As a kid, I used to really like the Bible stories of the Old Testament characters (even though they all pretty much look the same in flannel). I especially liked the one about Daniel and the lion’s den. The one that makes me sad a bit is the one about Sampson, especially where the Bible tells us that “he did not know that the LORD had left him.” That’s a rather sobering statement for any of us (especially me) who takes God’s presence and blessing and favor for granted and expects it almost as a right.

I think about the churches I have worshipped with in the Nashville area. To say there is an abundance of musical and ministerial talent in this area is a vast understatement. I think where some places grow cotton and soybean, Nashville grows musicians and preachers. It’s our staple crop.

But I wonder with all that talent and technology and creative planning if we haven’t programmed out any room for the Holy Spirit. We can invoke moods and emotions and stir up people, but do they really go away transformed or do they just go away hyped and high off the lastest spiritual fix?

If the presence and glory of God departed from our services and worship events, would we even know? Would anything be different? Would we still go on just the same, having the form of worship, but lacking the power of true worship to affect any real change?

I am more and more convicted that unless we as the Church come to a place of desperation for God to really manifest His presence, we won’t really see wholesale changes. Unless we can really go out in faith to a place where either God comes through or we crash and burn spectacularly, we won’t really see the glory fall and the building shaken.

As a believer, I have to come to a place where it’s no longer about being safe and successful, but about really being willing to risk my reputation, my good standing, and (if it comes to it) my very life for the purposes and calling of the Kingdom. Not just me, but all who profess the name of Jesus as Lord.

I believe now more than ever God is calling us to a place where we fall on our faces and beg Him with tears and sighs (and maybe even with fasting) to come. We need to repent of trusting in our cleverness and talent to draw people to God and let the real Power work through our honest confession of spiritual bankruptcy and brokenness.

Again I ask, “Who’s with me?”

If we don’t awaken from our spiritual stupor, one day the glory and manifesting presence of God really will depart from us and we won’t even know it’s gone until it’s much too late.

Contrary to popular opinion, I don’t know everything. Ok, I’m sure I’m not popular, so I probably don’t have a popular opinion, but even I know that I don’t even come close to knowing everything.

I have so many questions. Why do little children get sick and die? Why do some babies die before they are even born? Why are there places in the world where just being born is a death sentence, where there is no clean water, proper food, medical care, or any of those things we in this country take for granted?

Why will so many people die without ever having heard of the good news of Jesus? Why do some people seem to have everything handed to them and others have to work so very hard for every little thing they get?

Why does life not seem to work like it should? Why do the guys who seem like the most marrigable people never finding love while the ones who seem least marriageable finding it? Why are the dreams I believe God has put into my heart so far from coming true?

I have a thousand more questions I can’t answer. I have a thousand more that I can’t even put into words. I may never be able to.

I do know this. God is good. God is in control. I don’t have to know all the answers or even the questions. I do have to know and trust and love the God who does.

I already know how this all ends. Everything wrong is made right, all that’s broken will be mended, and all the pieces will fit back together again. I know because it’s all written down.

I’ve heard it so many times lately, but what I think and feel will lie to me and trick me much of the time. What I think I know and what I see with my eyes will blind me.

What’s true is what God has spoken. Who God is is what matters, not what I see Him doing. And like the old prayer says, “God is great and God is good.” That I know because I’ve seen it in me and in so many others. And because God said it.

On a side note, I have got to stop waiting so late at night to write these blogs. But I’d rather stay up 30 minutes later and share what God put on my heart than get that extra sleep.

And what God told me to tell you is that He’s good and He’s got this. He’s not asking you to understand everything or have answers, but to simply have the faith of a child and believe. That’s all.

I feel like that guy that just won the Oscar for Best Actor reading the obligatory list of people to thank. I didn’t win an Oscar, but I do have some people to thank:

1) Thanks to all of you who keep reading my blog. I know you may not read every single one, but the fact that you read any at all is an honor. I am blessed to have you as readers.

2) Thanks to Kairos for being a big part of the transformation that God has been working in me the last 2 or 3 years. Especially, thanks to the greeter team for keeping me around and still letting me volunteer.

3) Thanks to all my facebook friends. You’ve stuck with me through some awkward (and some really dumb) posts. You’ve let me rant at times and throw my self-pity parties and haven’t defriended (or is it unfriended? I’m shaky on my proper facebook terminology) me yet.

4) Thanks to my family. You guys rock.

5) Thanks to Sweet CeCe’s for occasionally having Red Velvet, though not as often as I would like.

6) Thanks to Starbucks for the many drinks I have tried there, and especially for the organic chocolate milk that I had Thursday. It was pretty close to supernatural.

7) Thanks to Mike Glenn, Lloyd Shadrach, Michael Easley, Bill Wellons, Pete Wilson, Aaron Bryant, and Bryan Ball for some really good teaching and biblical application. All of you know how to rightly divide the Word of God. Plus, thanks to the multitude of writers that have helped change the way I see God, myself, and my world.

8) Thanks to God for Jesus. Because of Him, I’m alive and not the worst sort of criminal or pervert or louse I could be. Because of Him, I am something new.

9) Thanks to God also for the Holy Spirit who constantly reminds me of all the good things I know but sometimes forget and for also reminding me that who I am is not a sinner, but a son adopted by God and made righteous by Jesus and pleasing to both.

10) Last, but only because I didn’t think of it until now, thanks to wordpress for putting my blog out there for the world to see. Ok, for 20 people to see. But hopefully God uses what I’ve said to make a world of difference to somebody somewhere out there.

I’ve been reading quite a bit of C.S. Lewis lately. I just finished Perelandra, a story about what would have happened had the the man and woman resisted the original temptation. Lewis makes an interesting point. When Jesus comes back to set things right here, it won’t be an ending. It will be a re-do after a false start.

Eternally speaking, we haven’t even really begun. If you look at history like a novel, everything that has ever happened is like the preface and title page (and maybe the prelude) compared to what’s coming. Or in movie terms, history is like a sneak preview.

Most of us think of heaven as the place where all adventures find their ending, but I’m beginning to think that heaven is where the real adventures start. This life is just about getting us ready and prepared for those adventures. Put it this way, the best chocolate, the best sex, the best day, the most fantastic vacation (or anything that causes euphoria and bliss) doesn’t even begin to compare to the real joy that awaits. All these things are pale shadowy imitations and substitutes for the real thing.

Probably the biggest disservice to heaven came from whoever painted it as sitting on white clouds in white robes playing harps all day. Honestly, to me that sounds like a good way to be bored to death. And that’s just not what I get from reading Revelation.

The best description of heaven that really got me excited was in The Last Battle where C.S. Lewis describes heaven as the first day of summer when you realize that classes are over and the first day of vacation (or as our British friends would call it, the start of holiday).

It will mean an end for some things. Like jealousy, comparison, worry, fear, hate, death, taxes, saturated fats, desk jobs, and humidity. Seriously, it will mean the end of injustice, poverty, hunger, and so many other ills that plague society. But every good thing you and I have ever loved and everything that made us truly come alive will be there in their truest forms.

If you aren’t looking forward to heaven, maybe it’s because the heaven you’ve always been taught about really isn’t all that exciting. I recommend C.S. Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia and The Space Trilogy (as well as The Great Divorce) to get a better glimpse of what heaven’s really like.

And yes, there will be chocolate in heaven. Probably Ben and Jerry’s.

You are not the names given to you in childhood by parents or relatives or friends who spoke out of anger or frustration or disappointment or resignation.

You are not your grades in school or the level of your education.

You are not the house you live on or the job you go to every day or the care you drive or the clothes you wear.

You are not the one who got fired or couldn’t save your marriage or keep hold of your friends.

You are not your addictions or struggles or fears.

You don’t have to be what all the magazines and songs on the radio and television programs and movies tell you you need to be to be successful.

You are loved, more loved than you could ever possibly have thought possible, by the God who made EVERYTHING.

You are worth the price God chose to pay for you, which was the most outrageously lavish price ever paid for anything ever– the life of His only perfect Son.

You are a child of God. You are the bride of God. You are His beloved.

 You are the one He shouts and sings over and dances around in the night while you are sleeping.

You are the new name He is giving you that is already written on a white stone, carved out so it can’t ever be removed or erased or taken away.

If you’re me, you probably will read all these and be reminded that what you feel about yourself in the dark moments is not the truth. What you think others think about you isn’t the truth, either. Both of those things will lie to you.

You are what God has declared about you in bold red print. You are the promises that are as true as the God who gave them.

As the song says, You are more than the sum of your past mistakes. You’ve been remade.

Don’t live as worthless throwaways anymore, but as the priceless and loved and treasured children of God that you are.

The world will tell you you’re worth what you look like or how well you dress or how talented you are. The world will tell you that you’re only worth something if you can prove yourself and be better than the next guy. Then your worth only lasts until some upstart comes along and grabs your spotlight.

God tells a different story. He sees something He made when He sees you. He sees His image on you. Just like an antiques dealer or art critic will tell you that a signature increases the value of something, so does God. That’s what imago dei, or the image of God means. To be an image bearer is to wear God’s signature on you. You aren’t worthless; you’re priceless.

You’re twice valued because not only do you bear the Divine signature, but you were worth to God the most extravagant price ever paid for anything. The precious blood of God’s only Son, the very life of Jesus, purchased you for God. That speaks volumes of what you’re worth.

God made you and Jesus died for you. That trumps anything anyone has ever said about how you’re good for nothing. It trumps any word of condemnation, any time anyone told you that the world would be better off without you, any time someone you loved basically told you that you weren’t worth the effort. Jesus speaks a better word, and that word is that you are His Beloved.

I heard somewhere that salvation is when you believe in Jesus and sanctification occurs when you find out that Jesus believes in you. The truth is that you are precious to God, that He delights in you, that your Abba is indeed very fond of you and rejoices over you with loud singing.

It took me a long time to believe that about myself. I am still coming to terms with all that means to me. And yeah, I basically just wrote down what I heard tonight from Mike Glenn at Kairos. But I figure that truth is truth, no matter if I came up with it or someone else did. I’m not trying to be original, but faithful to what God has laid on my heart.

So my prayer is that you would live out of a joy that comes from knowing how deeply your Father God loves you and how much He values you. You were worth everything to Him, and there is nothing you are or have or do that can even begin to repay Him, but all He asks in return is for just you. Ain’t that cool?

To preface this, this didn’t come from any vision or audible voice. It came from part of a sermon I heard. Here’s what I heard:

“I know sometimes you feel like I’m missing, like you were walking along one day and looked up and realized that you couldn’t find Me anywhere. You thought I had left you. You tried searching for Me in all the wrong ways. You looked to everything and everyone else to fill My place.

Child, don’t you know I must be in my Father’s house? Don’t you know that now that house is inside you? Can you not recall Me telling you that if you were obedient to Me, I and My Father would come and make Our home in you? Didn’t you realize that I must be about My Father’s business? Don’t you know that His business involves you and those you love?

For you to love Me, you must know Me, and for you to love Me well is for you to know Me as one would know an old friend. I want to be in every pore of your being. I want to be what comes out when you breathe. I want those who look at you to see Me and be drawn to Me. That’s what I am molding and changing you into.  A perfect image-bearer and reflecter of the glory of My Father.

Child, why are you so scattered and anxious? Why are you still trying to earn what I’ve already given you? No matter what happens to you, even if it’s your worse-case scenario, don’t you know that even that can’t separate you from My love? Nothing can. Not death, not life, not tornadoes, not hurricanes, not earthquakes, not scandal, not failure, not persecution, not joblessness. Nothing, not even you, can ever cause Me to cease loving you and working for your ultimate good.

Trust Me always. Whenever you’re tempted to anger or lust or despair, choose My joy. Whenever it’s easier to compromise, choose My joy. Know that you can have joy in Me, because I am Someone you can trust in.

Rest tonight, My beloved, and listen for the sound of Me singing over you. No matter how faithful or faithless you’ve been, no matter how you think you’ve triumphed or failed, no matter if you feel valued or worthless at the end of the day, My song will always be the same.”

A Diving Bell and the Butterfly is about a man who has a massive stroke and is paralyzed completely, with the exception of one eyelid. His condition, called locked-in syndrome, has reduced his communication to one blink for yes, two for no. Someone else can read through the alphabet and when they get to the right letter, he blinks. That’s the only way he can communicate.

All in the space of a few moments, Jean-Dominique Bauby went from living a free and full life to being completely dependent on the care of others. He was literally trapped inside his own body. To the outside world, to those who didn’t know him, he was a vegetable. But his mind was still active, full of imagination and dreams and hopes.

How many are trapped inside their own past? Their own hall of shame that keeps them from expressing who they really are and being who God created them to be. How many can’t find words to describe the hurt, the pain, the rage, the despair inside? How many times have you been reduced to tears and sighs and groans?

The good news is that the Holy Spirit is a master at taking those tears and sighs and groans and articulating them into prayers. That inner voice that’s screaming on the inside while you’re wearing a mask of serenity and calmness on the outside.

You yourself are God’s love letter to the world. He will do whatever it takes to pull that masterpiece out of you. He won’t finish until your life is a poem (that’s what the word in Ephesians 2:10 literally means). One letter at a time, painstakingly, God is unfolding your story.

There have been times when my life feels like a War and Peace novel that’s taking too long to develop. But those are the best kind of books, the ones where the payoff is delayed, but comes just when you least expect it. Be patient with your life as God unfolds it over time. In the end, what comes out will leave the world speechless and take their breath away.

So, all that from me watching a French film at 10:30 pm on a Friday night on my computer. Who says I don’t know how to live?