

I crowed, “I’ve got it made.

I’m God’s favorite.

He made me king of the mountain.”

Then you looked the other way

and I fell to pieces.

I called out to you, God;

I laid my case before you:

“Can you sell me for a profit when I’m dead?

auction me off at a cemetery yard sale?

When I’m ‘dust to dust’ my songs

and stories of you won’t sell.

So listen! and be kind!

Help me out of this!”

You did it: you changed wild lament

into whirling dance;

You ripped off my black mourning band

and decked me with wildflowers.

I’m about to burst with song;

I can’t keep quiet about you.

God, my God,

I can’t thank you enough.” (Psalm 30).

My New Daily Prayer (Stolen from Mother Teresa)

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“Dear Jesus, help me to spread Thy fragrance everywhere I go. Flood my soul with Thy spirit and love. Penetrate and possess my whole being so utterly that all my life may only be a radiance of Thine. Shine through me and be so in me that every soul I come in contact with may feel Thy presence in my soul. Let them look up and see no longer me but only Jesus. Stay with me and then I shall begin to shine as you shine, so to shine as to be a light to others.”

Fountain Ramah Church Part II

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image

I went back to Fountain Ramah Church today. I knew exactly where to turn and what to look for this time, so my route wasn’t quite so scenic, if you know what I mean.

The main pastor, Blaise Katshing, spoke about how we should allow ourselves to be colonized by God. It struck me as weird when he said it the first time, like maybe I heard him wrong. But the more heard him speak about it, the more it made sense.

When a country colonizes another, like England did with India a long time ago, the idea was to have the locals learn the customs and language of the colonists. For India, it meant that they learned to speak English, act English, and take on English practices and customs.

If we are colonized by God, it means that He takes over completely. We learn to speak in God’s language and to think like He does. Just like the Indians became English subjects, so we who are colonized by God now belong to the Kingdom of God.

It means that we carry the Kingdom of God in us because the Kingdom of God is the presence and rule of God. And if we have been taken over by God, it means God now reigns and rules in us.

When we speak, we speak God’s words. Wherever we walk, it is God walking. Whomever we touch, it is God’s healing hands we touch with. That’s what it means to be colonized by God.

I love that church and I love the people that I meet there. I have never known people who grasp as much what it means to be the family of God as these people. I have never felt so welcomed in any place as this place.

I believe that revivial will come from places like this, where the people are crying out to God for a breakthrough and not settling for the Christian status quo, but people who are desperate for God to move in and around them. People who thirst and hunger for God more than anything else in this world.

 

Running the Race

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It’s hard to turn on the television and not hear something about the Olympics. Especially when somebody like Missy Franklin wins the gold medal for the US. You can’t help but want to root for somebody like her, the all-American girl who made us all proud.

I was watching some of the track and field events and watching in awe at the speed of some of these people. They truly are the best at what they do and they win because they’ve invested a lifetime worth of training into preparing for this moment.

Right now, I’m thinking of another race. The race Paul talks about. Only this race isn’t to the fastest or strongest. This race is all about finishing well.

The only way you don’t win this race is not to finish. Sounds easy, right? But there are so many distractions and temptations that try to divert our attention and get us off course and out of the race.

I can personally attest that there have been times when I’ve been paying too much attention to the crowd or who’s around me and comparing my pace to theirs. It’s easy to get too caught up in where you’ve been that you can very lose your way.

There’s only one place I should train my eyes on. One destination I should aim for. The finish line. Paul talks about keeping our eyes on the prize and fixing our eyes on Jesus, the true destination.

In the end, it won’t matter if I ran faster or slower than the person next to me. It won’t matter that I lost focus at times or found myself in the stands instead of in the race at times. It will only matter that I finished well.

It’s not about how you burst out of the gate at the starting gun. It’s not about how fast a pace you set in the beginning. All that matters is finishing well.

That’s good news for me. It means that it’s never too late for me to really start running the race with all that’s in me, arms outstretched toward the destination, eyes locked in on the prize of having Jesus say, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”

It also means that whether I ran great or poorly yesterday doesn’t matter. All that matters is how I run today.

So how will you run your race today?

 

 

Kudos

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I would like to give recognition to some people. You can call it “giving a shout-out” or “giving props,” but for the sake of not dating myself, I’m going to give kudos. Besides, kudos kinda sounds like candy, and who doesn’t like candy?

Kudos to those who are willing to step out from sitting in the same place with the same people at church events and will sit with a stranger and start a conversation and make that person feel welcome. Sometimes, it’s good to break out of the familiar cliques. It’s hard, but worth it.

Kudos to those who send out random notes or texts or posts of encouragement throughout the day. I know for me, those have rarely been random, but have always come at the right time when I needed a good word.

Kudos to those who try and fail regularly, but who keep trying anyway. To those who know that success is 99 steps back, but 100 steps forward.

Kudos to those whose names and faces most people will probably never know, but who are the real heart and soul of any local church. Those who take care of babies in the nursery. Those who stand out in the parking lot and direct traffic. Those who set-up for events and clean up afterward. Those who are mentoring new believers and helping them understand what following Christ really looks like.

Kudos to you for every time you didn’t feel like it, but chose instead to do a small act of kindness anyway. To you who went and served the homeless or volunteered for VBS. To you who smiled and offered a word of encouragement to a stranger. You served Jesus.

You may not feel like you did much or that anyone saw or cared. You may feel that in the grand scheme of things, your little contributions didn’t mean anything.

But God knows and He sees. And just as He knows the number of hairs on your head and the number of tears you’ve cried, He knows all that you’ve done for Him out of a heart full of love and gratitude.

Trust me. He knows.

Nuggets of Wisdom: My Take on Chick-Fil-A Appreciation Day

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Yes, I was one of the faithful horde who descended on the local Chick-fil-A en masse today around noon. I had a great chargrilled chicken cool wrap. Then I got to thinking. And I’ve been thinking ever since.

This is not to bash one side or the other, but to ask some very probing questions.

Did I go there out of a true spirit of love or did I go to prove a point or show my political beliefs in action? Is this something the real live, breathing Jesus of the Bible would have done, or just something that the middle-class, white, Republican Jesus would have done?

At the end of the day, Jesus will not ask us who we were against or how much we defended our free speech or how we let everybody know where we stand politically. He will ask, “Did you love the least of these? Did you love your enemies? Did you give to those who can’t ever pay you back?” At the end of the day, all that matters is this: did we love well like Jesus loved us well?

I will probably keep eating at Chick-fil-A, mainly because they have some amazing chicken. Not because of what the owner thinks about marriage, traditional or otherwise. Definitely not because I want to make some political stand.

When I see Jesus, do I want to tell Him that I stood up for the rights of a fast-food restaurant or do I want to tell Him that I stood up for the rights of the outcast, spoke for those with no voice, fed the hungry, took care of the sick, and in so doing, minstered to Jesus Himself?

I’m not sure what my point is, other than if I do anything at all, it should be out of 100% genuine love for Jesus and for all those He created and loved and died for.

I love what Brennan Manning writes concerning all this (or at least I think it relates quite well):

“The Lord Jesus is going to ask each of us one question and only one question: Do you believe that I loved you? That I desired you? That I waited for you day after day? That I longed to hear the sound of your voice?   The real believers there will answer, “Yes, Jesus. I believed in your love and I tried to shape my life as a response to it. But many of us who are so faithful in our ministry, in our practice, in our church going are going to have to reply, “Well frankly, no sir. I mean, I never really believed it. I mean, I heard alot of wonderful sermons and teachings about it. In fact I gave quite a few myself. But I always knew that that was just a way of speaking; a kindly lie, some Christian’s pious pat on the back to cheer me on. And there’s the difference between the real believers and the nominal Christians that are found in our churches across the land. No one can measure like a believer the depth and the intensity of God’s love. But at the same time, no one can measure like a believer the effectiveness of our gloom, pessimism, low self-esteem, self-hatred and despair that block God’s way to us. Do you see why it is so important to lay hold of this basic truth of our faith? Because you’re only going to be as big as your own concept of God.   Do you remember the famous line of the French philosopher, Blaise Pascal? “God made man in his own image, and man returned the compliment”? We often make God in our own image, and He winds up to be as fussy, rude, narrow minded, legalistic, judgemental, unforgiving, unloving as we are.

In the past couple of three years I have preached the gospel to the financial community in Wallstreet, New York City, the airmen and women of the air force academy in Colorado Springs, a thousand positions in Nairobi. I’ve been in churches in Bangor, Maine, Miami, Chicago, St. Louis, Seattle, San Diego. And honest, the god of so many Christians I meet is a god who is too small for me. Because he is not the God of the Word, he is not the God revealed by it in Jesus Christ who this moment comes right to your seat and says, ‘I have a word for you. I know your whole life story. I know every skeleton in your closet. I know every moment of sin, shame, dishonesty and degraded love that has darkened your past. Right now I know your shallow faith, your feeble prayer life, your inconsistent discipleship. And my word is this: I dare you to trust that I love you just as you are, and not as you should be. Because you’re never going to be as you should be.'”