reality

Never Getting Beyond My Need

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I was channel surfing earlier, and ran across a program called Better Together, where some speakers and authors were discussing modern idolatry and how we are all prone to it.

Basically, most of us think of idols as tiny statues made of gold or silver or wood. Most of us picture idolaters as people bowing toward some stone image that can’t possibly reciprocate.

The reality is that idolatry is taking something good, i.e. marriage, family, children, careers, success, and putting it in the place of God. It’s letting something other than God take the throne of our hearts.

The painful truth is that we are all idolaters. We have something else other than God that we put in front of God or place beside God. We never get past needing to repent our idols because our flesh craves something tangible to worship. Our flesh isn’t satisfied with God.

We will never get past our need of God because the more we grow, the more we see how far we are from the mark of God’s standard. The more we see our own faults in the light of God’s perfection and holiness. The more we understand that our good intentions rarely lead to good works.

But God is faithful even when we are not. God is faithful to His promises when we don’t keep ours to Him. God is faithful to pursue us when we so often pursue so many lesser objects instead of God. God is faithful to finish what He started in us and make us like Jesus.

100% Original

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Everything you read tonight (or possibly tomorrow morning or afternoon) is completely original with nothing borrowed, copied, or stolen from anyone else. No quotes. No references. Nothing. Got it? Let’s proceed.

In this day and age of overblown reactions to everything and in response to all the fake news that seems to be more prevalent than actual real news, I’m loving my Netflix. Sure, none of it has any basis in fact, but that’s what makes it so great. I can invest myself in people who are completely made up.

Case in point: Gilmore Girls. I know I’m in danger of having the already shredded remains of my man card painstakingly reassembled just so that it can be immediately burned alive. But I do love this show.

I think it’s because of the witty dialogue. No one can talk this way (at least not for very long), but it’s the ideal I strive toward in every conversation.

I also find myself immersed in the strange and wonderful world of Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events (the current series and not the movie from 2004). I do love Jim Carr

Choose Your Own Adventure

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I used to love a series of books called Choose Your Own Adventure. In these books, you  went from completely passive reader to active participant in your own story. Well, sort of. You’d come to a decision on page 13. You come to a hallway with a creepy door at the end of it. If you proceed down the hall and enter the creepy room, turn to page 26. If you decide to be a weenie and stay at the end of the hall, turn to page 14.

Whenever I’m at Goodwill or any other used bookstore, I always look for any of the books in this series. So far, no luck.

Life is like that.

So many of us see the days in a week as merely exercises in existence, something to get through until the weekend arrives. Then we look back at our lives and wonder why they seem for the most part to be empty and vacuous.

What if you viewed each day of your life as a brand new adventure? Not in the sense of zoning out of reality and living in a fantasy world, but seeing the challenges and obstacles as opportunities to grow and learn.

Each day you get to choose to be a passive observer or an active participant in your own life. You can mark time until 5 pm, or you can see even the most menial of tasks as holy and sacred as unto the Lord and see everything as an spiritual act of worship (see Romans 12:1-2). That’s the choice you get each morning.

So what will you do with this great and amazing gift called life? If life is the grand play and you may contribute a verse (as Walt Whitman and Robin Williams put it), what will your verse be?

“I’m going to live my life inspired
Look for the holy in the common place
Open the windows and feel all that’s honest and real until I’m truly amazed
I’m going to feel all my emotions
I’m going to look you in the eyes
I’m going to listen and hear until it’s finally clear and it changes our lives

There are so many ways to hide
There are so many ways not to feel
There are so many ways to deny what is real

And I just showed up for my own life
And I’m standing here taking it in and it sure looks bright” (Sara Groves).

A Legacy of Love That Includes YOU

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“ Do you see what this means—all these pioneers who blazed the way, all these veterans cheering us on? It means we’d better get on with it. Strip down, start running—and never quit! No extra spiritual fat, no parasitic sins. Keep your eyes on Jesus, who both began and finished this race we’re in. Study how he did it. Because he never lost sight of where he was headed—that exhilarating finish in and with God—he could put up with anything along the way: Cross, shame, whatever. And now he’s there, in the place of honor, right alongside God. When you find yourselves flagging in your faith, go over that story again, item by item, that long litany of hostility he plowed through. That will shoot adrenaline into your souls!” (Hebrews 12:1-3)

I attend The Church at Avenue South. Somewhere in the neighborhood of two years ago, some members of Brentwood Baptist Church had a dream about reaching out to the residents of the Melrose and Berry Hill area for Jesus and set out to make that dream a reality. They were told that it was impossible to find a place in the area for a church to meet. God proved them wrong.

45 years ago, Brentwood Baptist Church was the dream in the minds of some people from Woodmont Baptist Church. People told them that to plant a church in Brentwood was a pipe dream– there would never be enough people to warrant a church in the area. God again proved them wrong.

In 1941, someone had the vision to start Woodmont Baptist Church itself. 74 years later, who knows how many people have been affected by that one simple act of obedience? Who knows how far the ripples will reach from that one stone’s throw?

You are part of a legacy of love. Even if you don’t know it, you have a crowd cheering you on and rooting for you. Whether that’s your physical family or your spiritual family or even those who have gone on and are watching from heaven, you have people who are on your side. Even Jesus Himself roots for you and intercedes for you.

It’s easy on the dark days to feel alone, that you don’t matter, that nothing you do makes any difference. It’s easy to think that nothing will ever change for the better, that this is as good as it will ever get.

Don’t let that be the final word. Let what Jesus has declared be the final word. What did He declare? That He would finish what He started in you, that He had plans for you not for barm but for hope and a future for you, that eye has not seen nor ear heard what God has prepared for those who love Him (and those He loves).

Let this Monday be the day that you run your race faithfully, knowing you have a legacy both behind and ahead of you, cheering you on and being inspired by you to run their own race.

 

When Helping Hurts: My Take So Far

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My church life group recently started a new study on the book When Helping Hurts by Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert. So far, I give it two enthusiastic thumbs way up.

The premise of the book is that poverty around the world can be traced back to four broken relationships: relationships with God, self, others, and the rest of creation. The book then goes on to say that where most people go wrong is to treat poverty solely as a lack of resources with the solution being to give money, food, etc., and treat the symptoms without addressing the underlying ailment.

One of the most convicting parts for me was reading about how in this American middle-class mentality there is an almost subliminal “health and wealth gospel” belief that God rewards faith with prosperity, therefore these people are poor because they are sinful, much like the disciples questioning Jesus about the man born blind and how it must have been either him or his parents who sinned for him to be like that.

There is a sense sometimes where Americans have an implicit “god-complex” about serving the poor, as if I am condescending to serve the poor out of my benevolence from my lofty spiritual position, like the Pharisee who praised God that he was not like those other sinners. Sometimes, I personally need to be more like the tax collector who acknowledged his own sin and deep need for God.

The reality is that both those in need and those in position to meet that need are equally broken, just in different ways. One may have a better coping mechanisms for hiding his brokenness than the other, but they are both equally flawed and both need Jesus.

For me, the biggest revelation is that poverty brings about a sense of helplessness and hopelessness and the solution is to help people see their innate worth as those created, redeemed and loved by God as those who with God’s help don’t have to remain trapped in the vicious cycle of poverty.

I suppose at the end of the day, we are all poor in one sense or another. Jesus says that it is blessed to be poor in spirit, realizing that we have nothing in ourselves to offer God but ourselves, for to those belongs the Kingdom of Heaven.

Trust me. The book words all this far better than I have. I recommend it to anyone who has a heart for the poor or the least of these.

PS Here’s a link if you want to buy the book. The cover is different than mine, but the content is the same. I’d go so far as to say this is a must-read for any individuals or organizations who want to work toward alleviating poverty in the most effective manner.

http://www.amazon.com/When-Helping-Hurts-Alleviate-Yourself/dp/0802409989/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1424978877&sr=1-1&keywords=when+helping+hurts

 

Thanksgiving in Advance

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If you’ve ever been out of a job, you know it’s not fun. Well, maybe for a day or two when it still seems like a mini-vacation, but when the bills start coming due and there’s not enough money to cover them, reality rudely barges in.

Maybe you’ve been praying for a job. Maybe you’ve been praying for a spouse. Or maybe you’ve been praying for something else entirely. I have a suggestion.

Maybe you thank God in advance for His provision.

Here’s the way I see it. God will either 1) give you what you ask or 2) give you something better.

I’m not saying that God is a celestial genie who will unload untold riches on you if you know the magical password or rub the lamp a certain way.

I am saying that God knows best how to give good gifts to His children. He knows what they need best, far more than they often do. He does after all own all those cattle on those thousand hills.

I truly believe that the best gift God gives is God. God gives Himself. And God plus nothing else is better than everything in the world minus God. God is enough.

So maybe you and I need to incorporate more thanksgiving in our prayers. I know sometimes it’s hard to give thanks when all you see are unpaid bills and all you feel is anxiety. But even if you’re alive, that in itself is something to be grateful for.

Maybe you can even try the experiment where every day you list three things you are thankful for. I do believe gratitude changes your perspective and helps you see more of what God is up to in your life. Gratitude opens your eyes to the miraculous.

At least try it for 24 hours and see if it doesn’t make a difference in your outlook.

 

10:55 PM

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image

I know I’m not the only one who does this.

You have a picture in your head about how your weekend will go. You envision going to a party and who you will see there and maybe even what you’ll talk about.

Then reality sets in.

There’s no party. So what’s plan B?

It turned out plan B was every bit as good as plan A. I got to spend time with my family, which is always a good thing.

Here’s what I’ve learned. God’s plan Bs are always better than our plan As. In fact, some times, I’m thankful that some of my plan As didn’t work out the way I wanted them to.

So trust God for His plan B. Trust God when your plans don’t work out. Heck, even if it seems like a plan C . . . or even a plan Z. . . God is working all things together for good.

Trust Him.

Easter Season Liturgy Part I

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Tonight at Kairos we had a liturgical Easter service but with a Kairos-style twist. It was a very cool blend of modern and ancient forms of worship. I was particularly moved by the responsive reading we did at the start:

“Blest are you, Lord Jesus who came to us a little child 
one of us,
flesh and blood to share in our humanity
For God so loved the world
ALL: That all might have eternal life.

Blest are you, Lord Jesus who came to us as carpenter
and yet in whose creative hands a world was fashioned
For God so loved the world
ALL: That all might have eternal life.

Blest are you, Lord Jesus who came to us as fisherman
and yet pointed to a harvest that was yet to come
For God so loved the world
ALL: That all might have eternal life.

Blest are you, Lord Jesus who came to us as teacher
and opened eyes to truths that only 
the poor could understand
For God so loved the world
ALL: That all might have eternal life.

Blest are you, Lord Jesus who came to us as healer
and opened hearts to the reality of wholeness
For God so loved the world
ALL: That all might have eternal life.

Blest are you, Lord Jesus who came to us as prophet, priest and king
and yet humbled himself 
to take our place upon the cross
For God so loved the world
ALL: That all might have eternal life.

Blest are you, Lord Jesus who came to us as servant
and revealed to us the extent of his Father’s love 
for human kind
For God so loved the world
ALL: That all might have eternal life.

Blest are you, Lord Jesus, who rose 
from the ignominy of a sinner’s death
to the triumph of a Saviour’s resurrection
For God so loved the world
ALL: That all might have eternal life.

God so loved the world that he gave his only Son
for the sake of me
and you
and other sinners too
God so loved the world
Blest are you Lord Jesus, our Saviour and Redeemer.
ALL: Thanks be to the God of Love. Amen”

I think it’s good to step out of your comfort zone when it comes to worship. For me, that meant going to a Roman Catholic Ash Wednesday service last year. Whatever it is for you, it’s good to get out of your own faith tradition and see things from different points of view sometimes. It helps you to know what you believe and– better still– why you believe what you believe.

More on that to come tomorrow.

 

When You Feel Like Giving Up

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I’ve felt like giving up sometimes. And by that I don’t mean I felt a desire to end my life. I just didn’t feel like trying anymore. At the time, I felt like I didn’t matter and nothing I did made any difference. Like the world would be better off without me.

But those thoughts were lies. I know that now. I’ve learned not to trust every feeling I have. I’ve come to realize that not every thought in my head deserves attention, because what I think isn’t always true. The Bible calls it “taking every thought captive.”

God is always true. He never lies. I know now I can always trust him, especially in the times when I can’t trust my own thoughts and feelings.

It’s easy to let fear or anger or doubt or depression skew your reality. It’s easy to give into those fears and the bondage that comes with them. But that’s no way to live.

It’s much harder to say, “I need help.” It’s much harder to say, “I can’t do this on my own. I’ve tried and tried and failed and now I need help.”

Sometimes faith and prayer are enough. I know personally that sometimes it takes medication and counseling. It’s not weakness to need pills to help you think normally. It’s because you and I and everybody else live in a fallen world and have brokenness because of sin entering the world.

Just remember that God’s in control. He’s bigger than any problem you’re facing. As a pastor I once heard said, what seems impossible to you and me isn’t even remotely difficult for God. And he’s waiting for you to ask him for help.

There’s a whole lot I don’t know. But one of the few things I do know is that God is truly close to the broken-hearted and crushed in spirit. He knows where you are and what you’re going through. And he will get you through it.

That’s what I know.