faith

Life Lessons from Round 1 of the NHL Playoffs

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I confess. I had little to no faith in my Nashville Predators to be able to beat those mighty Chicago Blackhawks in the first round of the NHL playoffs.

I boldly predicted that Chicago would take the series in five games (and I thought I was being generous to Nashville by giving them that one game). The regular season series between these two teams hadn’t gone well for the Preds. They managed to win that first game, but after that it got ugly.

I was wrong. Boy, was I wrong.

My Nashville Predators not only won the series but they swept those mighty Blackhawks. For the record, no 1 seed has ever been swept out of the first round in the 100-year history of the NHL. Nada.

I wonder how many of us have given up on a dream because we’ve already decided before we begin that it’s a lost cause. We’ve convinced ourselves not to even bother trying because it can only end in abject failure.

With God all things are possible.

Do you really believe that?

Do you believe it not as an abstract generality but as a specific reality meant for you?

I know that God’s not a celestial genie giving me whatever I want whenever I want it. Some of God’s best answers to prayer are no because that means a bigger and better yes is following, something I would never have dared to dream.

I also know that God is able. I’ve said it before (and credit again goes to Pete Wilson for this one) that what seems impossible to us isn’t even remotely difficult for God.

I’m hoping my Preds keep winning. It’d be awesome to see Nashville bring home the Stanley Cup (although that’s still a long shot). That kind of hope is along the lines of I hope I win the lottery.

I’m hoping God will keep His promises toward me and always do what’s best for me. That kind of hope is certain and secure, as sure as Jesus who made them is alive and sitting at the right hand of the Father.

Next time I might have a little more faith in the home team.

 

Take Your Time

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One of my favorite Kairos moments from back in the day when Mike Glenn used to lead the prayer time.

Put both feet on the floor, he’d say. There’s nothing that will come up in the next few minutes that’s more important than what God’s saying to you right now. Relax and breathe. All those errands will still be there later. Right now, all you need to do is focus on God.

We live in a culture that celebrates busyness. Not necessarily productivity. Just busyness. The mantra of the age is that we don’t have time because we’re so very busy doing God knows what.

The idea is to never have a dull moment or any down time. We have all these time-saving gadgets that create more time to get more done. As a result, we have less leisure and free time than ever.

Maybe the most freeing words anyone will ever tell you– take your time. That was my takeaway from tonight’s Kairos message.

Sometimes, it’s good to focus on your breathing. It’s good to be silent and still. It’s good to rest. Above all, it’s important to be in the moment, not always thinking ahead to the next big event or thinking back to the what if’s and the could have been’s.

“There’s no present like the time.” That may be my new favorite line from a movie. Time is not infinite. You get a precious few years to live, too few to waste in busyness. Life is to be lived and savored and not merely gotten through.

Take your time.  Wherever you are, be all there. Do less but do it with everything you have, offering it as your spiritual act of worship. Enjoy the little things and pay attention to the moments in your life.

Also, take plenty of naps. Those are good.

 

 

 

Good Friday 2017

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“But thank God the crucifixion was not the last act in that great and powerful drama,” King preached. “There is another act. And it is something that we sing out and cry and ring out today. Thank God a day came when Good Friday had to pass” (Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.)

“A man who was completely innocent, offered himself as a sacrifice for the good of others, including his enemies, and became the ransom of the world. It was a perfect act” (Mahatma Gandhi).

“Our Lord has written the promise of resurrection, not in books alone but in every leaf of springtime” (Martin Luther).

Why is today called Good Friday? What’s so great about Jesus being tortured to death for a crime He didn’t commit? Why does it still matter nearly 2,000 years later?

It seems weird to call the day of Jesus’ crucifixion Good Friday, but when you look at it with Easter Sunday in mind, it makes a lot more sense.

If all you had was Good Friday with no resurrection, then it’s a very Tragic Friday. We should all stay home on Sunday and live however we want. Get stoned, get drunk, get laid, do whatever because none of it matters if Jesus is still in that tomb.

But God raised Jesus from the dead. He walked out of the tomb two days later and everything changed. Absolutely everything. That’s what makes it good.

So much of what happens in our lives will only make sense in reverse. When God promises to work all things together for our good, we often can only see that good not looking ahead or in the midst of it, but looking back on it. We see then how God orchestrated every moment perfectly to lead us where we are now, the best possible outcome.

 

That’s What He Said

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“How are we to think about Jesus’s presence today? No doubt volumes could be written on that question, and have been. But the simple fact is that Jesus Christ is present in this world, the only world we have, and in many ways. His teachings, even mangled and broken, have an incredible power to disrupt human systems, including the ones that claim to own him. He is the misfit and thus is available to all who would seek him. His crucifixion and resurrection announce the end of human systems and stand in judgment over them. He is the man on the cross calling us to join him there. He makes himself available to individuals who hear of him and seek him. In many forms both inside and outside the church, with its traditions, symbolisms, and literature, he is simply here among us. He is in his people, but he does not allow himself to be boxed in by them. He calls to us by just being here in our midst. There is nothing like him. The people in the churches also have the option of finding him and following him into his kingdom, though that may rarely be what they are doing.

For many today who think of themselves as educated, historical studies and ‘higher criticism’—perhaps something they call a ‘scientific’ outlook—have made the person and teachings of Jesus problematic. From where they start, he seems a questionable resource for actually living their lives. He may become for them a scholarly football to kick around or to ignore. But he does not go away. In spite of all, he himself is still available in this world, and beyond all historical issues and confusions there stands a strong if somewhat hazy impression of what he stood for. To come to know him and to clarify who he really is, people have only to stand for what he stood for, as best they can, and to do so by inviting him to take their life into his life and walk with them. If they do just this with humility and openness—which everyone knows to be his manner of life—they will know him more and more as they take his life to be their life. In this way they do not have to ‘know’ at the start. It is enough to venture in the kingdom of God and its King. ‘Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved’ (Acts 2:21)” (Dallas Willard, Knowing Christ Today: Why We Can Trust Spiritual Knowledge).

Wow. I do believe that says it all.

 

This Blood’s for You: An Easter Toast for 2017

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“Do not abandon yourselves to despair. We are the Easter people and hallelujah is our song” (Pope John Paul II).

Once again, I raise my glass and drink to all of you outcasts and loners out there.

Here’s to all of you with perpetually plastered smiles on your faces whose cheery dispositions hide a world of pain that few know about. You may project eternal optimism, but inwardly you feel you’re in the middle of the deepest darkest valley.

Here’s to you who know all too well the meaning of being alone in a crowd. You’re always the one feeling left out in all the conversations and the one who never gets invited to group activities.

Here’s to you who never quite fit in anywhere and who always feel unwanted. Maybe you feel closer than ever to simply giving up on everything.

Here’s to you who feel invisible, rejected, undesirable, outcast, and alone. Jesus died for you. Jesus saw you in your darkest and at your worst and loved you enough to die for you, then and there.

You are no longer unworthy because Jesus considered you worth not a little or even a lot but all of His precious blood shed on that cross.

Here’s to all those nobodies whom God has called to turn the world upside down. You who were once far off and strangers to hope and desperately awkward and ashamed are now sons and daughters of the King and joint-heirs with Jesus to the Kingdom and– best of all– the beloved of your Abba.

Here’s to those who finally belong and who finally fit in and who finally are learning how to embrace all of who God made them to be and to find that in comforting to the image of Christ they become their very best and truest selves.

Here’s to you.

Tested Faith

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“No faith is so precious as that which lives and triumphs through adversity. Tested faith brings experience. You would never have believed your own weakness had you not needed to pass through trials. And you would never have known God’s strength had His strength not been needed to carry you through” (Charles Spurgeon).

Leave it up to the old dead guys to speak some serious truth in a way that few now speak it. I’m not saying that everything old was great and everything new is crap, but there is a lot of wisdom out there that has been tested through the years and proven worthy, much in the same way that the purity remains after the gold has been refined by fire.

This quote spoke to me profoundly, even though I’m not currently in the midst of a crisis. Maybe you are. Maybe this will speak to you on a whole different level than it did to me.

Tested faith doesn’t come through prosperity and wealth, despite what some preachers might say. It only comes through hardship and poverty (sometimes material but more often being poor in spirit).

I keep thinking about how the apostles actually rejoiced because they were counted worthy to suffer for the sake of Jesus and the Gospel. Such language doesn’t fit the culture we live in that worships success and comfort. Sadly, you find little of it coming from pulpits on Sunday mornings.

But that’s the kind of faith that lasts and leads to Christlikeness. That’s still the kind of faith that changes the world.

 

Billion Year Perspective

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“A whole human life is just a heartbeat here in Heaven” (from What Dreams May Come).

I heard someone comment recently about having a billion year perspective and the more I think about it, the more I like it and the more it makes sense.

The billion year perspective chooses to look at everything that happens in life through the lens of eternity. Even a billion years is barely a dot on the timeline in view of eternity, much less the 80-90 years most of us get in this lifetime.

It’s much easier to get your priorities realigned when you realize that much of what you obsess and fret over currently won’t matter even the tiniest little bit in the grand scheme.

It makes the bad stretches easier. When you realize that while you may not like where you are in life, it won’t last forever, it changes how you handle it. You’re more inclined to be able to bear up under adversity than to buckle underneath it.

It makes it easier to pray for your enemies and for those who persecute you (even for those evil nasty Trumps or Clintons, depending on your political persuasion). You can forgive easier once you know that the pain is light and momentary compared to that eternal weight of glory that’s coming.

As the dreaded Monday approaches, it’s helpful to keep that billion year perspective in mind and realize that even the worst days still only last 24 hours and nothing you go through is unendurable if you keep eternity and God’s love in mind. If you bear in mind that God still works all things together for good, then you can make it though anything.

 

 

Peter, Peter, Peter II: The Sequel

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“The members of the council were amazed when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, for they could see that they were ordinary men with no special training in the Scriptures. They also recognized them as men who had been with Jesus. But since they could see the man who had been healed standing right there among them, there was nothing the council could say. So they ordered Peter and John out of the council chamber and conferred among themselves.

‘What should we do with these men?’ they asked each other. ‘We can’t deny that they have performed a miraculous sign, and everybody in Jerusalem knows about it. But to keep them from spreading their propaganda any further, we must warn them not to speak to anyone in Jesus’ name again.’ So they called the apostles back in and commanded them never again to speak or teach in the name of Jesus.

But Peter and John replied, ‘Do you think God wants us to obey you rather than him? We cannot stop telling about everything we have seen and heard'” (Acts 4:13-20, NLT).

I wrote something a while back about how Peter always gets a bad rap for taking his eyes of Jesus while he’s walking on the water and sinking. People point out how Jesus had to rescue him and rebuke him for his lack of faith.

Yet Peter remains one of the only two people in history to ever walk on water, with the other being Jesus Himself. At least Peter got out of the boat. The other 11 stayed behind.

Peter had a long history of good intentions mixed with some bad execution. I personally can relate to that quite well. He’s the one who made the profession that Jesus was the Christ, the Son of the Living God, only to turn around and try to rebuke the Messiah later in the same conversation.

What I love about Peter is that he never quit. Even after so many embarrassing failures and foot-in-mouth incidents, he kept going. Eventually, he kept his zeal and enthusiasm, but added some wisdom to it.

That same apostle who denied Jesus three times is the same one who preached the Pentecost sermon that saw 3,000 saved. He’s the one who stated that he wouldn’t (and couldn’t) stop talking about how Jesus changed his life. They could beat him, stone him, jail him, and even kill him, but nothing would deter him from sharing the Gospel.

That same apostle ended up (according to tradition) being crucified upside down for his faith because he felt he was unworthy to be killed in the same manner as his Lord. He kept his word and was faithful even unto death.

What made the difference? What made people sit up and take notice when he opened his mouth to proclaim the gospel? It was the time spent with Jesus.

I’m thankful that God still uses people like Peter. God isn’t looking for the best-looking or the most gifted or the most gregarious. What he wants are people who are available and surrendered. He can use the least and the lowliest.

What He wants is you and me.

 

My Read Thru the Bible in 2017 Update

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My quest to read through the Bible in 2017 finds me in the book of Joshua. So far, I see that God has established a people who are in the process of becoming a nation while claiming the promised land.

I’ve noticed two things– 1) These people seem to go out of their way to screw up and to disobey what God has decreed, even when they’ve learned from numerous experiences that God’s ways are always best. 2) God continues to be patient with His people, though not always letting the people’s rebellion slide.

At first glance, it’s easy to be come frustrated with the people of Israel. Why can’t they just do what God says the first time and save a lot of trouble and heartbreak?

The more I look at these people, the more I see myself mirrored back. Why is it that I have such a reluctance to do what I clearly know God is asking of me? Why do I have such a tendency toward disobedience and outright rebellion?

Maybe the real question is this– why is God so patient with me after all the times I’ve given Him no reason to? Why is God still pursuing a love relationship with me when all I seem to do is respond with anything but love?

God’s people continue to be an imperfect representation of God and His Kingdom. We’ve gotten it wrong far more than we’ve ever gotten it right. We’ve made it far more complicated than it needs to be to get to God as we’ve set up way too many obstacles between people and God.

Still, we’re a broken people trying to figure out what it means to follow and serve God individually as well as corporately. We’re a work in progress that thankfully remains in progress not because we deserve it but because God has promised to finish what He started in us.

Now back to those meddling Israelites.

 

Sharing Your Faith

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I met a friend of mine at the Well for coffee this afternoon. In the midst of our conversation, he mentioned that his PC virus scan picked up some spyware that was slowing down his computer.

Without even meaning to, I went into full-on proselytizing mode for Macs. I talked about how my MacBook Pro didn’t have all those annoying popups that most PCs seem to have after time, how I never got viruses, how much faster it was, etc.

On my way home, a question dawned on me– why couldn’t I be as passionate and articulate about my faith? Why am I so often silent when it comes to sharing my faith and what I believe?

I honestly believe that people automatically talk about what excites and motivates them. It could be sports, politics, music, philosophy, or any number of other topics and interests.

Maybe the reason I haven’t been passionate about sharing my own faith is that its become more of a checklist than a Love Affair. It’s become more of a religion (in the sense of man-made traditions and rules) than a relationship with my Creator and Redeemer.

I’m not trying to beat myself up or throw the ultimate self-pity party. I’m just being honest in hope that someone else out there recognizes what I’m feeling and knows they aren’t alone in this.

You really don’t have to be taught evangelism because you will share what you’re excited about. You will talk about what you obsess and dream about the most. So what does that say about how I prioritize my faith? What does that say about how much I really believe how much the God of the Universe loves me and cares for me?

Again the key isn’t beating yourself up but recognizing when you get off track, repenting, and giving yourself grace for not being perfect. It’s about realizing that you’re not who you were yesterday or who you will become tomorrow.