Jesus

Reminders That Life Really Is Good

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I woke up today to snow on the ground. To those living above the Mason-Dixon line, that may not be a big deal, but it is for this guy living way down in Tennessee. It may not have lasted, but it was pretty.

I may not have everything I want in life, but I do have everything I need. I am still so very blessed.

One of my friends is getting re-baptized at her church. I plan on being there to celebrate and rejoice in this brave step of obedience on her part. I love seeing how God has been working in the lives of family and friends lately. It’s a good reminder for me that those prayers of mine really are getting past the ceiling. James writes that the prayers of the righteous are powerful and effective. I do know that they work.

I’ve learned over time that real maturity is seeing God bless someone else and being happy. Even if that person gets something you’ve wanted but not received, you can still choose to be happy for him or her. I’ve been envious and bitter in the past about such people, but I’m learning to rejoice for them. I think there’s hope for me yet.

I keep thinking that one day this little blog of mine will explode and start raking in thousands of readers. Maybe. Maybe not. But I’m thankful for those who take the time to read my ramblings when there are so many other things competing for their time and attention.

God is good, all the time. Not just when I feel that he is good. Not when I feel he’s doing right by me. All the time. That’s 24/7.

Just so you know, if you ask me to pray for you about something, I do. If you ask me to pray for a loved one, I will. Keep reminding me that life is good and that God is good, because I forget early and often. I’ll try to do the same for you. Deal?

 

The First Letter to My Future Wife in 2013

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I have a confession to make to you. I actually gave up on you for a little while. I gave up hope that I would ever meet you. But now I have hope again.

It may the tiniest bit of hope, but it’s there. It may not always be visible, but it’s strong enough to hold on to. I will never give up believing in you and praying for you until the day I meet you.

At this rate, we may both be 80-something and senile, but we’ll have fun– at least for a little while.

Don’t give up on me either. Don’t quit praying for me as I won’t give up praying for you. May we both commit to growing closer to Jesus and by that way grow closer to each other. May your first desire not be to find me, but to seek after and hold on to and treasure Jesus for all he’s worth. May that be my first desire, too.

I’ll be honest. Right now, meeting you seems like an impossibility, humanly speaking. But I believe that God is at his best at making the impossible possible. So I keep hoping. And praying. And waiting.

I pray that I don’t find you until I’m ready to love you like I’m supposed to love you. Like Jesus loved his bride and laid down his life for her. Like he will call me to love you when I meet you.

Until then, my hope is secure in the only place that can’t be shaken. It’s in God himself. I pray yours is, too.

 

 

What Are Christians For?

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I was finishing up season 1 of Downton Abbey when a facebook post caught my eye. It was entitled “A Christian’s View of Downton Abbey.” I had to read, though I feared what the result would be.

My fears were realized. The reviewer condemned the series after watching part of an episode.

I’m not here to say the assessment was wrong. You have the right to your opinion and I have the right to mine. What bothered me was that this is yet another example of how we as believers are known for what we’re against, rather than what we’re for.

I still remember how Christians came out against the Harry Potter books and movies, even though most of them had not read one word of the books or seen any part of the movies. I even saw Christians attack Twilight and try to tie the series to teenagers wanting to become vampires. As if Twilight was the only vampire franchise in town.

How does any of this attract people to Christ? How does any of this show love? I’m all for personal convictions, but I’m not about to impose my personal convictions on someone else. I’m not about to condemn someone else who has different convictions than mine.

I choose to show what I’m for rather than what I’m against. I want people to know I’m for Jesus and all he stands for. That’s love, forgiveness, second chances, repentance, belonging, renewal, and –best of all– life abundant.

I don’t believe in condoning sin or sinful behavior. But I believe in loving the sinner.

Above all, I know how many times I mess up in a single day. I’m not about to pick up a stone to throw at anybody, because I know that I can’t say that I am without sin. I’ve been the recipient of grace from God and so many people over the years and now it’s my turn to pay it forward and show that grace to as many people as I can as much as I can.

This isn’t written by someone who’s figured it all out and is preaching at you from on high. As the old saying goes, “I’m just one beggar trying to tell other beggars where to find bread.” I’m just a sinner saved by grace who fell in love with Jesus and wants every single person to know that.

That’s all.

A Book Review In Progress Of A Book I’ve Already Read

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importance

“The great mark of a Christian is what no other characteristic can replace, namely the example of a life which can only be explained in terms of God” (Cardinal Emmanuel Suhard).

I’m re-reading a Brennan Manning book, The Importance of Being Foolish: How to Think Like Jesus. I started off not sure of whether I’d read the book or not, but soon started recognizing that I had indeed read it before. No matter. It’s worth a second (or third or fourth) read because it still speaks the same truth it did the first time around.

The book resonates with me because it is all about getting the Christian faith back to the basics. Actually, one basic: knowing Jesus. Not just in a ecclesiastical or theological way. Not knowing facts about him or memorizing his words to spout off in an argument. It’s about knowing Jesus, celebrating how he chose a nobody like me (or anyone else) to love and rescue and save.

This Jesus isn’t the feel-good type who’s telling everybody to be nicer to each other. He’s not only a wise teacher trying to make us better people with better morals and better ethics. He’s God in the flesh who says, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father but through Me.”

It’s both comforting and convicting. It’s comforting in that it’s about knowing a Person, not following rules and being good enough. It’s convicting, because I can’t know Jesus and stay the same. I can’t follow Jesus and not have to change radically.

I love this quote of Manning’s (from another book he wrote):

“The gospel is absurd and the life of Jesus is meaningless unless we believe that He lived, died, and rose again with but one purpose in mind: to make brand-new creation. Not to make people with better morals but to create a community of prophets and professional lovers, men and women who would surrender to the mystery of the fire of the Spirit that burns within, who would live in ever greater fidelity to the omnipresent Word of God, who would enter into the center of it all, the very heart and mystery of Christ, into the center of the flame that consumes, purifies, and sets everything aglow with peace, joy, boldness, and extravagant, furious love. This, my friend, is what it really means to be a Christian.”

That’s what I’m after. Are you?

 

 

Live Naked

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I need to preface this blog by emphatically stating that by “live naked,” I so do not mean join a nudist colony or walk around all day in your birthday suit. If you do, we will disavow all knowledge and pretend you don’t exist. This blog will self-destruct in 15 seconds. . . .

For real, I do think that we need to live naked. By that, I mean live transparently and honestly. You will always be a second-rate version of someone else, but a first-rate version of you, because God made you to be you, only you, and no one else.

That means you don’t have to force yourself to believe that everything is fine when it’s not. You can honestly admit that you’re having a bad day, that your brokenness is showing, and that you feel completely inadequate to handle what the day is throwing at you.

To like naked is to live a life that is 100% 24/7 completely and utterly dependent on God for every single moment and every single thing. You know you need God in the next moment to avoid a full-on falling apart mental and emotional meltdown. You need all of God’s strength to hold you together and you need all of his love to keep you sane.

To live naked is to live trusting without understanding, following without knowing the way, and believing without having all (or even most) of the answers.

That’s how I am choosing to live each day. That’s how I pray you choose to live. Because believers aren’t perfect, but forgiven. If anything, those who have given up everything to follow Jesus know that Jesus is all they have and that Jesus is all they need.

It’s a battle to trust when your emotions and thoughts are screaming at you that God won’t come through. It’s a lifelong struggle, but it’s so much more than worthwhile.

May we live naked starting today and every day.

Spontaneous, Joyful Uncertainty and Expectancy

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“If our certainty is only in our beliefs, we develop a sense of self-righteousness, become overly critical, and are limited by the view that our beliefs are complete and settled. But when we have the right relationship with God, life is full of spontaneous, joyful uncertainty and expectancy. Jesus said, “. . . believe also in Me” (John 14:1), not, “Believe certain things about Me”. Leave everything to Him and it will be gloriously and graciously uncertain how He will come in—but you can be certain that He will come. Remain faithful to Him” (Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest).

If there’s one thing I’ve learned from life, is that almost nothing ever turns out according to my expectations. No conversation ever goes like I planned it in my head, no holiday plays out quite like I planned, and no day ever seems to be what I thought it would be.

I think my only expectations from 2013 are of God. Specifically, I expect him to show up in 2013. How? I have no idea. I only know that when I need him most, he’ll be there.

I’ve had unexpected relationships that I never saw coming. I’ve had friendships with people I never thought would even talk to me. I’ve also had friends move on and seemingly drop off the planet (or at least off my radar). For those of you who have moved on to the next phase of life, the friendship is still on and always will be. Count on it.

That doesn’t mean I sit back and do nothing. I think this year I have to prepared and ready for whatever God brings. As one of my favorite lines from a movie goes, I have to have my fields ready to receive the rain when it comes.

I know that whenever God has shown up in my life, it has never been exactly in the way that I expected, but it has always been better. It has never been when I expected, but it has always been at the perfect moment when I needed him most. God’s gifts to me haven’t been what I asked for; many times, they’ve what I needed and longed for but didn’t know it.

I know that whatever I go through in 2013, God is good. I know whatever the day turns out to be, God is faithful. And I expect that to be the same in 2014 and beyond.

Freedom and Other Thursday Randomness

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dog with gate open

I don’t understand a lot of what happens. I don’t understand why people act the way they do. I don’t know why I act the way I do half the time.

But I do know this.

The best kind of freedom is freedom from the expectations of others. The freedom from being a slave to whether someone else likes or doesn’t like you. The freedom to know and be your truest self, regardless of who sees or responds.

I’m not there yet. Maybe you’re not either. I have a strong feeling many people wish they were there, but aren’t just yet. It’s a precious few folks who find this kind of freedom.

People come and people go. You never know who will show up and who will leave. You never know who will be your friend and who won’t. You just have to trust God daily and cherish the people he brings into your life while they’re there.

Sometimes, when my life feels most unstable, that’s when I appreciate the most God’s unchangingness– how he is the same yesterday, today, and forever. His promises are true yesterday, today, and forever, too.

Cling to the eternal and let what is temporary go. Or, as Jim Elliot said, “He is no fool who gives up what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.”

I’ve always loved that. And that’s what I intend to do, God willing and with God’s help. And today is one of those days when I need an extra helping of God’s help.

I’ve been told that God helps those who help themselves. But if we could help ourselves, we wouldn’t need God’s help in the first place. I think it’s more like this. God helps those who know they can’t help themselves, who have tried and tried and failed so many times before only to end up back where they started. Who know that they are poor and wretched and miserable and blind and needy without God. The poor in spirit.

Lord, may we fall into your grace and find that it is more than sufficient.

Amen.

God’s YES

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“Whatever God has promised gets stamped with the Yes of Jesus. In him, this is what we preach and pray, the great Amen, God’s Yes and our Yes together, gloriously evident. God affirms us, making us a sure thing in Christ, putting his Yes within us. By his Spirit he has stamped us with his eternal pledge—a sure beginning of what he is destined to complete” (2 Cor. 1:20-22).

So many people think that Christians are all about what and who we’re against. And honestly, we  haven’t done a very good job in dispelling that sentiment. We’re sometimes too eager to condemn the sin and not nearly as willing to love the sinner.

But I have to look at a guy like Adam Lanza and say with all honesty, “That could have been me. But for the grace of God and different circumstances, that could have been me.”

That scares me and comforts me at the same time.

It scares me because it means that I’m not nearly as good as I sometimes think I am. It means that I am just as in need of a Savior now as ever and just as prone to wander from the One I love as ever.

But it comforts me because God has promised to stick with me through everything. He’s stamped his YES on me through Christ and nothing will ever change that.

I think we would do better to show love instead of judgment. We’d do better to reach out to those in trouble instead of later saying thing like “I could have told you that boy would end up like this. I could see it coming a mile away,”

While we were yet sinners, while we were at our most unlovable worst, Christ died for us. He reconciled us to God and now gives us a chance to be a part of reconciling others, too.

I don’t know about you, but I want people to know what and who I’m for. More importantly, I really want people to know that God is for me and for them and has a new start for anyone who’s willing to take him up on it.

That’s all.

 

Not-so-new Thoughts on Newtown, CT

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theodentheoden2

“No parent should ever have to bury a child.”

That’s the line from the movie The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers that King Theoden uses when he talks about the death of his only son, the one that was to be king after him.

I’ve thought a lot about that line today, especially after hearing and reading so much about the senseless killings of at least 20 children and 6 adults in Newtown, Connecticut. I have no way to comprehend the level of sadness and grief that so many people are feeling right now, and I’m not going to pretend that I understand what they’re going through.

I know that no discussion about limiting handguns or locking school doors will ever bring these children back. This is so much more than political issues; we’re talking about human lives lost. Each one had a family who loved him or her and each one is deeply missed.

I’m reminded of another massacre. This one happened after the birth of Jesus, when Herod sent soldiers to the town of Bethlehem to kill all the male children under the age of two. Matthew says (quoting Jeremiah), “A voice was heard in Ramah, weeping and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be comforted, because they are no more” (Matt. 2:18).

Again, I can’t begin to imagine what that must have been like.

Most of all, I am reminded that God himself watched as people took his only son and falsely accused him, beat him, mocked him, mutilated him, then killed him in the most excruciatingly painful manner possible. Even though Jesus’s death was ordained from the foundation of the world, it doesn’t change the fact that the Father’s heart was broken that day.

I think the Father weeps with all those who weep tonight. He sees his creation and his people broken and in disarray. He sees evil acts perpetrated by sick minds and his heart is broken.

I don’t pretend to have any answers. I don’t pretend to know why this happened or what the purpose was behind it. I do know that even in this, God works all things together for good to those who love him and are called according to his purposes.

I know that God is good and that he is in control. Still. And in that I put my hopes and I lay my head down to rest tonight.

I pray for peace right now in the hearts of all who are grieving and who cannot be comforted, for their children are no more. I pray for peace for the children who lost parents and teachers tonight, as well as the family of the mentally ill man who killed all these children before killing himself (who are probably in shock and grief as well right now). May you be present in these broken homes and lives right now. And may you set all things right one day very soon.

Come, Lord Jesus, come.

A Christmas Prayer

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Lord, the time approaches yet again when we celebrate your arrival in human skin to make your home among us as one of us. We celebrate that you became Immanuel, “God with us,” and took your place among us, sharing our joys and sorrows, weaknesses and pains.

We confess that we have so often lost sight of why we celebrate this day. We have made it into the giving and receiving of gifts and of excessive shopping and spending. We have forgotten that at the heart of Christmas, it is your birthday.

Help us also to remember those for whom Christmas isn’t such a happy time. So many mourn the loss of loved ones and live in the midst of family strife and turmoil. So many are facing tough days ahead as many are without jobs, some without homes and even the basic necessities.

Help us to walk along side those who are hurting in this Christmas season. May they find you, O God, to be their burden bearer, their refuge, their safe dwelling, and their peace in the midst of storms. Comfort them, bring healing to their strife, and be in the midst of them as the Prince of Peace.

Help us to remember those less fortunate than we and to be generous to those around us who have needs, both physical and spiritual. May we serve you by serving one of the least of these.

May we remember Christmas every day by being living incarnations of your presence everywhere we go, for you are not only God with us, but you are God in us, too. May we never forget that what started out in a manger ended on a cross, and that we are alive and free because of that terrible price you paid.

So as we get into the days of celebration and merriment, help us to remember that you are the reason for it all. May the best gift we give anyone be to show them your love and point them to you this holiday season.