Chapters.

What story are you writing?

2012-01-27T08:59:00.000-08:00

We all crave a good story, just like we crave a good life. After all, what is a life but a story: a narrative that includes a plot, characters, some sort of crisis, and some sort of potential resolution.

Think about the components of a great story. It has to have a plot. It has a protagonist. It has a villain. It has a huge crisis or problem that needs to be overcome. It involves some sort of journey of identity on the part of the protagonist ... forcing her to go through something she otherwise would have not, and through those extraordinary circumstance to emerge a different person. The characters have to face their fears with extraordinary amounts of courage. Most of the time something is at stake... maybe even death ... that's what makes the story so interesting. Most of the time there is some sort of romance, the hero that discovers a love that makes the battles worth fighting and the adventures worth undergoing.

A question that has haunted me ever since I read this absolutely fantastic book two years ago is this one: "am I living a good story?"
Are you? Here's some questions I've been asking myself lately to help me live a better story:

Are you fighting a battle that's worth fighting?
Are you pursuing a love that makes it worth it?
Are you confronting your fears or are you submitting to them?
Are you striving towards purpose or are you coasting towards complacency?
Are you risking anything at all?
Does the life that you're living parody the dreams that you're dreaming?
Are you creating anything or are you consuming everything?
Most of all: are you living for a larger Story than your story?

What do you really want?

2012-01-26T08:53:00.000-08:00

Once upon a time there was a friend of mine who was really attracted to this girl. By the way he would talk, it seemed that he truly believed that if he were in a relationship with this girl he would be completely happy, and no matter what other bad things were going on in his life, the fact that this particular girl was with him in a relationship would enable him to endure any hardship.

He asked her out. She said yes. They dated for awhile. She lost interest. He held on, thinking having her was the fulfillment of ultimate desire... it pushed her away, and he lost her. He came over to my apartment when it happened. I'll never forget what he said: "you know, I legitimately thought that (this girl) was what I really wanted, but now that I've lost her I'm realizing that it is something else entirely that I want, and by making her my ultimate pursuit I was using her in my relentless pursuit of the other thing..."

Have you ever had a desire for something and spent lots of energy trying to pursue that thing only to realize later that it wasn't that thing that you desired but something else? Maybe you thought you wanted a job, but when you strip away all the 'company lines,' you realized that what you really wanted was the status that came from the job? Have you ever thought you wanted a relationship, but what you really wanted was the security that comes from being in a relationship?

Its what caused Alexander the Great, after conquering all of the known world, to sit down on a rock facing the Mediterranean and weep over the lack of worlds left to conquer. Its what led reporters to find John Elway during his first Super Bowl win to be found alone in his hotel room during all the festivities, and the only reason he could give was "now that I've won the Super Bowl, now what?"

I often wonder if this world was wired for disappointment, but not the bad kind of disappointment: the kind that keeps us from pursuing good things as ultimate things; the kind that wrestles us into gratitude for the joys and pleasure that come and go. And could it be that it is not merely a design flaw but a designed flaw...a glitch wired by God into the system ... that our disappointments are really some sort of divine compass to point us to a true Source and Fountain of all desire... sometimes I wonder ...

So ask this question with me today: "I think I want (you-fill-in-the-blank), but what I really want is (you-fill-in-the-blank)." Can you say that about anything in your life?

You've Got to Bring It.

2012-01-25T13:58:00.000-08:00

There's a lot of different ways of saying this idea: showing up, going all out, going for broke, being all there. My favorite way of saying it is: BRINGING IT.

Have you ever heard a great public speaker who 'brought it' ? Or have you ever had a teacher or a professor who "brought it" every day? It seemed like they were fully prepared, fully passionate, and fully present. Their material was intelligent, humorous, and clear.

These people are truly unique breeds: The moment they enter a room there is a gravity there with them and they have the kind of reputation where there is a sense of expectation in the air...that important conversations are going to happen, that decisions are going to be made, that people are going to be challenged, and that being in that person's presence is going to inspire everyone to be a better person.

That's what 'bringing it' is all about... being fully present, energetic, and alive in the midst of other people. Devoting yourself wholly to connecting with them, even if it is just one on one. Bring your passion, your best, your attention to every opportunity you have to connect with others, whether its as a public speaker or one-on-one over coffee. Manage your energy level...if you don't have the energy to bring it, do what you need to do to recharge before connecting with others.

Every conversation you have is an opportunity to serve and love people and in doing so to have a lasting impact on their lives. People deserve your best.

Bring it!

The Things That Might Have Been

2012-01-20T08:45:00.000-08:00

The older I get the more I realize that "motivation" is really an illusion. The conversation usually goes something like this: you'll hear someone say "I really want to do (blank), but I'm just not motivated," or "if I really wanted to, I could (blank)." You fill in the blanks.

Run a marathon. Write a book. Start a business. Record an album. Apply for your dream job.

"Unmotivated" is simply a more culturally sanitary word for "lazy." Motivation comes when you choose to take a first step. Its why I've been blogging every day. Because some day I'd like to write a book, and every great writer I know will say that the only way to get better is to WRITE! A LOT!

If you wait around until your "motived," life will pass you by. So what is keeping you from the undone things in your life? The unactualized dreams? The unwritten pages? The unspoken words? The unsung songs? The unplayed music?

There's a book I read a long time ago called the Traveler's Gift by Andy Andrews, in which a business man has a dream where is taken to a room after he dies. The room is filled with all sorts of things, computers, gadgets, instruments, bottles filled with medication, etc. His guide then gives him the chilling secret of this room: it is filled with the things that might have been, if the people who had lived those lives had actually acted upon their ideas. In the middle of the room on a pedestal is a folder. The man asks his guide, an angel of sorts, what this folder is, to which the angel replies "that is the cure for cancer."

Eternity will only tell the things that we all were capable of but never decided to act upon.

Stop waiting around for 'motivation' to magically appear. Show up, daily. Choose to work. Get stuff done. I believe that I, you, and we, are far more capable of what we think we are...

The Twitter Gospel.

2012-01-19T08:23:00.000-08:00

Okay, so to be fair today's post isn't original. It's definitely been said elsewhere. I read a post from this blog (which is a fantastic blog by the way) and I haven't been able to stop thinking about this idea.

Social media is the language of the next generation.

We live in a Twitter world. I have a friend with whom I send things that I write for him to read it over and give me his feedback. He is always telling me to shorten things. People don't want to read long paragraphs. They want short, quick summaries. They want sound bites. In other words, if you can't say it in 250 characters or less, then its not worth saying... that's what he said to me exactly.

This is hard for me because I like to build long complex arguements. I like to have well-developed ideas. I like to build a case for something. I like to use words like a painter uses his palette. But if I truly want to communicate anything, according to my friend, I need to condense. I need to say more by saying less.

This has profound implications for teachers, communicators, educators, and those who seek to pass on knowledge to the next generation. The challenge is that if we want to capture the attention of a generation of students that is glued to Call of Duty, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, World of Warcraft, we may have to shorten the message!

It poses a curious question for myself and other Christians with the 'message' that we are trying to pass: if you had to 'tweet' the Gospel, the core message of Christianity, in 140 characters or less, how would you do it? That's right... if you only had one 'tweet' to pass on the Gospel message of God's saving grace in Jesus Christ on to the next generation, what would you say? I believe that the message of Jesus can transform people whether 140 characters or 140 pages. Its that powerful.

I'm still working on mine. Here's what I've got so far:

"God sacrificed his perfect son for our imperfections, and raised him from the dead so that we can be made perfect and complete in Him."

What about you? If you could summarize the core message of your life in 140 characters or less, what would it be? And If you're a Christian: how would you communicate the gospel of Jesus in 140 characters or less?

How to Choose a Church.

2012-01-18T13:36:00.000-08:00

Title caught you, didn't it? The word 'church' in our culture means 'local religious non-profit business' (I'll call them LRNPBs from now on) that has a staff, a facility, a building, and a budget. Technically there is only one Church, and its not a business, its the collective community of people who follow Jesus and do his work in the world.

But for the sake of being interesting and relevant, out of the thousands of options of 'local religious non-profit businesses' to which you can go on Sundays to worship, how do you even start?

Often I have heard one of the main reasons that people choose one LRNPB to worship at over another is because they "feel like they get something out of it" or they "feel spiritually fed," but what they really often mean is that they liked or preferred one particular style or aspect of the service (like the music or the preaching). So "feeling spiritually fed," in my opinion is an undependable criteria for selecting a LRNPB. So is great music. So is fantastic preaching. Its all preference. As a guy who has worked at LRNPBs for six years, here's some questions I like to ask when choosing a little-c church, in no particular order of importance:

1. Is the environment contagious or average? Another way of saying this is are you proud enough of the experience that you would invite your friends and family? Were you welcome there? Were the people warm and friendly or unengaging and disconnected? Did someone greet you? Did you feel energy in the air and a sense of expectation? If the environment isn't contagious, chances are you're not going to stay long, and you're not going to trust it enough to invite your friends. Do people who are not Christians feel welcome there?

2. Does the preacher talk about Jesus and preach the Bible? Preaching/teaching that is truly and distinctly Christian will preach Jesus and the Gospel as the hope for men and women. Topics are great and necessary, but if you go 6 months and all you talk about is marriage, finances, and 'inviting your friends to church,' and giving random proof-texts from all over the place to support their "applications", that church has lost sight of the Gospel which is the "power of God unto salvation." Do you leave with a greater thirst for reading the Bible? Do you leave with a greater sense of wonder about knowing Jesus better?

3. Are you challenged to contribute, or invited to consume? Where I live in Scottsdale, AZ, I am appalled by the number of people that jump from church to church. We live in a culture of spiritual consumers who attend whatever church tickles their fancy or gives them their spiritual high or spiritual fix for the week. The Church is not a place you go that exists for your benefit, it is something you are, and YOU exist to GO serve the world. In my opinion, many times the fact that a church DOESN'T have everything you want might be the very reason YOU should stay so that YOU can lead it.

4. Is raising up the next generation of young Christians a high value? If a church is not focused on the younger generation, and not just in lip-service but as reflected in their budget, chances are they're more devoted to maintenance than mission. Chances are they're more devoted to traditions than vision. And let's be honest, if we don't win the next generation and train them up we have about 20 years until the church is dead.

5. Are there LOTS of opportunities to connect and share life with others? People long for connection and relationships. Is this a church filled with people who care about each other?

6. Is this a church that serves? Are there community missions projects? Are there massive relief efforts? Is this is a place that hurts people or that heals people? Does the leadership have hearts that bleed for social justice issues that God's heart bleeds for? Are the pastors compassionate or cold?

7. Does this church SAY it does the above things, or does it actually DO them. This one was added after a friend read my original post. :)

This is a short, by no means exhaustive list of things I look for in a healthy 'church.'

And here's the biggest reality that may negate everything I have just written... this is the wrong question to be asking in the first place.

BE your definition of a 'healthy church.' Live that way. Stop looking for the perfect LRNPB. It doesn't exist. Commit to a community. Contribute. Serve. Love.

But in the meantime, out of curiosity, what would you add to the list? :)

Miss. (part 2)

2012-01-17T08:53:00.000-08:00

I'll be the second to admit, yesterday's blog post wasn't very inspiring or positive to put it lightly. I had a friend let me know that it sounded kind of...condemning, which wasn't my intention at all. I think the word 'sin' has been culturally used in so many condemning settings and ways, that it is hard to use it without it being heard as an attack.

And to be fair, I was attacking. But I wasn't attacking any person ... I was attacking this thing in us. I'm tired of it. I'm tired of sin, of addiction, of depression. I'm tired of abuse, divorce, and neglect. I'm tired of injustice, apathy, and atrophy. I'm tired of hopelessness and despair. I'm tired of selfishness, greed, lust, and bitterness.

Basically I'm tired of the world being sick. One time two years ago I contracted a virus in my liver. I could not go to work, and I had a perpetual fever of 102. I was pretty much tied down to my couch for a good solid month. One morning I woke up and I remember being so angry that I was still sick. I was tired of being sick.

That's why I wrote yesterday about sin...because I am tired of satan, the bully of this world, pushing people around and using sin to dominate people's lives. I'm tired of people becoming slaves to their own choices.

That's why I do what I do. Because I believe that God has delivered a mortal blow to the power of sin in our world through the person of Jesus of Nazareth, that sin was dealt with violently at the cross, and that the benefits of this are directly accessible through faith. I wrote about sin because so many people do not know that it no longer has power over them, and they don't have to continue living the way they are living. I wrote about sin because even though its a theological word with a ton of baggage, its a spiritual reality that no practical advice, discipline, or psychology can explain, diagnose, or cure.

Miss.

2012-01-15T23:10:00.000-08:00

"You were dead in your sins..." Eph. 2:1

John Wesley was one of the greatest preachers in British and American history, and the founder of the Methodist movement. He also had an awesome mom, Susanna Wesley. John recalls that at a young age he asked his mother the question "what is sin"? Susanna, always quick-tongue replied

"whatever weakens your reason, impairs the tenderness of your conscience, obscures your sense of God, takes off your relish of spiritual things, whatever increases the authority of the flesh over the authority of the mind, that thing is sin to you, however innocent it may seem in itself."

"Sin" is not just a word invented by the theologians. Its not just a label to slap on certain vices. The word itself is a target-practice word: it means very simply a "miss." The Christian story began with humanity 'missing' what it was intended to be. We missed the glory we were originally meant for. We missed the life that was once ours ... the life of fulfilment, satisfaction, and fullness. We missed the intimacy that God created us to have with Himself and with each other. Sin is missing out on something that should've been ours.

One writer in the New Testament said that there was a time when all of us were 'dead in our sins.' The implication is that there are people walking around who think they are alive, when really they are dead. Sin kills us. Spiritually. Physically. Literally.

Sin kills your innocence. Even psychologists say that you never forget things that you do in your past. Your choices always remain lodged with you. Every time you choose to sin, you become something a little bit different than you were before...it always leaves a mark, always leaves a scar, and cannot be forgotten. Most of us are somewhat inescapably wounded by the choices of our past ... sin transcends time and stretches across generations. In places where once there was purity, there is guilt, shame, and embarassment.

Sin kills your ideals. What you start to tolerate, you will eventually begin to accept. Sin causes people over time to participate in things they once regarded as ghastly, horrible, or unacceptable. It numbs values and erodes priorities. Each mistake makes the next one easier. It leads to the absolute abandonment of values.

Sin kills your intentions. The life of purity is a life filled with dreams and hope for the future. Hope of becoming a better person. Intentions on being a certain kind of man or woman. Intentions that often lead to the will to act. Intentions on acting courageously, selflessly. Sin erodes away the will to act, the intentions to be, and the hopes to become. Sin leads to sin. The more and more sin is fed, the more and more it requires to satisfy it. It weakens the will, and dominates people's lives.

There is something insanely murderous about sin. Its a virus, a sickness, and a disease that has left its mark deep within humanity. It entraps, ensnares and enslaves people to the point where no matter how hard they struggle, they cannot get free from its grip.

This is how we die... not the physical death, but the slow, gradual, unsuspecting disintegration of those things that make us human, leaving us with numb souls, anesthetized hearts, and rapacious cravings...

5 Keys to Sticky Communicating.

2012-01-14T12:31:00.000-08:00

I communicate to people on a regular basis, just like the rest of us. My job is unique though, because I am expected to essentially deliver a message to a group of people every week. Call it what you want to call it: teaching, preaching, speaking, orating, whatever it is, the challenge that I face is the challenge of (1) saying things that are worth saying and (2) doing it in a way that sticks.

I'm starting my sixth year in full-time church work, and a large part of my job has been spent preaching both to large audiences and to small audiences. For today's post, I wanted to share some things I've learned about making your messages 'sticky' (yes I stole that from one of my all-time favorite books on communicating, Made to Stick, by Chip & Dan Heath), that is, communicating ideas in such a way that it sticks. So here's some lessons for anyone that communicates on a regular basis... which on some level is pretty much all of us:

1. Keep it simple. Especially with younger generations to whom I mostly communicate, everyone has incredibly limited attention spans. This is accentuated by the digital and social media world we live in where a distraction is always right there in your pocket. People check out extraordinarily fast, and the more complicated your idea is, the harder it is to listen to you. Learn the great art of omission, cutting out things that aren't absolutely necessary for what you're trying to communicate. Focus on ONE idea, and make that the filter through which the rest of your lesson/sermon/oration/presentation goes. Don't keep anything that doesn't support your idea.

2. Use logic. The more scatter-brained you seem to people, the quicker they will check out. You need a mental map of the development of your idea, and people need to intuitively follow you to the next movement or point. This also requires the use of clear transitions. I've had many a sermon that was clearly logical, but I didn't make clear statements to show my audience how it connected, so I came across as scatter-brained. Using logic helps people to pay attention and it engages the mind.

3. Utilize the art of mystery and surprise. In order to keep people engaged in your teaching, you have to leave them wanting to hear the 'end of the story' so to speak. Start off with a question or a tension that demands some sort of resolution. Create tension. Stir up mystery as far as what it is you are going to say. Leave something hanging until the end. Its what keeps us going to movies and reading books...we love mystery and surprise.

4. Be concrete. Jesus used parables in order to communicate abstract ideas ("God loves you even though you've sinned") with concrete examples ("once there was a man who had to sons. The younger son came to his father and said 'give me my inheritance!'"). Don't get lost in the world of abstract theory. Talk about every day things and how they relate. Be constantly on the lookout for parables & object lessons that will relate to the world of your audience. It will give flesh to your idea, and will hold your audience's attention.

5. Be passionate. This cannot simply be contrived. You cannot manufacture passion. It comes from a life of experience of wrestling with the truth you want to communicate. Make sure the message is calling you to the stage, rather than the stage calling you to the message. Pray over the idea you want to communicate. Let it germinate in your heart and mind. Care about your audience more than yourself. Share the idea with people one on one, over coffee. Teachers don't teach because they have a stage, they teach because they are teachers. Give yourself fully to having something to say instead of having to say something.

Be humble.

2012-01-13T10:01:00.000-08:00

Humility is not a virtue in our world. Power, success, prestige, 'leadership', influence ... these are virtues in our world. According to the biblical writers, however, humility is something to be sought after. It is a foundational posture that people take before their creator. It is the 'grateful and spontaneous awareness that life is a gift, and it is manifested as an ungrudging and unhypocritical acknowledgement of absolute dependency upon God." (Tyndale Bible Dictionary)

That's against the American way. Independency is the virtue in the American man, not dependency. To most in our world, an acknowledgement of one's own inadequacies is a sign of weakness, and communicating need to anyone is often interpreted as failure.

Jesus saw pride as detestable. He taught that in order to save your life, you have to lose it (Matt. 10:39; 16:25; Mark 8:35; Luke 9:24; 17:33; John 12:25). He taught that those 'poor in spirit' would be the very ones to rule over others in the kingdom of God (Matt. 5:3). When his disciples got into an arguement about who would be the greatest, Jesus arose and proceeded to take on the job of the lowliest slave in the household, and washed his disciples feet (John 13). He then explained to them that the 'rulers of the Gentiles lord it over their followers, excercising their power, but it wasn't to be so amongst them. Instead, the greatest among them would be the one who serves...

To be clear, there is a kind of false humility which presumes lowliness but in actuality is a narcissistic form of self-pity. That's not humility. Its pride. it prevents people from standing up for things when they should, and fighting for things when they should, and living out of the confidence that comes from God. True humility isn't thinking more highly of oneself or more lowly of oneself: its not thinking of oneself at all.

Its what both frustrates and fascinates the world about Tim Tebow... his apparent unconcern for himself, and focus on others. USA Today this morning published an article in which Tebow, commenting about being in the international spotlight: "I meet with my pastor frequently to help me stay humble when its going good and to stay confident when its going bad. Athletic ability can be taken away like that. It can all end in a heartbeat." When asked about the pressures of public opinion, Tebow answered "I don't have to live the roller-coaster other people live with my life...people try to have an effect. I try to stay centered in my faith."

How much of life would be simpler if we weren't so preoccupied (whether positively or negatively) with ourselves? How much freer would we be if we were released from the chains of comparison with other people and free to serve without having to get anything in return? Humility frees us...from ourselves... from others perceptions of us...from the comparisons we're addicted to. It places us before God, as children cross-eyed before a Heavenly Father, in a posture that's ready for glory.

Be humble. Serve. Stop thinking about yourself, and be caught up in the wonder of the gift of life that God has given you. Make this your prayer: "Lord, give me a humble heart," and prepare yourself for what He will take you through in order to produce that in you.

The Audience of One.

2012-01-12T08:24:00.000-08:00

"But Peter and the apostles answered 'We must obey God rather than man.' Acts 5:29

I remember Os Guiness saying that a life lived listening to the decisive call of God is a life lived before the only Audience that matters: the "Audience of One." As a Christian, I believe that we ultimately have One to whom we must give account, one Judge before whom we all must stand.

The pull of the masses is strong with its allure of popularity, celebrity, power, and pleasure. But it is all fool's gold. The disciples of Jesus were so radically consumed by the call of God that it did not matter what they were threatened with, whether imprisonment, beatings, or even death... they lived before an Audience of One.

When God smiles upon you, neither the smiles nor frowns of man can affect you...

How would your life change if you began living before the Audience of One?

Read. Learn. Listen. Write. Share. Grow.

2012-01-11T07:50:00.000-08:00

I have an addiction...not to things that are obviously destructive in the sense that we normally think of the word. My addiction is to reading books.

For instance, when I was home for Christmas, my dad has this huge library in our basement filled with thousands of books from over the years. And that's only half of his collection. He has twice as many in his office. I spent most of my time during Christmas break in a chair in the basement reading books. I would liken it to some sort of thirst that never seems to be satisfied, and I go rummaging through a book to try and quench it.

Nerdy? Yes. Unhealthy? Sometimes. Manageable? Only when I turn off Amazon.com's 'one-click-buy' option.

My life has been infinitely enriched by books. There are books that I believe God has placed in my path that have gotten so deep into me, or have bothered me so much, that I keep coming back to them over and over.

C. S. Lewis once, when asked why he reads, responded "I read because it helps me to see the world through other eyes." Learning, reading, & education is critical because it helps us to see the world with new eyes. It helps us to empathize, realize, sympathize.

A word of encouragement for my intellectual friends today: don't stop reading. don't ever stop thirsting for growth, for knowledge, or for learning. Feed your thirst for it. Take every opportunity to grow and read and listen. Especially those of you whose 'spiritual pathway' is the intellect ... know this: God is infinitely wise and intelligent and wants to teach you... to be your private tutor. Listen to him. Love him with all of your mind. Hear him speak through the voices of others. Be diligent in your intellectual pursuits. Share them with the world. The world needs your God-given ideas. We're waiting for you to share them. You have a unique way of thinking. You have a responsibility to share and present that knowledge in learnable format.

Read. Write. Learn. Grow. Share. Listen.

"I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go." Ps. 32:8

DO SOMETHING.

2012-01-10T08:18:00.000-08:00

Blogs don't write themselves. Pushups don't do themselves. Weights don't lift themselves. Phone calls don't make themselves. Paintings don't paint themselves. Miles don't run themselves.

Resistance is one of the most deadly killers. It paralyzes people in fear. It is a relentless ruiner of dreams. Don't listen to it, humor it, or play into it. It will dominate you. So many of my friends have awesome ideas or dreams but all of them have a common enemy: resistance. There are unseen forces that are impersonally conspiring to trap people into conformity and sameness. There is always an excuse to put off your dream. There's always a reason to stall action. It is time, my friends, to do your work, because no one else is going to do it for you. Sure you could put your life on cruise-control, and if you're beautiful or talented enough you'll probably get by with a nice job, a salary, a retirement, and pats on the back. But the pain of unrealized dreams will sooner or later get the best of you. Don't let it.

For Christ's sake ... DO SOMETHING.

The Lost Discipline.

2012-01-09T20:29:00.000-08:00

Life is noisy. From the moment most of us wake up in the morning to the moment we go to bed our days are filled with noise, whether its the radio, the TV, our own thoughts, crowded restaurants, busy streets, hundreds of advertisements trying to sell us products, emails, texts, Facebook notifications, tweets, and the list goes on and on and on. Sometimes its not even the external world that is noisy: its our thoughts ... our souls. We constantly worry and analyze and plan and think and consider and asses because we feel like the moment we stop moving or stop talking, the world will leave us behind. As noisy as the world is and as noisy as we are internally, sometimes its easy to go for long periods of time without having any silence .... any break from all the noise to reflect, listen, contemplate, and center ourselves...

One of the things Jesus taught and modeled is the lost discipline of silence & solitude. In fact, before he even began his public ministry he spent 40 days in the Judaen wildnerness in silence, alone, to listen to God. Luke tells us that Jesus 'withdrew often to lonely places to pray.' John the Baptist spent most of his life in the wilderness, in solitude and silence preparing for his preaching ministry. In Mark 6, after Jesus' twelve disciples return from their ministry tour, he says "lets go off by ourselves to a quiet place to rest for awhile." The Psalmist writes "be still, and know that I am God." Another translation says "be quiet, and know that I am the Lord."

As a Christian, I'm convinced that it is impossible to hear the voice of God when my life is filled with so much noise. That's why this practice is so vital. Richard Foster wrote one time that "the purpose of silence and solitude is to be able to see and hear (Celebration of Discipline). I believe that God wants to speak to me, but I can't hear unless I'm spending time away from the noise of the world, quieting my soul so as to hear what he has to say. Some of the most vivid moments of clarity in my life have come in moments of silence and solitude...these moments are the place where God meets us and transforms us.

Sometimes we're afraid of silence because that is the place where we have to confront what many of us are most afraid of ... ourselves. There are dangerous battles to fight in silence. We have to deal with the thoughts and the attitudes that are going on inside. We have to deal with the bottled up emotions and pain and frustrations and unrealized dreams. We have to recall hurtful memories and old wounds. We're forced to deal with ourselves. But it is in that place of solitude that all of these impurities come to the surface, and it is there that Christ can heal them. That's why silence is so vital in the Christian journey....

Solitude and silence is the place where God meets us. It is the place where He transforms us. Crave it. Cherish it. Seek it. Practice God's presence in it. Let your heart be purified in it. Enter God's rest in it....

"be still and know that I am God.' Ps. 46:10

Lessons I Learned in 2011

2012-01-02T11:51:00.000-08:00

So I was reading this guy's (who is an exceptional writer) blog and was inspired to write my own personal list of things I've learned from 2011. In other words, if I could go back in time and give January 2011 Luke some words of advice and wisdom, this list would pretty much cover it. 2011 was a great year, in spite of myself, :) and I love this time of year because its a time of natural reflection and introspection: things I seem to do a bit too much anyway! Maybe you have a list too. If so, let me know! I'd like to see it! So here's mine, in light of the New Year, which I'm sure is going to be filled with lots of new memories and lessons and experiences, here's my list of lessons learned...

Keep in mind that my tone right now is directed towards myself ... I'm trying not to get 'preachy,' unless I'm preaching to myself!

There is incredible power in forgiveness. I carried some things too long with me the beginning part of this year and realized that I missed out on some pretty good opportunities. The truth is, if you have any sort of emotional baggage that you find yourself lugging it around, the sooner you deal with it the better. There's a reason why the Bible teaches that we ought not 'let the sun go down in [your] anger,' whether that is a 24-hour period, or an entire season of life. You may think that by holding on to your anger you are getting back at the person that you feel like owes you something, but in reality the only person you are hurting is yourself. This year I learned that God's forgiveness for us in Christ is quite a powerful incentive for our forgiveness of other people.

Friends are important. I realized this year that I had been going through life without really valuing or seeking authentic and deep friendship with people. I can tend to sometimes lock myself in a room and read books all day and night. Sure, I've always had 'friends,' but I lacked in terms of choosing one or two people to pour into, to share life with, and to laugh with. This year I had one or two of those types of friends, and I realized what I've been missing out on for so long. Nothing sustained me or refreshed my soul more this year than the presence of a few people in my life who brought words of wisdom, clarity, and peace, and who created opportunities for me that I otherwise would not have had...

Read a good fiction once a month. Your imagination is one of the greatest gifts that God has given to you. Its the thing out of which you dream and hope and love. Feed it!

Most of the battle is simply 'showing up.' Its true in friendships... being there when people need you. Its true in physical workout. Its true in every job I've ever had. You can overanalyze all day long and exhaust all the obstacles in your mind, but sooner or later you have to show up and DO YOUR WORK. I read this book this fall and was reminded of this simple truth: work hard, every day. Get up early. Show up at work, whether that's actually in an office or at Starbucks or sitting with your laptop on the couch. Put in your time. The more you 'show up' the more results you will get.

I'm at my best when I'm creating something. The theologian in me has always felt that I most reflect the image of God when I am doing what God does best: creating. This year I realized that I am the most fulfilled and challenged when I am not simply consuming the movies, the art, the books, and the products of everyone else around me, but when I make attempts, however feeble they may seem, at creating something. I don't want to be merely a consumer ... I want to be a creative.

Stop thinking about it so much and ask her out. Enough said.

Physical health and spiritual health are connected. I ran a half-marathon about a year ago. When I was training for it, I was the most positive, energetic, excited, and upbeat I'd been in a long time. Its because I was excercising every day and striving towards the accomplishment of a physical goal. I'm convinced now that if I'm not doing well physically, it is going to be hard for me to be focused intellectually, emotionally, spiritually, etc.

"Leadership" talk is often a misleading myth. Pick up the towel and figure out a way to serve. My upbringing and my college experience were ones in which 'leadership' was praised above all else, and where everyone is taught to strive for influence. The pressure to be a leader for so long weighed upon me that I felt that there was a certain way I had to carry myself that wasn't really me. The beginning of this year marked a shift in my attitude towards anything "leadership." I realized that it is way more important for me to follow Christ and to serve Him and please Him alone than to strive to be a 'leader,' according to the ways that my subcultures had defined that concept. I didn't have to worry about being influential or being up front or being in command or being on stage, but rather I was free to joyfully serve those around me without needing approval of the crowd. This year also marked the end of the second year of youth ministry at a small church after being at a large church. For a lot of guys, that shift can be humbling...I used to preach to 600 plus people every week. Now I preach to 20. But the reality is that students have come to Christ because of my work in this community ... I know that. I remember hearing a quote a long time ago from someone: 'if you take care of the depth of your ministry, God will take care of the breadth.' I don't need to worry about applause, attention, stages, speaking engagements, promotions. God never called me to be a leader. He called me to be a follower. And followers of Jesus are those who pour out their lives in love for the sake of others. Ironically the moment you release your need to lead and give yourself to following Jesus is the moment that you are set free, and in the end, indeed, the greatest among all of us will be those who serve...

One of my favorite lines from a worship song...

2011-06-28T12:14:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite lines in a church song is from “Your Grace is Enough.” There’s a line where everyone sings “you wrestle with the sinners heart.” I’ve always thought that it was weird to think of God wrestling. Like in the passage where Jacob has the dream and wrestles with God in the middle of the night and subdues him. I’ve always thought that was a difficult passage. How did Jacob beat God in a wrestling match?

The only way I can understand it is this: when I was a kid my dad would wrestle with me in the basement of our house and sometimes he would let us win. It was the kind of wrestling between boys and men that brings them closer together. What brings men together more than anything is joining in a cause, or competing to win. When a dad wrestles with his boys, he is giving them permission to join in a larger cause, a competition … he is inviting them to truly be boys. He is giving them permission to use their strength.

I think that God let Jacob win, but who won that wrestling match between Jacob and God is besides the point.

The bigger point is that God wrestles with people, and that very fact that a God who could obliterate…completely wipe out those people if he wanted to, chooses to allow his sons to wrestle with him is not only an act of mercy, but a rite of passage in the Christians journey. There’s an inherent closeness that comes from having entered into contest with someone and coming out of it intact.

When he could simply wipe humanity off the face of the earth…

…he wrestles with the sinners heart…

When he could end it all with a word from his mouth…

…he wrestles with the sinners heart…

When his justice could overpower all evil in a moment…

…he wrestles with the sinners heart…

When you think that he has given up on you, remember…

…he wrestles with the sinners heart…

Sometimes it hurts. Sometimes we walk away scarred, wounded, limping, but if we keep walking on with tilted halos and keep accepting his invitations to get into the ring with him that pain will turn out to be only a small first chapter to a glorious and fruitful life.

Beholding and Devouring.

2011-06-05T00:31:00.000-07:00

Our world misunderstands beauty for one reason: there is something in human nature that makes it so that beholding beauty isn’t enough. We think that we must devour it. C. S. Lewis wrote this:

“We do not want merely to see beauty, though, God knows, even that is bounty enough. We want something else which can hardly be put into words — to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it.”

As a result, anything with the promise of beauty we devour thinking that the beautiful thing will somehow pass through us and become a part of us.

But beauty wasn’t meant to be eaten. It wasn’t meant to satisfy a hunger.

The sight of a beautiful landscape painting, with mountains and forests, or a starry night sky above a winding river, a world untouched by people and pristine in its stillness, for instance, can easily lure its spectators under its spell to the point where they have a strong desire to enter the world of the painting. Its beauty captivates. But the reality is that you can’t enter the painting. Your only response to that kind of beauty is to behold, and marvel of the craftsmanship and imagination of the artist, and to allow it to call forth ancient desires within you that point to the possibility of something transcendent.

Yet there is something within us that wants to devour beauty. To eat it up. Its what causes men to date women they shouldn’t, or to be addicted to sexual images and pleasure. Its what causes our infatuation with celebrity gossip… we want to eat and eat and eat to satiate a desire to become more a part of the lives of beautiful, rich, and glamorous people… to allow their beauty to somehow pass into and through us. So we eat…

And eat…

Beauty was never meant to be devoured. It cannot fulfill the deep hungers of the soul. It was only meant to be beheld. To be looked at. When we simply behold the beauty of a work of art, a person, or a piece of music, it directs our attention to the Artist in whom the beauty originated.

When you eat something, it is destroyed. Eating is an act of the will to seize something which can only be freely given. When we treat beauty in this way, when we seek to devour it, we require more and more of the food and we get less and less of the satisfaction, and things that originally should have been beautiful have lost their luster, and we in turn have lost our capacity to appreciate beauty. Simone Weil said it this way: “it may be that even vice, depravity, and crime are in their essence attempts to eat beauty, to eat what we should only look at.”

God created beauty. He is the God of all beauty. Of every sunset, every forest, every mountain landscape, every sweet scent, every beautiful woman, every song, every painting, every masterful work of art. He created beauty to awaken us to Him. To direct our thoughts to Him, the only satiation of deep hunger. So walk into life with eyes wide open, finding beauty in obvious and hidden places, but remember that it is fools gold... a signpost to things unseen, and it was never meant to fill the stomach of your soul.

Hear the voice of God in beauty. See the touch of God in beauty. Let it captivate you.

But don't eat it.

The Bucket.

2011-05-30T10:43:00.000-07:00

I heard someone one time say that in life we are all carrying around a bucket. Some people have a bucket that's full, and some people have one that's empty. The "bucket" is a metaphor for the things that people have said or done that have encouraged, challenged, inspired, and changed you. Some people pour into your bucket. Sometimes they do it through encouraging notes, through cards, or through letters. Sometimes its through conversations and statements that quench your thirsty soul like long-needed water. And then there are people that take away from your bucket,

After I heard this, I made it a point to keep every note of encouragement that anyone had ever written. Here's what it looks like today:

I pulled it out this morning and began thumbing through the contents. Some were small notes written to me while I was in college, some were encouragement cards from summer camps that I've attended. Others were long, sincere letters of deep appreciation. All of them were people that had poured into my bucket...

A friend telling me how much he respected my role in his life and appreciated my leadership style...

A guy on my floor reminding me that I had had the biggest role in leading him closer to God in college...

A girl I had just broken up with writing to me to tell me how much she appreciated and respected me even though we didn't work out...

A former professor telling me that he saw something unique in me...

But by far, my favorite one was a old envelope, tattered from the years, that was sent to me by a seventh grade boy. I had worked at a summer camp for a week in the panhandle of Oklahoma. This kid was in my cabin that week... he was the type of kid who loved attention enough to do ridiculous things to get it...the type who was looking for something from everyone. I immediately recognized it in him, because I used to be the same way. Since the first day of camp, my heart pounded for this kid. Everyone loved him, he was full of energy, but I could tell that behind it all he was searching for something. One night I pulled him aside and said 'let's take a walk.' We walked around the campground and he told me his story. He shared with me some painful details. He told me how he never wanted to go to camp but someone had invited him. I didn't really think much of the talk, but a year later I got this letter in the mail. He wrote about how much that talk had encouraged him during one of the darkest moments of his life so far... his parents had been going through a divorce and a bunch of other painful stuff. He said that I may not have seen it, but our conversation had a radical impact on him.

...he poured into my bucket...

Your words have the power to heal someone... to bandage broken hearts... to nudge someone towards healthy, beauty, and fullness. Don't ever underestimate that power. Every moment, every intersection that you have with others, whether people close to you or even strangers, is a moment to either pour into their bucket, or take away from it. Say what you need to say...

Who is pouring into yours?

More importantly, who's bucket are you pouring into?

Mjölnir.

2011-05-11T10:05:00.000-07:00

Mjölnir. Its the name of Thor's hammer. Thor's hammer is a symbol of his strength and identity.

Yep, I saw the movie last night. What I love about mythology is that it is humanity's primary form of seeking meaning through narrative. Every culture throughout history has had some sort of mythology...a "meta-narrative" if you will... that attempts to tie everything together. Because of this, you can expect within mythology to see that heart of what humans long for...namely to conquer mortality, to celebrate beauty and heroism, to honor the highest virtues such as courage, selflessness, and wisdom.

Thor is a classic story. A prince about to be king is exiled to earth and stripped of his powers by his father Odin because of his bull-headed bloodthirsty craving. Thor is selfish, brash, and quick to rush into battle. When the Frost Giants try to steal an artifact from Asgard, Thor's homeland, he retaliates and invades their homeworld. His actions launch Asgard into unnecessary war. As a punishment, Odin exiles Thor out of the sky realm and down to Earth, followed by his hammer Mjölnir which possesses the very power of Odin. Only when Thor is worthy can he once again reclaim the power from the hammer that he once so recklessly wielded.

I think that the reason I liked the movie so much, besides Natalie Portman, is that is a modern parable of the journey of manhood. Our world is filled with exiled warriors, unfinished men meant to fight courageously, to lead boldly, and to serve selflessly...men created to reign as kings, but haven not yet proven themselves worthy of the royalty that is rightfully theirs. Out there somewhere buried in the sand is a Mjölnir of sorts... a holy calling that they were meant to reclaim but are not yet ready for it.

The reality is that our world is at war, and not just over boundaries. This is a spiritual battleground in which the casualties are people's souls. There is also a Kingdom over which we fight, and everywhere we look the enemy is attempting to storm its boundaries, to win over the hearts and minds of people. The crisis need of our day and age is not for new ideas, novel methods, or a redesigned image, but for men to be men... that men would let go of their pride, arrogance, insecurity, and shame, to reclaim the glory for which they were created, to wield Mjölnir once again and to march fearlessly forward and stand against unknown evils and uncertain times.

Mjölnir is the symbol of a man's strength. For Thor it was a hammer that carried the power of his father Odin. For King Arthur it was Excalibur. For Samson it was...uh...his hair. For Billy Madison it was his father's corporation...the thing that he was meant to inherit but is not yet worthy. Its the one thing that deep inside of you everything in you is saying "I have to do this or I have not lived."

Mjölnir is out there. Maybe for you its a dream, a job, a decision, or a commitment. Its the risk you've been unwilling to take. Its the jump for which failure seems too devastating. Its the phone call that you've been putting off for way too long. There is no time left for insecurity! The kingdom is suffering violence and its King is calling upon his warriors to return and reclaim what is rightfully theirs.

Kings are forged in times like these. So MAN UP, and call down the thunder...

Uncrippled Glory.

2011-05-09T10:43:00.000-07:00

When I was in college I tore my ACL at soccer practice a few days before we went to nationals. I had surgery. I went to physical therapy. I'm back to a hundred percent... able to play soccer and run as much as I want.

There's still a scar there on my knee though.

And I still can't fully bend my knee as far as I could before.

And sometimes when its cold outside, I get a tingly sensation on the front of my knee, where they took out a piece of my tibicular tendon. It doesn't hurt anymore, but I'm still sometimes reminded that there was once a wound there.

Deep wounds are like that. Its possible to fully recover from them but still have them, well, tingle from time to time.

A basic truth of the Bible, and of Christianity, is not that time heals wounds so we don't hurt... but that God uses wounds so that we become better people. Pain has a way of waking us up to what we have... rescuing us from a life of focusing on what we don't have. Pain has a way of sensitizing us to things that we'd previously been calloused towards, of opening eyes towards things to which we were previously blinded. C. S. Lewis said it this way: pain is "God's megaphone for rousing a slumbering world."

The Bible tells a story about one time when a man was healed of his paralysis by Jesus. The story goes that Jesus commanded the man to take his mat home with him. The man immediately picked up his mat, upon which he used to sit and beg. Often I get caught up in details in stories like this. Why did JEsus command that he take his mat? Why didn't the man just leave his mat there...after all, he didn't really need it anymore...he could walk! Its possible that he, in his poverty, wanted to take his mat for some other use. Its an interesting thought, though, to consider the possibility that maybe the reason he took home his mat after being healed was as a reminder...

...of the days when he used to sit at the gate of the city begging...
...of the shame he once felt...
...of the helplessness that he had to carry around with him every day...
...of the powerlessness that had reduced him to begging for food and money...
...of the smell of dried urine that he couldn't control...

I wonder if that's why Jesus told him to take his mat home with him...not for its practicality but as a reminder. This was his "I-once-was-lost-but-now-am-found" moment: the eternal reminder of the dakrness out of which he came. The visible commemoration of a deep wound he had once suffered but was cured. I wonder if every time the man looked at that mat, rolled up into a corner, sometimes forgotten and collecting dust, it caused him to remember at once both the severity of the pain he once had but also the glory-story that he could now tell because of it. His pain had enabled him to see Jesus more clearly and to enjoy the glorious memory of an erased past.

Jesus was in the business of healing people's wounds.

He also wanted to use their wounds for greater purposes...

...there are those of us who were told that time heals all, and things have definitely gotten better, but there are still scars and tingling sensations when its cold outside...points of numbness that feelings don't come back to. We can still run and jump and play but can't quite bend our knees as far as we once could. We would do well to remember that "those God greatly uses are those God greatly wounds," that suffering is often the prelude to glory, that pain is the pathway to peace, and that when you allow God to heal your wound it becomes not a dark chapter in need of sweeping under the rug, but the moment of your greatest glory and redemption. I wonder if that's why he told the man to take his mat home with him...

Do you have a wound?

Have you allowed God to heal it?

Do you have a 'mat' ?

BRB.

2011-04-30T11:23:00.000-07:00

"in my former book, Theophilus, I wrote about everything that Jesus began to do and teach until the day he was taken up into heaven..." Acts 1:1

It seems like everyone is familiar with and remembers the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus on Easter. These three parts of Jesus' life are often dissected, reflected upon, and celebrated. I always thought it curious that (at least American Protestant Christians) don't celebrate the ascension of Jesus. This was the moment in Luke 24 and Acts 1 where Jesus was taken up into heaven.

What a crisis for the disciples and the early Christians the Ascension must have been! All of a sudden, this flesh and blood man that they had relied upon as their leader, their example, and their Lord, was gone! What would become of them? How would this movement carry on? What were they supposed to do, now?

The book of Acts records the last words of Jesus before his Ascension. In these last words to his disciples, Jesus gives them a command and a promise. The command is to "do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift my Father promised, which you have heard me speak about." He was promising that they would receive the Holy Spirit. That even though he was about to leave the earth, his Spirit would always be with them, guiding them, empowering them, and leading them. His command to them was to "wait." How hard of a command that must have been for the disciples who had witnessed the risen Lord must have been absolutely ready to move forward and to...well...do something. Sometimes in spite of our eagerness to move and our willingness to serve, God simply calls us to wait. There are obvious decisions that we can make in our own ability in order to move forward, but "waiting" on God often brings about new perspectives and opportunities.

He also gives them a promise. "You will receive power, and you will be my witnesses." The promise is that something supernatural would come upon them as a result of waiting on the Lord, and they would be equipped for the great task of continuing the work of Jesus which he had previously began. Jesus was about to ignite a movement that transcended time and geographical location and physical reality. He was about to ignite a Church, a community of people filled with power who would "do even greater things" than even He had done while he was on earth.

And then, like that, he was gone. "Hid from their sight" the text says.

The implications of the Ascension are equally as mysterious and powerful as that of the death, burial and resurrection. Jesus' work will continue through his Church. His work is not finished, and the time of relying on the physical presence of Jesus was over for his disciples and for his community. It was time for them to continue to flesh out the life of Jesus through their actions, attitudes, choices, lifestyle, and boldness. The movement of Jesus transcended time and space. Ideologies, movements, and historical legacies are often immortalized in the departure of the person who championed them. Jesus had accomplished the work of the cross, and now the time had come for him to return to the glory that was originally his. It was time for the Jesus of earth to become the Christ of Heaven, over all time and history, perpetually empowering His Church through the power of his Spirit. Finally, the Ascension opens us up to the wonder that the next chapter will be better than the first. Jesus promised his disciples that they would perform even more wondrous works than he had done on earth because he was leaving. The ascension was the opening of a new chapter, the Church. Its as if Jesus was telling his followers "you ain't seen nothing yet...just wait till you see what I'm about to do through my Church." He will come back, the same way you have seen him leave. Death doesn't have the last word, and this world, through the power of the Holy Spirit and the faith of the Church is being renewed, redeemed, and recreated, and there will be a time when he comes back.

C. S. Lewis captures it the best in the Last Battle: "all their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on forever: in which every chapter is better than the one before." There is a hope beyond hopes, to which the Ascension speaks, that reminds us that we are invited to play a crucial role in the God-story Jesus is writing through his Church, and that our lives are only a shadow of glorious things to come, and that the very fact that Jesus left implies that he will return...

So June 2, 2011... lets reclaim Ascension Day.

The Difference Between Ugly and Beautiful.

2011-04-28T09:27:00.000-07:00

The line between "beautiful" and "ugly" is thinner than you think.

I've always thought that there was something inherently beautiful about obviously ugly things. Its what keeps me appreciating Tim Burton movies, Pugs, and weird experimental music like Radiohead, and other things that don't really conform to public standards of what makes something "beautiful." Ugly things often get forgotten, ignored, missed, neglected, and many times written off. I've written before somewhere about how the best kind of beauty is the kind that's not obvious... the hidden kind of beauty, the kind that only reveals itself to the attentive heart...the woman who wields it not as a cheap way to get the attention and approval of everyone around her, but as if it is her most sacred possession...a holy gift meant to be hidden and unveiled at moments where it can be used for good. C. S Lewis said it this way: "beauty is not democratic. She reveals herself more to the few than to the many."

For instance why do we call the traditional Friday every year where we remember the crucifixion of Jesus "good" ? Was it not one of the darkest hours of the New Testament, with the hero hanging on a cross? Why isn't it called "bad Friday"?

Because there's certain ugly things that possess in them an inherent and mysterious beauty...

Crosses were execution devices. The cynical part of me scoffs at centuries and millennia of church history that has "beautified" the cross. Gilded it with gold. Made it into an ornament...a trinket. But then there's part of me that sees it with different eyes, and I understand why its become the cherishes symbol of Christianity: it symbolizes sacrifice, love, and selfless service. Servant-love. Beauty, in its purest form.

It is a basic truth of life... or at least of Beauty and the Beast: that beautiful people are never too far from ugliness, and that ugly things become beautiful when they are loved. Love carries beauty with it, no matter how dark or sinister is the moment into which it is brought. That's why nobody ever tells someone that their newborn baby is ugly (although we have all seen some pretty ugly babies!) ... what makes that baby beautiful is the fact that he/she is loved ... and their very existence seems to prove it. Even the ugliest and darkest places, people, and moments in the world can at once be transformed to be the most beautiful, hopeful, and joyful when Love appears on the scene.

The difference is love.

Attention Seeking Leaders Hurt People.

2011-04-28T09:11:00.000-07:00

Did you ever see that submarine movie set in World War II with Matthew McConaughey and Bill Paxton called U-571? There's a scene where Lieutenant Andy Tyler is turned down for a promotion to be the captain of his own submarine. He later finds out that his commanding officer, Captain Dahlgren (Paxton) was the one who recommended that he not be promoted.

Tyler confronts Dahlgren, angrily claiming that he is ready to lead his own submarine, that he is more than qualified than anyone else...that he has an extensive knowledge of all the roles and jobs on the sub and cares so much about his men that he is willing to lay down his life for them.

Suddenly Captain Dahlgren asks him the question that causes him to reconsider everything. He looks at him and says this: "I'm not questioning your bravery. But are you willing to lay their lives on the line?"

At that moment, Tyler pauses and gets silent.

Dahlgren continues: "You see, you hesitate. As a captain you can't. You have to act. If you don't you put the entire crew at risk. Now that's the job. It's not a science. You have to be able to make hard decisions based on imperfect information, asking men to carry out orders that may result in their deaths. And if you're wrong, you suffer the consequences. If you are not prepared to make those decisions, without pause, without reflection, then you got no business being a submarine captain."

Now, to be fair, I've never really been a leader of a large organization. Leadership is something that's been pounded into me from a young age though, and seems to be a topic that keeps coming up in conversations with people that run in the circles in which I run.

You see, in college I used to think I wanted to be a "leader,” but then I realized that really all that I wanted was attention and a reputation. I’d jump at opportunities to be seen as a “leader,” but when it came to actually leading...actually putting others before myself when nobody could see or when there was no way that I could get the credit, I wanted nothing to do with that. I wanted to be a pastor, because that was where I could get the most attention. I didn’t actually want to pray for people behind closed doors. I didn’t actually want to do the hard work of shepherding and caring for people’s needs. I didn’t want the pressure of being a Godly example all the time to everyone around me.

Few leaders admit that. And their people suffer for it.

My eagerness to lead has quelled, partly because deep down I’d like to think that I genuinely care about the people around me enough to know that I ought not take leadership so lightly, and I ought never use it as a way to merely get attention. It is a stewardship ... Something God gives people that they must be faithful to, or he will remove them from it.

My prayer is that if you are a young leader, you will start to be honest about why you want to lead. Your motives may even appear on the outside selfless and courageous. But when the lives of others, the spiritual growth of others, the development of others, the opinion and perspective of church in others, the families of others... When those are all at stake...

...are you willing to lay their lives on the line?

The World Needs Your Courage...

2011-04-20T11:00:00.000-07:00

One of the first "epic" movies I ever remember seeing as a kid was Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. I was too young to criticize it for having the main protagonist be the only one without a British accent, or for Kevin Costner's overall bad acting ... I just remember it being one of two movies that my dad took me to as a kid ... that and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.

Over the last week for some reason the scene has been in my mind at the beginning of the movie in the prison in Jerusalem where Robin places his hand on the chopping block in place of another imprisoned Englishman ... "English courage," he says. Just before they chop of his hand, he yanks the rope the prison guard is holding and the swordsman chops off the other guys hand instead, and Locksley leads a daring escape.

English courage.

I'm not making an ethnocentric statement here. "English courage" has led to some really dumb things over the course of history ... its led to a lot of bloody wars ... to a lot of colonization, which as history will attest, always ends in violence towards natives. It caused the Crusades... the darkest hour of Christianity.

There is definitely a dark side to courage. Men often courageously move towards destruction...of self/others. But then there's a side to courage that reflects and awakens something in us that makes us fundamentally human.

There is a courage that willingly sacrifices for others... that puts oneself in the line of fire for the sake of others ... that charges into darkness in order to pierce it with the light. When I see that kind of self-sacrificial courage it has a tendency to clarify the truest part of me, and I think of all of us: the part that desires above all else to live a life that matters... to stand for something meaningful.

Its William Wallace on the scaffold shouting "Freedom" as his bowels are removed...using his last breath to champion the cause he dies for.

Its Major Heyward offering himself to be burned at the stake in front of the Mohawks in Cora's place in the Last of the Mohicans.

Its Leonidas in 300, refusing to kneel before King Xerxes and mocking him to his face..."today it will be known that few stood against many."

I'd venture to say that the number one thing that awakens people ... ignites movements ... catalyzes change, transformation, and metamorphosis is not "leadership" or "organization" or "planning" or "administration" or "strategy" or "programs" or "novelty" or "relevance" or "excellence" ..........

...its courage...

...men don't follow titles...they follow courage...and the greatest need in our world and culture is not more intelligent leaders, or more capable leaders or more disciplined leaders or more focused leaders.

What our world needs is more courageous leaders.

Those are the ones that we all want to follow...leaders who self-sacrificially risk in order to pierce darkness with light. My hope is that there is someone reading this who has an idea about what they want to do or be with their life but no one has given permission to them to do it, and have maybe even been met with constant opposition by people they respect who keep telling them "it'll never work," or "you're not ready." I want you know that the world needs your courage... the world needs your idea...

...the business you want to start...
...the girl you want to ask out...
...the conversation you've been meaning to have with your dad...
...the book you want to write...
...the product you want to design...
...the race you want to run...
...the person you want to invite to church...
...the forgiveness you want to give but never have...
...the job you want to pursue...
...the job you want to quit...
...the dream that wakes you up in the middle of the night...

Risk. I'll be there to follow you and so will a lot of other people.

The Stage is Seductive.

2011-04-18T18:33:00.000-07:00

When I was about 14, I was at a church camp and there was a preacher who was preaching out of Philippians 3 ... it says this:

"I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ, for whose sake I have lost all things..."

He asked the question "what is the all-consuming passion of your life?"

I remember watching the way that he spoke... there was nothing outwardly impressive about this guy. He was an older dude who didn't wear cool clothes or have tattoos or anything like that. There was nothing about him outwardly that made you look at him and think that he could even speak the same language as all the teens that were at this camp, but there was something about the way this guy talked that awakened something in me.

I remember walking outside of the assembly hall in which we had met and I remember looking up at the stars in the Colorado night sky and raising the white flag of surrender in my heart. That night, for lack of a better way of explaining it, I knew that I wanted to do what that guy did... I wanted to be a preacher... I wanted to talk in a way that lifted people's spirits, that joyfully announced hope to people sitting in darkness. I wanted to know the Jesus that this guy knew...and speak of Him with the passion and commitment that this guy had.

In high school that desire grew. I began to take some risks. I spoke at Younglife, at FCA, at various events, eventually at my high school graduation in front of 7000 people. In college I began to travel to different churches around Kansas and preach to small congregations in middle-of-nowhere Kansas. It energized me. It awakened me. It motivated me.

I wanted nothing more than to be a great preacher. I read all the books. I interviewed all the greats. I traveled to preaching conferences by myself in Missouri and Indiana, when I couldn't find anyone to go with me. I listened to audio tapes of great preachers constantly in my car. It had become my pursuit...

Then one day an old-timer whom I had sought for wisdom, guidance, and mentoring said something to me that totally changed my perspective on preaching... he asked me this question:

"Is the pulpit calling you to the sermon, or is the sermon calling you to the pulpit?"

I came to a realization that I was more enamored with the stage than I was with the message... that I would rather talk about Jesus in front of people than know him personally...

Its a question that's haunted me ever since.

In junior high, I wanted to be a preacher.
In high school, I wanted to be a good preacher.
In college, I wanted to be a great preacher.
Just out of college, in my first ministry job, I wanted to be better than anyone else at preaching.

I sense a shift inside me. I still want to be a preacher. But I want to be a follower of Jesus first. I want to know Him firsthand. I want his words and his message and his life burning so brightly inside of me that I cannot help but to speak those words to others.

What about you?

Do you HAVE to say something? Or do you HAVE SOMETHING to say? This world is filled with too many people who are living lives that they never chose for themselves, and championing messages that they themselves don't actually believe.

Are you in the job you're in because you ACTUALLY BELIEVE in what you're doing, or are you in it for a paycheck? For prestige? For status?

I want to be like George Whitefield... the famous preacher from the Great Awakening of America. Thomas Jefferson would get ridiculed by his friends for going regularly to hear Whitefield preach. "You don't actually believe what that guy is saying so why do you go listen?" Jefferson would reply "you're right, I don't believe what he's saying, but HE DOES."

I want to live my life in search of a story worth telling, a message worth hearing, and a gospel worth believing. I want to preach with actions first, and words second.

Stages are seductive. They carry with them the illusion of health, success, and progress, when in reality it is something that ought to be earned... ought to be stewarded faithfully ... ought to be accepted reluctantly and with humility...

Is the pulpit calling you to the sermon? Or is the sermon calling you to the pulpit?

Casino Heists and Clarity in Leadership.

2011-04-01T12:41:00.000-07:00

I love the scene in Oceans 11 where George Clooney meets with Matt Damon's character in the bar to ask him if he wants to be a part of the heist on the Bellagio, the MGM Grand, and the Mirage. All he does is put a plane ticket on the table in front of Linus, Matt Damon's character. Linus is puzzled: "who are you?" Danny Ocean: "I'm a friend of Bobby Caldwell's. For Linus, Bobby Caldwell could only mean one thing: a Vegas heist job. Danny looks intently at him: "You're either in or you're out, right now."

That kind of leadership is the kind that is rare today, the kind that is missing, and the kind that is critically needed: the kind that calls people to a clear commitment and a clear decision, and gives them the freedom to either accept or walk away. To many times, in leadership situations that I've observed, leaders don't call people to anything clear, and as a result, there is no accountability for thousands of directions that the people in their organization are going. Its no wonder to me that one of the most important leadership characteristics that is often talked about today is clarity. People need to know exactly what they're committing to, even if they don't know exactly how they are going to get there. Even though I'm young and with limited experience, it seems to me that people respond extremely well to clarity in leadership: that is, to clear directions and clear instructions in spite of uncertainty. For Linus, the challenge was very clear: we are stealing 100 million from three casinos in Vegas. Here's the plane ticket. You in?

Lack of clarity makes it hard to buy into a vision. I know several leaders who seem to have a "vision," or a dream of what they want to do, but lack the clarity that it takes to rally people around their cause. By clarity of course, I mean specifics about the end goal. If people have a clear view of the destination towards which they are heading, they will come up with ways to arrive there... people are smart like that.

I'm not John Maxwell, Andy Stanley, Steven Covey, or Zig Ziglar by a long shot... but I know that in my life and in my leadership and ministry at the church, I have a deep appreciate for and motivation to follow leaders that are able to give clarity in spite of uncertainty. As the saying goes: "as you gain clarity, you gain influence."

Pencil your plans. Write your vision and destination for your life and leadership in ink, so that you can say to people with full confidence

"are you in or are you out? Right now."

The Prose.

2011-03-20T22:36:00.000-07:00

The prose of unspeakable longings

Familiar archaic and fierce

Returns all at once without warning

With phrases intended to pierce

A face filled with fire and water

With droplets that fall to the floor

With knees calloused over from kneeling

And dreams that I dream of the door

The door of unsearchable wanting

Cracked open revealing a light

That shines from a world found in whispers,

Both suffering and endless delight

O prose and O voice that arrest me

I pray that you carry your call

Persisting to hearts that are bleeding

Destroying this crumbling wall

On this road I keep walking onward

The Prose remains hauntingly here

With calls that light beacons in darkness

Long awaited arrivals are near

Hosea. (part 4)

2011-02-28T21:56:00.000-08:00

"help me...please..." the words trailed off as he dropped the phone. For a long time he'd waited for this moment, rehearsing what he would say, trying to figure out what he would do. His heart and mind raced in a thousand different directions. Outside, the rain that patted against the window furiously could not compare to the storm that raged in his mind.

He bolted past the kids' rooms, wondering if he should wake them and take them with him, but he didn't want them to see her... not like this. He knew the gas station that she had told him she was at. He knew the kind of "work" that she'd done there in the past, and that it wasn't just a random street corner. Grabbing an umbrella and jacket from the coat rack, he stumbled outside and into his car.

The thunder boomed as he sped towards the gas station. The conversation that he had rehearsed a thousand times in lonely rooms and joyless dreams now seemed a muddled mess, and he found himself overcome with the strange sensation of being caught between furious anger and bitterness and a fiery blazing care and concern for this woman of his ... "his?" Did he really just think those words? Yes... though she'd been in the arms of other men, it was clear that she had always been his, fully, no matter what actions she committed, and no matter what vindictive responses he had given. She was his.

His car pulled up in the pouring rain to the parking lot of the gas station, and there she was, a silhouette hunched over in the light of a single lamp whose light glistened off the soaked concrete.

Out of the car emerged another silhouette in the light of the street lamp: that of a broken-hearted man about to face a moment of everlasting redemption or never ending rejection once again. The face of a woman appeared underneath a waterlogged hood peered upward filled with a look of dread and shame that was altogether new to him. He approached her as the thunder clapped once more, moved the umbrella over her, and stretched out his hand.

And that's where the story ends. The curtain comes down. The lights come up. People begin filing out of the movie theater. What? That's it?! What happened to the guy? To the girl? Did they get back together? Most people walk out... frustrated at the lack of closure and dismiss it as a waste of ten bucks. But then there are a few people with whom the question lingers... the deeper meaning... the emotions evoked ... the story ends without a resolution.

...which either means that its a bad story, or that its a story that's not over yet...

This is how it ends in the Bible...

This is the story of the man, Hosea, who God told to marry a prostitute and love her in spite of her unfaithfulness.

This is the story of the God, who did it to show his people the agony and the deep pain that He feels when his people 'prostitute' themselves out to other gods.

It ends with a broken-hearted God stretching out His loving arms once more to an unfaithful people.

It ends with a God, hands stretched out on a cross, reaching for the people that He calls His own, forgiving the men that crucified Him.

And the surprising part of all, is that its not just a story,

...its our story.

The ending remains yet to be written...

All we get is two silhouettes in the rain... a broken-hearted man stretching out His hand to His unfaithful wife...

Will it be a story of redemption? Or will it be a story of rejection?

Hosea. (part 3)

2011-02-25T09:54:00.000-08:00

*continued from Hosea. (part 1) and Hosea. (part 2)

...it had been nearly three months. Three months of agony, of sleepless nights tossing and turning, of wondering, regretting, wishing, hating, and of holes punched in the drywall of the basement. Emptiness. There was nothing left in him but an anger that constantly burned. It had become the comfort that fueled his bloodthirsty vendetta.

After that first night...that dreadful night of seeing her car parked in that driveway and walking in on them, there had been multiple encounters with other men. The worse thing about it all was that he knew two of the men ... one of them lived down the street ... the other he knew from church. Church of all places. He'd found out about it through one of the members of their small group. Why would she do all this? What had he done? Did she ever even care about him?

The agonies of unfaithfulness had driven him to the edge of sanity. And on the edge of that cliff he had stood peering into the chasm beyond, eyeballing every bar he drove by, pulling into the nearby pawnshop with cash in hand and sitting in the car, then driving off. The canyon beyond offered no return were he to jump, and he knew that the Thirsty Beast within him would stop at nothing to satiate its throat long parched from abstinence and accountability.

Everyone knew.

Most couldn't look him in the eyes. Not even at work. He'd probably not have done what he later did had he had someone to talk to ... someone to vent to ... but no one wanted to get messy. No one wanted to get involved. No one wanted to place themselves in the middle of his rage and speak healing into it. Several guys at work knew the line of work she was in when they had first gotten married. They'd seen her standing on the street corners. They'd seen her in the strip clubs. Even his closest friends at first had raised eyebrows when he began pursuing her. 'Are you serious?' they'd say. 'Don't you know about her?'

They'd never understand the startling reality that only he knew beyond all doubts.: a reality that caused him to burn deep down. Why had he felt so strongly at first that God wanted him to marry this woman? Was it really just his emotions? They had gone to pre-martial counseling. They had sought the advice of wise people... and he originally felt a strong confirmation about her... but agony tends to cause one to reconsider their own choices and faith, no matter what higher power they thought compelled them.

Then there was the pregnancies. He knew they weren't his children. He knew even standing in the hospital room when the boy was delivered. He remembered the hot flash of ferocious anger that came when he saw that the baby didn't even have the same skin color as his. The embarrassment. The shame. The surprised horror of staring into the face of the baby that didn't belong to him...

Everyone knew that too. They'd see the boy riding his tricycle down the street and no one knew who the father was. Then, a girl... again not his. More anger, then guilt over the thought of 'how can I ever love these children that don't belong to me?

She left him with the kids. No mother to take care of them. She was gone to other men, other encounters, other affairs. The kids continue to grow up, largely unaware that they were a constant living reminder of the deep wound and pain she had caused him.

Then one night, when the years had passed and proved that time doesn't heal and that some wounds run deep, long after he had put the kids to bed, he was woken once again in the middle of the night to the sound of a phone ringing.

"Hello?" He mumbled, his mind fresh out of dream world.

And the broken voice, that at once called forth memories of love, of desire, and of unimaginable agony could be heard on the other end...

"Hey... its me. Please help me..."

...to be continued...

Hosea. (part 2)

2011-02-19T08:28:00.000-08:00

...continued from Hosea. (part 1)

He awoke in the early hours of the morning, startled. Fumbling around in the dark of the bedroom, he reached his arms over to the other side of the bed. The sheets were empty...and cold. She'd been gone for awhile. His heart raced. Where would she have gone? What's happened? He tried to reassure himself with his thoughts thinking maybe she had just gone downstairs to sleep on the couch. After all, it did sometimes get hot in their bedroom. He glanced at the digital alarm clock... 2:45 AM. The carpet felt cold to his feet as he padded his way across the bedroom to the hallway, and down the stairs. The couch was empty. By this time, a feeling of deep dread began to well up within him ... the dread of the thing he had always sensed but had refused to acknowledge. And then he saw it.

The coatrack.

And hers was gone. Maybe she needed some late night medicine from Wal-Mart. His thoughts drifted momentarily back to the first time he met her...they immediately fell in love, starting dating. Two weeks into the relationship she got sick, and he was appointed to make late night Wal-Mart runs for Tylenol. She was a knockout: the kind of girl that captures attention. She was charming, full of life, and he loved her more than anything. The thought of how much he loved her collided in that moment with the dread of where he feared she had gone, and a sickening feeling welled up in the pit of his stomach.

The clues should have added up. The string of emails he had found. The random texts late at night. The time he woke up and she was on her laptop, on Facebook talking with someone. When he asked her, she immediately closed it and assured him it was noone.

"Where are you?" his phone vibrated as he texted her the words. No response. He grabbed his coat and his car keys and opened the front door into the brisk winter air. Snow covered the ground of their front yard. He began walking quickly towards his car. Just as he was getting in he saw the object of all his fears... the small little post-it note on the ground that shattered all his hope... on it was written an address. He knew the address. He knew who lived there.

He sped through the snow covered streets running stop lights and taking turns a bit too sharply towards his destination. It can't be true! I refuse to believe it! As he neared the street of his destination he knew that the moment he turned the corner he would know... whether the only woman he had ever loved was in the arms of another man. He approached the stop light at the intersection, and for a moment there was a stillness in his soul. Snowflakes continued to fall and melt on the defrosted windshield. All was silent except the whir of the engine and the wipers whooshing it off. His mind raced.

The light turned green.

He turned left onto the street and began driving down towards the house.

The memory of that moment would later be as clear and as sharp as glass. The Volkswagen. The truck. The hope of it being someone else's vehicle demolished by the sight of the familiar license plate.

He approached the house, now knowing that it was true. By this time, fear and hurt had mutated into anger ... rage ... and he shut of his headlights, pulled up to the driveway, and got out of his car...

...to be continued...

Precarious.

2011-02-19T00:57:00.000-08:00

I'm pretty sure I've written like three posts about this: C. S. Lewis wrote one time that we all walk a knife-edge between heaven and hell. At any moment we are one angry thought, one uncontrollable act of indulgence, one spiteful word uttered away from destruction. How awful and awesome a thought it is that every choice we make leads us down a path to one of two specific ends: one of unimaginable glory, and one of inescapable depravity.

Heaven and Hell in a lot of ways are a state of mind. There are people I know that can walk into any room, enter into any conversation or interaction and bring heaven with them. There are people who make life a living hell for everyone around them too. And most of us have moments of both, occilating between the two like a fan.

How precarious this road! Lord, have mercy down this road that I must travel...

Four Things Jesus Did on the Cross. (and why they're changing my life)

2011-02-18T10:11:00.000-08:00

Its an overcast morning here in Scottsdale. I went over to the Kierland Starbucks with the hopes of finding a spot to sit down and write, but the place was packed. The line was out the door. So here I am in my office writing about anger and forgiveness.

I'm angry right now... and I can't shake it. I'm not usually one to play the "victim" card... if anything can be said about me its that I own up to my own crap and I'll go toe to toe with anyone who says otherwise...but this time its hard to not see the situation as something that was done to me ... against me. And the hard part is I know I should forgive, I know I ought to forgive, but the reality is that I do not will it. Its not right, but sometimes I see my anger as my solace and justification.

Then I think about those Amish families who went to the funeral of the gunman who killed their children to pray for/with the family of the gunman.

And the couple who adopted the kid who raped and killed their little girl.

And the Egyptian Christians surrounding the Muslim's and praying/protecting them in the news.

And the Nazarene who stretched himself out on a cross and cried out "father forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing."

And the Bible passage that talks about how the extent to which we forgive others is the extent to which we are walking the reality of God's forgiveness.

And the class I'm teaching this weekend, about the four things that Jesus accomplished on the cross...

When he was crucified, God's wrath was propitiated. God was angry at us because of our sin, but he provided Jesus as the atoning sacrifice and placed his wrath upon him... the "chastisement that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed." Jesus was the sacrificial lamb of God who "takes away the sins of the world."

When he was crucified, we were redeemed from sin. In the Bible "redemption" is a word that is used for the price paid for the release of prisoners. God paid the price of Jesus' blood to buy us back from slavery and addiction and darkness. He purchased us with the high cost of his only Son. Even knowing that there would be people that openly rejected that redemption, he did it anyway.

When he was crucified, our relationship with God was reconciled. Before, we were enemies of God but Jesus on the cross has broken the walls of hostility and provided a way for us to have access to the Father. We can now 'approach the throne of grace with confidence' because we have a great 'High Priest' who has gone through the heavens. We can now have a relationship with God to whom we were once estranged.

When Jesus was crucified, we were justified. Standing in the courthouse of heaven before the Righteous Judge himself, who had every reason to condemn us, has declared us "not guilty" through the blood of Jesus. Our condemnation is taken away. Our guilt is taken away. There is "no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. The verdict is in. It is finished. I stand innocent, washed of my past stains, and declared to be righteous through the Cross.

That's the good news that I try to carry to people... to students.

But I'm still angry at this person.

If I really believed these things I so passionately preach, shouldn't it be easy to forgive? Shouldn't it be a simple step of gratitude, knowing that "he who has been forgiven much, loves much"?

Its not easy. But I'm comforted by the fact that I have a Savior who knows what its like to feel betrayed, to be spat upon, to be misunderstood, lonely, abandoned, frustrated, and wounded. He knows what its like to get cheated upon by the people that he loves, every single day. He knows what its like to have a heart that breaks for people who won't listen, won't apologize, won't acknowledge their rebellion.

And what does he choose to do with all that? For some supernatural reason, I don't know why, He still chooses to forgive, and not just lip-service forgive, but stretch-myself-out-on-a-cross forgive.

I want that kind of love.

I want that kind of power.

I want that kind of freedom.

I want that kind of heart.

These realities cause me to fight within myself to forgive. I'm unsure if I'll succeed, but without these realities, I wouldn't even be fighting...I'd be crucifying all sorts of people within me. There is a greater power at work who paid a high price for me and He is waging war against the impostor in me, whose compulsion is to wound, to cripple, to hate, to emotionally murder. And there is a haunting and powerful instinct that that Greater Power is Jesus Himself, who knows...who understands...and who in the end will ultimately be victorious.

What about you? Have you ever had to forgive someone? What helps you to forgive?

Dice-Rolling.

2011-02-16T10:08:00.000-08:00

Humor me for a minute...

I typically gravitate towards people who are risk-takers.

I want to be a risk-taker...trying new things, taking new risks, talking to new people in public places, putting myself constantly on the edge of life. Another way of describing it is that I have an addiction of sorts... I'm addicted to semi-controlled danger. The world is filled with too many critics and not enough contributors... and far to often I'm more of a critic. I want to be a contributer. I want to be a part of a community of people who are starting new things, coming up with new ideas, constantly changing, moving, growing, expanding, shrinking, deciding, advancing. I also want to be that kind of a person.

I want mediocrity to be my only fear. I want to have a greater distaste for missed opportunities than I do for failure.

Risk-takers usually have the best stories to tell.

If there was one risk that you could take this week in order to become a better person, what would it be? A phone call that you need to make? A conversation you've been wanting to have? A decision you've been putting off? A girl you've been wanting to pursue?

Do it. Roll the dice. And tell me your story.

Redboxes, Chips and Salsa, and Being Single on Valentines Day.

2011-02-14T18:14:00.000-08:00

Had a great weekend at camp this weekend with the teens from CCS. We went bowling, played some Presidents, lit a few fires, and made some late night N-and-Out runs. Plus I got to speak ... always a privilege. Then we got home and to my surprise I realized that Valentines Day had snuck up on me, unawares.

Everyone used to talk about Valentines Day as if it was this horrible thing for single people. Up until last year, I'd always been single on Valentines Day and it never bothered me... I never really cared. But, amongst the many positives that come out of failed attempts at intimacy with another person is the fact that it whets your appetite for it. You realize what you've been missing out on. Its like the first time I discovered Redbox... "man, I should've been doing this all along!"

As I've talked with several people around my age (26), I hear the same tension: the tension between having a huge desire to meet someone and the tension between being socially acceptable and not 'coming across as desperate.' This twenty-something phenomenon is something that's new to me. You're not in college anymore, but you're also not in the same bracket as the majority of people around you that are getting married or dating. If you're a Christian and you go to church, you get looks like you're some sort of alien or something because you're not married (see Jon Acuff's blog from this morning on awkward "you're single?!" conversations you have at church). The socially typical time for you to meet someone, fall in love, and get married has come and gone, or is almost gone, and you're left coming up with excuses of why you're not married: "I'm career driven," "I'm picky," "I haven't met the right person," ... all things you tell yourself, and maybe they're true, but they don't satiate or quiet the deep desire that you have that society and culture has taught you to be ashamed of ... the desire to be intimate with another person.

Or maybe I'm just projecting myself onto you... :)

Either way, we all hunger for intimacy. And I never knew I hungered for it until I had a piece of it and lost it. This deep hunger is both a gift and a curse. It is a curse when people chase after it in empty ways ... in things that on the outside promise to satisfy that hunger but in the end just kind of leave them feeling empty and numb...kind of like eating chips and salsa on an empty stomach. Sex will solve it, they say. A boyfriend or girlfriend will solve it. Romance will solve it. So we have sex and wake up feeling further away from that person and not closer. We date and realize romance, while fun and exciting, if pursued as ultimate is really more of a fascade.

This desire is a gift when it is embraced unashamedly and viewed as the fuel that burns within us and drives us to love other people deeply. Its a gift when we start to see it as the compass that points our hearts to God.

This post is for all of my single friends and for every single person that for whatever reason has been led to be ashamed of that desire ... led to "want less" than to "want more," to apologize for feeling such a deep desire. Your desire is a holy gift that will find its supreme fulfillment in the Creator of all desire. Its meant to point you towards the author of intimacy ... to Love Himself ...

"Shouldn't we be more content? Perhaps, but contentment is never wanting less ; that's the easy way out. Anybody can look holy if she's killed her heart; the real test is to have your heart burning within you and have the patience to enjoy what there is now to enjoy; while waiting with eager anticipation the feast to come... contentment can only happen as we increase desire, let it run itself out towards its fulfillment, and carry us along with it..."

So while you are waiting... love and be loved. Your Heavenly Father created you with that desire to have a boyfriend/girlfriend, husband/wife. It was he who said "it is not good for man to be alone," and knows what you need before you even ask. He clothes the flowers of the field with splendor, will he not clothe you and take care of your needs, his sons and daughters?

I will never be ashamed of my desire to get married someday to a wife who loves God more than me, to journey towards God together because I know that if I peel away the layers of that desire, in the middle of it all is a desire for God Himself, the only source of true intimacy. And should he choose to give me the gift of a wife someday there will be great rejoicing! :) But I know that marriage is only a foreshadowing of the intimacy, fulfillment, and delight that I was created to find in God himself, and one day I will realize the Ultimate Redbox: what I was missing out on all along...

...I'll finally realize why the metaphor the Biblical authors chose to use for Heaven is a Wedding Feast...

"Heaven," wrote Jonathan Edwards, "is a world of love, where God Himself is the fountain." If you are single on this Valentines Day, my hope and prayer is that you are drinking from the Fountain.

The Thing Behind the Thing.

2011-02-10T15:39:00.000-08:00

Most of the time, there's more going on than meets the eye.

Have you ever been in a conversation with someone and they give you several reasons for why they are making a certain decision but you get the sense that there is some emotional issue under the surface that is driving them to come up with all these reasons?

An important skill in life, and especially in leadership is learning to discern what the "thing behind the thing" is. There are the reasons people give for their decisions, behavior, and choices, but then there are the feelings underneath the reasons that often govern those decisions.

Its especially important to discern those things within yourself... why are you dating that girl, really? Why are you taking that job, really? Why are you buying that car, really? Why are you leaving your faith, really? A lot of times we invent justifications for our lives that for aren't true nor are even logical. Many times beneath a decision is an emotional motivation.

For instance: in relationships, there have been people in my life where whenever I see them, I have an immediate, negative emotional reaction. Sometimes it is just a flash, but sometimes its a soundtrack that always plays in the background... and that emotional distaste for that person causes me to make decisions or "logical" judgements or criticisms about that person, when really deep down it was an emotional thing that may be rooted in my own insecurity. I was talking with a friend about this the other day, and the phrase he used to describe it is this: the thing beneath the thing.

Its important to study it, because often YOU are the hardest person to be truthful with.

And if you do realize that emotional reaction... you have to remember that you can't really attack an insecurity until you label it. That's why it is critically important for every leader to be a student of the "thing behind the thing." A lot of times, the conflicts you are having with people are more "personal" than you would like to admit, and there is an underlying emotional issue that is causing you to make all these rational justifications and arguments. Label that flash of emotion. What is it? Anger? Jealousy? Resentment? Inadequacy? That's when you can begin to attack it with the truth.

Let's stop lying to ourselves and to others. Label that "thing." Then you can start listening, leading, and loving from a place of honesty and health.

"Immediately Jesus knew in his spirit what they were thinking in their hearts..." Mark 2:8

Three Sixteen.

2011-02-08T17:54:00.000-08:00

John, three sixteen. Its the verse most people know, even the irreligious... "for God so loved the world that he gave his only Son that whoever believes in him shouldn't not die but live forever." It is the simplest and most basic summation of the Christian gospel... the message which preachers, teachers, bishops, leaders in the church have been trying to transmit for two thousand years.

Have you ever read the story that surrounds John three-sixteen?

Its about a guy named Nicodemus who comes to Jesus in the middle of the night. Curious time to come... most scholars think it was because Nicodemus, being a member of the Jewish ruling council, had his reputation on the line and didn't want his buddies to know that he was coming to see this .... insurgent...

Nicodemus starts off with a great line: "we know you are a teacher who has come from God, for no one could do the miracles you are doing if God were not with him." To the acute imagination, you can almost hear the desperation in his voice. Here is a Jewish leader, who knew the Scriptures inside and out, who probably lived a life that kept all the commandments of the law, who still feels as if he is missing something.

Jesus cuts to the chase... "you can't enter the kingdom of God unless you're born anew."

Its an idea that's all over the New Testament. Peter talks about being born anew by God's mercy (1 Pet. 1:3), of an imperishable seed and not a perishable one (1 Pet. 1:22, 23). James talkes about God giving birth to us through the "Word of truth" (James 1:18). Paul's letter to Titus mentions baptism as the "washing of rebirth," (Titus 3:5), and also to the Corinthians about how if any person is in Christ it is as if they have been created all over again. The idea is drastic, radical, irrevocable change.

Nicodemus knew of this change, and knew that it was necessary: "How can a man be born if he is old? Surely he can't re-enter his mothers womb?" It appears as if he is taking Jesus' statement literally, but Nicodemus would've been well aware of the "new birth" that Jesus was talking about. In his question to Jesus there is a deep, unexplainable longing. He knows of the concept of "new birth." Its like he's saying to Jesus: "seriously?! I know that it requires radical change... I hear you talking about being 'reborn,' you talk about this drastic change that people need to undergo, but its impossible! You might as well ask me to crawl back into my mother's womb as an old man! How is this birth possible?"

Characteristic of Jesus, he responds with another hard to understand statement: "the wind blows where it pleases. You see the results of it, but you don't know where it came from. Its the same way with everyone born of the Spirit...."

Nicodemus had seen the results of the wind... the Spirit of God. He had seen the miracles. He had seen the healings, the excorcism, lame people being made to walk and blind people recieiving their sight...he had heard the sound of the wind...rumors of the prensence of God in his very midst...

Then Jesus reminds him of a strange example from the Old Testament: "just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert so the son of Man must be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life." Its a story found in Numbers 21. God had delivered the Israelites from Egypt and they were complaining and grumbling and wanting to go back because they were being bitten...by snakes. God told Moses to lift up a snake in his hand, and that everyone who looked to the snake would be healed of their poisonous snake bites. It didn't make any sense to the Israelites... how could looking at a snake heal them of their snake bites? It must've seem like a ridiculous request to the them....

...almost as ridiculous as saying that looking to a crucified carpenter would give people eternal life...

...which is exactly what the next verse, the most famous verse in all the Bible says...John three-sixteen. "For God so loved the world that he sent his only Son that whoever believes in him should not die but live forever."

In Nicodemus, we find a man who sees the effects of Jesus' life and miracles... he "hears the sound of the wind," the powerful work of God through Jesus. He is a man who is deeply longing for something that we all long for: a new beginning...radical transformation and change... and we find Jesus speaking into that longing with an impossible promise. It is the same promise that he offers to people today and throughout all ages, that whoever looks to the Son can be created anew and experience a phenomenal new birth into a life of wholeness, of freedom, of beauty, and of life eternal. And what on the outside must have seemed illogical to Nicodemus and to you and I ... that a crucified man so many years ago could pay for the sins of the world and could light a path to new beginnings: it may just be the means chosen by the "Wild One whose image we bear" for our healing and wholeness.

"but I, when I am lifted up from the earth will draw all men to myself..." John 12:32

The wind is blowing. Do you hear it?

Irene.

2011-02-02T21:35:00.000-08:00

I met Irene this weekend. I met her in Minnesota... unexpected of all places, amidst the business of the downtown Minneapolis corporate universe. I went up there for a conference with my dad over the last few days. She was there attending the conference too. I first ran into her at the conference cafe outside of the bookstore. Needless to say, it was love at first sight. She took my breath away... she sent my world spinning, she immediately gave me hope that I hadn't felt in a long time. I want to tell you about how "beautiful" she was, but I fear that to say that she is beautiful would be to fail to give her justice, like trying to say the ocean is big. Ever since that first encounter, I couldn't stop thinking about her. It seemed like no matter where I went, she was all over the place...I'd run into her while walking from our hotel across the Skyways to the convention center, I'd see her sitting near us during the main sessions. We even found ourselves in the same elevator one time. Irene had a demeanor about her, where even though everyone else seemed to be hurrying to their skyscrapers and jobs, or rushing toward the next session, she had a stroll that spoke contentment, comfort, fulfillment, and freedom...I noticed it immediately.

Its funny how you meet someone when you least expect it. The conference was all about prayer. I'd been listening as one of the speakers told stories about answered prayer and the adventure of what a life of dependancy on God looks like. I'd been listening to stories about Robert Murray McCheyne, a Scottish preacher who died at the age of 29 but whose legacy lives and inspires today... how he'd spend 4 hours a day pouring himself out in prayer before God. I read a book in my hotel room by E. M. Bounds about how our lives and our leadership is completely devoid of any kind of power unless we are constantly on our knees before God. While being barraged with the message that I am absolutely, totally dependent on God... that's where I met her.

I'd even been praying myself. A lot. About raw stuff... not prayers filled with programmed phrases, nor prayers about things that don't matter, but prayers about depression, pain, loneliness, isolation, and anger. I prayed prayers of repentance from sinful fixations I've allowed to dominate my life. I prayed my pain to God, my fears to God, my insecurities to God, my frustrations to God, and my failures to God. I prayed small prayers... that I would win the iPad at the drawing (I didn't), that there would be a Caribou coffee around the next corner (there was). I prayed big prayers... send-people-into-the-harvest, raise up a generation of leaders kind of prayers.

Irene, "eirene" is the Greek word for "peace." "Present your requests to God... and the PEACE of God which transcends all understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus." The promise of the New Testament is that when you pray God gives you peace. I'm not sure when or why it happened, but sometime in the last few days I have sensed a huge weight being lifted from my shoulders. I feel peace, for the first time in a long time. I feel contentment and rest that I can't explain apart from God answering my prayers for healing and hope. I'm energized and reminded that there is something unexplainable about prayer ... that its God's way of unleashing his power, healing, and peace in a person's life.

Do you know Irene?

Can't wait to introduce you to her.

The Exchange... (part 2)

2011-01-29T07:35:00.001-08:00

Met with this old timer the other day… old retired pastor… “arranged” kind of meeting if you follow me. Probably 60. He had a soft, raspy, cackling voice…the kind that keeps you waiting for them to clear their throat but they never do. He had a Santa Claus demeanor about him too, as if this was his year-round job when it wasn’t the Christmas season. There was a tender severity in his voice that was at once both comforting and intimidating. I started talking. He started interrupting. I starting talking again. He didn’t let me get away with any maybes or kind ofs. He kept asking questions like “is it or isn’t it?” After a half hour he leaned it real close and his voice lowered till it was slightly above a whisper like there was someone else in the room trying to eavesdrop.

“You’ve got a lot of pain, my man.”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“You guess? Or you do?”

“I do.”

“Ever tried letting Jesus heal it?”

Silence. “Depends on what you mean by that.”

“I mean have you ever been intimate with God about the specific things that are causing you to hurt? Kind of like David in the Psalms, how he cries out to God out of anger, pain, fear, and insecurity. See, I think that when you are intimate about your deepest pain before God in prayer, when you share with him the specifics… somewhere in there, an exchange happens where God speaks healing into you.”

“I guess it can’t hurt to try…”

“Ever read Psalm 34?”

“Yep its one of my favorites.”

“Remember what it says? God has a special sensitivity ‘to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit? He knows that the place where you are at is a terrible place to be, and over you he is now keeping watch. Do you believe that?”

“No, to be completely honest. It sure doesn’t feel that way.”

“Well I believe it, and let me tell you, I’ve been through a lot. Some people carry pain for years. They never heal from it. I’ve talked to hundreds of pastors dealing with insecurity and pain. I believe that when you lay yourself bare and surrender that to Jesus, there is an exchange that takes place…that exchange is mysterious and incomprehensible, but somehow, beyond all hopes, Jesus begins to heal you.”

"Have you experienced that in your own life?"

"You have no idea..."

The Exchange... (part 1)

2011-01-28T08:33:00.000-08:00

I woke up this morning feeling pain. Not physical pain… sometimes I wonder if that might be easier to deal with because at least its measurable… treatable in a lot of cases. I’m talking about deep pain, the kind that constantly plays in the background…the embarrassing kind… the kind you don’t want to tell people about because you don’t want to be seen as the guy who is always throwing a pity party. I laid in bed, telling God about my pain, asking him to heal my heart, asking him to free me from it, to give me hope and energy and joy. I have to surrender before I ever get out of bed or I literally won’t make it through the day.

Its become somewhat of a regular occurrence for me in the mornings. Vivid memories of things people said, of stabs of rejection and loneliness, and of seemingly unshakable guilt, sorrow, and regret. I glance at my phone hoping someone might have texted me encouraging words in the middle of the night randomly, but the screen of my iPhone simply shows the time, laughing at me and telling me that my hope won’t be found in friends. I used to be able to count on my phone for encouragement… texts coming all the time, people wanting to hang out, friends surrounding me like space heaters in a freezing cold basement, but nowadays there is no one. The nights of scrolling through my contact list looking for one person who will listen and maybe even understand have become too numerous to count. There are moments where I work up enough courage to be the pursuer but my attempts are met with quick answers, dodged hangouts, and cold busyness with time for everyone else but me. I’m the leper. The unclean one. Why would anyone want to be around me? Nobody wants to be around hurting people… people whose hope and energy is diminishing by the day.

I hear the voice of people I respect: “hurting people hurt people.” The book I’m reading about “Safe People” accuses me too… am I an unsafe person? Do I have character problems? Its not so much what people say that accuses me, but what they don’t say and do.

I hear the imagined voices of those around me “Luke you need to figure yourself out so that you can be healthy in your life and in your job,” “You need to quit being selfish…you’re making this all about you.” “Quit playing the pity party and go live your life.” “Get over it…don’t be insecure…you’re second guessing yourself: that’s insecure thought patterns…” I counsel myself over and over again with the right answers, but I’m at least wise enough to know the futility of seeking the right answers to the wrong questions. My heart cries for company, but deep down I know company won’t heal me…it definitely didn’t for Job. I long for connection, friendship, a tribe to call my own. I have a history of failed attempts at vulnerability and I’m a withdrawer … two things that work together to cripple hope. And who posts all this stuff on a blog anyway? Shouldn’t you just tell people you trust and pretend that everything is okay in the public eye? Desperation drives men to do drastic things.

This is a hard one to post. I’m hurting, really bad…maybe worse than ever before. And what compounds it is how alone I am most of the time. The only hope I have is the glimmer of a feeling deep down that this is a necessary chapter in a grand plot, and not the end of the story...

The Fighter.

2011-01-19T08:03:00.000-08:00

**spoiler alert** I recently saw the movie The Fighter with Mark Wahlberg and Christian Bale. It definitely wasn’t what I expected going into it… there were only a handful of actual fight scenes. Bale plays Dickie Eklund, a washed up former boxer whose claim to fame is allegedly “knocking down” Sugar Ray Leonard. Dickie is a cocaine addict who lives in a crack house and has basically thrown away his life. His younger brother Micky Ward, played by Wahlberg, is a young aspiring boxer who frequently seeks out his older brother for training and advice. The story is riveting… more about the brothers’ relationship than about boxing. When Dickie proves to be a liability to Micky’s career, Micky cuts him off, for his own good and for the good of Micky’s boxing career. Dickie is sent to prison and Micky loses all trust for his brother and for his family who seems to be more out for their own interests than for his. He decides to take his career into his own hands, thus alienating himself from his family and most importantly his best friend and brother.

Without giving away too much, I think the reason I liked the movie so much is that in the end the story is more about fighting for something much more important than a boxing championship or career: its about fighting for reconciliation. Fighting to keep relationships together. Fighting to restore misused and abused loyalties and trust.

In one of the most famous sermons in history, the Sermon on the Mount, found in the Bible in Matthew chapter 5, Jesus of Nazareth stood on a hill overlooking the Sea of Galilee and began to list of character qualities of people that were ‘fit’ for the Kingdom of God… and the things that he listed must have been nothing short of surprising to the vast crowd that was listening. One of the qualities he listed was this:

“blessed are those who work for peace, for they will be called the children of God” (Matt. 5:9). Another translation says “blessed are the peacemakers…” (NIV)

For some reason I’ve always thought this synonymous with “peacekeepers.” But that’s simply not the case. Peacekeepers keep peace at all costs. Peacekeepers don’t confront if it will cause a problem. Peacekeepers don’t fight battles that need to be fought in order to achieve peace; they don’t ruffle feathers. Peacekeepers only goal is to promote human happiness and well-being. The word here for “peacemakers” in the Greek text is a word that is used only once in the entire Bible. Its the word “eirenopoios.” It comes from two words: eirene, meaning “peace,” and “poieo” meaning to make or do. Antony used this word in his great speech to describe himself after murdering Caesar. Peacemaker.

I remember the movie First Knight where Sean Connery played King Arthur and Richard Gere played Lancelot (reminiscent of Robin Hood: Prince of Theives where Kevin Costner was the only one without an English accent … and Sean Connery plays King Richard at the end). There’s a scene where Arthur is sitting with his knights at the round table debating on whether they should go to war. Sean Connery stands with a fiery look in his face and proclaims “there is a peace that is only to be found on the other side of war, and when that war comes, I will fight it!”

Peacemakers. Disinterested parties that come between two opposing forces in order to make peace. People who put themselves in the line of fire in order to pacify tensions, bitterness, or rivalry…those are peacemakers. People who are willing to fight for reconciliation…fight for peace. Jesus says that those people are God’s sons because they are like Him.

Its Jacob in Genesis 33 initiating reconciliation with his brother Esau, being commended for “wrestling with God and man and overcoming.”

Its Martin Luther King standing on a podium saying “I have a dream, that one day on the red hills of Georgia sons of former slaves and sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood.”

Its Nelson Mandela refusing to fire any white employees from his administration after taking power despite years of oppression and hatred.

Its Micky Ward, giving his crack addict brother a second chance, a third chance, and a fourth chance then restoring him at the end as his trainer once again.

Its Jesus, hanging on a cross, crying out “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing,” taking upon himself the punishment we all deserved, becoming the “mediator of a new covenant,” the go-between for God and man, whose blood “speaks a better word” than the blood of Abel…the blood of revenge, jealousy, and anger.

Blessed are those willing to risk themselves for the sake of making peace.

Blessed are those who fight for it.

Do you?

Quickened.

2010-12-20T11:47:00.000-08:00

Gotta love Mondays. Most people hate 'em, but for me its my day off: the day where I get to indulge myself in mindless activities without a shred of guilt... camping out at Starbucks early morning for some recreational reading, going out to breakfast, going running, writing a blog like this one, hiking, watching movies, having a late night campfire and a celebratory cigar. Its a day of rest, of checking out from productivity and progress and simply enjoying life.

This morning I was reminded of an incredible moment in the New Testament. William Barclay calls this "one of the immortal short stories of the world." Its the story of the two men at the end of the Gospel of Luke in the Bible who were walking away from Jerusalem disappointed because Jesus had just been crucified and they "had hoped that he was the one who was going to redeem Israel." They are bewildered... disillusioned... giving up...walking away from Jerusalem after Jesus died, back towards their home in Emmaus, a town outside of the city. All of a sudden, a stranger walks up beside them on the road and asks them what they are talking about.

At first the presence of the stranger seems an annoying interruption to the welcomed isolation of their disappointment and gloom, but as he begins talking to them, they are encouraged and their hearts are lifted.

Something about what the stranger says moves them. Something within them quickens, and as the sun is setting they invite him in to talk more of the matter. Interestingly enough, its during the breaking of bread that their eyes are opened, and they realize that the stranger is the resurrected and risen Jesus himself who has been walking alongside them the whole time. Mysteriously, the stranger "vanishes" from their sight. I love their response: they immediately get up and head back to Jerusalem to tell of what has happened.

I have to wonder about this story: why did Jesus wait until the end to reveal himself? Why did he let them walk along that sunset road to Emmaus in their sorrow and disappointment? Why didn't he show them it was he right at the beginning? I think that's what I find so beautiful in this story is the age-old truth that God's greatest appointments with us are in the disappointments of our lives. To coddle our journey through those times with the unbridled gift of his presence would be to rob us of the potential faith it will produce ... the very sunset of his absence makes possible the sunrise of a knowledge of his presence even when we don't feel it.

Truth be told, a lot of times I find myself walking along a sunset road ... filled with sorrow, disillusionment, a sadness. Sometimes life happens in ways that leaves me frustrated, hurt, and resigned, and I find myself walking away from community, from my beliefs, from hope, towards the sunset. Sometimes its merely my disposition to over-analyze life and assume the worst of people's intentions feeling as if the whole world is against me. This morning my eyes are opened to the reality that as a follower of Jesus I don't walk towards a sunset... I walk towards a sunrise... a new beginning, a new hope, a new start, and a new life.

Not sure if any of this resonates with you, but its my hope that if you find yourself walking along the sunset road of bewilderment and shattered expectations you'll be alert and aware because you might look back on it one day as a time of radical transformation and a time where Jesus was indeed walking with you and you didn't know it. The sunrise awaits.

Running Out of Crosses.

2010-12-16T23:15:00.000-08:00

"Anyone who isn't ready to pick up their cross and follow me isn't worthy to be my disciple." Jesus to a group of Jewish people in the first century A. D.

"By nightfall, we'll all be on crosses." Lucius Vorenus to Titus Pullo in the HBO TV show Rome.

Christians have sanitized the commitment that Jesus originally called people to. Can you imagine being a Jew that was well aware of all the Jewish revolts against the Roman Empire that had ended in hundreds, sometimes even thousands of people getting crucified? Flavious Josephus, a Roman-Jewish historian wrote in his Wars of the Jews, which chronicled the Jewish rebellions from about 100 BC till about 70 AD about what they would do to the Jews:

"they were first whipped then tormented with all sorts of tortures before they died, and were crucified before the walls of the city. This miserable procedure made Titus to greatly pity them, while they caught every day five hundred Jews; nay, some days they caught more; yet it did not appear to be safe for him to let those that were taken by force to go their own way; and to set a guard over so many would be to make such as guarded them useless to him. The main reason why he did not forbid that cruelty was this, that he hoped Jews might perhaps yield at the sight, out of fear lest they might themselves afterwards be liable to the same cruel treatment. So the soldiers out of wrath and hatred they bore the Jews, nailed those they caught, one after one way, and another after another, to the crosses, by way of jest; when their multitude was so great, that room was wanting for the crosses, and crosses wanting for the bodies." Josephus, Wars of the Jews, written about AD 75.

They crucified so many Jews that they ran out of crosses.

Needless to say, if I was a first-century Jew, and a guy came along claiming to be the fulfillment of all the prophecies of the ancestors of my faith and then called people to pick up their cross and follow him, I'd be pissed.

Seriously? That's what they do to foreigners, rebels, and criminals ... don't you realize that Jesus? Are you freaking kidding me? You want me to rebel against Rome and get nailed to a cross for it?

But Jesus persists: "unless you take up your cross, you're not worthy to be my disciple."

Its more than just having a passionate, illogical disposition to martyrdom for Jesus' sake , "dying for Jesus!" as some would say.

Its more than just being prepared to carry the burdens of life's little frustrations and pressures ... "crosses to bear" as some would say it.

What Jesus is saying is that if your heart isn't ready to abandon all accolades, reputations, identities, privileges, even its own life, you are not ready to follow Jesus. If you're not ready to be a complete failure in the eyes of everyone around you, if you're not ready to be a public embarrassment and shame, you're not ready to follow him.

That's offensive to Jews.

That's offensive to Romans.

That's especially offensive to Americans.

But that's what Jesus calls people to. Not the ornamented, decorated, gilded trinket that we have made it into, but the crude, splintered, blood spattered crossbeam upon which we all must die if we are to truly live. That's the hardest part about the teachings of Jesus ... the only way to life is death, and the only way to spiritual power and glory is suffering. The promise on the other side of the cross is freedom. Spiritual power. Love. Truth. Beauty. Glory. Forgiveness. Peace. Life. Hope.

Are you prepared to be a loser according to the values of this world in the eyes of your church? Your family? Your co-workers? Your classmates? Are you prepared to go wherever God wants you to go and do whatever God wants you to do regardless of personal, emotional, physical, psychological cost to yourself? Are you ready to join a movement of which the only logical outcome is getting nailed to a cross?

That's tough. Sometimes I'm not sure I am either...

Vestiges of Lost Glory.

2010-12-02T20:43:00.000-08:00

I set a new record for myself tonight: I ran 8.1 miles (at least according to mapmyrun.com, but that didn't include the loop under the overpass). I've literally never run that far in my life. If you would've asked me two months ago whether I would ever run that far in my life, I'd probably have told you no. But I signed up for the half-marathon and having that goal in my mind has been forcing me to go running a couple times a week.

Its pretty cool running through the neighborhoods of northwest Phoenix at sunset. There's this park around the corner from my house with a man-made lake in it bordered to the west by a huge wall that separates it from the freeway. Huge palm trees line the back side of the like in between the wall and the water. Whenever I turn the corner towards the park about a mile and a half into my run, I see the silhouettes of the palms against the sunset fire of colors, and all that combined with the faint whooshing of cars somewhere beyond the wall creates a moment that I don't appreciate enough. The other night I had just finished asking God the question: "what do you think of me?" ... a question that every now and then I have to come back to, and I turned the corner into the park... the sunset and the silhouettes and the sound of a dog barking and the reflection of the twilight evening sky across the water said enough; they said that maybe God in some mysterious way had made that moment just for me, had painted those colors across the landscape of the universe in that moment simply to watch me enjoy it.

Then there's the smells in the evening. I love running by all sorts of different houses and smelling what they are cooking for dinner. Tonight someone was making BBQ, someone was definitely cooking burgers on a grill, someone was definitely smoking weed and burning incense. Then I ran by the restaurant strip and the smell of freshly grilled filet came drifting out of Angus Steakhouse, followed by the familiar seafood smell from Caribbean Cafe, the smell of nachos and chicken wings by Rock Bottom Brewery, and then my favorite: the smell of apple pie coming out of Mimi's Cafe on 75th Ave. A lot of times I will smell something and it will take me to a place in my past ... to my backyard in Kansas cooking burgers, to that BBQ place I ate at one time in Sedona.

About 6 miles into my run I started to feel the back of my hamstring start to cramp. My right foot started to hurt, and I suddenly felt a searing sharp pain in my head. It reminded me of two things: how I need to train right and eat right ... I can't just run as far as I can and expect to be ready for the race, and also of how frail my body is... just an 'earthen vessel,' a clay jar that's wasting away. It made me think about that verse in the Bible that talks about those who wait on the Lord and how they soar like eagles and run without getting tired... I've always wondered about what the human body was like before sin entered the picture. What if people could run without getting tired? Adam and Eve would be talking about their vacation to Europe from Mesopotamia. "How do you want to get there?" Eve would ask. "We could run." And they'd run barefoot all the way up through Asia and Greece without every getting tired or hurt.

And then there's the quiet neighborhoods with Christmas lights up and man, some people went all out! Reminded me of when my dad would drive us around and search for houses with the best Christmas lights and call them "sights to behold."

I don't know if its because I don't listen to an iPod or anything like that, but when I run I feel wide open to life... I feel as if those moments are where I get to hear and see in ways that I don't otherwise. They remind me that this world and everything in it is filled with vestiges of lost glory that can only be enjoyed by the attentive heart. Its a glory that is all over the place, at the same time both fresh and new, ancient and primal. And there is something... magical about it all, like in all the stories where ordinary things possess extraordinary characteristics: a train station, a wardrobe, a cloak, where a moment you can be running along in the Phoenix suburbs and the next moment you can be bordering Hogwarts or Narnia or some other astonishing country the likes of which you've only dreamed or read stories about.

My only conclusion for those still reading (that have humored me this long) is that we are surrounded by glory: a world that drips and flashes with heaven, whispering rumors of a great Magician, Himself filled with the greatest glory of all, who seeks to break us all of the spell of busyness, mediocrity, and passionless living and open our eyes to a bigger Story that surrounds us on all sides. That, to me, is nothing short of incredible.

Did I mention that I love to run?

Christmas Reading List.

2010-12-02T10:29:00.000-08:00

Here's some books I want to read over Christmas break. Feel free to gift them to me if you want, even though 2010 has been slightly more 'naughty' than 'nice.' Ha. Its okay if you don't though. I probably wouldn't either.

(already got Gazelles) :)

Rapunzel.

2010-11-27T22:42:00.000-08:00

There's this girl I know who is a lover of all things life. She is vigilant and watchful for everything good in the world ... she sees goodness and beauty everywhere she goes, recognizes it, appreciates it, and laughs about it. She sees the silliness in my serious introspection, the clear line of thought in the regurgitated musings from the canyons of my mind, and the happiness to be found in small and insignificant things that no one else sees. For her, there are burning bushes everywhere... every corner of life a signpost to things unseen and eternal, and gratitude to be had for every good and perfect gift that comes from above.

And it definitely rubs off on me. When I'm around her I feel like Jonas in The Giver who begins to see colors he's never seen before in a world where everyone sees in black and white. He begins to remember what its like to see life... to have fun... to play... to "exult in monotony."

People who love life are like that. They change your lens and help you to see in living color. They remind me that there's a lot of beauty, goodness, and excitement right under our noses, and that imagination can make adventures out of even the most mundane of tasks. They alert me to the reality that there is much joy to be found in all moments and all things ... a deep underlying satisfaction untouchable from life's disappointments and vexations. For some reason, there's something about this girl.

Its like Flynn Ryder in "Tangled" who after he tells Rapunzel his real name is Eugene Fitzherbert, and that he made up Flynn Ryder from childhood pirate stories he used to read because he thought his true name and identity was a worthless and boring orphan... after all, "what does a man have except his false reputation"? Rapunzel tells him that she likes Eugene Fitzherbert better ... she sees the goodness in what is really and truly him, and it changes the way he sees himself. That's what this girl is like to me. I don't have to be Flynn Ryder around her... and even though Flynn Ryder impresses everyone else, she likes Luke Wright, cynicism and bluntness, rebel-spirited, restless, over-analytical, imperfections and all, better.

I want to be that kind of man... a lover of all things life, passionate about goodness, truth, and beauty, with the ability to always see the world through the lens of gratitude. I want to laugh a lot, play, work with energetic joy, take the world in ... highlight good in others and myself, leaving a better world in my wake one conversation at a time like she does. I feel that all there is to do in this moment of contemplation and admiration is to sigh a sigh of gratitude and realize that if I don't meet God in the next interaction with someone then I don't really need to look any further, and to thank the Giver of all good things for unexpected Rapunzels who help me see the good in myself and in all of God's good creation.

Created to Create.

2010-11-22T10:09:00.000-08:00

I've always felt a desire to be creating things. Whether its writing, teaching, generating new ideas or trying new things, for some reason I've always had this desire to leave behind something that wasn't there before. I also think there's a part in all of us that has this desire: to create. I'm definitely at my best when I am using the talents and gifts God is giving me to create. In my life, the closer I've been with God the more often I'm creating things: new relationships, blogs, thoughts, chapters, journals, risks. Its when my relationship with God is strained that I feel like I'm not creating anything or having any new ideas... I feel stagnant... I feel like I'm regurgitating things just to impress people.

There's something about being close to God that causes me to become more like him... God is a creative God... thats what He does: he creates. He takes words and speaks galaxies into existence. He knits and weaves together babies in their mothers' wombs, with all the personality and potential and creativity that they will exhibit throughout life.

For me, part of my spiritual journey in following Christ is a desire to "create" goodness wherever I go. There are some pretty crappy situations that people are in and some pretty broken people that I come in contact with. One time I heard a teacher talk about how one of the things that made Jesus so revolutionary was that the Jewish culture to which he spoke taught that if you come in contact with someone who is "unclean" you should stay away from them because their "uncleanness" will pass to you. Jesus taught that as a person changed by the power of God, your "cleanness" can pass to those who are "unclean," and that is precisely why you should embrace proximity with people who are different from you and with the marginalized from society. I want to be that kind of man... who seeks to help, serve and love, and "create" goodness everywhere I go.

Because if I'm honest there is this feeling that something is missing in my journey of following Christ if I am not creating good in anyone's life. I believe that I was created to create... to leave a better world behind when I'm gone.

Clandestine.

2010-11-20T09:34:00.000-08:00

"Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret will reward you." Matt. 6:4, 18

Clandestine. I've always liked the word. On a basic level it means secret, unnoticed, private, internal, concealing, underhand, confidential, illicit. It usually has a negative connotation... relating to secret meetings or cultish activities with the purpose of subversion. Subversion of course is the act of overthrowing an institution or a social structure.

Sometimes I think American Christianity is obsessed with obvious displays of "progress". I think that Church leaders have kind of created a culture where image, attendance, and participation in programs are signs of progress, and have excused people from actually living lives of obedience to Jesus by preaching programs rather than Jesus. As a result, bigger is better, "cooler" is "truer," and "popular" is "progress."

The way of Jesus has from the beginning been "subversive." The gospel has always been opposed to culture and opposed to the world. It is a wonder then, why Christian leaders insist on accommodating that Gospel to the world and to the culture in which they are called to bring it.

Jesus likened his message of "the Kingdom of God" not to big things, obvious things, or popular things, but to small, hidden, unnoticed, and seemingly insignificant things: a mustard seed which grew to be the greatest tree in the garden, a small bit of yeast that spread through the entire batch, a small pearl which a man sold everything he had to obtain, a few small fish and barley loaves. He was always talking about the value of small acts of kindness: "whatever you did for the least of these, you did for me," and that the Kingdom of God didn't belong to those who were powerful, recognized, and celebrated, but to little children, and only people who became like little children could enter it.

I have this hunch that true spiritual living, true obedience, true transformation, and true communities of love are only going to be found in clandestine places... in small acts of kindness done to the poor and to widows and orphans. In seemingly insignificant attempts at doing what we all know to be true, right, and just. In small clusters of friends, eager to find creative ways of loving people who are hurting and in need, and caring for each others' needs. True obedience to Jesus calls people to clandestinity ... to small and hidden things, to covert meetings and relationships that seek to subvert such institutions as slavery, poverty, injustice no matter what their churches are preaching or saying (this is the kind of stuff that they crucified Jesus for saying).

Anyways, I'm rambling now. I just want to be obedient to Jesus first ... sometimes that gets blurred in a culture that asks you to be obedient to a leader, a mission statement, a job title, what's culturally acceptable, etc. I guess I'm looking for a community of people that want the same thing.

A recent prayer.

2010-11-18T19:53:00.000-08:00

Me: God?

God: Luke, my son.

Me: What are you up to in my life?

God: Shaping you.

Me: Into what specifically?

God: I want you to be a leader of men. I want you to set an example for everyone else with an attitude of service. I want you to become great by becoming small…

Me: Why me?

God: Because I created you that way… to influence. I had so much fun creating you. You were special. I wove your gifts together with specific moments in mind.

Me: How come its so hard to let go of certain things?

God: Luke, the human heart is my favorite creation… it’s the deepest part of who you are. when you let things into that deep place, it affects everything about you. It’s the vessel I gave to each person … the vessel in which I dwell.

Me: God, I’m tired of fighting battles and feeling like I’m failing. I’m tired of getting in my own way. I know its my fault but I can’t seem to overcome myself. I know I’ve got some heart issues I need to overcome, but I just feel like I can’t.

God: I can.

Me: How? How do I tap into Your power?

God: You are.

Me: Why does it seem like everything is harder for me than it is for other people?

God: Because I’ve been disciplining you. Cutting things out of your life and your heart that don’t belong there. That’s because I love you.

Me: God I wish I could hear from you.

God: That’s up to you. Are you listening? I’ve been trying to get your attention for awhile now.

Me: I haven’t been listening… I’m sorry. I’ve been distracted. I’ve allowed other things to drown out your voice. I’m so lonely right now. Will you at least give me someone who understands?

God: I understand.

Me: What about someone who believes in me?

God: I believe in you.

Me: But don’t you think I need someone around me? Someone who can help me through this?

God: Luke, son, there are people praying for you right now, look closely … you are loved…

Me: God, I wish you were right here, with me.

God: I'm right here.

Abide.

2010-10-23T14:02:00.000-07:00

I've always wondered what it meant to "abide in [Jesus]" like he asks his disciples to do in John 15:5...

"I am the Vine, and you are the branches. If a man abides in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit."

I had a friend in college who was one of the most optimistic, enthusiastic, positive friends I've ever had. There was something about being around him that was energizing to me. I'd walk away from hanging out with that friend as a better person, every single time. The influence that that person had on me was so profound that even to this day, whenever I get down on myself or whenever my thoughts become sour about myself, life, or anything else, I remember my friend from college. Sometimes I'll even call him up to chat, and still to this day, whenever I connect with him I am lifted.

Its almost like keeping contact with that good person helps get rid of the evil stuff in my life...

Its like that with a Christian's relationship with Jesus. The secret of Jesus' life was his contact with God... time and time again he would withdraw into solitary places to meet with him. The secret of my life is my contact to Jesus...as long as I continue to meet with him in prayer, I put myself into a position to be changed by him. "Abiding with Jesus" means re-arranging my life, my prayers, my schedule, and my solitude in order that I never have a chance to forget about him.

Staying connected to the true Vine makes people into fruitful branches, which in turn bring glory to God. Because as you "remain in Jesus," he changes you into the type of person where the very thought or mention of your name turns people's thoughts to God.

Take hold!

2010-10-20T14:16:00.000-07:00

I'm the only one getting in my own way. I'm tired of choosing to think about negative things and to see life through the lens of my problems and struggles. I used to think that my haunting instinct that there is this amazing and fulfilling life that is out there, somewhere and I have to go find it, but now I know that that instinct is wrong. That life is available here and now... I just need to take hold of it.

So from this moment on I'm choosing joy. I'm choosing to embrace everything around me that is good, true, beautiful, right, just, and pure and I'm embracing those things and focusing on those things, especially during times where I'm not "happy."

Joy isn't something that you just happen upon. Its something that has been available to you all along, but every moment is a decision to choose to live in that joy or to allow your negativity, insecurity, frustration, fear or disappointments to rob you of that joy that's available to you. I believe that God has put me in a specific neighborhood and a specific network of relationships for a reason, and there are people in need of love, tasks in need of leadership, communities in need of examples to follow. I'm done following my own pursuits and passions and desires... I want to live in God's pursuits, passions, and desires. My view of my life is so limited, but God sees all. All I have to do is choose to 'take hold' of the life that he wants me to live.

"Some have wandered away from the faith and have pierced themselves with many griefs. But you, man of God... Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called when you made your good confession in the presence of many witnesses." 1 Tim. 6:12

2010-10-16T13:45:00.000-07:00

There's a part of me that's always needed to introduce change in my life on a constant basis. I feel like I'm dying unless something is changing or unless I am making progress... transforming into a better man, experiencing new adventures. I've always been like that. As a kid I was definitely the explorer type. My buddies and I found unending joy in riding bikes around the city of Manhattan, KS, finding new places to explore, office buildings to sneak into and pretend we belonged, forests to get lost in, and secret hidden neighborhoods.

I've lost some of that, I think.

Maybe its the nature of the suburbs... sameness everywhere I go... I'm not really sure what the reason was or why it happened, but I feel that I've allowed that sense for adventure to fall dormant.

It seems like there are a lot of people who have given up their sense of adventure for lesser, cheaper forms of entertainment. Entertainment is no substitute for adventure. Its the quick-fix for deeper longings. Whenever I substitute entertainment for adventure, my adventurous sense is numbed and it begins to become hard to tell the difference between the two.

You see, there's a deep part of me that knows that to live without risk is to risk not living... and that if I am not taking any risks or putting myself out in places where the chance for failure is immanent, I'm not really living.

I've forgotten how to love life because I've started to hold onto it too tightly.

I'm learning to let go... and starting the adventure of risking again. Whose coming with me?

Do you know him?

2010-10-04T10:53:00.000-07:00

One verse in the Bible that has always rocked me a bit was in the letter to the church in Philippi when the Apostle Paul says that he wants to know the "fellowship of sharing in [Jesus'] sufferings." This has always bothered me because why would anyone want to suffer, indeed, almost to the point of seeking out suffering?

I think its because just before that Paul says that compared to knowing Jesus, everything else he considers as a loss. From there he goes on to enumerate what "knowing Jesus" actually means:

"I want to know Christ, and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings..." Phil. 3:10

He highlights two things: power and fellowship, suffering and resurrection.

Sometimes I've heard well-meaning people say that they "know God," and talk about other people as if they "don't know God." My question is always "how do you know that you know God?"

As a Christian, I believe that God is knowable. But I think that we miss the mark when it comes to knowing what that means. We think that God is knowable through religious activities: church attendance, small groups, community, Bible reading, and prayer. I would never say that these things don't help a person discover more about God, and its not my intention to undermine the value of these things.

I think there is a deeper way of knowing Jesus that Paul understood all too well. The only way to truly know Jesus is to suffer with him. Jesus carried his own cross. People who want to know him and follow him must carry theirs. Multitudes of people are willing to say the right words and even believe the right things, but few are willing to suffer for it. For Paul, suffering was a "fellowship" ... a community of people around the world embracing suffering for the sake of the cause of Jesus. Until a Christian knows that fellowship, they do not truly know Jesus.

Second is "resurrection." By this of course Paul is talking about heaven: the hope of an eternal future of living in the presence of God in a world that is free of suffering, cancer, sickness, hatred, war, and evil, and filled with justice, truth, love, peace, fullness, wholeness, health, and beauty. For the early disciples of Jesus, however, resurrection wasn't simply something that only benefited people in heaven. It is something that radically transforms people here and now.

The invitation Jesus gives people who would follow him is that they will experience a kind of "resurrection" in this life. In other words, following Jesus isn't simply about life after death... its about life after birth...

Paul wanted to know the power of Jesus' resurrection that gives us both hope for heaven and hope for now. If a person doesn't know the resurrection power that blasts sinful addictions and fixations in this life and leads to transformation of the inner person, they don't fully know Jesus.

It was these two things, suffering and resurrection, that Paul sought to embody in the core passion in his life: knowing Jesus.

Do you know Jesus? Or do you just know about Jesus?

Hosea. (part 1)

2010-09-08T10:40:00.001-07:00

There's some things that I just don't get about the Bible. I don't get how God would send "lying spirits" into the mouths of prophets, who in turn incite the king of Israel to attack a foreign nation. I don't get how God would command the Israelite army to kill the Philistine women and children. My degree is in theology, so I'm familiar with the sometimes roundabout ways that people explain these things like this in the Bible, but I cannot help ut sometimes teeter between embracing the mystery of a God whose character is always good but sometimes does things that to me seem apparently bad, and refusing to accept unsatisfactory explanations and excuses for a God who is acting in obviously contradictory ways to what I know about His character...

So sometimes I just feel like Susan from the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe when she asks Mr. Beaver whether Aslan is "safe" or not to which he responds, "safe? Who said anything about safe? 'Course he isn't safe. But he's good." I trust that God is good, and that in spite of his goodness, justice, and righteousness, there is something that is terrifyingly mysterious about his holiness...his Wholly Otherness. I still trust that he is 'good,' but sometimes my desire for Him to be 'safe' confines me to a particular definition of 'good' which in turn prevents me from seeing God for who He really is...

Needless to say, there are moments in the Bible that are meant to arouse feelings of anger while at the same time leveling me with truth so pure that anger turns to conviction, stubbornness turns to resignation, and I walk away of my bout with God being able to see Him with new eyes...

One such story, that changed the way I see God in such a profound way, that radically and irrevocably altered the way that I read all of Scripture was the story of Hosea...

God Likes You.

2010-07-26T22:10:00.000-07:00

Accepting and embracing God’s love has definitely been a journey for me in my life that is still incomplete. The greater challenge for me, however, has been realizing that not only does he love me, but he really likes me.

A lot of people talk about how God loves you. For many of us, God’s love is something of which we constantly have to grow into our awareness of it. Not to downplay that huge reality of God’s love, but I also think something that I need to understand and that you need to understand is that God likes you. He enjoys you. He enjoys your personality that he created. He takes great delight in your idiosycracies and qualities.

I know that God loves me: I’m confident in that. But sometimes I wrestle with being confident in whether he likes me.

I know that there are people that I really love but that I don’t really like. I wouldn’t want to hang out with them on a daily basis. I don’t think that God is like that : I think God loves me, but he also likes me a whole lot. He likes my personality: he created it. He enjoys spending time with me. He celebrates with my successes and sympathizes with my failures, no matter what. He really wants to see me find, choose, and claim joy. He really wants me to marvel in his beautiful creation, love and enjoy the people that He has created in whose proximity he has placed me. In me, he has woven together a specific and unique set of gifts and talents that he has called me to use to reflect his glory in a way that brings him pleasure and joy.

I wonder how our outlook on life would change if we embraced the truth that not only does God love us unconditionally enough to endure the cross, but also that he really likes us…

"...He will rejoice over you with singing..." Zeph. 3:17

Day 6: Will you keep walking, even though it hurts?

2010-07-24T19:42:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was our last day at Biola and I'm a little late in getting our final CIY blog up b/c this morning we were running all over the place loading vans, and I wanted to get enough sleep for the drive. I woke up early and went to coffee with a friend of mine named Chase who works with CIY. When I got back around 7:30, no one was awake! Our group had a pretty rough time getting to breakfast. I let Connor McKenna sleep through breakfast as long as he ate a Nutrigrain bar and showed up at the morning session on time.

CIY had a "records board" in which each conference would try to set a new record. Our conference decided to go for the "largest pillow fight" record, so all the students brought their pillows to the main auditorium and went at it for a few minutes... the CCS leaders were meeting outside, so we didn't get to see it, but I heart it was pandemonium! (BTW, if anyone has pictures of that, I'd love to have 'em) After the morning session we went to our D-group time where we discussed how to "endure" ... how to stay strong in your faith and convictions despite the distractions and opposition that you may face.

That afternoon they had a camp-wide dodgeball tournament. Our group had bought some red Elmo t-shirts from Wal-mart before coming, so they all wore those shirts. The very first match Connor hit some kid in the head, and what made it more epic was that it was the first throw! Our group won the first two games, but lost the third on a techinicality. Several of us then went up to the soccer field to play a big game for the rest of the afternoon.

Last night's evening session was easily one of the most powerful I've seen in a long time, and I've been going to CIYs for about 8 years. The Ben Kolarcik band was AWESOME... I appreciated the fact taht Ben took some time in between songs to teach the students what the words meant and to direct them in worship.

The theme was "endure," focusing on staying strong with the call that God has given you. Jayson French told a story about hiking in the Alaskan tundra, and how after the first night his foot hurt so bad that he had to bandage it with duck tape in order to keep going. He then asked the question: "are you willing to keep walking, even though it hurts?" After that Jayson began talking about the apostle Paul and everything that he went through... he was beaten, he was stoned, he was bruised, he was persecuted. He talked about time and time again that Paul was physically battered and his life was threatened, but he WOULD NOT stop preaching about Jesus, and every opportunity Paul had to quit, he decided to endure.

The entire time he was telling the story of Paul, Jayson was tearing off strips of duck tape and throwing them on the ground. At the end of Paul's journey, he wrote a letter: some of the last known words we have from Paul before he died, an old man battered and broken from preaching the gospel. The words were the letters to Timothy, specifically these words: "in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who will judge the living and the dead, and in view of his appearing and his kingdom, I give you this charge: Preach the Word; be prepared in season and out of season, correct, rebuke and encourage--with great patience and careful instruction...for I am already being poured out like a drink offering, and the time has come for my departure. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, and I have kept the faith."

In the last moments of his life, an old man bruised and battered from years of refusing to quit gives his last charge to Timothy: preach the Word! Jayson then talked about how Timothy went on to a faithful minsitry in Ephesus, eventually being murdered during a pagan festival for preaching against what they were doing. He then held up the last strip of duck tape and challenged our students: "Paul got his head chopped off. Timothy got murdered. Peter got crucified upside down next to his wife. Matthew got drug through the streets for preaching. Luke got hung from a tree. Jesus got crucified. But they endured. Are you willing to keep walking? Are you willing to give it all? If you're ready to preach, then come get your tape...." He called our students to be "preachers" ... to be kingdom workers for the cause of Christ.

All of us were dead silent. Then slowly one by one students began flooding the stage, picking up pieces of tape, ready to give their lives to kingdom work. We put arms around each other, prayed for each other, and had an awesome time of worship at the end of the session.

In our youth group time we had everyone who grabbed the tape stand and tell us why. The reasons ranged from "I couldn't believe everything that Paul went through for the sake of the message and I'm not even willing to speak out because I'm afraid of getting made fun of" to "I'm ready to give my life to the work of the kingdom and to making Christ known." It was amazing to see students, some of whom hardly knew each other, open up like that. Also we got in trouble for moving all the furniture out of the entire building and into one room (couches and comfortable chairs etc) and someone left us a friendly note! :)

That night we had some wrestlemania in the dorms, and some great laughs and conversation. It was an awesome end to an awesome week. Thanks to you parents for making it possible!

I've already written too much, but needless to say it was an incredible night. I pray that I will be prepared as a pastor to follow up with these students and continue to pour into them. I also pray that our families at CCS would continue to invest and participate in the spiritual development of their teens...

I've got to figure out something to talk about for tomorrow morning's youth service... but in reality I've got way too much to talk about! Just need to figure out how to make it short!

God is real, alive, present, and working. To Him be all the credit and glory.

I'll never stop walking, no matter what...

Day 5: Don't Waste Your Life

2010-07-23T11:46:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was our fifth day here at Biola. It was slightly different from the other days, because after our morning session, we took off for the beach to do baptisms! The night before we had three people that decided to get baptized for the first time: Haley Smith, Dillon Duhon, Connor Shelby, and Nick Melillo. It was awesome to see these students take the first steps of faith on their journey of knowing and following Jesus. I know that God will do huge things with each of them, and it was truly a blessing to walk with them during this significant stage of their life.

After baptisms, we hung out at Huntington Beach for the afternoon. The boys swam in the ocean to whole time, a few of the girls went shopping, and I went to Starbucks to work on my message for youth sunday. John ate a lot: a double cheesburger, a cookie with ice cream (he says "it was good, and it was awesome") from a place called The Scoop on Cookies. Tyler and I hit up Wahoo's fish tacos for the second time, and Sarah and Austin took a picture by a 7-foot-tall longboard. Brianna got attacked by seaweed, and Mitchell Morgan saved her life!

We got back to campus in time for dinner and an awesome evening session. They showed a video called "Zambia's Song," which educated our students about the worldwide water crisis. Jayson French gave an awesome message on Paul and Timothy, unpacking 1 Tim. 4:12 and the barriers that Timothy faced that prevented him from INFLUENCE. He challenged our students to embrace a life of influence... to take advantage of the gifts that God has given all of us and use them to influence people for Christ. There are a lot of people who waste their lives on meaningless pursuits, but we are all called as Christians to be influencers with the message of Jesus.

Our youth group time last night consisted of everyone sharing what prevented them from being influential. We had a lot of laughs and a lot of fun in our youth group room. John Kesler led us in worship. I feel like our group is just now starting to feel more like a family...being open with each other and sharing with each other. Spending this much time together tends to either rip people apart or pull them together. For us it has definitely brought us together. I'm excited to head back to Phoenix and share the things that we've learned and what God is doing in us with our church.

Later that night, I walked into Connor and Dillon's room only to find Nick creepishly hiding in the closet (see below).

Hope you've enjoyed our blog... we're ready for one more epic day of CIY...

Day 4: Everyone's Got a Chair

2010-07-22T10:00:00.000-07:00

What an awesome day here at Biola U! Our group is having a great time, and due to all the time that we have spent together, is starting to look like more of a family! Its always like this with weeks of camp. By about the third day, the group has gotten to know each other a bit more and is starting to gel. Its awesome to watch!

We had a fun morning, some great discussion in our D-groups. Each student was given a small mirror. We went around and discussed things that we liked about our physical features and things that we would change. Then we had students write one word on the small mirrors that they were given that symbolized the obstacles or barriers that were preventing them from looking like Jesus, or reflecting the character of God. It got deep pretty quickly! I'm amazed at the courage of our guys specifically to get real about their insecurities and imperfections. Powerful stuff...

In the afternoon, Haley, Mychal, Sarah, Connor S, Ryan S., and Jen entered the volleyball tournament. Their original plan was to lose the first game so that they could go play soccer but I wasn't going to have that! I told them they are either going to play to win or they are going to withdraw from the competition... no letting the other team win! They ended up getting all the way to the final round and lost to another church... that's alright guys... next year...

Today's theme was "godliness" from 1 Tim. 4:7 : "train yourselves to be godly, for physical training is of some value but godliness holds value for all things, both in the present life and in the life to come." At the night session Matt Proctor spoke again. This time his message was on "everyone's got a chair." He talked about the three chairs of committment (he had three chairs on stage): the chair of commitment, the chair of compromise, and the chair of complacency. It was a powerful message: where he reminded our students that Jesus fiercest words were for people in the middle chair, the compromise chair, not the complacency chair. He called our students to commit all their passion and devotion to Jesus... to move into the commitment chair, and to surrender everything to God in their pursuit of godliness.

There was also a cool moment in the session where they had the students go outside. There was as tring of lights and lightbulbs. The challenge was to write the name of someone on one of the bulbs that they neeeded to share Christ with and screw the bulb into the string of lights. It was a cool visual reminder that we are the light of the world and our purpose is to share the love of Jesus with everyone... (see picture below)

At our youth group time, I set up three similar looking chairs and opened up our discussion by calling students to come forward and to physcially sit in the chair that represented where they were at in their commitment to Christ. One by one our students got up and sat in the chairs and confessed openly and honestly where they were at, and what was preventing them from moving to the commitment chair. We called our students to make some decisions. A few decided to raise the white flag of surrender and to commit their lives to Jesus... AWESOME!

It was a powerful day... some great relationships formed, some great stories created, and some new memories that we won't forget. I love these students! Thanks for all your support and prayer!

Which chair are YOU sitting in?

Day 3: Get in the Ring!

2010-07-21T09:31:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was our first full day here at Biola. Some great memories were created, and our group started to come together. The topic/theme for today was "truth." We talked about how there were false teachers in Ephesus and so the apostle Paul is encouraging Timothy to fight for the truth. In our morning group time, the guys and girls split up and we went to a lobby in our dorm and discussed all the different world religions, and why its important to stand for the truth. We talked about what truth is: its not a proposition, but a person: Jesus. Talk about philosophical stuff! We had a lot of great dialog.

After lunch we had a session with Dave Ramsey's daughter about how to manage your finances. Our students were challenged to have an emergency fund, to trust God with their finances, and to be good managers of their money and not incrue debt. After that, a bunch of us went up to the soccer fields and played a big game of soccer with a few other church groups.

At our night session, a guy named Mark Moore did a video on what truth is: (1) truth is a person: Jesus said i am the way, the truth, and the life, (2) truth is a story... the story of the church reveals the truth of the message of Jesus, and (3) I can't even remember the third one. In the video he shared the story about his mom who was a lesbian with whom he had been trying to share the love of Christ. He challenged our students to choose one person in their lives with which they could continue "getting in the ring" with and standing up for the truth, allowing the life of Christ to shine through them to.

At youth group time afterwards, I asked our students the question: "who do you need to get in the ring with?" We had a lot of people share about what prevented them from standing up for what they believed, or from initiating spiritual conversations. We all concluded that what we needed was accountability and community. A lot of times its easy to go back to school and feel like you're alone. We encouraged each other, remembering that we are NOT alone, but that we are all a part of a community.

We had a great time in the dorms later that night. Mitch braved the "gauntlet," a hallway filled with screaming boys with pillows which they claimed was the rite of passage for freshmen.

Funny observations from our trip so far:

--Connor Shelby's perpetual lack of shirt.

--Ryan the senior that constantly gets mistaken for a freshmen.

--Connor McK's constant requests to go work out "dude, lets go get swoll..."

--Chris Diffie's epic goalkeeping ability.

--How no one wants to take showers in the handicap shower except for me.

--the "ninja" game phenomenon.

--going to sleep at 11:30 is more of a guideline than a rule. (a suggestion)

--how everyone keeps saying "for reals?" after everything I say.

--John Kesler taking ten plates of pizza from the cafe.

--Austin Kerr having an answer for everything.

Day 2: God Doesn't Make Spare People

2010-07-20T09:25:00.000-07:00

Monday was a great day here in California. We let everyone sleep in a bit, woke up about 9 am, and headed to the beach. It took us slightly longer to get there than anticipated, but we had fun spotting all the crazy names of Donut shops on Beach Blvd. Pulling up to the beach, Katie Perry's "California Girls" came on the radio in both vans... (this would be the first of about 20 times that we heard that song...) Everyone went their own way at the beach: some went shopping, some went straight into the water, and some set up shop and played some volleyball. The tide was pretty strong, and the current kept carrying everyone further down the beach. Austin thought it might be a good idea to go boogie boarding with his hat on and lost it. Poor guy. Lesson of the day: don't go boggie boarding with hats on!

We got to campus around 4, ate dinner at 5, and had our first night session at 6:30. Ben Kolarcik band led worship and Matt Proctor preached about "grace." He spoke from 1 Tim. 1:12-17, highlighting two reminders that God loves us when we don't deserve it: because (1) God wants our help, (2) God forgives no matter what, and about how God turned his back on Jesus because he would not turn his back on us.... powerful stuff! It was awesome to see our students singing and participating. There is a general sense of expectation: that this week is going to be different than just any other week...

We headed up to another building to have our youth group time, and had fun scavenging the building for furniture in order to turn a classroom into the CCS lounge! We had a great conversation... some great questions asked: "why did Jesus have to die?" "Why would God allow his only son to die for us? That doesn't seem very loving..." We had an awesome time discussing the topic of "grace" and "sin" and how "sin" isn't merely a behavior, its a condition, sickness, and virus.

Today was an awesome team-building time for our group, and it was a great opening night to our week of CIY. Aside from being just short of exhaustion, our leaders are doing great! Props to John and Sarah for bringing Lila and being awesome parents and youth coaches at the same time!

Day 1: A Near-Life Experience

2010-07-19T08:33:00.000-07:00

Well, we finally made it to California. We left our church office yesterday morning with two vans filled with 16 people at MIDNIGHT. I tried to sleep during the day so that I would be rested, but of course it didn't happen. Between packing and picking up the vans, I showed up at the church already tired, and praying that I'd be able to make the 6 hour drive to CA.

Luckily with the expertise of Tyler Lund and 4 Red Bulls, and gift packages from our CCS parents, we rolled into Disney around 6:30 AM. There were no near-death experiences but according to Tyler, (after I made this observation), there WERE some near- life experiences. :) We all played frisbee in the parking lot after a few egg McMuffins, met up with the McKennas and the Keslers, and the group headed to Disney while I went over to Biola to get all of our rooms ready.

We probably took 20 pictures of our students in their zombie-like state from the night before... this was one of my favorite parts of the day: watching everyone from our group transition slowly from tired, to crankie, to delirious, to slap-happy, and to the final stage of sleeplessness which I call zombie.

Katie and Connor were the first ones to turn zombie before we ever got into Disney. We had to quarantine them so that the others wouldn't get infected. Ha!

At Disney we split into groups and sent each group of students with a leader. I took all the students who were too tired to even see straight and went and rode Pirates of the Carribean like 4 times. After a full day at the park we ended it with a showing of the Aladdin musical. Out of our entire group there were maybe three students that didn't sleep through the whole thing. It was AWESOME! We left Disney around like 6:30 and grabbed some Chipotle on the way back to the campus. Then we checked in and split off girls/guys. The guys played poker and threatened to send the freshmen students through the "hallway gauntlet," but were soon snoring in their beds.

Its going to be an amazing week...

Trying and Dying.

2010-07-09T10:31:00.000-07:00

I sometimes get asked the question: are you religious? Its a loaded question for anyone to answer. Its almost as if you're being sized up... as if your answer to that question will tell the person everything they need to know about you. I try not to ask people that question in that way, because usually its asked by people who are religious. People who aren't "religious" per se could care less whether you say you're "religious" or not. All that means to me is that you are a part of a religious community and that you regularly engage in religious practices.

I've been doing a bit of thinking lately on that question: "what am I all about?" Am I all about a moral system? Am I all about a book (the Bible)? Am I all about a set of ethics? Am I all about a faith tradition?

I've made "following Jesus" about a lot of other things BUT following Jesus. I've made it about personal happiness: about finding my personal definition of a "happy life." I've made it about a personal reputation: about maintaining the image of having good character. I've made it about being successful, about "being a leader" and influencer of people. About so many things but the main thing...

The problem: Jesus never taught his disciples that following him was about a moral code, religious traditions, an ethical system, or personal success, happiness, or reputation. In fact, some of his strongest and most ferocious words were directed at those who mainly sought after religious elitism and moral purity. I've spent much energy in pursuit of other things in order to find true life.

The truth is, I've heard so many teachings about "striving to be like Jesus" and "imitating Christ" ... the problem with this teaching is that its impossible. I'm reading a book where the author writes that even Jesus himself admitted his inability to be a "successful Christian" :

"The Son can do nothing of Himself..." John 5:19

"I can do nothing of myself..." John 5:30

"Then someone came to him and said "Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?" So he said to him, "why do you call me good? No one is good but One, that is, God." Matt. 19:16-17

So how did he live such a perfect life? How did he pull it off? Listen to some of his answers:

"Whatever the Father does, the Son also does." John 5:19

"I seek not to please myself, but him who sent me." John 5:20

"I do nothing on my own but speak just what the Father has taught me." John 8:28

Jesus didn't pull it off by his own ability, but by the ability of the Father living in him. His power came from the Father inside him. He spoke the words that he spoke. He loved the people that his Father loved. He did the things that his Father was doing. There's his secret... God living in him.

Just as God the Father lived in Jesus, so God the Son lives in his disciples. His life becomes our life. His heart becomes our heart. It isn't by our own abilities, traditions, or religious programs that we find true life, it comes from Jesus living in us, apart from whom we can do nothing. None of us can pull it off on our own. No matter how hard you try, you're going to screw it up, and you're going to fall short. You can't find "eternal life" or the "life of God" in a book, a program, a discipline, or a idea. You can only find it in a person: Jesus himself:

"I am the vine, and you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing..." John 15:5

"The glory of the gospel is that we who are fallen, tarnished and marred have been invited to live our lives in the exact same way that Jesus lived his life: by an indwelling Lord." Leonard Sweet and Frank Viola

Am I religious? Jesus is my religion. He is my joy. He is my life. He is my contentment, fulfillment, and wholeness. Its time ... to remember Galatians 2:20 "I am crucified with Christ, and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me..." ... to stop trying and to start dying.

Continue in him...

2010-07-03T22:36:00.000-07:00

"So then, just as you have received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live in Him, rooted and built up in Him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, overflowing with thankfulness." Col. 2:6

Three words are empowering me tonight. So much of the Christian life can be summed up in these three words: continue in him.

If I'm being brutally honest, the temptation to quit is sometimes strong. I'm not talking about 'going off the deep end' and abandoning life-long values, but the temptation to quit Jesus in substitution for something else...

An idea. A leader. A church. A job. An opportunity. A relationship. A program. A "ministry." A Bible study. A feeling. An experience. A reputation. A status. A philosophy. A "mission statement." A teaching. A personality.

Because when I'm following Jesus... when I'm consistent in prayer... when I'm walking with him in the truth, its hard! He commands me to see the ugliness that's inside me, to dive into my own unexamined brokenness, and to confess those things to people in embarassment. He challenges me to seek reconciliation with people that have hurt me and with those that I have hurt even when I don't want to. He calls me to forgive people and to let go of the anger I have towards them. He leads me to seek to be in community and relationship with people, transparent and authentic, when I'd rather be alone and hold people at arms length. Why would I want to "continue in him" ?!

There's times where I'm tempted to give up on him, and substitute him for something else. Quitting is the ever-present temptation...

I refuse to give up though. I commit to "continuing in him." I know I'm going to fail again, but I'm set on continuing in him... letting him live his life through me, being a reflection of his great glory and goodness. I know that his grace is enough for me, and that my nourishment comes from him alone. I'm committed to identifying and letting go of the things that I've substituted him for, and coming back.

I know that without him, all I am is a messed up guy in need of forgiveness from God and from others, without purpose or hope in this life.

But I also know verse 10 : "you have been given fullness in Christ." He's all I will ever want. All I will ever need. The old Luke has already been crucified with him, and I am a new creation, possessing the only relationship that matters, transformed by grace, overflowing with joy that I sometimes lose sight of. Its not Jesus plus (fill-in-the-blank)... its Jesus alone, "in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge."

Sometimes I wonder if that's all it takes: "continue in him."

Toy Story 3: When Andy Leaves...

2010-07-02T17:11:00.000-07:00

**Spoiler Alert** Maybe it was because I had just watched Jackie Chan trying to be Mr. Myagi and substituting ‘wax on, wax off’ for ‘pick up the jacket, hang up the jacket, take off the jacket, put it on the ground,’ but I was a bit nervous for Toy Story 3. The preview talked about Andy going off to college and the toys ending up in a day care. I couldn’t help but wonder where they were going to go with the story: after all, Woody and the rest of the toys’ relationships with Andy their kid owner is the ‘big story,’ the overarching narrative that ties everything together. This was the big plot that gave the other little plots context and meaning. What happens when Andy is gone?!

What happens to the story when the characters lose the most important relationship in their lives?

But Pixar pulled it off. Here’s why: In Toy Story 1, Woody’s main goal was to get back to Andy, his owner, his kid, whom he loved and felt needed by. In Toy Story 2 Woody was forced to choose between immortality in a museum with Prospector Pete and a short few more years of getting played with by Andy. He chose Andy.

Toy Story 3 opens up with Andy preparing to leave for college, and Woody looking across Andy’s room and realizing that many of the toys are gone… sold at garage sales, broken, lost, thrown away, and at once the crisis of abandonment is introduced. The toys wind up at Sunnyside Daycare, where apparently the crisis is solved: they get to get played with by hundreds of small children every day! When the glamour wears off and they realize that getting played with by toddlers every day is more of a hazard than it is a joy, the toys discover the true character of Sunnyside from Mr. Pricklepants: a “place of ruin and despair, ruled by an evil bear who smells of strawberries.” Toy Story 3 tells the story of their escape from Sunnyside, their journey back to Andy, and their surprising revelation of the things that matter most in spite of losing what they thought mattered most: being loved by Andy.

But the question that echoes through Toy Story 3 is clear: What do you do when Andy leaves?

The theme of abandonment became a main theme of Toy Story 3. What happens when you lose an important relationship in your life? Most people have gone through this… losing someone you love. Maybe its been through death, through a wounded relationship, through circumstances, or through things outside of your control. What do you do with that? The person with whom you shared life with for so long is gone, and you’re left wondering about the things you could’ve and should’ve said, wishing you could say goodbye one last time…

Without spoiling the story, one of the main truths is that your identity and fulfillment can never be fully met in one relationship. In fact, you can get so blinded by that relationship that you miss out on the family and friends that are surrounding you. Just like the toys discovered that “sticking together” is more important than “being with Andy,” we were never meant to “put all of our eggs in one basket,” thinking that one person can bring ultimate satisfaction. Andy, sooner or later, is going to go off to college… he’s going to outgrow the toys, and the affection, love, and affirmation from whom they crave it all most is gone. When it comes to love, how quickly we can move from pleasure to sorrow, and from laughter to silence! But in a weird way, as illustrated by the conclusion of the film with all the toys sitting with Bonnie (their new owner) on the porch of her house, watching Andy drive off down the road to college, this very fact produces a hope in loss and pain that the pleasures and joys could never quite achieve by themselves. Reminds me of the old George Bernard Shaw quote: “there are two great tragedies in life: one is not to get your hearts’ desire, the other is to get it.”

The truth is that Andy will always grow up and go off to college. We will all experience loss in some way or another, whether through death, conflict, circumstances, through “poisoned waterholes” or “snakes in boots,” or other things that are outside of our control. What’s important is sticking together with our friends and with our families in spite of the losses we all will face, and remembering that God invites us all into a relationship with Him that we will never lose: he isn’t like the Andy’s that grow up and lose interest and go on to other things, but loves us unconditionally and perpetually pursues us with His unrelenting grace to infinity and beyond.

"God's grace was poured out on me abundantly..."

2010-06-15T19:19:00.000-07:00

I was reading today about the apostle Paul.... a guy who had every reason to run from Jesus and Christianity: after all, he spent much of his energy killing Christians, dragging men and women out of their homes and stoning them to death. He was "breathing out murderous threats" against anyone who belonged to this new Way, and was preparing to go to Damascus to capture and kill more Christians.

Then he was ambushed by grace. On the road to Damascus, he has a powerful vision of Jesus who encounters him by surprise and through a series of instructions, calls him to be God's chosen instrument and spokesmen to the Gentiles and their kings.

Amazing how God pursues people with his grace. His grace is arresting... undeserving... unrelenting. In my experience, once a person truly understands God in this way, they are never the same. And it doesn't matter how bad a person is: its just a greater opportunity for grace. The greater the sin, the greater the grace.

Someone once referred to God as "the hound of heaven" who pursues those that are far from him with a love that will not give up and will not let go, no matter what they have done to Him. Its what C. S. Lewis, reflecting on his conversion experience, called "the offense of heaven," that closed in on him and captured him.

Acts 8 records "Saul" persecuting the church, blaspheming God, and murdering the children of God. Acts 9 records "Paul" completely surrendered to the will of God in being a carrier of the gospel.

Grace changes everything, and you can never expect the ending: what God will do in people that we least expect.

God loves us and pursues us no matter what.

2010-06-15T14:48:00.000-07:00

I'm in Sedona, AZ. I came up here to be alone for a few days... had an awesome week of junior high camp at UCYC but at the end my prayer was "God, I need someone to pour into me..." Last night I spent the night at my friend Dennis' trailer in Mormon Lake. We grilled steak, rode quads at night, sat in front of a fire for several hours listening to coyotes howl in the distance, and read some Bible. Its amazing how quiet it is up there! Living in the city, I rarely get to experience that anymore. Summer is always an awesome time for me to get away and reflect and remember who God is and who He has called and created me to be.

Today I went to the grocery store to pick up some food for my hotel room: got two microwave dinners and a lean cousine. My hotel has a microwave and a refrigerator. After dropping all the stuff off at my hotel room, I walked across the street to this tea place. The girl recommended this Japanese green tea, so I bought one and sat on the deck overlooking the awesome red rocks of Sedona:

I found myself asking God to speak to me... to lead me... and sat there listening. I began thinking about how much in life is a matter of perspective. Sometimes you and I only see what's immediate... our momentary troubles, our situation ... and I wonder if many times God looks into our hearts and says "if only you could see it from my perspective."

So then I asked aloud: "God, when you look at my life, what do you see?"

I opened my Bible up and read Psalm 84. The verse that hit me was verse 5: "Blessed are those whose strength is in you, who have set their hearts on pilgrimage. As they pass through the valley of Baca, they make it a place of springs; the autumn rains also cover it with pools. They go from strength to strength till each appears before the God of Zion."

Then I remembered... God sees my life as a pilgrimage. This world and the things in it aren't enough to satisfy my longings. "blessed are those who have set their hearts on pilgrimage" to me meant that God's desire is that I continue journeying towards him, to one day meet him face to face. That's his perspective! This life is not about the relationships, the problems, the successes, or the pleasures, but rather its about journeying towards God.

I found myself somewhat frustrated at this thought: "why then, did you make the world good? Why did you make the Red Rocks of Sedona so that all these new age hippies worship them? Why did you create human beings to long for the arms of other human beings, or romantic love, or the desire for intimacy? Couldn't you have just made the world grey and bland so that people couldn't help but to long for you and pursue you?"

I know how crazy that sounds: but that's my thought process. Then the answer came to me like lightning...

"I made the world good, but not that good. I made the things of this world just good enough to whet people's appetite for Me. I made romantic love just good enough to point people towards Me, because only I can bring true intimacy. I made the Red Rocks so that people will look at them in wonder and awe and ponder the mystery of My creation...that they would be rumors of another world, of a place where beauty, majesty, intimacy, love, justice and truth are no longer shrouded by the finitude of this life."

Here then, was God's answer: "they go from strength to strength, till each appears before God in Zion." There are times where I feel strong... where life is going well and I feel secure, but those times won't last forever in this life. Strength will rise and fall, and my life is short. But I am a pilgrim, on my way towards the God of Zion!

If I can keep that perspective: that I am ever, always journeying towards God, despite the "from strength to strength" of life, I know that my ultimate strength comes from God who walks with me along the way, who watches over me as a shepherd, who prepares feasts before me in the presence of my enemies, who "will withhold no good thing from those whose walk is blameless," and who knows me more than anyone else.

Better is one day in his courts than a thousand elsewhere...

2010-05-21T11:28:00.001-07:00

Wow... this has been one of the hardest weeks for me in a long time. Four major events happened all at once on Wednesday. There have been a few moments in my life where I'm convinced that there are evil forces conspiring to conquer me and steal my confidence. This weekend I'm preaching at our church on 'exposing your secrets' and never before have I felt a spiritual pressure such as the kind I feel right now, as if someone doesn't want me to say what I must say, and as if someone doesn't want people to confess their secrets. The weight of the world is on my shoulders, and everything is colliding. I found myself walking through my neighborhood trying to make sense of everything...

have you ever actually felt darkness closing in on you? That's how I felt last night.

I found comfort this morning in a verse from the gospel of Mark, after Jesus has healed a deaf and mute man (whom in that day people assumed was afflicted by evil). The people 'were overwhelmed with amazement," and they said "he has done everything well..."

God has indeed done everything well in my life... he comforts the brokenhearted... and he does it well. He lifts me up when I'm in despair, regardless of my circumstances, and he does it well. He speaks kind words to me when the only voices around me are accusing and attacking, and he does it well.

As dark things happen all around me and within me, I hope and trust in the God of the light who has called me to shine his light that is within me to a world that is sitting in darkness.

My only prayer is that through whatever small pain I'm going through that good will come of it, and that restoration is on the horizon.

To the Sovereign God, who created the heavens and the earth with his great power and outstretched arm for which nothing is too difficult, may everything I do be a testimony to his glorious love and forgiveness.

2010-05-07T14:39:00.000-07:00

My brain never gets a break. We went up this week to a camp up in northern Arizona for a pastors retreat... I foolishly expected that I would get some R & R. Monday we played golf most of the day: I played horrible, but finally turned it on the last two holes. By the time we actually got to the camp I was already torched from the sun and ready to spend a week just chilling. We had three sessions over two days, which alone was brain-frying enough, but also had to sit at tables with people that we didn't know. Sooooo, between forcing myself to meet people and getting throttled with several provocative talks from a guy from RockHarbor Church that spoke, an all day staff meeting on Wednesday, and reading to get caught up for my three hour Thursday night class, my brain this morning was done.

I sat on the couch for half the day pill-popping tylenol and watching a web show called "The Guild" that Brad let me borrow. ITs about these five people that play an imaginary online game (similar to World of Warcraft). One of the characters in the show ends up getting stalked by a guy who met her in the online game, so she decides to enlist the help of members of her guild to get rid of the guy! Its pretty stupid, but if you know the world of Warcraft lingo, its hysterical...

Anyways, I'm reading a book for my class called "A Christianity Worth Believing" in which the author says that we have to constantly reinvent and re-imagine the Christian faith in order to be faithful in whatever context or culture we find ourselves. He condemns the Greek form of Christianity that Western Europe and eventually America have embraced... forcing people to embrace an Aristotalian, Augustinian Enlightenment rationalistic approach to Christianity rather than allowing it to maintain its original roots in the Hebrew culture and Blah. Blah. Blah. If every message is culturally confined and defined, then why favor one culture (Hebrew) over others (Greek, American)?

The nugget I'm getting from this book is that requiring people to embrace your culture before they embrace your message is unfair, and unbiblical. One of the greatest arguments that arose in the early church was over Jewish and Gentile believers. Jews were trying to make Gentiles become Jews before they became Christians. The Americanized Gospel sometimes does the same thing....forcing people to embrace western American evangelicalism before they embrace the teachings of Jesus. Also that you can't completely strip away your culture's influence on your message, but the message can still transcend cultures. The challenge, then, is communicating messages in such a way that they are understandable in the given culture of the intended recipient.

2010-05-04T07:51:00.000-07:00

I’ve had some difficulty with the Christian message over the years. For some people that I know, their belief seems to come easily. They accept, as they should to an extent, the things taught to them by their parents, the story of the Christian faith, and the values that have been transmitted to them.

Not me. I’ve fought it. Sure, I’ve had my moments of child-like faith and humble obedience, but more often than not, I’ve wrestled with things that I was supposed to believe… I’ve questioned things that shouldn’t be questioned.

One of the hardest things for me to fully embrace on my spiritual journey was the idea that one innocent man’s death could possibly be payment for all the wrongs that I had done. I mean, how does that even work? He was crucified two thousand years ago under the Roman empire, and yet somehow his blood is supposed to cover my wrongs? For a long time it seemed to me inconceivable that a punishment placed upon someone else who lived thousands of years before I did was enough to take care of the crap that I had done. How is that just? How is that fair? How does that reveal that God is a God of justice?

I never got the crucifixion that I deserve… the penance to which my own soul felt obligated.

Some people throughout history have believed this, and have resulted to punishing themselves for their own sin. The pre-Reformation Catholic church sold indulgences to people. The monks of ascetic monasticism whipped themselves.

For me, my obligation led me deeper and deeper into sin. After all, if I deserve to be punished, I might as well punish myself by engaging in addictive behaviors…allowing myself to be a slave to the self-punishing, sinful fixations that became so prevalent in my life.

I can’t really pinpoint where or when it was, and indeed, am not even sure there was a specific moment or point in time that I realized it, but somewhere along the road I discovered grace. I discovered that the cross of Jesus isn’t fair or just. It doesn’t make sense. Its not conceivable. Its not something that can be earned or deserved… it can only be accepted. The grace that a person has to accept comes in that moment where they realize that they are a receiver to a gift they did not deserve, an honored guest at a party to which they were not invited, and a benefactor to an inheritance to which they had no right.

For me, it was found in the realization that, when merely accepted as unearnable, the blood of Jesus works. It is enough. It is sufficient for the payment of sin. That realization for me was life-altering.

2010-03-31T07:58:00.000-07:00

I'm a couple weeks into my new part-time job at Christ's Church of Scottsdale and am enjoying getting to know everyone and working to complete our youth room (which will never be done!) I've enjoyed meeting some interesting people, and am starting to build some cool connections.

Yesterday we had just finished moving some stages around and unpacking some media carts, and I looked around at our room. I realized something: how easily we drift into methods and models of doing things simply because its the way they've always been done. I realized that I myself am in danger of becoming the very things that frustrated me about working for a church before. I spent some $ on video games, on couches, etc, had a HUGE screen donated to us from CCV along with some stage platforms and a projector. I don't want to be a church that merely entertains. I want to be a church that authentically connects with people and challenges them to live out the message of Jesus.

The problem is that when we have a bunch of "stuff," it creates the illusion of progress and growth. When we get a new TV, a pinball machine in the corner of the room, a ping pong table, etc, and people walk into the youth room, they automatically assume that our church has an effective youth program. What I know to be true is that stuff will never compensate for relationships. Facilities will never compensate for real and true friendships that students develop. My prayer is that I will not be distracted by stuff and programs and paychecks, but that my focus will always be on encouraging, loving, teaching, and enjoying people.

2010-01-20T10:02:00.001-08:00

Some random thoughts…

Remember that scene from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade? Its right after young Indy narrowly escapes the treasure bandits with Coronado's cross. The picture cuts away and suddenly shows Henry Jones Sr. reading his grail diary, praying this prayer: "may he who illuminated this also illuminate me."

I think that's what compels me to be a reader... Not so that I can have more knowledge or be able to spout out facts on command, but that I can be illuminated by the thoughts and dreams of others... There are corners of our souls that are too dark and hidden to be recognized from our own perspective. We need the words of those who have gone before us to shine into us and illuminate things about ourselves that we never knew existed. C. S. Lewis once said that the reason he read a lot of books was so that he could learn to ‘see through others’ eyes.’ I’d like to be able to do that…to see the world not only through my limited perspective, but to experience the world from another’s.

Tonight I went and saw the Book of Eli. It’s a post-apocalyptic story about Denzel Washington trying to carry the last copy of the Bible westward. There’s a moment in the movie where he says “I got so focused on protecting this book that I forgot to live what it says.” It made me wonder if the goal of any book of faith, or any authoritative text is not so that people can prove that its authoritative, but to actually change a person’s life… some folks are so concerned with trying to convince people that the Bible is true that they forget to allow it to illuminate themselves… to shine light into the darkness in their hearts. As a result, the Bible becomes a ‘weapon,’ and people use it to win battles over their opinions, rather than a guidebook for daily living. When I was in Israel, our tour guide, an Israeli Jew, said that you could go up to any Jewish person in Israel and ask them about what they believed about “end times,” and most of them wouldn’t have an answer. They are mostly concerned with correct living today, and the Torah is a book that helps you live right before God today. Its not for proving ideologies or theologies or its own veracity, it’s a guide for all that we do, think, and say.

It’d be great if we would all stop using the Bible, or any holy text for that matter, as a ‘weapon’ and start using it more as a guide to help us live and love in a way that transcends our own selfish natures and points people to the ultimate reality and fulfillment that we find in God.

2009-12-14T12:10:00.001-08:00

Just had a conversation over coffee, one of the kinds of conversations that reminds you why you exist on this planet. I'm prone to focus on my problems, my feelings, and my struggles, while the world around me is filled with people who are looking for community and connection and encouragement.

God has gotten his attention through a series of unfortunate events. We talked about how God's greatest appointments come to us in the middle of our greatest disappointments in life. We talked about how those God greatly uses in life are those God greatly wounds. We talked about James 1:2, considering our trials as pure joy because of the transformation that comes from them. We talked about Romans 12:1-2 and reprogramming our minds to focus on what God is trying to say to us. Talked with a guy this morning who is at the bottom of life, in the deepest valley, so far down that the only way to hike is up. One thing he said really stuck with me:

"Is it hard for you to see the girl that you broke up with around?" I asked.

"I mean, it is, but this whole thing, you know, is so much bigger than my relationship, its so much bigger than anything else."

Its funny how the more we focus on a life with God, all of our problems seem a little bit smaller. The more desperate we get for God, the less hungry we are for the things that we know won't satisfy.

Its all a matter of perspective. In the valley, you can't see as clear. On the mountaintop, you look back and realize how the journey has transformed you and look forward to new valleys for the same reason.

2009-12-03T23:50:00.000-08:00

The wind is blowing outside and its freezing. I walked out to get the free pizza from Dominos when the delivery guy showed up, and the breeze was enough to make me guiltless about spending the evening @ home watching a Netflix movie. I got off work and waiting for me on the counter was a coupon for a free medium pizza and two dvds in the mailbox.

Tonight I watched Funny People. I'm normally not the type of person that enjoys the raunchy Seth Rogan types of movies, but this one looked interesting so I gave it a shot. Adam Sandler plays this comedian who is diagnosed with a life-threatening disease and hires Ira, played by Seth Rogan to write jokes for him. The story is about their relationship and trying to cope with George (Adam Sandler's character) and his depression.

There are a lot of people who try to hide their pain by being funny or using jokes or sarcasm... and some people are really good at it. Even though the movie was pretty much as inappropriate as I expected it to me, it did make me think about the age-old truth that everyone has a point of seriousness. They can only joke about life for so long, but there are certain things and topics that whenever touched in conversation, they simply cannot be made into a laughing matter. We all have a point of seriousness, about which not only do we want to take lightly, but we don't want it to be taken lightly by other people either. We want them to see how important and sensitive it is to us.

I know what its like to make a joke out of things that are important to you because you don't think they will be taken seriously by anyone else.

2009-11-28T09:46:00.001-08:00

One of the worst kinds of pain is the kind that comes from coming close to getting something incredible only to lose it forever. It’s the athlete, who trains for a lifetime for their moment of glory only to suffer from a paralyzing injury, the student who makes one dumb decision on a weekend and loses their scholarship forever, or the traffic that caused you to miss that job interview.

It’s the pain of missed or squandered opportunities.

It’s the pain that causes you to think about what you could have done differently, to long for the way things were, to desire things that at present are unattainable. You try to move on, to forget and stay positive, but then unexpectedly you wake up in the morning with it on your mind. You lay in bed and dream about the way things could have been. The dull ache, deep within your soul and the wondering about why things happened the way they did. Then you wonder if things will ever get better, if you will always have that moment in the back of your mind. Part of you tries to push the thoughts out of your mind and to think about positive things, but part of you likes the torture of these thoughts, because the memory was so good, and you came so close…

So you move forward, try to create new opportunities, try to forget the past, and try to sleep at night. But in the back of your mind there’s the hope that what you desire will someday be fulfilled.

2009-10-28T10:16:00.001-07:00

My life is haunted.

I went to Israel last week to travel the lands where Jesus lived and walked. You could say in a way that I was chasing the ghost of a man whose words and actions changed the world. Jesus of Nazareth is a figure in history that is deeply personal to me…indeed, his ghost has haunted me all my life, whispering to me in my dreams and in dark places, in rooms at night with closet doors slightly open, in the deepest darkness and the still quiet places with no other souls near. He seems to know my thoughts and fears, my dreams and ambitions, and always he creeps into my thoughts, ghostlike, and calls to me in the night.

There was an eeriness about being in Israel … every place we went, whether it was Capernaum (where Jesus lived for two years), Nazareth (his hometown), Tabgha (where he fed the 5000 people with a few loaves and some fish), or Caesaria Philippi (where he revealed his identity to his disciples), I felt strangely familiar with places I’d never been before. The stories I’ve read since a kid even up until now seemed only distant fairy tales, but to put flesh on them… to see the places where they happened, to imagine Jesus standing near the place where I am standing, looking at the same hills, seeing the same sunrise, touching the same stones, makes something in me come alive that before was never fully alive.

And everywhere we went, the ghosts of the past spoke. On the temple mount, between two mosques, I could hear Peter and the disciples preaching to the crowds about the resurrection of Jesus. In the Upper Room, a building that is now a memorial to three different world religions, I could hear the small group of followers talking over a meal, and singing a hymn before leaving for the Mt. of Olives. In the Garden of Gethsemane, I could hear Jesus agonizing before God in prayer… “Father, let this cup pass from me, yet not my will, but yours be done.” On Mt. Carmel, I could hear Elijah calling out “how long will you waver between two opinions!” and taunting the prophets of Baal as they slashed themselves with swords, calling on their god who never answered. On the boat on the sea of Galilee, I could hear Jesus telling Peter to let down his net one last time after a long night of no catch. At Caesaria Phillipi, I could hear Peter making the declaration of his lifetime: “you are the Messiah, the Christ of God.” In the empty tomb, I could hear the mysterious voice of the angel to two bewildered women “behold, he is not here, for he is risen.”

In the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, where Golgotha probably used to be, surrounded by golden shrines and ornamented decorations, I could hear Jesus say “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing” as Roman soldiers crucified him.

The early disciples of Jesus faced a major crisis, one that his Church that has survived throughout the centuries still faces today: the crisis that Jesus is gone. He’s no longer physically here to teach us, to guide us, to lead us. What are we to do, now that our leader is gone?

Then they remembered his words when he appeared to them after rising from the dead: “I will be with you always, even to the very end of the age.” What do you mean you’ll be with us? “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

To be a witness means to testify to that which we have seen. But all the people had seen was a man hanging on a cross…

And then, a few days later while the disciples were gathered in Jerusalem praying, the Ghost of Jesus showed up. Things started happening. Freaky things, like straight from a scary movie. People started speaking in other languages. Fire filled the air. A thousand people committed their lives to the Way of Jesus, a few days after he was crucified.

The Ghost, the Spirit, is still here today… leading, whispering, guiding, calling to all who will listen…

Will you?

2009-07-03T15:05:00.001-07:00

When I was younger people older than me would talk about how they “remembered when they were in college” and “had all these big ideas and dreams” but then reality sets in and the demands of raising families and owning homes set it, turning those desires into memories. I never believed them. For some reason, I thought that if you had passion… if your heart was consumed by a particular dream… that it would last. I refused to believe that “idealism” was merely a phase that people went through…that its only for people who have yet to reach maturity.

Time sometimes seems to have a tendency of eroding passion. Dreams seem further and further away than they used to be. Choices you’ve made leave you with responsibilities and demands that you never anticipated, and the world around you affirms the secure and serene path that you are walking.

In the moment of this realization… that your life isn’t quite what you expected it to be in college, that the life you’ve always wanted and the one you used to dream about seems distant, you realize the value of courage more than ever before. You realize that unless you have courage, you’ll become a product of your culture and environment:

The courage to say what needs to be said.
The courage to sell what needs to be sold.
The courage to quit what you need to quit.
The courage to persevere in the things that you need to persevere.
The courage to abandon small passions for big ones.
The courage to trade success for sacrifice and purpose.
The courage to be vulnerable to people around you… to take risks in relationships… to know and be known.

Mediocrity requires no risk and no courage. It’s the default setting of most people. But it might also come at the greatest cost to your soul.

Fear closes in. Few face it. The rest become its slaves by “playing it safe.”

God, help me.

2009-06-06T01:34:00.000-07:00

"you mean," asked the Tragedian, 'you mean--you did not love me truly in the old days.'

'only in a poor sort of way,' she answered. 'I have asked you to forgive me. There was little real love in it. But what we called love down there was mostly the craving to be loved. In the main I loved you for my own sake: because I needed you.'

--from "the Great Divorce" by C. S. Lewis

2009-05-30T01:14:00.001-07:00

A far-off rumbling, drums in the distance,
Thunder echoing across an expanse of plain,
The celestial, primitive sound of wind chimes
Whistling breeze encircles me.

Attention pricked, head pressed upon dirt,
listening to the vibrations of the storm,
Drops of sky pat down the dirt and grass,
Darkness on the horizon moving toward me.

The angels of heaven covet to stand here,
the opportunity for vigilant words,
glowing upon a way previously invisible,
Lighting the paths to hopeful destinations.

Great sunsets conclude fierce storms,
Rays painting exhausted clouds,
Desert skyline above purple earth,
Monsoon voices echo from the past.

Chest heaving, palms sweaty,
Exhausted yet exhilarated, new lore for telling,
Fingers interlocked, side by side,
We walk together homeward.

2009-05-24T01:52:00.000-07:00

Its one of those nights... *sigh* ... the ones where you find yourself lying in bed realizing that sleep is nowhere in the foreseeable future... where your soul is longing for something you can't define or describe. Your heart is stabbed by a deep hunger, a picture of the way things should be... with you, with the world, with your life. The picture is just a flash, but its beauty is enough to send you to your laptop to start typing. That's why it hurts, because you know that it is just a flash... here, then gone, like dreaming you met the girl of your dreams and waking up to a vacant house. The image is not what is so suddenly painful: indeed, nothing in life is more beautiful, but rather the fact that its temporary, and it arouses desires within you that you can do nothing to satiate.

2009-05-11T23:53:00.001-07:00

I find myself being repulsed by things in other people that I’m blinded to in myself.

Classically, there’s been two main views of human nature as it relates to morality: (1) that we are all basically good and inherently moral creatures, and even the “bad” people have good in their roots, and (2) the view that there is something wrong with all of us... That we are not in fact basically good, but have an unnatural tendency inside of us to put ourselves before other people. I’m no scholar, but I would imagine that ethical philosophers will debate this question on into eternity. Some argue that the preservation of self is merely a “survival instinct,” and therefore cannot be considered a matter of right or wrong. There are some who also argue that this survival instinct is necessary for the propagation of the human race and therefore cannot be considered right or wrong.

Any they, of course, are right ...if indeed the propagation of the human race is the highest good.

I, on the other hand, am of the belief that if we were all to allow human nature to play out to its logical conclusions, we would not find humanity to be basically good but would find that we are all out for our own good. History can testify to the death, the wars, the genocide, and the chaos this causes....man’s ‘inhumanity’ to man.

Most people try, at least on some level, to be good. Anyone who has tried good morals and even maybe succeeded for a long time realizes that there’s something within that fights against it, and that every now and again in secret places that something wins over our morals. They realize that there’s something selfish about the whole pursuit...something that, were we backed into a corner and asked to choose our morals or our life, we’d revert back to self-preservation with very little hesitation.

At this point something profound happens. We’re faced with the reality that we are helpless to break the cycle, and the fear that maybe we are doomed to forever be the greatest perpetrators of the things we find so repulsive in others. At this point, a new, all-pervasive question enters our mind:

Can anything save me from myself?

The pursuit of the answer to this question changes everything.

2009-04-22T00:57:00.001-07:00

I’m a seminary student right now… that means I’m going to school and academically studying the Christian faith and the Bible. I’m really not sure why, to be honest. I feel sometimes that it’s a bit like dissecting something that you’re not supposed to dissect, lest it lose its wholeness and character… like listening to a beautiful song and missing its beauty because you’re too busy analyzing its measures, notes, cadences, and syncopation.

For instance: I’m taking a class on the Revelation of John (which is the last book in the Bible). When I first re-read the book before starting my class, I was profoundly struck my the metaphors, the imagery, the way Christ is depicted that sometimes we often forget, and the unfolding of human history all the way up to its climax in the “return of the King.” But then when we began to dissect it, and read all the commentaries and views about what certain phrases mean, and approach it as an academic subject, it loses some of its impact. I understand the value in this exercise, for there are things that cannot be fully understood or explained except by disciplined and scrupulous academic attention, but it also causes me to consider a statement by the Apostle Paul in the Bible that I haven’t for awhile:

“knowledge puffs up, but love builds up.”

Education can be a person’s greatest tool, or their worst hindrance in being influential in this world. I don’t ever want to become an “ivory tower theologian,” parading my views and opinions around as if to say “I’m more spiritual or closer to God than you because I have an education in the Bible.”

Theology, the study of God, is not primarily meant for the academicians, the scholars, the bishops, the pastors, or the priests. Its meant for the common man and woman. Its meant for daily life. Its meant to be told not mainly in abstractions, propositions, and creeds, but in stories, anecdotes, narrative. Its meant to be simple, but profound at the same time. That’s why I’m undertaking an education in theology: so that someday I can translate theology into hope for the simple person.

Because I agree with Tozer: “what you think about God is the most important thing about you.” That’s why its important to “think rightly about God.”

Thoughts?

2009-04-19T09:37:00.001-07:00

I walk outside early in the morning. The air is cool, untouched by sunlight for hours, and as I fill my lungs with it, it refreshes me beyond description. The morning to me never ceases to be a heavenly metaphor for newness and hope... that there are new possibilities with this day, new people to meet, new opportunities to make decisions that ascribe worth to my creator, and new chances to be transformed with ever-increasing glory. I sit down on a chair in my driveway and open the Old Book... the one I've had for many years, have read its pages a thousand times, falling apart from the use of a desperate man who is hungry for meaning, and I turn it to an often forgotten and ignored chapter: the last one... a story of a man who had a vision and saw heaven opened up for him and history unfolding before him like an open scroll. He's a prisoner on an island, and one day is suddenly encountered by a vision of Jesus Christ, but not the compassionate and gentle Christ... this one has a voice like a trumpet and shakes the entire room! His face shines with blazing brilliance ... his eyes are like fire, and he is no longer the 'lamb that was slain' but is now the Lion of Judah who has come not to die for the world as before, but to judge it. HIs voice booms and he tells the terrified man to pick up his pen and write letters to seven churches. To one of the churches, Jesus tells him to write this:

"those whom I love, I discipline and rebuke."

The newness and freshness of the morning add to the newness and freshness of these words in my heart as they immediately resonate with my soul and with my situation, and not surprisingly the Old Book has once again left me with hope in the morning.

2009-04-11T22:03:00.001-07:00

“For we are but dead men, we are like so many carcasses wrapt up in grave clothes, till that same Jesus who called Lazarus from his tomb, and at whose own resurrection many that slept arose, doth raise us also by his quickening Spirit from our natural death, in which we have so long lain, to a holy and heavenly life.”

George Whitefield, 1771

2009-04-09T23:36:00.001-07:00

Among the great atrocities of our age, there's one that has to rank up there with the worst of them: loss of interest in the transcendent. Being bored of things that are anything but boring. Allowing our attention to wander from pursuits which should quicken the heart and engage the mind more than anything else. When men are reduced to dissecting, studying, and analyzing without any thought of the harm they are committing to their subject... that is one of the greatest tragedies of our time. Passion is lost in intellection, and urgency is replaced with explanation, and what once seemed the mightiest of all pursuits is now merely a topic of conversation.

2009-04-05T13:33:00.000-07:00

Identity has been somewhat of a sparring-ground for me all my life. You see, I'm kind of a paradox: I'm outgoing, but I'm extremely analytical and introspective. Not introverted...that means that you always "turn inward." Introspection means to consider one's own thoughts or feelings. I'm very introspective, and as a result, I'm very critical of myself. Sometimes I project that onto other people... its a huge fault that I'm trying to heal from. I've always been interested in the question "who am I?" What values define me? What activities drive me? What thoughts preoccupy my thinking? What do people think of when they hear the name Luke Wright?

I've spent a lot of time trying to find my idenity in what other people think of me. I know this isn't a unique phenomenon... most people do it. The logic that leads to this: other people's perception of me = who I really am. I've learned that nothing can be further from the truth though. You can trick people into having a certain perception of you, while being a totally different person with different values than you let on. Some also find identity in other people's expectations of them: (blank) expects me to be (blank) so I'm going to be (blank).

I'm not satisfied with these approaches anymore. For whatever reason, I believe that God has crafted in me something unique... a unique expression of life and creativity with unique values. Only he knows who I really am/supposed to be. To "sell out," and continue to spend many years and energy meeting the expectations and perceptions of people around me will cause me to miss what was intended at my creation.

Question: what are the implications of believing that? If you really are "God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works which he prepared in advance for you to do," what does that imply for how we approach "identity"?

For me, its releasing myself from "identity slavery" to everyone around me.

For me, it means figuring out the values of the one who created me.

For me, it implies that only if I continue to seek God in prayer and in the other spiritual disciplines he has given us for the purpose of seeking him, will I ever discover the unique calling he has for me, and indeed, the "identity" I was created with.

2009-04-02T09:30:00.000-07:00

I'm not a historian per se. I've never been crazy good at remembering historical facts, names, or dates. Nevertheless, I always do fairly well in history classes because I can remember general/major chronology of events. But ask me questions about the year that something happened on a test and I'm screwed.

I started my masters degree at Fuller Seminary this week. On Mondays, I'm taking American Church History, on Wednesdays I'm talking Theology of C.S. Lewis, and tonight I have a class on the book of Revelation. With only two classes down this week, I already have almost 3000 pages of reading to do... in the next 10 weeks! I have four research papers to write, and nearly ten books to read in their entirety. There goes my life for awhile!

I'm grateful for the opportunity to immerse myself in studies, becuase for one, I love it, and also it provides a necessary distraction from all the crap that swirls through my head when I'm sitting around. Its also been exciting to read about the life of C.S., and about the early settlers that came over to the New World from England and Holland. Hard for me to imagine what life would have been like back then... always having to worry about surviving, having enough food to eat, and being prepared for the grueling winter.

Found out that I'm going to the Holy Lands this fall with Southeast Christian Church's college ministry team... I have to somehow raise $3200 for the trip. I'm also excited that Zach Anderson might be going with me. We're going to spend a couple days in Jerusalem, and in the regions surrounding the Sea of Galilee. Its something I've always wanted to do, and through a couple random emails, I got connected with this group from Kentucky that is going. Call it a 'pilgrimage' of sorts. I think every Christian should someday plan to make this trip... kind of like the Muslims do to Mecca.

Anyway... I should probably head into work. Its great that there is a Starbucks right on my way to Chang's in the mornings, and its even greater that you can get FREE WIFI now @ Starbucks. All you need is a gift card activiated through Starbucks.com's website and your set. Class tonight, work all day tomorrow and Saturday, thousands of pages of reading...God is good.

2009-04-01T23:04:00.000-07:00

Easter is a peculiar Christian holiday for me.

Its always a reminder of how much we overemphasize the crucifixion of Christ and forget about his resurrection.

Lots of people have been crucified throughout history. Hundreds of thousands. Maybe even millions.

Not a lot of people have come back from the dead.

My guess is, if you're not a Christian and you're reading this, you know Christians who talk about the cross a lot, wear it around their necks, engrave it on their bibles, and decorate their churches with it.

But you don't hear a lot of Christians talking about dead people being raised to life. You don't hear them discussing much about the empty tomb. We, as Christians, are great at admiring the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross... we're great at worshipping God because of the forgiveness found in the blood of Christ... we're great at accepting the free gift of grace and freedom because he paid the price, we're great at getting emotional and nostalgic at easter because we know that "the suffering that brought us peace was upon him,"

...but we're not so great at celebrating and living what ought to be the most essential part of the Christian message: the face that Jesus rose from the dead... the fact that dead people can be raised up again... the fact that this one life is not all there is... the fact that new life is available to all who will follow him.

The early followers of Jesus didn't become martyrs because their leader died. In fact, when they heard he had been crucified, they ran away and hid.

But something happened that caused them to believe so strongly that Jesus had risen from the dead that they risked their lives in telling people about it...some of them even to the point of being crucified themselves.

There is no power in the cross. There's nothing magical about a bloody beam of wood.

Its the empty tomb that deserves attention, the implications of which change everything.

2009-03-29T09:13:00.000-07:00

"Do not offer the parts of your body to sin, as instruments of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God, as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer the parts of your body to him as instruments of righteousness. For sin shall not be your master, because you are not under law, but under grace." Rom. 6:13

What's your motivation for living a good life?

Is it the fact that its expected by people around you?

Is it societies definition of a 'good citizen'?

Is it because its the type of behavior that your friends value?

For a long time my motivation for living a good, moral life was negative: if I didn't act this way, this would happen. There's certainly some wisdom to this kind of motivation... after all, I'm sure that when I made right choices, I avoided negative consequences, but somewhere along the road I realized that this kind of negative motivation for being moral... the "I'm supposed to act this way" or "I'm doing it just because its the right thing to do" didn't really work as well as I thought it did.

Because no matter how much I tried to follow the rules, I couldn't ... I'd have moments where I'd break the rules, where I'd say something I never thought I would say, where I would do something I never thought I would do.

There's something in us that wants to break the rules, no matter what they are.

I realized through studying the Christian faith that Jesus invited people to a life of freedom and grace, not based on the motivation that they had to live a certain way, but more on the motivation that they were FREE to not be slaves to sin.

Rather than offering imperatives, Jesus offered invitations to a new kind of living. A living based on grace: the grace that he displayed on the cross.

There's a verse that's always stuck in my mind from the Bible: "whoever has been forgiven much, loves much." Jesus says it of the woman who pours perfume on his feet. If I can really start to wrap my mind around the fact that I have been forgiven already in Jesus, I start to be a little less hard on myself. I also start to be a little less hard on other people, who need grace just as much as I do. My motivation for living a good life changes from fear of breaking the rules and being punished to gratitude for the blood spilled for my sins, and a desire for other people to experience that same forgiveness.

2009-03-23T00:29:00.001-07:00

I’m slowing becoming more and more convinced that most people in the world would rather have security, predictability, safety, and comfort over passion, risk, change excitement, and purpose. When I say that, I’m not about to get on my high horse and pretend that I’m a part of the latter, or even pretend that one group is better than the other, I’m just stating what I’ve observed.

Its not that I blame them (us) either. There’s nothing wrong with being secure and safe. Its comfortable. You don’t have to worry about your next paycheck. You don’t have to worry about failing, because most of the time it’s the organization that takes the hit, not you personally.

It might just be a rich American thing too. I know that there are billions of people in the world who fight to make enough money to eat food for the day… if you were to ask them whether they wanted to continue living day to day in survival mode or have a secure income, food to eat everyday, we all know which they would choose.

But this conversation isn’t about surviving… its about living. Really living. And I’ve got a hunch that there’s a difference.

Can you really blame anyone for sacrificing their desires for security?

There are people who are OK with existing within an organization, under a hierarchy, with people telling them what to do, and being given tasks to perform, and doing whatever they can to get better at doing those tasks. And there is nothing wrong with that. Our world, our communities, our companies, and our churches need faithful and competent workers to continue to build the future.

What I have a problem with is the people that have an idea, a passionate dream of doing something, a burning desire or goal that’s been dormant inside of them for a long time, who refuse to act on that dream in the name of security.

In the name of a paycheck.

In the name of a promotion.

So if you’re that kind of person, go for it. Even though few may understand you and the road is paved with question marks, let the fear of a missed opportunity outweigh the fear of failure. I’ll be right there… applauding your efforts.

That’s really living. Risking. Sacrificing. Believing.

Does any of that resonate with you?

If I were to self-apply this for the world of bloggers to see: I love to write. I love ideas. I enjoy inspiring people and finding people who don’t think anyone believes in them and believing in them. I love to challenge people’s thinking in subtle ways, and to generate ideas. If I were living my dream, I would be writing articles and books and blogs that motivate people to seek God, love, hope, faith and truth and everything that is good in this world and in this culture, and that helps people to strip away the religious jargon and fascade of our age, and reveal the heart of God as specifically revealed in Christ… the heart for people that embraces them where their at and invites them to come home with Him.

I have a motivation to create something in my life: to look back and say “I was faithful with that dream.” I want to gather a community of riskers together who are committed to loving and accepting people and inviting them to share life, seeking Truth together along the way.

I have a passion for true community: not the kind that hangs out together once a week on Sunday nights, but the kind filled with people who are committed to a common-unity, to a cause that consumes the hearts of all. I want to create community everywhere I go, to meet people and get to know them, and help them with their physical needs.

2009-03-17T01:01:00.000-07:00

I have a confession to make: I’m bored with attending church services.

Maybe its because I’ve been doing it for too long, or because I’ve heard most of the ideas before. Maybe its because I just need to get over my own personal preferences and realize that church services don’t exist to make me happy or to entertain me. Maybe its because I need to stop evaluating everything that happens in church services and just learn to enjoy them.

Or maybe its because they are led by people who are passionate about the wrong things.

What happens with church leaders are driven by a passion for pragmatic results? They lose reliance upon God. What about when they are passionate about numerical growth? They lose the value of the pastoral role of shepherding lives. The culture that’s created is one in which ‘the priesthood of all believers’ is replaced by ‘invite your friends to church.’

Raw passion for God is what excites, motivates, and inspires people. Where are all the men who have that?

I guess what it comes down to is that I don’t want to be ‘fed’ anymore. I want to be led. I want someone to follow who is living in passionate obedience to the Father, telling stories of sacrifice and faith along the way.

2009-02-28T23:36:00.000-08:00

Tired. Frustrated. Bored. Sad. Hurting. Loosing hope. Lonely. Outcast. Shattered. Gone. Has-been. Depressed. Sameness. Confused. Conflicted. Doubting. Bitter. Angry. Pointing. Longing. Wanting. Waiting. Needing. Calling. Holding on. Crying out. Striving. Contemplating. Learning. Growing. Disciplined.

Praying.

2009-02-22T14:18:00.001-08:00

The first century was both an exciting and a dangerous time to be a Christian. Sick people were being healed through prayer. Lame beggers were being given the ability to walk. Blind people were receiving their sight again. The Bible even records that in the earliest community of Christians "everyone was filled with awe, and many miraculous signs and wonders were done by the apostles."

I wish I could say those things about churches today.

What happened to the faith of the first community?

What happened to the sacrificial commitment to being 'witnessess' no matter what the cost?

What happened to the leadership courage of James and John in the face of death and imprisonment?

What happened to the 'power' that seemed to embolden the faith of those early Christians?

If Christians today cannot have access to that same power, then why do we even bother putting on programs, preaching sermons, and inviting people to church?

2009-02-01T22:12:00.000-08:00

I'm reminded today about how hesitant I am to be vulnerable to people. What to me is priceless, to those I share it with is casual. What for me is meant for one person, for someone else is just another conversation. What would it take to be totally transparent with someone? I want to know that there's someone that I can fully trust... to trust and be trusted... and to know that I'm not just another person on their list of people that trust them, but that what is shared between I and they is secret and special.

One time Jesus, speaking about judging others, made an interesting statement. He had just finished a famous quotation about removing the plank of wood from your own eye before pointing out the sawdust in your neighbor's eye... in other words, "don't be a hypocrite!" And then he makes this statement that I've tucked away for a long time:

"Do not give to dogs what is sacred and do not throw your pearls to pigs. If you do, they will trample them under their feet, and then turn and tear you to pieces."

What does that have to do with judgment? What is he talking about? It doesn't seem to fit. Obviously Jesus can't be referring to literal pearls, so what are these "pearls" ?

I think what Jesus is getting at is this: the things that are sacred to you, the morals that are sacred to you, the boundaries that are sacred to you, the wisdom that you have been given from your parents and leaders in your life, those things that you hold closely that make you who you are...

be wise about who you share them with. Be wise about when you share them. Be careful unless what is intended for good can actually destroy a relationship.

I'm the type of guy that wants to share myself with people, but I'm always afraid of being misunderstood. I know that when I percieve that someone isn't understanding what I'm saying, I'll start to put up wall, and not let them into the deepest parts of who I am.

I'm not sure what I'm getting at here. Just having mental diarrheah (or however you spell it). Maybe someone smart can decipher what I'm saying...

2009-01-21T22:18:00.000-08:00

Ok. So I think I'm at the point where I've gotten this whole "hang out, work a regular job, and enjoy life without thinking about the future" phase out of my system. While I definitely see the value in the season of life that I am in, and the things that I believe God is shaping within me, I'm impatient. My soul is restless. And its only been two months...

Nevertheless, I'm reminded that the discipleship journey, the journey with God, is one that cannot be rushed, and resembles a "long obedience in the same direction" more so than the drastic and immediate movement and results I want. The time for movement will come... soon... but in patience and prayer I must wait.

2009-01-18T23:33:00.000-08:00

What do you do to fill the emptiness?

Some people dress themselves up, put on some makeup, and go to places where they can get attention. Some people watch movies... every night after they get off work: movies distract them from the pressures of life, and fill the time of thier lonely lives. Some people look for a relationship with a member of the opposite sex (or the same sex these days) and try to fill their time and emptiness with a significant other. Then there's those that go out and buy something. It doesn't matter what... just the fact that it fills the time and it gives them something upon which to fix their momentary affections.

I, like many of the above listed 'someones,' have done a lot of things in my past to fill the emptiness...

I've drank and smoked.

I've fixed my affections on a woman, thinking she would bring me contentment.

I've played a LOT of video games, most recently World of Warcraft.

I've gone shopping... not really looking for anything in particular, just the thrill of the purchase.

I've wandered Wal-Mart looking at DVD racks for cheap $5 movies for hours, desperately digging through the bins for the epic find.

I've listed to a lot of preachers and sermons to try and give me the next quick fix.

I've read a lot of books, sometimes to learn, sometimes just to say that I'm smart and regurgitate information, and sometimes just to escape.

I've even sought God through the Bible, through prayer, and through Scripture.

I've sought to fill the emptiness by pouring myself into other people, serving and loving them.

My point is not which of these above listed things is right/wrong, even though you who know me know that I have my opinions about that. My point is that there is something that all humans share in common, no matter who you are. Its something that causes us to seek, to reach out, to do, live, be, act, work, strive.

Its the wanting.

We are all trying to fill a deficit, a void, a vacuum.

We are all seeking some kind of satisfaction.

We all crave something. That's why we pursue the things we do and that's why we make the choices we do.

What is it that our souls crave? And more importantly, is there anything out there that can bring lasting satisfaction to those things we are hungry for?

Therein lies the beginning of the human dilemma.

2009-01-14T10:21:00.001-08:00

"Lord, we understand that Luke is in a unique place, but that's ok: Moses was in a unique place, Peter and Paul were in a unique place..." A recent prayer someone prayed aloud for me.

"Do not be distressed or angry with yourselves for selling me here as a slave, because it was to save lives that God sent me ahead of you...to preserve for you a remnant and to save your lives by a great deliverance." Joseph, Gen. 45:1

Obedience has a history. That reality is empowering to me.

2009-01-13T23:56:00.000-08:00

A campfire blazes on the empty beach as the waves gently wash the coast. Night lies behind me and before me across the dark expanse of ocean, and the moonlight bleeds its way across the tops of the waves until it almost touches my feet. The tide gently washes over my toes, pulling the sand out from under them on the way back out to sea. I stare down watching it for a couple minutes and it reminds me that my life is like the tide…mighty and proud and energetic one moment, then washing back out to sea the next. The turmoil of thoughts and emotions swirl like a giant maelstrom in my mind. I scream out to the night waves, but they respond with the same sound they’ve been making since the beginning of time. The breeze from the ocean softly chills me, and I scoot closer to the fire.

I begin to see not only the obvious differences, but the similarities between the world at my back filled with cities and lights and people, by now long asleep in their beds, and the world at my face… both appearing one way on the surface, filled with depth and secrets beneath the surface no eye might ever see.

I lie back, cupping my hands to make a pillow of sand for my head, and stare up at the stars.

I feel peace.

2009-01-05T01:51:00.001-08:00

I've been thinking about the role of work in a person's life: work is a necessity... you have to work. Some people overwork, other people are lazy. Some people view their work as their identity... their means to attaining status, others view it as something they have to do in order to do what they want to do.

I read Psalm 127 tonight. The opening line of the Psalm reads "unless the Lord builds the house, its builders labor in vain, and unless the Lord watches over the city, its watchmen stand guard in vain." Some people would take this to mean that Christians don't have to do any work... don't have to follow any rules, uphold and standards, or pressure themselves to put any effort into living a life of love. The New Testament teachings though paint a different picture about work. Jesus, one time, made this statement: "my heavenly Father is always working and I also am working." 5 times Paul, in his letters, writes that the believers ought to "make every effort" to live according to certain standards.

So on the one hand, "unless the Lord builds the house, its builders labor in vain."

... and on the other hand, "make every effort" ...

how are these reconciled?

I don't think the Bible teaches that the answer is in abandoning you work and living a life of laziness. Nor do I think its in pouring all your time, energy, and efforts into your work as if it all depends on you to get ahead in the world. The heart of what the Psalmist seems to be writing is : don't do your work without God! Don't pretend to do God's work for Him! If you do, you are doing it in vain!

Disaster comes from the two extremes. Letting work drive our lives leads to the Tower of Babel...men building for their own glory. Abandoning work leads to laziness and apathy. But working as if God is sovereign over all the resources, people, and purposes in the world leads to gratitude, joy, generosity, and faithfulness. Colossians 3:23 seems to sum it up: "whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as if working for the Lord, not for men."

These thoughts are what keep me going at my job that I don't want to be at. :)

2008-12-28T22:28:00.001-08:00

A few things that I’ve heard people say this week:

“What is heaven? Heaven is whenever you can accept anything, which is to accept everything in the right now… that’s a little moment of heaven.”

“…its not a place, elsewhere, its here. We are in nirvana, but we are actually bad at enjoying it.”

“…heaven is when you be here now…you’re getting very very close to God…”

“I don’t think that Jesus’ message was primarily about who will get to heaven and who will get to hell when they die. His message was more about how do we bring heaven here? How do we do the will of God in this life, here?”

2008-12-04T09:26:00.001-08:00

Life belongs to those who are able to translate the invisible into the concrete.

2008-11-28T21:41:00.000-08:00

I get a thousand opinions from people about what I should do with my life.

"Are you looking for another church to be a part of?"

"Not necessarily."

"What are you looking to do?"

"I don't know."

"Don't you want to figure out what you want to do with your life?"

"I don't know."

I think that there comes a point in most people's life where no longer can they rely on everyone else to take care of them and make decisions for them. Not saying that you shouldn't seek out the advice of people you respect, but ultimately you know what is in your heart. You are the one who has to live with your decisions... so you are the one who has to make them. And when you do make them, the people that really care about you will come around you and support you.

Its a lonely place to be sometimes... where you feel like no one else cares or understands the choice you are trying to make, or the season of life you are going through. All you can do is get down on your knees and hope that God exists as you pray... God who sees all things... to give you wisdom and providence.

I'm not sure what the next several years of my life will bring. I'm not sure what the next couple months will bring... as a matter of fact, the next fews days are a bit unclear as well.

I'm praying for a miracle to happen: for me to find purpose and meaning in life. For me to finally reach a place of contentment, of peace and passion... the place where satisfaction with life and with God mixes beautifully with striving to accomplish all that I was created to for the Kingdom of God.

There are more questions than answers, more mysteries than clues, more longing than pleasure, more criticism than support, and more waiting than progress.