spirituality

The Biggest Loser

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“Take a good look, friends, at who you were when you got called into this life. I don’t see many of “the brightest and the best” among you, not many influential, not many from high-society families. Isn’t it obvious that God deliberately chose men and women that the culture overlooks and exploits and abuses, chose these “nobodies” to expose the hollow pretensions of the “somebodies”? That makes it quite clear that none of you can get by with blowing your own horn before God. Everything that we have—right thinking and right living, a clean slate and a fresh start—comes from God by way of Jesus Christ. That’s why we have the saying, “If you’re going to blow a horn, blow a trumpet for God.” (1 Corinthians 1:26-31)

I remember back in elementary school at recess, I always dreaded the selection process. That’s when the team captains (usually the most popular and most athletic) chose teams. I generally was picked near the end.

But what’s really bad was to be the one not chosen. The one that the first team captain said to the other, “Oh, you can have him (or her). I’ve got all the people I want.”

To be chosen last is bad enough. But to not be chosen at all is worse. Nobody wants to feel left out or unwanted. Everybody at some level wants to be appreciated and validated and acknowledged for their own unique gifts and talents.

Jesus wanted you. Jesus wanted me. He picked you and me, not because He had to, but because He wanted us. He wants us to be a part of his team and to be a part of the work he’s doing.

God picked those who are considered foolish and weak. God picked the nobodies of the world. Look at the twelve disciples. Most leaders would have picked the cream of society and the smartest, prettiest, powerful people around. Not Jesus. He picked fishermen and radicals and tax collectors, none of whom had much of an education.

That’s comforting. At least to me.

It’s also a warning. If we get caught up in how wise we think we are, God might just send someone to confound our wisdom. If we get too hung up on our own strength, God just might send some to shame us. And if we strut around thinking how great we are, God might just send a few nobodies to adjust our perspective.

But for most of us most of the time, it’s good to know that Jesus wants us around. He wants to use people exactly like you and me to reach the world, to be the people to be his hands and feet, to take this great message of reconciliation and hope to those who need it most.

To the world, you may be a nobody. You may never win any awards or make millions of dollars or make any who’s who lists. But in God’s eyes, you are a treasure beyond price. You are worth every drop of Jesus’ blood. You are the apple of your Abba’s eye. You are the Beloved.

I don’t know about you, but that’s enough for me.

PS Thanks again to Mike Glenn for inspiring this blog.

 

I Am Rahab

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I am Rahab. I am what is known as a prostitute. A hooker. To put it bluntly, a whore. I make my living on my back. It’s a profession as old as time, but also a way of living that fills me with shame.

Then I meet two strange men. Something in me compels me to let them in. Right away, I can tell they’re not looking for a companion for the night. They don’t look and sound like people from the town I live in.

I ask them where they’re from and what they’re doing here and they start talking about being a people chosen by this god they call Yahweh. It’s so unlike all the other stories about gods that I’ve ever heard that I am instantly hooked. Right away, I know that if trouble comes, I want to be on their side.

The more they talk, the more I think that maybe this God who turned a bunch of ragtags into a nation can somehow turn my life around. Maybe this God of Israel is God. Period.

So I agree to their plans and hide them. I even lie to the soldiers about them. Surely this God will forgive me if He knows I’m doing it to save His people. I’ve agreed to help them and to let them out by a secret way from my window on the outer part of the city wall by a scarlet rope.

I know why they’re here. They’re here because Jericho is a wicked city and God has told His people to destroy it. I know that they will bring death. So I plead for my life. I plead for the life of my family.

They tell me that if I hang a scarlet cord from my window, the same one I used to save them, they will spare me and all my family who are inside. Me and my family will be spared.

I’m telling you this because I am a part of a famous genealogy. You may not know this, but from my line will come David, King of Israel, and later (and best of all) the Messiah Jesus. Because of my small acts of courage, I get to be a part of bringing the Savior of the world to the world.

If you look in the book of Hebrews, you will find my name. Specifically in the 11th chapter, better known as the Faith Hall of Fame. I’m living proof that God can save the lowest of the low. Not even a common whore is beneath the reach of God’s love.

If God could save me, He can save anyone. And that includes you.

I am Rahab, and I am the beloved of my Abba.

Fish & Chips & The Promises of God

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I was driving home from McCreary’s Irish Pub (one of my favorite places to eat in the world in case you’ve been living under a rock for the last year or so and weren’t aware). It was cool, almost fall-ish weather, and I had my windows rolled down listening to some old school dc talk ’cause I rock it like that.

I was thinking of the amazing fish and chips I just ate and reminiscing on a good sermon I just heard about the promises of God. Like the one Jesus spoke at the end of Matthew about how He would be with us always, to the very end.

It won’t always feel that way. God won’t always feel present. In fact, God will feel a million miles away sometimes. But I’ve learned that while feelings lie, God doesn’t. And He promised He wouldn’t leave or forsake you. Or me.

I have a lot of uncertainties in my life, like if I will ever get married or not (or just have a dating relationship), but I know at least one thing for certain. I can’t go where God’s not there. I can’t go where God’s not already waiting on me.

I plan on breaking out my running shoes tomorrow and doing a bit of jogging. I estimate it will take me 7 straight hours of jogging to run off the meal I had tonight, but it was so worth it.

I may not feel God near, because a lot of things can numb my ability to sense Him. Like unconfessed sins or addictions or uncaptured thoughts. But God is always near because He says He would be.

Faith has to be bigger than feelings or intuitions or sometimes even common sense. Faith is believing when common sense sometimes tell you not to. Faith is believing that God said it and that settles it. He doesn’t need my agreement for it to be so.

By the way, if you’re ever in historic downtown Franklin for any reason, check out McCreary’s Irish Pub. You won’t be disappointed.

 

Safe in the Storm

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I’m sitting here typing contentedly away on my laptop and listening to the rain lash against the window of my bedroom. I hear the thunder rumbling in the distance. I love it.

I don’t love storms when I’m driving in the middle of them and can barely see the road through my windshield. But when I finally make it home, I can breathe a huge sigh of relief.

I think it was John Piper who describe the fear of God kind of like being in a storm from a safe place. You’re able to witness the power and majesty of the storm while protected from the dangers of it.

I think we forget that God is all-powerful and all-present sometimes. We focus on the loving aspect and forget sometimes that He is also a holy God. Well, I do, anyway.

It is a good feeling to know that this God who could destroy me with one word from His mouth calls me His child. He has promised that He won’t leave or forsake me and that He will finish what He started in me.

He’s promised to bring me safely through those storms that come into my life. Not only that, but I will come out stronger on the other side.

I am learning what it means to fear God. I am learning that if you fear God, you need fear nothing else, for if God is for you, who could ever be against you? This fear of God isn’t a trembling terror, but more of a reverential awe of a God who is bigger than all that is and has existed before anything was. This same God who knows my name and the number of hairs on my head.

I pray you find that fear of the Lord that leads to wisdom. I pray you know that God is holy, but that He loves you more than you can possibly imagine. By the way, the storm has passed, as all storms do. But God remains.

 

 

A Good Reminder to Myself

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I talk to myself sometimes. Out loud. I tend to use a British accent so it’s more fun and less creepy.

Sometimes, I have to remind myself of certain things. Repeatedly.

1) You are not your job (or lack of one). You are not your salary. You are not a title or a profession. You are exactly who God made you to be. And He said you were good.

2) God’s in the past where you messed up and where you got hurt, healing your wounds so they no longer bleed into your present (thanks to Mike Glenn for that one. He’s right there with you in your present. And He’s already in your future, waiting on you with plans that will blow your mind.

3) It’s okay to feel scared and unsure. It’s okay to have doubts because faith by its very nature comes with doubting. If we knew with 100% certainty, we wouldn’t need faith.

4) If you are loved and if you have friends, you are not a failure. If God loves you and calls you friend, then you have already won.

5) Whatever happened today, be it good, bad, or ugly, tomorrow is a new day filled with fresh possibilities and a clean slate. You can start over.

Maybe you’re having a great day and you’re loving life and everything is going your way. That’s wonderful. Maybe not. But everybody will at times go through storms. Everyone will go through deserts where your faith seems dead. Everyone will go through dark nights where God seems impossible to find.

No matter what your feelings or senses tell you, no matter what your circumstances tell you, God is there. He has not left you. He has not forgotten you. And He never will.

By the way, this blog is best read with a British accent. It sounds so much more sophisticated that way.

A Place to Belong

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“That’s plain enough, isn’t it? You’re no longer wandering exiles. This kingdom of faith is now your home country. You’re no longer strangers or outsiders. You belong here, with as much right to the name Christian as anyone. God is building a home. He’s using us all—irrespective of how we got here—in what he is building. He used the apostles and prophets for the foundation. Now he’s using you, fitting you in brick by brick, stone by stone, with Christ Jesus as the cornerstone that holds all the parts together. We see it taking shape day after day—a holy temple built by God, all of us built into it, a temple in which God is quite at home” (Ephesians 2:19-22).

That’s what everybody is looking for, isn’t it? A place to belong? A place where we feel welcomed? I think so. We all want to be a part of something that is bigger than our individual selves.

No one likes to feel left out or unwanted. No one wants to feel ostracized and rejected.

That’s the beautiful part of the Gospel. God wants you to be a part of what He’s doing in the world. He wants you. Once you say YES to Him, you’re no longer a stranger or an alien or an outcast. You belong. You matter. You are now a child of the King.

That’s what the Church really is. A community of nobodies that God chose and gave a new name and purpose to. Strangers who now belong to God and to each other.

Maybe you know what it’s like to be picked last for a kickball team (or not picked at all). Maybe you know what it feels to be the only one not invited to a party. Maybe you know what it’s like when it seems like everyone is talking to everyone else in a group but you.

You have a purpose. You have a God that picked you because He wanted you and placed you in a family whose bond is stronger than flesh and blood.

You belong.

 

 

More Movie Theology

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“I’d imagine the whole world was one big machine. Machines never come with any extra parts, you know. They always come with the exact amount they need. So I figured, if the entire world was one big machine, I couldn’t be an extra part. I had to be here for some reason. And that means you have to be here for some reason, too. . . .Maybe that’s why a broken machine always makes me a little sad, because it isn’t able to do what it was meant to do… Maybe it’s the same with people. If you lose your purpose… it’s like you’re broken ” (from the movie Hugo).

Very few people know what they were born to do. Fewer still are actually living out of that purpose. So many have settled for jobs and routines and hobbies and weekends and wonder why they lead lives of quiet desperation (as Thoreau famously put it).

I think God made each one of us with a purpose. No one is a mistake. No one is an afterthought. You and I are uniquely and expressly designed by our Creator to do what no one else can do.

I am finding out my own purpose. I know part of it involves writing and communicating the truth of knowing who you are in Christ. I know that I want people to know that God doesn’t love them out of an obligation or because He’s God; He loves them because He wants to. He chose you and called you by your own name and set His affections on you. He not only loves you, He likes you.

Not only did God create each of us with a purpose, He made us to help each other find and fulfill our purposes. I truly believe that we can only be our true, God-made selves in the middle of a community of believers who both minister to each other and reach out to a lost and broken world.

May we know what it’s like to see people find their purpose, to see broken people find wholeness, to see lost people found, and to see dead people coming alive again. What could be better?

Just Relax

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I have yet another confession to make. I over-analyze everything. Well, most things anyway. I can wreck myself thinking too much about conversations I’ve had where I spoke and should have been silent or was silent and should have spoken. I’ve analyzed to death things friends have said that really didn’t mean what I thought they meant.

The word for today for me (and for you if you’re like me) is RELAX. Don’t over-analyze and don’t try so hard to force an outcome in your situation. Instead, enjoy the moment and watch expectantly for God to act.

I don’t mean veg out on the couch and eat bon-bons all day (or oreos, if you feel bon-bons aren’t manly enough). Live your life and have faith, or as Oswald Chambers said, “Trust God and do the next thing.”

God will act when He’s ready. When you’re really and truly ready and not when you think you are ready. In my experience, the longer the wait is, the better the surprise God has for you.

Sometimes, you wait until you think you can’t wait any longer. You hold out until you are absolutely about to run out of patience and strength and willpower. And then you wait some more. You come to the end of yourself and all your schemes and plans and the only prayer you can pray is, “Lord, help.”

The last time I checked, God was still sovereign. God was (and is) still in control. He still knows the number of hairs on your head and the number of tears you cry in the night. He more than anyone knows the secret desires of your heart and He more than anyone knows what will make you come alive and where you were created to be.

So relax. God’s got this. Like the old saying goes: there is a God and you’re not Him. I know for me, that’s a big load off my shoulders.

 

A Bike Ride in Crockett Part (and What Later Came of It)

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“I love God because he listened to me, listened as I begged for mercy. He listened so intently as I laid out my case before him. Death stared me in the face, hell was hard on my heels. Up against it, I didn’t know which way to turn; then I called out to God for help: “Please, God!” I cried out. “Save my life!” God is gracious—it is he who makes things right, our most compassionate God. God takes the side of the helpless; when I was at the end of my rope, he saved me.” (Psalm 116:1-2 MSG)

I pulled my bike out of the dormant cocoon it’s been in for some time and took it down to Crockett Park in Brentwood, TN. Actually, I crammed it in the back of my Jeep and drove it down there (if you want to get all technical about it).

It was a beautiful moment, me riding my bike in postcard-perfect weather through scenic paved trails with overhanging tree branches serving as a kind of natural canopy. It got me thinking.

Too often we as believers try so very hard to be relevant and trendy and cool and successful when all God calls us to be is faithful and obedient. We’re not called to re-imagine or re-invent the Gospel story. Just to tell our story and how we are different people because of what Jesus has done for us.

The Story God wrote doesn’t need any emotional embellishments or dramatic additions. It has stood for 2,000 years through multiple generations and languages and been powerful to save people from all backgrounds and walks of life in every part of the world.

I guess the connection between a bike ride through the park and sharing my faith is this: just as I don’t need to hang streamers or other decorations to improve nature, I shouldn’t have to add to the gospel story to make it more palatable or relevant. The Story is eternally relevant. It never goes out of style or becomes obsolete. We will always need it, need to hear it, need to be reminded of it every day for the rest of our lives.

 

 

 

Joy in the Waiting

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Sometimes, I have this idea that if I can just get to this stage in my life, then everything will be okay. Maybe if I get that relationship or that job, I can find that contentment.

To use a phrase that’s been way overused, it’s like I’m waiting for God to open a door so I can walk through and find joy. Then my life will be complete.

But maybe I don’t need to wait for that open door. Something I read on facebook challenged and inspired me. No, it was not about how if I don’t share a certain status, it means I hate puppies and kittens. Not that kind of post.

It said, “Until God opens the next door for you, praise Him in the hallway.”

Maybe you’re in a hallway. Neither here nor there and certainly not where you’d rather spend your time. But hallways are inevitable. Sooner or later, you end up there.

That’s where you learn to really praise God and mean it. That’s where you find joy that is different from the happiness that is dependent on your circumstances, or what happens to you.

That’s where you learn and grow the most. That’s where your faith deepens and your heart expands. That is where you will hear the voice of God most. That’s where you become the person that’s ready for whatever lies behind the door God will open for you next.

Joy is knowing that while you might not know what’s next, God does. Joy is knowing that God’s in your past redeeming it, in your present with you, and in your future waiting for you.

Joy is knowing that God works all things together for good to those who love Him and are called according to His purpose. Even in the hallway.