friends

Why Fairy Tales Last

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I saw Snow White and the Huntsman, based on the fairy tale, tonight in the theatre. I think for me there’s still something about a fairy tale well told that still tugs at my heart strings.

It’s more than just a damsel in distress. Or at least I think so.

We’ve all at some point pricked our fingers on a spindle or taken a bite of that apple. Suddenly, we find ourselves dead inside and out.

You and I need to be rescued. We need Someone strong and brave enough to fight for us. Someone who’s not afraid to die for us.

That’s the Gospel in a nutshell.

I love the story where Tolkien finally wins C.S. Lewis over when he tells him that the Gospel is a myth, but at the same time, a true myth.

I read a book recently that spoke of the Gospel as a tragedy, a comedy, and a fairy tale. The last third of the book made my heart come alive inside my chest. The idea of the Gospel being a fairy tale come true is something most of us have never thought or dreamed of, but that’s what it is.

We get the Rescuer. We get to be Princes and Princesses, royal children of the King of the Universe. And we get the happily ever after (read the last chapter of Revelations if you need proof).

That’s why fairy tales will never, ever go out of style.

An Awesome Definition for Worship

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worship111ma

“Worship is extravagant love and extreme submission.”

I love that definition.

Too often, worship is all about singing songs. It’s all too easy to sit back and critique the song choices and musical styles and whether or not those around me are worshiping the “right” way.

In Nashville, it’s easy to let worship become all about the level of musicianship and charasmatic personality. It’s easy to manipulate a crowd into a frenzy if you’re talented enough, but that’s not worship.

Worship is extravagant love. I can’t help but thinking about the woman who poured the expensive perfume on Jesus’ feet and then wiped those feet with her hair. That was more than inconvenient. That was extremely costly and humiliating. That’s worship.

It’s also extreme submission. It’s surrendering my own illusion of self-control and admitting that I have a desperate need for God. And it starts long before you enter the sanctuary and the church service and doesn’t end when you pass the exit doors on your way out into the parking lot.

Worship is not an event, but a lifestyle of saying, “Not my will, but Thine.”

I don’t normally do this, but I posted a link to a fantastic blog about the nature of worship that I ran across today.

http://allsonsanddaughters.com/2012/03/26/art-in-worship-join-the-conversation/

I challenge to you read it and let it soak into your very being.

If I’m truly worshipping in Romans 12:1-2 fashion and being transformed by the renewing of my mind and offering my body as a living sacrifice, then it won’t matter whether I’m singing the most current and trendy modern worship songs or the old, old hymns.

It won’t matter if there’s a rockin’ worship band, or a guy with a guitar, or an orchestra and choir, or just a piano and organ.

It will be worship. It will declare the great worth of God to the world.

After all, like the song says, it’s not about me. It’s all about You, Jesus.

My Faux Oscar Acceptance Speech

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First of all, I really thought Viola Davis should have won the Best Actress Oscar. No, I haven’t seen The Iron Lady, but I can’t imagine any performance being more pitch-perfect and soul-moving than her work in The Help. Even Meryl Streep’s.

On the last day of me being 39, I came up with an acceptance speench on surviving 40 years with all my hair and most of my sanity intact.

Thank you to my family for being awesome. Thanks to my mother, without whom I wouldn’t be here. Literally. And to my dad, who had his share in the blessed event. 50% to be exact. I will never be able in a million years to repay the debt I owe them.

Ditto for my sister and brother-in-law, two nephews and niece. I love you guys and I can’t wait to have you be a part of my birthday celebrations!

Thank you to my friends who have shown me what real grace looks like and have been Jesus to me countless times. You’ve seen my worst and believed the best for me and about me. I am a composite of what I have seen and learned and imitated in you.

Thank you to all the great artists who make up the soundtrack of my life. Life without music would still be worth living, but barely. Ditto for movies and really good books.

Thank you to all the animals I’ve grown up with. All the dogs, cats, and even the parakeet. I still miss you, Sammy. Currently, my cat Lucy has the disctinction of being my best birthday present ever 12 years running.

Thank you, Jesus. You are not just Savior and not just Lord. You are my Life, my Oxygen, my Strength, my Joy, my Salvation and my Song I will sing every day of my life until the day I die (and then I will keep singing it every day after that).

I am still Abba’s child and He is still very fond of me and I will never stop proclaiming to the world that Jesus can take anyone at any point, no matter how far they’ve fallen or how profoundly they’re broken, and make them shine and make them radiant and beautiful trophies of the grace of God.

Thanks in advance for all my birthday wishes. I do read each and every one and they all mean the world to me.

Thanks for reading this little blog by this guy who is way more blessed than he deserves. This Ragamuffin who is still trying to tell other beggars where to find the Bread of Life.

Goodwill Finds

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image

I am fast becoming a Goodwill junkie. I love going in those stores, not knowing what I’ll find, and walking away with a few unexpected treasures. Like today, for instance. I went in looking for music and came out with a little stained glass piece that has Romans 8:31 on it. Well, it looks like stained glass to my untrained eye. I went in with visions of finding Amy Winehouse CDs and found something I didn’t expect to find, but ended up being much more meaningful to me than what I was looking for.

I think life is a lot like that.

Sure, you can live your life in safe mode. That’s where you always hang out with the same people and go to the same places. That’s where you love people who are loveable and and invest in the friendships with people who are popular and know the secret handshake and password. Those in the know and on the go, so to speak.

That’s fine, but you never find any unexpected treasures there.

Sometimes, you have to go out of your way to find that treasure hidden in a field that’s worth more than everything you own put together. Sometimes, you have to get out of your safe life to find the most satisfying and rewarding moments.

Maybe the treasure is found in the friends who are on the outside with the in-crowd, but who have deep wells of wisdom when it comes to walking with Jesus. Maybe it’s in serving those who won’t say thank you, or giving to those who will never pay you back.

Maybe it’s in giving that someone a second chance after they screwed up the first and finding that forgiveness is its own reward.

I think God deliberately puts the most precious things and people and places and moments in the most ordinary disguises so that they will mean that much more to us when we find them and see them for their true worth and value. It’s a fearful thing to step out in faith that way, but the risk is always way more than worth it.

I can think of a few friends who have turned out to be golden. My family is the same way. Those memories I cherish most happened when I was expecting something else (or not expecting anyhing at all).

Sometimes, when you go digging through the trash, when you go to the lowliest places, sometimes you will look into the face of the broken and hopeless and outcast and find Jesus there.

A Prayer for My Friends Tonight

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God, I bring my friends before you tonight. I know that You know what they need better than I do and even better than they do.

God, they are burdened and heavy-laden with work and with school, with spouses and with romantic relationships, with family and friends.

Grant them Your perfect peace tonight and enfold them in Your arms so that they can feel You near to know that You are just as near when they can’t feel You.

Grant them the joy than transcends circumstances and events, good or bad. Joy that can only come from You and that other people can only attribute to You.

Give them wisdom in their friendships. Bring people into their lives who will draw out the God-colors in them and inspire them to hunger and thirst after righteousness and to above all yearn for Jesus more than life itself.

Remove the people who hinder them being who You called them to be. Lord, even me, if I am a hindrance to Your work in their lives. Give them the grace to let the people go who You take out of their existance.

Above all, give them a single passion and vision: to follow hard after You, regardless of what it costs or what anyone else around them thinks. May they see only You and love only You. May their love for others be Your love flowing through them.

Lord, cause Your face to shine on them and be gracious to them. Take them to the lowliest people and let them be Your hands and feet to those who will never be able to repay what You do to them through my friends.

I pray for success and prosperity and good fortune for my friends. More than that, I pray intimacy and a deeper, wilder love for You, even if it comes at the expense of success and prosperity and good fortune.

Thank You for my friends. May they know how grateful I am. Much more than that, may they know each and every day and all through the night how You love them and how fond You are of them and how You call them beloved and how You are their Abba Father. May they each hear the sweet sound of You singing with joy over them in the deep waches of the night.

That’s my prayer for them tonight. Amen.

Why I Am a Fan of Henri Nouwen

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solitude

“In solitude we can slowly unmask the illusion of our possessiveness and discover in the center of our own self that we are not what we can conquer, but what is given to us. In solitude we can listen to the voice of him who spoke to us before we could speak a word, who healed us before we could make any gesture to help, who set us free long before we could free others, and who loved us long before we could give love to anyone. It is in this solitude that we discover that being is more important than having, and that we are worth more than the result of our efforts. In solitude we discover that our life is not a possession to be defended, but a gift to be shared. It’s there we recognize that the healing words we speak are not just our own, but are given to us; that the love we can express is part of a greater love; and that the new life we bring forth is not a property to cling to, but a gift to be received” (Henri J.M. Nouwen).

Henri Nouwen wrote that every single person ever born deals with aloneness, because every single one of us is unique and no one else will ever have our exact problems and issues and hang-ups and phobias.

He said we can either see our aloneness as a wound and thus turn it into loneliness or view it as a gift, where it becomes solitude. In solitude is where we can learn to be still and quiet and know that in truth, we are never really alone. God is with us.

Solitude makes us better people, better neighbors, better friends, better spouses, better lovers, and better disciples. We’re not clinging to each other out of a desparate need to not be lonely, but because we are finally comfortable with who we are in the times when we are alone with no noise to drown out our own thoughts.

That is my own wording of what I’ve been reading in The Only Necessary Thing, a compilation of Nouwen’s thoughts on living a prayerful life. Seriously, if you don’t read another one of my blogs, but read one of his books, I will be supremely happy. He’s that good.

That’s all for tonight. Let me know what you are reading that touches you deeply at the soul level. Maybe it’s a book that will do the same for me. And may the God of the earthquake and the God of the thunder also be the God of your silence and the God of your solitude. Amen.

More Thoughts on Fighting From Victory (And not For It)

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chariots of fire

I normally don’t do follow-up blogs to ones I have posted. Kinda like the line about not repeating this ever again or something like that. Did I mention my brain is a little fuzzy this evening?

Someone posted a comment on my blog that got my attention. I failed to mention or say correctly that we should pray for strength. Absolutely. We should pray that God will strengthen us with power through His Holy Spirit.

It seems to me that sometimes we should claim the power that is already in us. The Bible states that the power that raised Christ from the dead is in us. It is in us because the risen Christ is in us.

The power that my sin couldn’t overcome. The power that death could not conquer. The power that the grave couldn’t hold down. That kind of power.

Maybe I’m wrong, but I don’t pray to be strong, but rather that God would be strong through me. I want to be a vessel that God pours through, that God loves through, that God comes through.

Sometimes I know how I want to say something in my head and for whatever reason, it doesn’t quite come out in print. On a side note, I have become quite familiar with the taste of shoe leather for as many times as I have put my foot in my mouth and said really dumb things. That really makes me feel like a heel.

Pray for strength. Yes. Claim the power of the risen Christ in you. Yes. The point is that you don’t have to live defeated and downtrodden. You can live in victory because the Victor lives in you.

That’s what I am praying and claiming for myself and for all of you tonight. May God’s peace rule your hearts tonight, friends!

Thoughts on Fighting From Victory (And not For It)

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chariots of fire

Today, God reminded me of something I knew but had forgotten. Lately, I’ve been praying for peace and stronger faith and for strength to overcome temptation and negative thinking.

I think what God was reminding me was that I already have these things in Christ. In Christ, I have everything I need for life and godliness, as it says in 1 Timothy. So maybe instead of praying for peace, I will claim the peace that passes all understanding.

Instead of praying for stronger faith, I will claim the promise that when I am weak, Christ is strong and that His strength works best in my weakness.

Instead of praying for the power to overcome temptation to anxiety and negative thinking, I will claim the verse that I can take every thought captive and take it to Jesus and leave it there. I’m not saying that I can claim a Bentley in faith and I will receive it. I am saying that God says to those who lack wisdom, to ask.

God says to keep asking, keep seeking, keep knocking, and keep wrestling with God until He blesses you. The victory is won. The enemy is a defeated foe. Never forget that. Death no longer has the final word and the grave is only a temporary resting place. Jesus holds the keys to death and the grave and hell.

Live out of the victory that’s already yours and fight from it and not for it. Believe in faith the promises of God not only for yourself, but for those around you.

Pray strong for someone when that person can’t pray for themselves.

Above all, if we are the winning side, we should be the most joyous, grateful people on the planet. Our thankful hearts will be what gets the attention of the world around us who is still looking for meaning and hope.

They are waiting to see someone whose testimony is not just talked out, but walked out, too.

Forgiveness

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Tonight, Mike Glenn talked about forgiveness at Kairos. He said forgiveness is releasing the other person from the expectation that they can fix the wrong and the hurt they caused you. He said forgiveness is when you are no longer defined by the pain and the hurt and the grudge, but by the love of Jesus.

He added that Jesus said to him once, “You can hold on to the hate for the person who hurt you or you can hold on to My love, but you cannot hold on to both.” When Jesus whispered, “Father, forgive them for they don’t know what they’re doing,” He was praying for those who hurt you. He was also praying for you.”

We are called to forgive. Jesus said the Father would forgive you as you forgave others. When you don’t give forgiveness, you can’t receive it and you stunt the work of the Spirit in your life. Every single one of us needs to forgive and be forgiven.

But what if the person you most need to forgive is yourself? What if the person you need to learn to live with is you? What if you’re scared to death that if someone else ever knew you like you knew yourself and knew all the dirty, petty, angry thoughts you keep hidden, they would walk out on you for good?

I have been way too hard on myself in the past and projected on to other people my own self-rejection. I thought that no one could ever really know me and still like me. But the love of Jesus broke through and changed me and changed how I saw myself. It transformed how I saw others, no longer through my own insecurities, but through the grace of God.

The key is to believe what God says about you. It’s to believe that God loves you and chose you and calls you BELOVED. The key is to receive God’s forgiveness. If God chose to forgive you of something you never in a million years could have paid for, then it’s time to forgive yourself.

You have a choice. You can choose pain and holding grudges or you can choose forgiveness and freedom and love. I think Anne Lamott said refusing to forgive is like drinking poison and expecting someone else to die. You only hurt yourself. Forgiveness is freedom to love and be loved and mostly, to be wrapped up by the love of Jesus.

I choose forgiveness every time. Lord, grant me and all those reading this forgiving hearts and fill us up with your love so there’s no more room to carry the hurts anymore.

Amen.

Taken, Blessed, Broken, Given

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lifeofthebeloved

“During the meal, Jesus took and blessed the bread, broke it, and gave it to his disciples: Take, eat. This is my body” (Matthew 26:26).

I’m in the middle of another Henri Nouwen book and I am loving it. He more than any other writer (except for maybe Brennan Manning) always seems to speak to where I am right here and now.

He says, “To identify the movements of the Spirit in our lives, I have found it helpful to use four words: ‘taken,’ ‘blessed,’ broken,’ and ‘given.'”

I had never thought about it that way before. I never looked at Jesus breaking the bread at Passover and made an analogy to my own life.

We are taken (or chosen) by God who loved us from the start. We are blessed by Him with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms. We are broken by our own sin and the broken and marred world we live in with so much poverty, injustice, and inhumanity. We are given to be God’s hands and feet to bring healing and justice and compassion into the world.

I read somewhere that my life is loaves and fishes. Remember the ones that Jesus used to feed the 5,000? In and of myself, I can’t do much. But if I am blessed and broken and poured out, God can bless so many more through me.

News flash: God takes and uses broken lives, scarred hearts, screwed-up pasts, and promises left unfulfilled. He can use anybody. In fact, He more often than not prefers the outcasts and nobodies and failures to be the ones to turn the world upside down (see the 12 disciples for examples).

Lord, may I be taken by You, Who chose me before I was born and gave me the name Beloved, and blessed with as much of You as I can stand. Break my heart for the things that break Yours and then give me out to those in need.

PS The book I’m reading is Life of the Beloved. Expect more blogs to come out of this. I’m not even halfway through. And, to throw in yet another shameless plug, go buy or download or pilfer or ingest this book as soon as humanly possible. It’s that good.