I look at most of the people who call themselves Christians (including me) and I immediately have a question. What is this Jesus that we claim to love and serve so much actually worth to us? How much are we willing to sacrifice to follow Him?

For the most part, Christianity is a facebook status. Born again means being politically conservative. Faith for the most part is hypothetical and theoretical, but hardly ever lived out.

If I am all about Jesus on Sunday, but all about me on Monday, what does that say about how much I love Jesus? We may not think so, but the chasm between the way we speak and the way we live speaks volumes and people are listening.

So many times, we look at sin as a line not to cross. We are so obsessed with how close to the line we can get without actually going over. The famous example is always how far a couple can go when dating but not actually have sex. Or how much can we drink without getting drunk and it still be acceptable?

At the same time, we look at Jesus and ask, “What is the minimal effort I need to have a relationship with Jesus? How much do I need to read my Bible to be able to mark that off the checklist and how much do I have to pray for that to count in my favor?”

That outlook betrays where our hearts are. It shows that we love sin more than we love Jesus. If we loved Jesus more, we would see how far we could stay from the line of sin and how much we could do to be more like Jesus and know Him more.

There’s good news in this. God won’t ever abandon or forsake His people, whether their passionately seeking Him or straddling the line of sin. The best answer is this: give up. Quit trying to fix yourself and manage your sin and make yourself better. You can’t. Only God can.

If you see only your own sin and failure, you’ll be tempted to give up. But if you see how good and faithful God has been and keep your eyes on that (and Him), you will be encouraged and strengthened.

But you can’t play both sides anymore. It’s either following what society and culture and the media and the masses say, or following what Jesus says. You can’t follow both.

As for me and my house, I will follow Jesus, only by His help and the support of His people. We do need each other.

 So how much is Jesus worth to me? Maybe not what He should be worth to me, but more than He was to me yesterday. Definitely more than a month ago, or a year ago. And that’s the important part.

As I am writing this, I am well aware of my lack of expertise in this area. For me as a single, never-married person to blog about divorce is like a vegan telling someone the best way to baste a rack of ribs.

I do know this. God hates divorce. Not in the way so many fundamentalist Bible-bashing believers have led you to believe. God hates what it does to you and to your children. No one comes out scot-free. Everyone leaves wounded and scarred.

I’m not going to say that the Bible ever condones divorce. I will say that it is not the unpardonable sin. Not even close.

I think that if you’ve been down this road, you shouldn’t be punished forever for a mistake you made once (or that someone else made that hurt you).

I know that for a marriage to work, there have to be both spouses willing to work for it. You can’t make the other care if he or she doesn’t want to. One person alone can’t save a marriage. But God can. It’s never too late for Him to change or save or redeem anything. Period.

I do think that no one should stay in a marriage where they or their children are in physical or emotional danger. Staying in that case does no one any good. Get out.

I know that God is a God of second, third, and fourth chances. He’s a God of 1,000,000th chances. You never run out when you come to Him seeking Him.

I know I have done and said and thought things that should have gotten me booted for good from God’s good graces. I should be in hell for all my sinfulness. The same goes for anyone who ever lived, if they are honest.

That’s why I am one of the biggest fans you will ever find of grace and forgiveness. No one is ever beyond the reach of God extending either of these to them. Never. At any time.

I know that God is for you, no matter what you’ve done or what’s been done for you. He won’t ever stop rooting for you, cheering for you, singing over you, and loving you wildly. That’s who He is.

I know that when I get married, it won’t be something I enter into lightly. It will be “all in”. and if I can’t be “all in”, then I probably need to stick with my cat. Marriage is a beautiful picture of God’s love for His people and it takes a buttload of work.

I pray you will read these words as one finite fallen man’s thoughts on the subject. I know I still have a lot to learn, but I am more and more convinced that my God is worth everything, every cost and every sacrifice, to know and make known. He’s just that good.

Sometimes, your thoughts are like a child that won’t lie down and go to sleep. You can’t quiet your mind and find rest. That’s me tonight, for some reason.

I don’t normally blog twice in less than 24 hours, but if I don’t, I will be up all night.

Have you ever had friends that you talked to or texted with or facebooked with that, for whatever reason, have stopped talking back?

Do you feel like sometimes that person suddenly decided you weren’t worth the effort anymore?

I have had those feelings, too.

Do you know that God looked down and thought you were worth whatever effort it took to win your heart?

Do you understand that in the times when He’s seemingly gone silent on you and quit responding to you, He’s giving you more than an answer. He’s giving you the precious gift of Himself.

He’s promised never to bail on you. Even when the world turns its back on you, He never will. That’s as good a promise as God is good.

I also have come to realize that those people I used to think had bailed on me or given up on me hadn’t. They just had their own lives to live and problems to solve and fears to face. Like the fear of abandonment.

Sure, some will bail on you. Let them go. The ones worth having are the ones who stick around and refuse to leave when your world comes unraveled. Like Jesus.

And if I am anything like Jesus, I won’t hit the back door when troubles knock on your front door. I won’t duck down the alleyway when storms come down your street. A good friend sticks around, regardless.

Ok, I’m going to try this sleep thing one more time. But I leave you with this: don’t make up your mind about anybody or anything when you’re tired. Trust God enough to leave it in His hands. Then you can sleep like a baby.

I am re-reading Radical a chapter at a time as I facilitate a group study on the book (me and 2 others counts as a group, right?) Again, I find myself convicted by the book at how very much un-radical I am in my faith, to coin a new word. This is not a book review, but more of a review of how the book is impacting me.

I’m thinking of the SS United States, built as a troop carrier, but used as a luxury liner. I think how Platt parallels that to the present American Church (for the most part). How we are called to a battle, but live as though we’re on a cruise.

I’m thinking about all those people who went to dangerous places to take Jesus to people who hadn’t heard His name before. Some suffered. Some even paid with their own lives. One missionary couple was killed and cannibalized, but the next missionaries saw the entire tribe come to faith in Christ.

What will it take for me to stop talking and writing about faith and then going AWOL on that faith so often. What will it take for us to really live Jesus to the world. Not live out a list of what and who we think God hates, or the how breaking these certain rules and secret codes will land you in hell, but real, revolutionary, radical grace and mercy.

But the Jesus who did not think His own life too high a price to pay for His enemies, so that they could have peace with God.

Not a Christianity that says. “God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life where you get to be the focus,” but one that says, “God loves you and has invited you to join Him in His advancing His own kingdom over all the earth and making His name glorious in every part of the world.”

I want that. Deep down. Underneath all the other things I chase, but once I catch them lose their appeal. I need God to change my heart to beat with His heartbeat.

Again, I ask, “Who is with me? Who wants to stop going to church and playing religion, and start being the Church and showing love and mercy and grace that the world so desparately needs.

I close with something Jesus said. I like the way the Message renders it. I’m not exactly sure where it is located in the gospels, but here it goes:

“Jesus, overhearing, shot back, ‘Who needs a doctor: the healthy or the sick? Go figure out what this Scripture means: ‘I’m after mercy, not religion.’ I’m here to invite outsides, not coddle insiders.'”

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.