faith

Rain, Rain, Go Away: The Sequel

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I am officially over the rain. I liked it for a bit, then it got old. Then it continued to rain.

I spent more than double my usual commute time from work to the Starbucks on Franklin Road in Brentwood where my friend and I meet weekly to walk and talk.

Thankfully, I had classic 90’s tunes in the form of the fantastic album, Surfacing, by Sarah McLachlan. I do believe that 90’s music by and large is better than the current pop music playing on most radio stations.

Still, I got stuck in traffic. At times, I’m fairly certain I could have gotten out of my car and walked faster than I was driving.

I don’t know what it is, but being in extended traffic makes me weary. I suppose it’s from being constantly hyper-aware of all those drivers around me (including those numbskulls who STILL don’t have their lights on in the rain EVEN after my last blog specifically on that topic).

Ultimately, being stuck in traffic means that I have a job to drive to and from, a car to drive in, and a me that is healthy and able to drive said car to said workplace. That in itself outweighs and inconveniences caused by traffic delays and the snail’s pace.

It’s still all about perspective. Before you complain about your life, remember that you still have it better than most of the world’s population. In fact, most people would give anything to have your problems versus the ones that they are facing.

Before you whine about being the 99%, remember that if you have a roof over your head, more clothes than the ones on your back, more than one meal a day, running water, transportation, and cash in your pocket, globally speaking, you are the 1%.

Plus, I had a very good chestnut praline latte at Starbucks to reward myself for not losing my everloving mind over being in the car so long.

All in all, I’d call it a good day.

 

A Certainty that Cannot Be Shaken

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“We say, then, to anyone who is under trial, give Him time to steep the soul in His eternal truth. Go into the open air, look up into the depths of the sky, or out upon the wideness of the sea, or on the strength of the hills that is His also; or, if bound in the body, go forth in the spirit; spirit is not bound. Give Him time and, as surely as dawn follows night, there will break upon the heart a sense of certainty that cannot be shaken” (Amy Carmichael).

I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around what happened in Paris.

Granted, I didn’t even hear about it until I’d gotten home from work.

I turned on CNN and saw where at least 153 people had been killed in what looks like ISIS terrorist attacks on innocent civilians.

If it happened there, it could happen here. But still, the fact that it happened anywhere matters. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. once said that injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. Attacks on liberty are a threat to liberty anywhere and everywhere.

I still don’t know why things like that happen. I know it’s a fallen and broken world. I know that people are capable of the worst acts, as evidenced by the Holocaust and Slavery and a million other atrocities.

I also know that God is in control.

I know that God can take the worst tragedies and turn them into something beautiful.

I still believe that in the end, Love wins. Jesus wins.

I know and believe with all my heart that, try as it might, darkness can never truly drive out the light. The only failure is a failure of the light when it refuses to shine.

I’m praying for Paris. I’m praying for all those who are burdened by oppression and injustice tonight.

May God have mercy on us all.

 

Why I Love Old Abraham

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“By faith Abraham heard God’s call to travel to a place he would one day receive as an inheritance; and he obeyed, not knowing where God’s call would take him. By faith he journeyed to the land of the promise as a foreigner; he lived in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, his fellow heirs to the promise because Abraham looked ahead to a city with foundations, a city laid out and built by God.

By faith Abraham’s wife Sarah became fertile long after menopause because she believed God would be faithful to His promise. So from this man, who was almost at death’s door, God brought forth descendants, as many as the stars in the sky and as impossible to count as the sands of the shore” (Hebrews 11:8-12).

“That’s what Scripture means when it says, ‘Abraham entrusted himself to God, and God credited him with righteousness.’ And living a faithful life earned Abraham the title of ‘God’s friend'” (James 2:23, The Voice).

I like Abraham. I can relate to Abraham.

Sure, he was the father of many nations. Sure, he’s the one through whose line came the Messiah, the Hope of the World.

But he also had clay feet at times.

Remember the time when he lied about his wife, saying she was his sister? Twice?

Remember when he tried to help God out by agreeing to go to bed with Sarah’s servant Hagar to produce the heir God promised?

Remember when Abraham had a hard time believing that God could keep His word in giving him a child?

Yeah, I can relate to all of that. Abraham’s my kind of guy.

The Bible is full of people like that. Not saints in the sense of people who walked through life with halos hanging over their heads who never messed up or got a hair out of place or got their knickers in a bunch. More like saints who stumbled and fell often, but kept getting back up, kept trusting in the next step, kept trusting that God knew where he was leading them through all the deserts and foreign countries.

Sometimes faith is simply showing up and taking the next step, trusting that God knows where He’s leading you. As Corrie Ten Boom said, faith is trusting the conductor of the train when it goes into a pitch black tunnel instead of jumping off the back of the caboose.

I suppose we’re all thankful that even faith the size of a mustard seed can move  mountains and uproot trees. It can change stubborn old hearts like yours and mine.

Best of all, faith leads you to the place where God is, where you were always meant to be, the place where your heart can rest.

 

More Borrowed Wisdom From One Mr. Lewis

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I have the crud, so I invited a guest blogger to share his thoughts. Well, I copied and pasted from something C. S. Lewis wrote. It blew my fuzzy, hay-fevered mind. I hope it blows your mind as well.

“An ordinary simple Christian kneels down to say his prayers. He is trying to get into touch with God.

But if he is a Christian he knows that what is prompting him to pray is also God: God, so to speak, inside him.

But he also knows that all his real knowledge of God comes through Christ, the Man who was God—that Christ is standing beside him, helping him to pray, praying for him.

You see what is happening. God is the thing to which he is praying—the goal he is trying to reach. God is also the thing inside him which is pushing him on—the motive power. God is also the road or bridge along which he is being pushed to that goal.

So that the whole threefold life of the three-personal Being is actually going on in that ordinary little bedroom where an ordinary man is saying his prayers. The man is being caught up into the higher kinds of life—what I called Zoe or spiritual life: he is being pulled into God, by God, while still remaining himself” (C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity).

You’re welcome.

Praying starts and ends with God. Sure, I bring my needs and wants to God, but sometimes there are no words. Sometimes, I need to know that God inside of me is praying to the God above me through the God in Christ who is beside me.

That’s prayer.

 

Coming Home

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“Isn’t it right to join in the celebration and be happy? This is your brother we’re talking about. He was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found again!” (Luke 15:32).

Editor’s Note: I still have The Crud, compete with intermittent coughing spells, so forgive me for any typographical errors I made while I was in the middle of hacking up one of my lungs. Hopefully, I’ll be better soon.

Every one of us has been a prodigal at some point. Every one of us.

Not all of us have run away to a far country to waste our lives and money on scandalous living.

Some of us have stayed at home and been just as far away from the Father.

As my pastor Mike Glenn reminded me today, lostness isn’t a matter of geography as much as it is of relationship.

All of us wander off in our affections and in our priorities. All of us.

All of us at some point will have that awakening when we come to ourselves and realize just how far away we’ve gotten.

It’s not Jesus who was lost. I was. You were. We were. Jesus found us. That’s the story of the Gospel. That’s my hope.

Some of you are praying for prodigals in your life who still haven’t come home yet. Some of you are the prodigals still out in the far country, ashamed and embarrassed to admit defeat and start the journey homeward.

Remember that God is the Father who never turns away any prodigals who come back in true repentance and faith. This is the God who doesn’t wait for us to get to Him. He runs after us while we’re still a long way down the road.

Every one of us at some point will be a prodigal again. It’s in our nature to wander and it’s in God’s nature to bring us back.

That will never not be good news to me.

The end.

 

 

Neighborliness

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“Neighborliness is not a quality in other people; it is simply their claim on ourselves. Every moment and every situation challenges us to action and to obedience. We have literally no time to sit down and ask ourselves whether so-and-so is our neighbor or not” (Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship).

Who is my neighbor? That’s the question that the expert in Jewish law asked Jesus. In other words, who am I required to love?

Jesus turned the question around from “Who is my neighbor?” to “How am I being a good neighbor to those around me?”

So, a neighbor is anyone who is in need and who is within my power to help. I can’t help every single one in need, but I can meet the needs of those who are in front of me, and those by Jesus’ definition are my neighbors.

Ultimately, the Good Samaritan is a picture of Jesus Himself. I’m the one who foolishly took the dangerous road alone and ended up beaten up and robbed. I’m the one lying half-dead on the road whom the Neighbor spotted and had pity on.

That changes the parable quite a bit, doesn’t it? It means just as the Good Samaritan wasn’t the kind of hero the Jewish audience was expecting, Jesus wasn’t (and isn’t) the kind of Messiah we were expecting.

We prize physical strength and virility. We prize magazine-cover good looks. We love take-charge, grab-the-bull-by-the-horns people.

I wonder sometimes if we’d know Jesus as Messiah if He showed up today as He did almost two millennia ago. People were expecting someone to rally the people against Rome, but instead got a man who insisted that we turn the other cheek and go the extra mile.

Sure, Jesus overturned those tables in the Temple, but He also said, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”

I’m thankful most of all that in Jesus, I got not the kind of Savior I might have wanted, but the kind I so desperately needed. He loved ( and still loves) me just like I am but refuses to let me stay that way.

PS Credit for all of this goes to Mike Glenn, courtesy of tonight’s Kairos message. Check it out some Tuesday evening if you’re ever in the Brentwood/Greater Nashville area.

 

Too Good Not to Share

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“look — we’re facing some pretty big things, Lord,
And You whisper: “Child, look — look at Me.
Now You’re facing the Best thing, who dwarfs all the other things.”
And we exhale.. and we get it, God, because that is the thing:
Prayer isn’t so much to remind our God of what all the problems are —
but to remind all the problems of who our God is.

And You cup us close tonight and tell us: No matter what you’re facing, look into My face — and know it, feel it: Your God is greater than what you’re trying to face, your God is bigger than what you’re trying to escape, your God is better than anything you’re trying to chase.
And our problems fade in the light of Your gentle face, Your tender embrace….” (Ann Voskamp).

That’s it. “Prayer isn’t so much to remind our God of what all the problems are– but to remind all the problems of who our God is.”

That sentence. For the win.

I got my health insurance premiums for 2016. Apparently, they’re going up over $150 a month. That’s a whole lot of moolah.

But no matter how big my insurance premium gets, God is bigger.

No matter how overwhelmed I’ve felt over the pressing issues facing me, God has been and will always be able.

That’s not a news flash, but it’s a good reminder out there to all the weary and heavy-laden hearts tonight who need to hear it one more time. It’s a great comfort to all those who feel like they’re less than adequate to meet all that life has thrown their way this past week.

No matter what, God will be enough.

Let that be your mantra for the days to come. Let it resound in your heart and mind when the lies come and try to drag you down into defeat.

No matter what, God will be enough.

 

So My Niece Turned Four

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I still can’t believe that my niece Lizzie is now a 4-year old. It feels like yesterday when I was holding her for the first time as a one-day old. It really and truly does.

It also seems surreal and weird that my nephews are now 8 and 10.

On days like these, I wish I still had my two uncles on my dad’s side. I’d love to get some of their advice on how to be a better uncle. I’d like to know how they felt when I was a 4-year old having birthday parties.

I miss them whenever I hear really good music I think they would like. I also wish I could have appreciated them as much when they were living.

I also think that right now God is pleased with me. Because of Jesus and what He’s done, I am enough and I have enough. I don’t have to perform to earn God’s favor. I don’t have to constantly strive for perfection in hopes that God will grant me His love.

I have it.

That’s the best feeling in the world. Knowing that I am already forgiven and loved and chosen and blessed makes me want to forgive and love and choose and bless better. It makes me want to live better.

So this day continues to be a gift. So is every day that I wake up to. So is every single moment where I’m breathing in and out, basking in the grace of God that forever holds me together and keeps me sane.

I really enjoyed being a part of Lizzie’s 4th birthday party. My sister is a fantastic mother and wife, and my brother-in-law is a great father and husband. Their kids aren’t perfect, but they have the two best role models I know to emulate.

Oh, and God is still God. That’s the best part.

 

Those Wildflowers and Sparrows

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“If God gives such attention to the appearance of wildflowers—most of which are never even seen—don’t you think he’ll attend to you, take pride in you, do his best for you? What I’m trying to do here is to get you to relax, to not be so preoccupied with getting, so you can respond to God’s giving. People who don’t know God and the way he works fuss over these things, but you know both God and how he works. Steep your life in God-reality, God-initiative, God-provisions. Don’t worry about missing out. You’ll find all your everyday human concerns will be met” (Matthew 6:30-33).

That’s the key to dealing with worry.

Remember that God provides for wildflowers and sparrows. He will provide for you.

Worry says that God is not enough. Faith says that He is.

Worry says that I have to be in control of figuring a way out of my problems. Faith says God already has.

Worry kills. Faith renews.

If I’m given the choice, the obvious is to choose faith over worry.

Yet I still choose to worry. It seems like it’s hard-wired into my human nature to want to worry and to give into anxiety.

Let’s just call worry what it really is– unbelief.

I need to repent every time I give into worry and pray for God to grant me faith to believe.

I’m not saying I’m 100% there, but I’m closer today than I was yesterday.

So to recap: remember those wildflowers and sparrows and choose faith over worry.

The end.

 

Today’s Word for the Day– Suffering

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“There’s far more to this life than trusting in Christ. There’s also suffering for him. And the suffering is as much a gift as the trusting. You’re involved in the same kind of struggle you saw me go through, on which you are now getting an updated report in this letter” (Phil. 1:29-30).

Imagine Mr. Fred Rogers in his sweater and sneakers saying something along these lines: Boys and girls, today’s word for the day is suffering.  Can you say suffering? Suh-fer-ring.

Most of the time, I am all about the suffering- avoidance mode. I likes my comfort. I don’t likes to suffer in the least.

I think that what drives most of the consumer market is comfort and convenience. That seems to be the American way, especially in American churches.

Still, the American comfortable middle-class Christianity is an anomaly. For most of the world, to proclaim Christ as Lord is to invite suffering. It’s not a matter of if, but when.

If I’m honest, when I read that suffering is a gift, my first thought is where to go to exchange it for something more comfortable and convenient.

But that’s where you and I find God. C. S. Lewis said that God speaks through our pleasures but shouts to us in our pain. Something about suffering clarifies our perspective and gives us better eyes to see God with.

Also, there is no better testimony than seeing someone willing to sacrifice for their faith. Anyone can believe in something that benefits them tangibly, but it’s quite another when you give up family, houses, and land for what you believe. Jesus Himself said that those people would be rewarded a thousand-times over for what they lose, but the loss is still very much present and real.

Christians all over the world are literally laying down their lives for the Gospel. I believe that the day is coming soon when believers in America will face the choice of denying Christ or death. Maybe not in my lifetime, but soon enough.

Will you and I choose suffering to advance the Gospel? Will we choose the painful path if it means that Jesus is glorified in us?

I pray our answer to both these questions is a resounding YES.