Jesus

Voted Off The Island??

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For the record, I have never watched a single episode of Survivor. Not even part of one. That may be what goes on my tombstone. “Here lies Greg Johnson. He never watched even a single episode of Survivor. What was wrong with him?”

I do have days when I feel like I got voted off the island. You know, those days when you post something clever or witty or profound on facebook and the only response you get back is the sound of crickets chirping in the field?

Or the days when you feel like you’re the odd man out in a gathering of people?

I’ve had days when I felt invisible, when it seemed like people looked through me, but never at me, and never saw me. It is true that you can be in a crowd and be alone, because I’ve been there plenty of times.

I keep coming back to the words of Jesus: “I will never leave you or forsake you.” Those words are just as true on the days when you are cracking the jokes that make everyone laugh and on the days when you have trouble forming complete sentences.

The words are true whether you feel them or not. Whether you feel Him or not.

The old footprints in the sand poem is a bit corny, but true. Even when you only saw one set of footprints in the sand, it was not because you were ever truly alone, but because you were being carried.

People are human beings (wow, what a revelation) with human frailties and with problems of their own. They may not see your pain because they are too busy dealing with their own. And everyone I have ever met has secrets and scars and shame. No exceptions.

Remind yourself when you feel alone that you’re not alone, for God is with you.

Oh, and by the way, I prefer Gillian’s Island to Survivor. I like my television as unrealistic as possible. But you would think that if the Professor could make a radio out of a coconut, he could fix a hole in the S.S. Minnow, right?

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.

A Letter to Kim Kardashian

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Kim,

I don’t know if you will read this or not. Realistically speaking, I’m pretty sure you won’t, since you probably don’t have time to read blogs by people you don’t know who aren’t famous. But if by some extremely remote chance, you happen to stumble on this quaint little blog, I hope you know I’m rooting for you.

I know a lot of people will look at your decision to start a Bible study and question your motives. They will say you just want to hook up with Tim Tebow or give some other reason why you can’t legitimately want to read God’s Word for its own sake.

I am not one of those.

I hope you read the Bible and find all that God has for you in there. I hope you find God’s love letter to His people, including you, and how much He loved His people and what great lengths He undertook to win back His people lost to sin and death.

I hope you will find that true beauty is in what God says about you, not what some magazine or television producer says about you. God says, “I made you and that makes you beautiful, because I made you in My image.”

I hope you will know that Jesus loves you just for you, not because of what you do or what you wear or who you know. I hope you can find joy in the fact that Jesus looked at you in your worst moments and thought you were still to die for.

I hope you fall in love with God’s Word and want it more than anything else. I hope you are transformed by what you read and that every time you read the Bible, you put it down a different person than when you picked it up. More than that, I pray you will take what you read and live it out in compassion for the needy and love for those whom God loves.

I hope you understand that no matter what you’ve done in the past, God has a purpose for you. He can work in and through you to do some pretty amazing things that will blow you away.

Like I said before, I’m rooting for you and hoping you find the peace you’re looking for.

Signed,

A Ragamuffin who is just trying to tell others about the grace of God that he’s found

PS It’s still not too late, no matter how messed up your life seems right now. Jesus can still turn your mess into something beautiful.

Goodwill Finds

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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.

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.

Thoughts on Fighting From Victory (And not For It)

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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.

When the Lights Go Out

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lucynarnia

I was en route from Memphis recently, listening to a book on CD, as all well-seasoned travellers do. It was The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, book 5 of The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis. It was read by Derek Jacobi, by the way, in case you were dying to know.

In the book, the Dawn Treader sails into an island of darkness. It’s a place where fear rules and all nightmares come to life. Lucy is at the top of the ship, watching as the crew tries vainly to escape. In her desperation, she says, “Aslan, if you ever loved us, help us now.” The answer to her prayer is an albatross who, as he flies by her, whispers, “Courage, dear heart,” in Aslan’s voice. He then leads them out into the sunlight.

I bet you’ve been in some dark places in your life. You’ve felt trapped in the valley of the shadow of death, where no light or hope can get through. You’ve been searching for a way out, but all you find is more darkness, more despair, more hopelessness.

You feel your circumstances will never get better. You fear that nothing will ever change. You come to believe that your worst-case scenario is due to come true any day now. Your faith is at a low ebb and your fears are cresting and crashing waves that swamp you.

There’s a voice, if you are still enough to hear it, that whispers the same words what it whispered to Lucy. “Courage, dear heart.” It says, “Hold on. Trust in Me in the darkness even when you can’t find Me there. I am with you, with My everlasting arms underneath you. I will never ever let go.”

Don’t believe that you feel or what you think, but what you know. Believe the same God who has proved Himself over and over and Whose word is true. Know that He is with you and for you in your darkness. Darkness may prevail right now, but joy is coming with the morning.

For All the Phonies in the World

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Let me ask you something. Just between you and me (and the world wide web). Do you ever feel like a phony?

Do you ever hear yourself giving Sunday School answers to real life questions? Do you ever feel that you’re praying what you think God wants to hear instead of what’s really in your heart? Do you ever lie awake at night wondering what would happen if the people around you knew what you were really thinking? What you were really like?

There’s good news that sounds like bad news at first. God knows. God knows it all. He knows all the faux-prayers and the religious jargon you talk sometimes. He knows what you do and what you think when no one’s watching. That seems like bad news until you get to the clincher. He loves you anyway.

He loves you at your phoniest. He loves you at your meanest. He loves you at your darkest moments in the middle of the night. He looks at you and doesn’t see phony. He looks at you and sees Jesus and what Jesus did in your place. He sees the perfect life Jesus lived instead of your own very imperfect existence.

Best of all, God sees you for who you will be instead of who you are. He sees what He designed you to be. He promised to not stop working on you until you’re 100% real and complete.

In the meantime, it’s okay to be real and honest and admit you have made a mess of your life. It’s okay to confess you don’t have all the answers, or even all the questions. It’s really not about how much you know or how well you act but how much you are loved.

I raise my glass and toast to all the phonies who are stepping forward to take off the mask and be honest about themselves. I drink to all the pretenders who just got real. I salute all of you who are letting down the walls on what God is doing in your life so others can see grace at work and how love can transform a person. That’s where the freedom is. That’s where I want to be. I hope you do, too.