religion

Courage and Cowardly Lions

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cowardlylion

 

“Courage! What makes a king out of a slave? Courage! What makes the flag on the mast to wave? Courage! What makes the elephant charge his tusk in the misty mist, or the dusky dusk? What makes the muskrat guard his musk? Courage! What makes the sphinx the seventh wonder? Courage! What makes the dawn come up like thunder? Courage! What makes the Hottentot so hot? What puts the “ape” in apricot? What have they got that I ain’t got?” (Cowardly Lion).

“Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of a readiness to die (G K Chesterton).

“Courage is not simply one of the virtues but the form of every virtue at the testing point, which means at the point of highest reality (C S Lewis).

“Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is the little voice at the end of the day that says I’ll try again tomorrow” (Mary Anne Radmacher).

“Just because you weren’t courageous today doesn’t mean you can’t be tomorrow. Just because you’ve never been courageous in your life doesn’t mean that you can’t ever be in the future. It’s never too late to be who you were always meant to be or always wanted to be” (Me)

“Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go” (Joshua 1:9).

I think that I haven’t been courageous as much as I like to think I have. There have been times when I did a good impression of the cowardly lion and shirked from my duties out of fear.

But the beauty of the Gospel is that it’s for people like me. It’s for the cowards and the much afraids.

The best part is that the transformational power of this Gospel makes most cowardly of us into the most courageous. Just ask the Apostle Peter about that when you see him in heaven. He’d have plenty to say about that.

May we have the courage to keep fighting for what we believe. May we have the courage to keep believing even when common sense tells us not to. May we have the courage to get out of bed every morning, whether we feel like it or not, and keep clinging to the promises of God.

God, give your people courage.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Art of Wonder and Awe

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“Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, “Do it again”; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, “Do it again” to the sun; and every evening, “Do it again” to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we. The repetition in Nature may not be a mere recurrence; it may be a theatrical ENCORE” (G K Chesterton).

I love watching my niece play. She can get endless delight out of the simplest things and when she finds something she likes, she wants to see it over and over and never tires of it.

I wish I were like that. Sometimes, my sin is that I am too sophisticated and expect to much. I take for granted the sun coming up every morning and going down every night. I expect new flowers to grow and bud each new spring. So little amazed me any more because I take it all for granted and expect it to happen.

But maybe I need the eternal appetite of infancy. To be astounded and amazed at little things like flowers budding or rain falling or the sun breaking through the clouds. To see my life not as a right but as a gift that I receive every single day.

The Bible says that God’s steadfast love and mercies are new every morning. Not because of necessity or duty, but because he never gets tired of showing them. For God, loving me and being merciful to me never gets old. His delight over me is renewed every single day.

I hope that in turn being loved by God and receiving those mercies doesn’t get old. I hope I am always amazed that God should love me and take care of me and give me the chance to know him and make him known. Or as a pastor put it, to be a thimble trying to hold the ocean of God’s love, which can’t help but overflow onto everyone and everything around me.

Maybe what you and I need is a little less grown-up sophistication and self-importance and a little more  childish wonder and awe. Maybe it’s time to be growing young again.

 

 

 

DIY Christianity

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diy

I am a fan of Do It Yourself. I’m not that handy myself, but I admire those people who are. I just don’t personally think it’s such a good fit when it comes to faith.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m all for a better marriage, better job, better parents, and better health. But that’s not all there is.

At the heart of Christianity isn’t about a better me, but a brand new me. That’s borrowed from a friend of mine who said it better than I just did.

At the heart of Christianity is another five-step program or 12 steps to get a better life. What Jesus calls me to isn’t humanly possible. The faith he calls me to requires a righteousness that exceeds that of the Pharisees. It means laying down my rights and ultimately, my life. It means being perfect as God is perfect.

I believe that Christianity isn’t something I do, but something that’s done in me. The big two-dollar words for that process are sanctification and transformation. It’s what Jesus does in me.

I’m not saying I sit back and do nothing. I bring to the table a willing spirit, a cultivated heart, and an engaged mind. I bring sacrifice and surrender. I bring me.

Until I see that my faith is bigger than me and my well-being, I’m not seeing the big picture, which is God’s glory. The endgame of my faith is God receiving as much glory as possible. Fortunately for me, his glory equals my greatest good. It’s a win-win.

If someone comes up to me claiming to have every aspect of faith and belief figured out, I have to wonder. Even though I may sometimes act like I’ve got my Christianity neatly packaged into tidy little compartments, I really don’t. I’m still figuring it all out.

That’s why we have the Church. It’s a place where we figure it out together. In the end, we can’t live the faith alone, which is why we need each other. We can’t live out the faith out of our own strength, which is why we still need Jesus.

Hopefully, this made as much sense to you as it did in my head when I was typing this all out.

Or, to put it this way, “Did you get all that?”

For When You Feel Like Giving Up

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Maybe you’ve felt like giving up lately. Maybe you’ve been so discouraged and disillusioned that the prospect of another day sounds daunting and the idea of giving up sounds appealing. Instead of going out there and fighting, it would be so much easier to stay home and pop bon-bons while watching daytime TV.

Maybe you feel like things will never get better, that the way things are now is the best they will ever get. Maybe your faith is at a low ebb and your motivation is slipping. It seems like nothing you do makes anything better, so why try? Even prayer seems mechanical rather than heartfelt and you feel like the biggest phony when you pray.

Keep praying. Even if it’s nothing more than reciting the Lord’s Prayer or repeating a simple phrase like “Abba Father” over and over, keep praying. Keep getting out of bed and getting out there and believing in better days.

God has a way of putting the right people into your life at just the right moment. God has a way of speaking comfort and encouragement from his Word or from random conversations with friends.

It’s easy to give up, but it’s harder to live with the regret of what might have been had you kept on trying. The Bible speaks about how trying circumstances and challenges build endurance, which builds character, which leads to a hope that doesn’t disappoint. That’s from what I like to call the GJV version of the Bible.

My prayer for you is that you keep putting one foot in front of the other and as you do, you find the next step a little easier than the last. My prayer is that you find unexpected blessing and encouragement when you need it most. My prayer is that you will take what you learn in these dark times and share it with someone else who is going through the same thing.

Don’t give up. God is faithful and he will get you through it.

The Wild Weekend of YEC

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I’m tired. It’s been a hectic, crazy 48 hours, but it has been so much more than worth it. I volunteered again for the Youth Evangelism Conference at the Municipal Auditorium in downtown Nashville. The atmosphere was electric, with close to 10,000 students and adults in attendance, anticipating what God was going to do next.

Well, God didn’t disappoint. I saw lots of students going forward, making decisions for Christ, not just being satisfied with playing religious games but willing to give everything to follow Christ.

One thing I remember from the weekend was the speaker talking from Jeremiah how God boiled down his people’s rebellion into two things: forsaking the fountain of living water and trying to quench their thirst from broken wells. They gave up the living water to drink mud.

The solution to my struggles and your struggles isn’t to try harder or to be more committed. The issue isn’t about effort. It’s about appetite. What are we feeding on? Is it everything the world says will fulfull us? Those things may taste good at first, but they leave us unsatisfied and still hungry and thirsty.

Or are we seeking after Living Water and the Bread of Life? For me, am I cultivating a good appetite for God and letting him fill me up so that I’m too full for anything else?

The answer is to feast on Christ. Let him be enough. Let him be your strength, your power, your supply, your joy, your reason for living. Anything else that you devote your life to or prize highly is an idol. Anything other than Jesus that tells you that it will take care of you no matter what is an idol.

I’m sure that I heard this somewhere else, so I can’t take credit for it. How do you defeat an idol? You starve it. You don’t give it any time or a affection. Instead, you give all that to God who deserves it in the first place.

I went to serve and be a blessing and once again found myself blessed and served. I was challenged and motivated to hunger and thirst after God more than ever before.

I hope that’s your desire, too.

 

A Real Man

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I want to put in a disclaimer at the start of this blog: this is by no means an exhaustive treatment of the subject of manhood. Exhausting, maybe. But not exhaustive.

You don’t really get a true idea of biblical manhood from most of the voices clamoring for your attention these days. Manhood means virility. It means physical strength. It means having the right car and wearing the right suit and living in the right house and making ungodly amounts of money. According to some.

Sometimes, you get manhood spoken of derisively to refer to caveman-type behavior and values and it’s expected that any man will be rude and gross and inconsiderate.

I don’t think so. Here’s what true masculinity is, according to me.

It means holding on to what you believe, no matter what. It means having principles and values and sticking to them, regardless of who else shares them or stands with you. Even if you stand alone, you still don’t compromise your beliefs.

It means that who you are in public is the same as who you are in the dark when no one else is watching. It means you are the same person around friends and around strangers.

In terms of faith, a Christian man is one who seeks single-minded obedience to Jesus, no matter what it costs him in terms of popularity, money, fame, friends, health, and even his own life. Obedience as I heard it described very recently is doing what you know to do because it is the right thing to do and doing it as consistently as possible.

I’d also add that being a true godly man means knowing when to ask for help from others and from God. It’s the bravery to admit weaknesses and faults, the strength to shed tears, the ability to care for the helpless, and the wisdom to know when you should stand and fight and when you should back away. And by fighting, I mean speaking up for those who can’t speak for themselves and standing up for those who no one else wants to help.

A true man is passionately and unashamedly in love with Jesus Christ and doesn’t care who knows it. A true man will be the one who, after he’s gone, people will remember not him but the Spirit of Jesus in him.

There are probably a lot more good characteristics of a godly man that I left out or simply forgot. But these are just a few of the ones that I think make a real man. In this man’s humble opinion.

Seeing With New Eyes

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I had a flashback to an old memory. Actually, it was less of a flashback and more of a memory of my mother telling me about it.

When I was 4 or so, I had the notion to pour Comet Cleanser on my head. It seemed like a fine idea at the time to my 4-year old mind. That is, until it got into my eyes.

I don’t remember any of this, but apparently I burned or damaged my retinas pretty severely. I had to stay in a dark room away from bright lights and have drops in my eyes every four hours. According to the story, there was some doubt as to whether my retinas would grow back.

They did.

I don’t know what triggered that memory. I do know that I’ve had experiences that have caused me to look at myself and others through new eyes.

Like tonight. The teacher at Kairos spoke about the tale of the Good Samaritan. Only he said that Jesus taught the parable to show us not that we’re the Samaritan who helps others, but the badly beaten, naked man lying in a ditch on the side of the road, desperate for help.

Maybe you’ve thought to yourself, “Hey, I’m a nice person. I try to help others and do the right thing most of the time.”

But if you’re honest you look at your life and you see deception and manipulation. You see those times when you failed and didn’t do the right thing. You know that if people could read your mind and see some of the thoughts you have in the dark of night, they wouldn’t think you were so nice.

The fact is that we’re all in need of rescue. We’re not as noble or kind or brave as we thought we were. We’re not nearly as able to help ourselves.

But Jesus is so much stronger than we ever knew. He’s so much more than able to reach down and rescue us from the messes we fall into. He’s able to change us into loving people who don’t do kind things as much as they exude kindness. It’s his love inside us by which we love others who aren’t lovable.

I know even after more than three decades of being a Christian, I need Jesus every bit as much now as I did when I first believed. The only thing that’s changed is that I see so much more clearly how good and great he is, how much he loves me, and how committed he is to me.

I haven’t had any more eye emergencies since. Hopefully, I’m smart enough now not to pour household cleaners on my head. Lesson learned.

 

My Break From Facebook Update

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It’s been 5 days since I last logged on to facebook. That may not sound like much to some of you, but for me, it’s a big deal. I’ve been known to check in multiple times during the day, mostly to see who liked or responded to one of my posts. Not like in the past, where I lived or died by who liked my status updates, but I still like to see who’s keeping up with me.

I catch myself starting to go to the website out of habit and divert myself to msn.com or espn.com. You don’t realize how addicting something is until you go cold-turkey from it.

I find that I am less anxious for the most part. The only thing I worry about is the notion that when I get back to facebook after Easter, that I will have far fewer friends than I did before I took a break from it/gave it up for Lent/took an extended cyber-holiday (pick any of the three).

I’m committed to seeing this though. I’m committed to using the time I normally spend on facebook to spend time with God in his word and in prayer. If you ask, “How’s that workin’ out for ya so far?” I say, “Up to this point, not so much.”

I remember what a pastor said. Fasting is giving something up to in essence say no to its demands on you, because no one and nothing has the right to make demands on your life other than God. I’m not calling this a fast, but I am recognizing that facebook does tend to dominate my thoughts more than it should and periodically, it’s good to step away to regain proper perspective and right thinking.

I feel at the moment like the runner who’s a mile or two into a marathon and thinks that there’s no way in the world he’ll finish. I don’t know how I can possibly hold out for the next few weeks. But if I take it one day at a time, one mile at a time, one step at a time, it doesn’t seem so hard anymore. Kind of like most things in life.

So pray for me that I put the new-found free time to better use. Pray that I am open to what God has to say to me during this time and the humility and bravery to not only listen to what he says, but to put it into practice.

I’ll keep you updated periodically as to how I’m doing with this. In the mean time, may you find freedom in giving up those things you thought you couldn’t live without to find more of abundant Life.

 

Not Alone

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Have you ever looked at somebody else who seems to have it all together and been a little envious? Maybe it’s a guy with the classic good looks who has a successful career and always seems to have a beautiful girl on his arm. Or maybe a girl who never seems to have any problems and is the one that every guy wants to talk to.

Admit it. You’ve envied. You’ve coveted. You’ve probably wanted to trade places or, if you’re feeling really spiteful, you hope something bad happens to that person. Not tragically bad, but embarassingly bad.

But have you ever stopped and wondered what really goes on in that person’s life? Do you ever stop to think that maybe behind that perfect facade, that person is hurting. Maybe that person is looking at you and envying you for something he or she doesn’t have.

The point is that you never know the whole story. You only see the surface, not what’s underneath. You may never see the pain, the frustration, the unfulfilled longings, the pent-up anger, the quiet desperation.

Maybe that person is you. Maybe you’re the one who’s hanging by a thread to your faith, who has all but given up on believing that anything will really ever change. Maybe you just don’t feel anything anymore and don’t think God really knows or cares about you.

You’re not alone.

I know when I’ve been deeply discouraged, the words “I know what you’re going through” were more helpful to me than the person speaking them realized. I didn’t want to hear that everything was going to be fine. I didn’t need to hear what I needed to do to get over it. I just needed to know that I wasn’t alone in my struggle.

The biggest lie of the enemy is that you are the only one struggling and that you can never tell anyone, but most go on secretly bearing your pain and shame. The truth is that we are all broken in some way, dealing with a shameful past full of secrets and a pain that never seems to go away. Some are just better at hiding their brokenness than others.

So, even though you might not want to hear it at the moment, it will get better. It did for me. God does know where you are and what you’re going through and yes, he does care. He even loves you in spite of the dark bitter thoughts you carry in your mind.

And you are most definitely not alone.

 

Some Things I Found While Randomly Surfing the Net

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“Keep a clear eye toward life’s end. Do not forget your purpose and destiny as God’s Creature. What you are in His sight is what you are and nothing more. Remember that when you leave this earth, you can take nothing you have received . . . but only what you have given; a full heart enriched by honest service, love, sacrifice and courage” (St Francis of Assisi).

I still can’t help thinking about the Ash Wednesday Mass at St Philip’s that I attended Wednesday. I’d like to say that I was brave enough to go down front and receive the ashes and the sacraments, but I wasn’t. I stayed in the very back and observed everyone else going forward, but I couldn’t make myself go. Even though I didn’t know another living soul there, I could have gone, but I chickened out.
It was still a beautiful service. To have the visible reminder of just how serious sin and its consequences are on your forehead is to remember the terrible price it took to pay for that sin. To receive the sacraments is to remember that it took a broken body and shed blood for that sin to be paid for.
I know I’ve sinned in the area of things left undone. I’ve sinned by listening more to my fear than to my faith. I’ve been more concerned about pleasing those around me than pleasing God. I’ve sat down when I should have stood up and walked.
But I also know that I’m forgiven. What I deserved, death and hell, fell on Jesus, and what I didn’t deserve, life to the fullest and grace overflowing, came to me and those like me. All I can do is be thankful and show that same grace to others who need it, too.
Since this is Valentines Day, a.k.a Single Awareness Day, I’m throwing in some wise words from a woman who epitomized grace and style. These are wise words to live by:

“For attractive lips, speak words of kindness. For lovely eyes, seek out the good in people. For a slim figure, share your food with the hungry. For beautiful hair, let a child run her fingers through it once a day. For poise, know that you never walk alone” (Audrey Hepburn)