Another New Beginning

About three and a half years ago, I started this blog as part of my journey into what I called "the real world." Little did I know how long it would take me to get there.

As I look back on the early posts here, I can't help feeling like it was a different person who wrote them.  I guess really it was.  I can hardly believe all that God has led me through in this past season, and the changes in my life have been both internal and external.  My soul and my situation are both so different now.

Not to say there weren't some really good things going on at the time I started all this, but as I look back I see a kid with some big talk and not much substance to back it up with.  In this season, God is calling me into manhood.  Into hard work.  Into courage.  (Things about which college graduate me had so very much to learn!)

God has also been providing me with new opportunities to share my thoughts.  It's become apparent to me that if I don't have any place to express what God is teaching me, I don't know what to do with myself.  That's part of why I started this, really.  I had all these ideas and no forum in which to teach them, and I was pretty much boiling over.  Now I lead a small group and a worship team, and God has finally given me chances to teach in church again after a long break.  I couldn't ask for more opportunity!

Another thing about the time when I started writing on here was just that: the time.  I had all kinds of it.  Much more than I knew what to do with, in fact, and I wasn't really using it well to be honest.  Sadly, those blog posts are one of the only truly productive things I was doing in a large part of that season.  Now I have a full-time job in addition to all the teaching opportunities I was just talking about.  I certainly don't need to try to find ways to pass the time!

Of course, much more could be written about how I'm in a different place now than I was then.  However, another thing God has been teaching me to leave behind is my compulsive desire to say everything I think needs to be said all at once.  With that in mind, here are just two of many things I think are important moving forward from here.

First, God owns everything.  There's already an appalling number of I's in this post and this blog, and there will be a few more before I get done here.  But he owns everything, and the more I realize that, the more I enjoy life.  He just isn't that concerned about my agenda.  I hold on to my freedom and time in self-employment, and he tells me to get a job.  I pray about a girl, and he tells me... to get a job.  Seriously, he knows what to do, and my time and effort belong to him, not me.  If I'll let him use those things as he sees fit, I believe with everything I am that I'll experience the blessing I've tried (and failed) so long to produce on my own.  Not that it's some magic formula-- it's just that where the Spirit of the Lord is there's freedom.  That's the ultimate blessing.

That brings me to my other point.  I've noticed that my life goes better when it's lived with a healthy dose of just not caring so much.  Now, I don't mean to say that life and doing the right thing aren't important.  What I mean is that a great deal of what I've cared about has been misplaced.  I've cared so much about my own safety and what other people think of me, and that has never produced anything but death.  I just don't have the energy to keep caring about that stuff, and I become the person I really am more and more as I let it go.  I end up accidentally walking into the freedom I thought I could find myself but couldn't!  I have life less figured out than I ever thought, and I can only hope that blessing continues.  Figuring everything else out is someone else's job anyway, and guess what? He's already finished it.

These days, I care more than ever what God thinks about me and less about what everyone else does.  The nice thing about that is that what he thinks doesn't change like people's opinions do.  I don't have to manage it.  Nor can I: no matter what I do, God is only looking at me with love and planning me a future filled with hope.  100% love, all the time-- Even when that means he has to discipline me to get something stupid to stop.  It never changes his opinion on me: beloved son, covered by the blood of the beloved Son.

So, that real world thing I was talking about?  I didn't mean getting a grown-up job (although I did do that).  I mean seeing that this is my Father's world, and no matter what happens I have him.  His question to me in this season is the same as to the disciples in the sinking boat in the storm: why are you so afraid?  And as I realize that he will always be there, I start to fear less.  With him there, it will always be ok... and even if it isn't, I still get to go be with him in heaven at the end.

Still, eternal life starts now.  That life is the light of the world, the streetlights' call.  What is eternal life?  That I may know the only true God and Jesus who he sent. I can do that now.  I can let his light shine through me more and more-- another new beginning, every day, every moment, every prayer.

Want to try it?  Want to see what happens?  Well, you won't read about it here.

Come live it with me.

Integrity in Community

I've had a couple conversations recently that really got me thinking again about the issue of how we relate to each other within the body of Christ (i.e. the church). Long story short, I ended up expressing a lot of my thoughts about it in a poem, so I'll start with that:


Euphemistic Eucharist

Howya doin’? What’s up?
Pretty good, not too much,
life goes on, praise the Lord,
the usual and such--

By pretty good I mean
my family’s a mess--
we fight, except not here:
in this house we just bless.

I’m saying in not much
my schedule is insane:
it’s filled with noise and stress
it hardly can contain--

Life just keeps on going,
and so I don’t have time
to let you see beneath
charade and pantomime.

To praise the Lord I smile
and just sing happy songs;
pain stays behind the mask
where it, of course, belongs--

The usual just means
I’d tell you I’m depressed
were I allowed to break
facades so nicely dressed

And such and such and on--
a thousand pointless things
I’d rather say than tell
you anything that stings.

Safe. But are we happy?
We smile; are we alive?
The one place where it seems
reality should thrive,

instead we hide away;
we put our pride above
our pain--how can we throw
our masks aside and love?

Because we need help and we need
to be saved and all of us are
pretty much the same kinds
of messed up so why not just be real?

Can you see here what I’m driving toward?
Maybe then we could really praise the Lord.


So, I realize that my poem is a bit caustic.  I'm just trying to honestly address a real issue, though, and the fact that it keeps on coming up among people I talk to lets me know I'm not the only one who feels it.  The issue, as you can probably guess from the poem, is that church (not just mine, or anyone else's specifically, but church in general-- the conversations I mentioned at the beginning were with people from three different ones) has a tendency to become a place of fakeness where people don't feel like they can come with their real problems, instead of what it should be: the place where they could safely be honest and receive healing.

3 questions come to my mind:  why does this happen, why is it so bad, and what can we do about it?

Let's break my OCD tendencies toward order and symmetry and start right in the middle with the second question.  I don't want to belabor the point that the phenomenon I'm talking about is bad news, but I want to start with what I see as the basic reasons why it is so harmful.

The first is that everyone has problems, and problems don't just go away.  Of course, drawing near to God is helpful in dealing with them.  God can supernaturally solve them whenever he wants to.  The problem comes when churches start teaching (or just believing, consciously or subconsciously), that this supernatural encounter with the healing Lord is only a one-on-one deal.  Now, I know that God has healed me at times without any help from anyone else--he's just that good.  However, the general model that he has laid out for us is something totally different.

"And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise him up. If he has sinned, he will be forgiven.  Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective." (James 5:15-16).  This is God's model for healing.  We get other believers involved, and they pray for us so that we will be healed.  Catch that?  James is letting us know that if we won't share our brokenness, both spiritual and physical, we won't access all the healing that we could because it comes through receiving prayer from each other!  So that's one reason why it's a crisis that we don't feel like we can be real in church-- where else will we find the righteous men who can pray powerful and effective prayers for our healing?


Another reason is that everyone has problems, and everyone knows this is true.  Even (or especially?) people who aren't Christians yet.  We might feel like being real with the stuff of our lives will scare unbelievers away, but I propose that the fakeness we choose instead is infinitely more frightening.  Everyone knows that people have problems.  Everyone knows that they themselves have problems!  So if you walk into a group of people where no one seems to have any, what do you think?  You think, I'll never fit in with these people.  So another reason this fear of dealing with real issues in church is a problem is because it is actually driving away the broken people who desperately need to receive healing by being prayed for (and who God wants to make into the powerful and effective prayers who will then help restore others!).

Finally, and potentially most seriously, being fake in church will hinder our worship.  We might think we can sneak in and deal with our problems alone with God and have ourselves fixed by the time we have to talk to anyone.  The problem there is that God is looking for worshipers who worship him in spirit and in truth (John 4:23).  If we won't be real with God and with our family, we can't worship him in the way he desires.  This is serious stuff, and if you don't think so just read in Exodus and Leviticus about people who tried to worship God in unauthorized ways.  If we want his healing presence to be with us, we have to be willing to worship in the spiritual integrity God is seeking.  Otherwise, our thanksgiving (Greek: Eucharist) will amount to little more than empty words we use to avoid saying what we really mean.

So, why does it happen that we feel like all we can be at church is just fine and peachy-keen, etc.?

I think it probably comes down to fear, mostly.  Just because we all have problems and we know it doesn't mean we necessarily feel comfortable sharing them with people!  If our fear of being judged for the things that are still messed up about us trumps our desire to be healed from those things, we won't share, plain and simple.  If we have a history of being judged, that makes things worse of course, as does seeing other people be judged in places (like church) where they should be welcomed instead.  Put all those things together, and fear wins out a lot of times.

Also, I think there's a misunderstanding in the church of what the Bible really teaches about joy.  When it says to be joyful in all circumstances (1 Thessalonians 5:16), is that the same as being happy all the time?  If the joy of the Lord is our strength (Nehemiah 8:10), and a fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22), are we weak Christians who don't have the Holy Spirit if we go through struggles and trials?

All of the answers are no, in case you're wondering.  No one is "too blessed to be stressed" either (although some might be in too much denial not to smile).  Joy is not the same thing as happiness, and godly joy is just as compatible with sorrow as with happiness.  Jesus himself wept (John 11:35), but he was given the oil of joy more than all his companions (Psalm 45:7).  He also got so stressed that he sweated blood (Luke 22:44).  So godly joy must be something different than unceasing happiness.  What if, instead, it's the ongoing security of knowing that eventually everything will work out for your good because it's all in the control of the all-powerful God who loves you?  Then you can feel the pain of loss and brokenness without losing hope, and when you are happy you can be happy for the right reasons.  That's the joy that will bring you strength.

One further note on why the problem of disingenuousness happens at church:  it kind of gets to be a vicious cycle.  No one wants to be the first person to do anything, so if no one is talking about any real stuff, it's that much harder for anyone to break the trend.

Which segues nicely into the last question: what can we do about this thing?

First, let me say that I'm no expert on this.  I'm actually more of an expert on being fake, to be quite honest.  All I know is that I deeply desire to be real, and I'm starting to learn what that means.  So how can we be the ones to step out and start being real in the one place in all the world where the truth should win out?  How can streetlights shine into darkness that has clouded the home of light?

The main thing I can see is that we have to start wanting more of God so desperately that we don't care about our own images.  We have to care more about what he thinks of us than what anyone else does.  This is what it means for him to be our Lord.  His opinion is the final word, and what he says goes, no matter what it makes us look like.  If we start believing that, maybe we can be the ones to step out and take the first risk.  We can't make anyone else be real, but we can show them they won't die if they try it!

Also, we have to confess and repent of our judgmental spirits.  This will allow us to bless other people who are real enough to be honest about their problems instead of comparing our own struggles to theirs to see how we stack up.  All judgment is comparison, and all comparison is irrelevant because God's love is infinite.  What if ours started looking more like his?

We also have to stop getting the truth backwards.  It's not that God is so good that his followers shouldn't have any problems; He's so good because welcomes us in spite of them!  He fixes them too, but for whatever reason he hasn't chosen to do it instantaneously in most cases.  We have to let him be who he is in this instead of making him into a false image of what we want him to be.

I'm sure there is much more to be said on this topic-- does anyone else have any ideas to share on how we can help?  I'll end with one I just thought of, which is actually the most important one: prayer.  I want to start asking God to change the problems I see instead of just worrying about them.  I want to talk less and pray more.

So-- God, change what you want to change.  Make us more like you.  Make your body whole.  Let us walk in integrity, bravery, and community.  Give us real relationships with real people, and let us worship you in Spirit and in truth.  Amen.

'Twas the Night after Christmas...

...and I finally felt like writing a blog again. It turns out that trying to be a writer for a living has left me somewhat less than eager to sit down and type out big entries on my blog. I think there's only so much structured thought (and staring at a screen) that my mind can handle.  With that in mind, this entry (and perhaps more and more of those to come) will be very unstructured and random.  The nice thing about having a blog with very few readers is that you can do things like that with no real ramifications. This blog has certainly gone through several different phases of more/less structure, and it will continue to be whatever I want and need it to be going forward.  Right now that means making it more personal and less conceptual, although I have no idea how that correlates to how beneficial it is for anyone else.  It might make me more likely to write more often, but I don't know if quantity is even as important as quality.  All I know is, if you want to read it, I'd love to have you do so! I do continue (even late at night) to hold myself to some standards of writing, so I will at least promise that-- I won't get completely lazy :)

It's funny to me how even the best things in life can become so formulaic that we do them without thinking.  I know I've talked about this before, but I seriously tend to do this with just about everything. Blogging is a prime example.  I like to share my poetry and thoughts, but sometimes I have such a rigid idea of what a blog post of mine can be that I don't write anything for a long time just because what that formula prescribes doesn't sound good to me!  That, in a word, is silly.  I want to do it less.  Random posts help me break out of it.

An interesting issue that brings up in my mind is that randomness can also become a formula.  This is a huge deal in the discussion of modern poetry, which I've been reading a lot of and a lot about recently.  Basically, poets around the turn of the 20th century got so tired of all the poetry "rules" about rhyme, meter, etc. that they just discarded them and tried to start all over without rules.  The thing is, they rejected the rules so rigidly that modern poetry quickly became just as stereotypical as what it tried to rebel against, only with fewer readers.

Now, I don't think poetry has to have rhyme or meter to be poetry.  Free verse can be wonderful if the words are chosen with the same diligence innately required by adherence to rhyme and meter.  It turns out, though, that it's also easy to use the whole "I don't follow the formula" thing as a cop-out for producing work with less effort and attention to quality.  As I look back at some of my poetry, I see that I too have done this.  I have traveled to the Wasteland and seen that many Waldo's have gone that way before, and continued on my journey.

Speaking of poetry, I have a B.A. in English with a concentration in poetry... and somehow I'm still woefully ignorant of good poetry throughout history.  I realized this with an unpleasant shock the other day, and I have a desire to fix it.  I own the Longman anthology of English poetry, so I just started at the beginning.  It's been a lot of fun, and I'm in the 18th century now.  I wonder why I didn't care about my education while I was actually doing it?

Speaking of that, I also unpleasantly realized that I haven't really cared about much of anything for a lot of my life.  I've been afraid, I guess.  I just want to stop living life like that.  I want to do things I really care about, and I want to really care about the things I'm doing.  Those are two subtly different things, in my mind, but I don't feel like explaining why.  Maybe you feel the same way and you'll just get it.

The more I begin to fear the Lord, the less I fear everything else.  This is what I think it means to be wholehearted.  Fear divides you, unless you fear the One whose great desire is to put you back together.  I don't want to live life in fragments, and I think God can make that happen.

I'm ready to care.

You know, I think you can only relax when you really care.  If you won't work hard on anything, you can't relax because there's nothing to relax from!  I know that when I've gone through times of just coasting, I couldn't even enjoy my downtime because it was all downtime.  I constantly had the feeling that I should be doing something else (which was true).  Entertainment, relaxation, procrastination-- they just won't get you where you're going.  Take it from someone who knows.  (By the way, that reminds me of a cool song called "Let the Drummer Kick" by Citizen Cope.  Someone on Youtube made a really cool animation that goes with it.)  To belatedly finish the thought I was just working on: if you work when you need to, all the fun things you get to do become amazing blessings rather than desperate attempts to escape your gnawing conscience.  It's wonderful.

Speaking of music and wonderful, music is wonderful.  Almost everything I was given for Christmas has to do with music (or else food, but that's a different topic).  I think that should tell me something about music.  I care about it!  It's part of what God's called me to, and I want to be better at it and appreciate it more.

Speaking of absolutely nothing in particular, I had one of the greatest text message conversations of my life the other day.  I had been at my parents before going to a party, and afterwards my mom texted me asking how it was.  I told her it was pretty good and pretty much what I was expecting, and I asked her how her day was.  She told me four things she did that day and said that I wasn't being very descriptive.  That's when it hit me: men and women don't understand each other.

If you ask a guy how his day was, you will get an evaluation.  It will probably be short. If you ask a woman how her day was, you will get a description.  It may be quite long.

Obviously, neither side understands the question they're asking, so both end up vaguely dissatisfied with the answers they get.  I think I can solve the problem, though-- we just need to stop asking questions.  Next, I'll be tackling world hunger.  Believe it or not, I also do some of my best and most organized thinking late at night like this.  But tonight is a holiday.

Two last things, and then off to try to live for the rest of the year like Jesus really did come to live with us and die for us... and also to try not to forget the giver for the gifts.

1. Today at church we played O Holy Night, and it was a powerful moment of worship.  Less than 3 minutes later, we were playing Jingle Bell Rock... and there was nothing weird about that.  We praised God with all we had, and then we laughed and danced like crazy people.  Or put another way, we cared about something deeply and invested our hearts in it, and then we were able to have joy in the ridiculous and simple.  Before today, I wouldn't have thought that Jingle Bell Rock could be a worship song.  I think it was this morning.  I can't even believe I'm saying that.  But what if we honored God in that moment just as much as in the rest of the service?

2. Penguins are pretty much the most comical creatures alive.

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!

Saying no...

I suppose I probably should have seen this coming.

What, you may ask? Well, of course ever since I posted about saying yes to God, I've been much more conscious of all the ways I say no to him.  I'm actually realizing, much to my chagrin, that between outright saying no and just not listening at all, I don't really say yes to God nearly as much as my previous post might have made it seem like.  I mean, I even boiled the whole process of life down to a few simple steps in that post... and then I found out I'm bad at doing them.

I guess this is just my personal disclaimer then.  I didn't ever mean to suggest that I have life under control, but it turns out that's kind of what I was actually thinking after all.  If that sounds prideful... it is.  Nice thing is, if you just get something like that out in the open, then God can do something with it.  What he likes to do is humbling and often painful, but that's really what progress looks like, I think.

So, I was thinking that I should amend my five-step plan to include a part where we confess and ask for repentance for all the ways we say no.  Then I was thinking, not many of us are actually bold enough to say no outright to God (although I have done that, and I don't recommend it).  Mostly we just don't ask/listen/pay attention to him.  For those of us who know that he actually speaks, this is a little bit like a kid plugging his ears and yelling lalalalala to not hear what his parents are saying.  He can try the excuse that he didn't hear, but that doesn't usually get far (note that this is a purely hypothetical kid of course, not based on personal experience at all).

The only difference between us and that kid is we've developed more sophisticated ways of plugging our ears and yelling, so to speak.  Last time I mentioned YouTube and its noise-making, distracting brethren on the web and tv.  Sometimes it can even be healthy things, like working hard, or even personal relationships.  Mostly, however we do it, we say no to God by trying to avoid the silence (physical and spiritual) in which we know he speaks.

What I'm finding is that no matter how well I think I'm doing with this stuff, I'm still much more of a mixed bag of good and bad than I wish I was.  I suspect the same is true for you, if you're honest.  Even in this, though, we have hope:

Our hope is that God pursues us.

Even when we are running away (or toward any other thing, which is the same), he comes after us.  He doesn't mind the whole mixed bag thing so much; it's really his only option for people to work with.  Check out the story of Elijah in 1 Kings 19, for example!  Elijah just had pretty much the most amazing mountaintop experience (literally) possible in the chapter before, and in chapter 19 he freaks out and runs away.  He also asks God to kill him rather than making him keep working!  Keep in mind this is the same guy that was eventually found worthy to skip the whole death thing and get carried into heaven on a chariot made of fire as well.  Was he perfect? No. But God pursued him... and he spoke to him in the silence (1 Kings 19:12).  I know the NIV says gentle whisper, but the literal translation is "thin silence."  That phrase inspired a poem for me that reflects my desire to listen and respond to the Lord, and I'll finish with that:

Elijah's Prayer


let me be found
in the thin silence

listening

let my voice
surrender and stay

quietly

for you

let my heart
be wholly at home

to whisper

resting on you
let me be lost

Amen

Memento Mori

The title of this post is a Latin phrase.  It may not at first seem like a very uplifting one-- it means "Remember you will die."

This phrase has been a motto of the Christian faith throughout its history.  Does it sound morbid to you?  It did to me at first... but as I've been thinking about it more I think it's one of the most important thoughts that has ever been expressed.

And believe it or not, it's in the Bible.  Ecclesiastes 7:2 says "It is better to go to a house of mourning than to go to a house of feasting, for death is the destiny of every man; the living should take this to heart."

Yeah, houses of mourning are pretty much our favorite places to be, right?  I was trying to think about what these places would be today, and what came to mind was funeral homes.  How do you feel when you go to a funeral?  I know I just want to get out of there as soon as possible most times.  If there's a choice between a funeral and a feast, I know which one I'd normally choose.

But Solomon is challenging us with something here, challenging us to deal with the real issues of this messed up world we find ourselves in.  When we're partying, we often don't have to deal with any of this-- it's like the food and drink and entertainment are specifically designed to keep us from having to think.  Actually it's not like that, it IS that in many cases.  As Solomon points out elsewhere in his book, this isn't always a bad thing-- too much thinking can be just as bad as not enough.  The lesson of the funeral, however, is said to have more lasting value.

What's the lesson?  Essentially, it's that we are all going to die.  And we don't know when-- could be tomorrow, could be fifty years from now.  As Francis Chan said in his (excellent and highly challenging) book, Crazy Love, "You might not finish this chapter."  Or this blog.  Comforting, right?

Actually, I think it is.  Here's why: something happens when we die.  You might be thinking, "we go to Heaven!" and yeah, that's obviously what we're shooting for.  (Remembering to live in the light of our future hope in heaven is really important too, but that's really a whole different post. I'm just talking about death here. Let's keep it focused on death.)

See, while our spirits are going to meet Jesus and face the last judgment, something is happening here on earth too.  The best way I can describe it is that things are ceasing to matter.  Think about it-- when you die, do you think anyone will care at all what clothes you wore, what job you had, how much money you made at it, or where you lived?  I doubt it-- they'll care about who you were, not what you did.  So all those other things will entirely cease to matter because the only person who ever really cared about them will have just left the premises.

Remembering that we will die just puts in perspective the things that are really important.  Did we live life striving to become more like Jesus and to bless those around us, both our Christian family and the lost around us?  Or were we too selfish?  As I've been thinking about this for myself, I've realized that a lot of the things I'm focused on are so dramatically self-centered that they completely lack importance.

Remembering that we might die soon provides the impetus we need to do something about this self-centeredness.  There really isn't time to deal with our own priorities and then move on to what God cares about and what will bless others.  We have to do the important things NOW.  I know I don't want to scrape my way into Heaven like someone escaping through the flames (see 1 Corinthians 3:11-16).  I want to devote my time to things that will last.

Now, obviously this mindset could lead us into frenzied panic: we have to know right now what God wants and do all of it right away with no breaks because we could die any minute!  But that isn't really the point.  I'm convinced that almost anything can have eternal value... if it's offered to the Lord.  We become more like him in our everyday work if we do it for him, in our resting if we rest in him, in our worship if our hearts are really inviting him.  We also bless our community by working, our friends and family by resting and recharging, and our God and church family by worshipping with all our hearts and inspiring others.

"So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God" --1 Corinthians 10:31

The coolest thing that's been happening in my life recently is that I've started seeing how God desires to meet me and grow me up in all these different situations.  I feel a lot of times like my thoughts and feelings are all over the map, but God pursues me in all of them.  All of these things then become windows into his love and ways to become more like him.  As I offer them to him, some he takes away, some he gives back, and some are multiplied several times over!  But all of it matters-- yet only to the extent that it stops being about me and starts being about God's plan being worked out in my life and in the lives of those he has placed around me.

So, I'm not planning on going anywhere anytime soon, but I have to remember that I will die.  I just don't want to waste my time alive on cares that will perish with me.  My life will have impact on the future only as I care about the things the eternal God has always cared about: the rescue and restoration, salvation and sanctification, of broken souls in a fallen world.  As I learn to live like this, I can be free from the stress of all my own plans and worries (which, incidentally, I don't have power to do anything about because God isn't terribly concerned about them) and begin to walk in the freedom that comes when you're working for the plans of the One who has the power.

And all that just from remembering that one unspecified day, I'll die.  Not so bad, is it?

Memento mori.

Humanism vs. Glory

I recently heard an excellent message from a preacher to whom I would love to give credit for it, except I don't know his name.  Anyway, I wanted to share the general gist of it in the hopes that it can spur others on to have some of the same thoughts and questions it sparked in me.  (By way of at least some credit being given, I heard this message as part of a video compilation called the revival hymn which you can google and I encourage you to watch if you're feeling ready to be pummeled with convicting truth and challenging ideas for about 40 minutes.  This thing rocked my world.)

Basically, this preacher started by describing how humanism has become the predominant worldview of our time.  A quick and dirty definition of humanism: a philosophy that states that the ultimate goal of life/existence is the happiness of humankind.  A lot of people (including Christians... we'll get to that in a moment) live like this is the case.  Even if they don't think their position out philosophically all the way to full-on humanism, many at least arrive at its cousin, hedonism (or simple pleasure-seeking) as the driving principle of their lives.

All this is simply a natural part of humanity's ongoing attempt to flee from God as the source of meaning or reason in life.  However, the problem as it relates to the church, to those of us who try to shine a light into the darkness, comes when this humanist influence starts seeping into Christianity.  Biblical Christianity teaches that the purpose for our existence is to bring glory to God.  The process by which we abandon God's glory and start living for happiness (either for all: humanism, or just for us: hedonism) is certainly a subtle one, and I don't really feel qualified to explain how it happens.  I see in my own life that it does, though.  Let me just share some questions that have been kicking around in my heart to hopefully shed light on what I mean.

Do I ask God for forgiveness because I want to feel better about myself or because I am really sorry for attempting to steal his glory through whatever prideful sin I indulge in?

Do I want God's guidance in my life because I want to feel safe, or because it will result in me taking part in his perfect plan to maximize his own praise?

Do we "do evangelism" as a means to fix the problems of the world and its broken inhabitants or because the Lamb of God shed his holy blood for these people and deserves to see them claimed by his love?

Do I even believe that God is justified in caring much more about his glory than our temporal well-being?

How would my life be different if I lived for God's glory instead of my own happiness?


See where I'm going with all this? The problem of humanism seems to be everywhere I look... all these ways that I've subjugated true Christianity to my own quest for ________ (fill in the blank: completion, happiness, fulfillment, simplicity etc.).  The problem is not that God doesn't want to give me those things!  It's just that pursuing them instead of God himself is like taking a medication because you want the side-effects, not the cure.  We can get so distracted that we completely lose sight of the fact that we've been set free from the sin and bondage that was killing us.

And what is freedom, anyway?  Not the ability to do whatever we want... but the ability to walk in the healing light of God's glory. The light we shine into the dark can't be our own, and it can't even be the elusive glow of happiness, whatever that is. 

The only light that can really illuminate the dark streets of our city and our world is the light of the glory of God revealed in Christ.

We need to be preaching God as the all-consuming righteous lover of our souls, the glorious Lord of all things who rightfully deserves their obedience, NOT the means to happiness, not something to add to the lives we already have to make them better.

But first, before we start preaching it... we need to start living like it's true.

I've often heard it said that people are looking for something bigger than themselves to belong to that will give them meaning.  Personal happiness is too self-centered-- I think many would willingly lay down most of life's comforts to really feel that they had meaning.  No wonder people don't buy what the church is selling: if it's all about happiness it just isn't that different from all the other scams they've already gotten burned on.  Only the overwhelming glory of God is enough bigger than us to be worthwhile.

How do we live for THAT?  And how do we share it with others in such a way that they want it too?  Although I have so far to go to really live this way, I long to pursue these things and see the church reflect them.  How can we start living for God's glory in fuller measure?

Maybe if we loved unselfishly... not for what we could get out of it.

Maybe if we worshipped God... not music or a song or the show.

Maybe if we truly gave up our lives to God... instead of trying to fit him into our plans.

Maybe if we prayed God would save us from the ways we don't honor him... instead of the ways we aren't happy.

Maybe if we stopped chasing happiness long enough to truly be still in the presence of God.

"Be still and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations; I will be exalted in the earth." (Psalm 46:10)

God's glory WILL win in the end.  I'd just like to be part of making that happen instead of getting myself in the way.

What and When

I am in a season right now where I am more aware than ever of my need for God's guidance.  I have a lot of decisions to make and things to think about, more than it seems I ever have.  Maybe becoming a man just brings that stuff with it, and maybe I should have been feeling like this a year or two ago while I was determinedly avoiding decisions and (to be honest) real life.  Whatever the case, anything that reminds you of your dependence on God can't be too bad of a thing; it's just that the uncertainty can be unpleasant.

I don't feel afraid about it all, though... not really.  This past year has been a year of immense change and I know God has guided me through it all.  As I approach another birthday, I feel like the coming year is going to be much the same in that respect.  The hard thing about change, though, is that while you can sometimes see it coming, it's pretty much impossible to tell what it's going to be.

Really, I think that's where we get in trouble a lot in life: trying to decide what changes will come to our lives before they happen.  Even worse, sometimes we try to tell God what changes he should be making and when they should be happening.  I know I had a whole plan for my life when I was 18-- according to that plan, by this present time in my life I was supposed to be a full-time pastor happily married to the woman of my dreams and thinking about when and how many kids to have.  Thankfully, God knew I wasn't even close to ready for any of that.

Funny thing is, a lot of that horribly mistaken adolescent vision was based on things that I really do feel like God wants me to do.  My heart is to minister to people, to be married someday, and to be a good father.  I feel like these desires come from God and even honor him.  What God has been showing me recently, though, is that just because he has spoken something, doesn't mean it has to happen right NOW.

I've seen a lot of people bring themselves pain like this-- God gives them a vision for something, and then they get ahead of the plan and wear themselves out trying to make it happen, only to end up questioning God when the plan fails.  My question is, whose plan was it?  We (I include myself here) have an alarming tendency to grab the plans out of God's hands and make them our own.  God should fulfill this vision this way, and (usually) right NOW.

The Bible paints a very different picture of how God fulfills his plans, even once he has revealed them to us.  The lives of Joseph, Paul, Abraham, David, and many others reveal that God doesn't always do things right NOW.  After God revealed some of his plans to those honored individuals, they ended up being imprisoned for years, preaching on the backside of nowhere, wandering about in foreign lands, or being chased by the very king they had been anointed to replace, for example.  And Jesus, who clearly knew that God was his father at age 12 (see Luke 2:49), had eighteen more years to wait before he began his ministry!

But who would have followed a 12 year-old rabbi?

It just wouldn't work.  My point, I guess, is that any attempt at carrying out God's plans before their time is just as ludicrous.

As for those people I mentioned, all they kept on doing was the next right thing.  Joseph never lost faith in prison and served with distinction no matter where he found himself.  Paul just kept on preaching the truth. Abraham was even willing to sacrifice the son of the promise if it meant following God's commands.  Maybe part of David being a man after God's heart was the way he knew that God had anointed him king in Saul's place but continued to serve him and refused to kill him even when he had the chance (twice!).  He was waiting for God to do what he said he would, and he refused to take it into his own hands.

As for Jesus, he just continued to grow.  That's pretty incredible, considering he was God in the flesh.

Now, none of that is to say that we should just passively wait for things to happen.  All those men walked in great purpose and initiative when the time was right.  It's just to say that finding out what God wants to do is worthless if we won't wait on his timing to make it happen.  We also have to keep growing in the meantime.

So that's where I find myself.  I know God wants to do some things.  I'm just trying to find out what they are and, just as importantly, when they are.  The constant battle of life is to let God's plan be the one I follow.  This plan is not just destination, but timing and method as well.  God's revelation, no matter what it is, awaits its appointed time to be fulfilled (see Habakkuk 2:3), because God fulfills it--not us.  Jesus knew that it was his Father who was the one doing the moving.  I want to know what the Father is doing, and then (and only then) join in doing that thing myself.  That's how God's will is done. 

And if we'd all do that... that's how his kingdom will come on earth as it is in heaven.

Moving

As I mentioned last time, this is a season of many new things for me as I move out of my parents' house for the first (and hopefully only) time.  Well, it really did (after some unforeseen delays) happen, and the dust is just now beginning to settle a bit.  There are countless things that could be said about this whole process and all it entails, so I really can't let it go by without blogging about it at least once.  Besides, it's really the main thing that's been happening in my life and my heart recently, so I can't imagine writing about anything else right now anyway.  What follows is a sampling of my thoughts from the past few weeks.  If it seems a bit random or chaotic, then it mirrors exactly the process of moving in general, at least to me.

This may seem self-evident, but one of the biggest things about moving is all the movement it causes.  It sometimes seems like everything is constantly in motion.  I think this is one of the best reasons to do it every so often, especially for people like me.  Sometimes I can just get very stationary in life, not doing much or making much progress in any direction.  Moving does not allow for that option.  I feel like I've learned so many things and in so doing gotten out of my own little world and into the real world at large to a much greater extent.  It's a wonderful, beautiful place to explore-- it makes me feel small, and that's a good thing.  It breaks the illusion that I am a big deal in a small world that I orchestrate to orbit myself.  Instead, I'm just a little man in a huge world that revolves around God's never-failing plan.  And that, my friends, is a comforting thought.

Another big thing that moves when you move is emotion.  It's a good thing that God started helping me learn to deal with my emotions before I started this process, because I had no idea that I could feel so many wildly different things in such a short space of time.  I have felt overwhelmed, exhilarated, afraid, happy, sad, peaceful, lonely, joyful, confident and any number of other things that I don't know how to name, sometimes all at once or in rapid-fire succession, sometimes at longer stretches.  I say stretches because that what it's doing to me in a big way-- it forces me to go to God, feel what I'm feeling, and bring it to him for help.  The only other option would be implosion, I think.  Another good reason for moving: anything that brings our constant desperate need for God into such sharp focus has to be a good thing.  He always comes through when he has to, and being closer to him is the end goal of life anyway...

Moving has really highlighted the value of relationships for me as well.  The people I care about mean more to me than ever now that I have my own house to welcome them into.  That being said, if I just stay in my house and retreat into myself, those relationships will suffer-- they need investment and time.  I mean, it helps if you have a wonderful, like-minded brother to move in with you, but even (or especially?) that kind of relationship is not self-sustaining.  It needs care and time to achieve the constant growth necessary for health... but it's worth it.  I would argue that relationship (i.e. friendship, love, community and real connection) is one of the biggest things worth striving for in all the world.  If you count relationship with God, then it definitely IS the most important.

And of course, moving teaches many more mundane or practical lessons as well.  For example, it is a better idea to wait for your roommate to help you move large furniture up two flights of stairs than to do it yourself because you just want to be finished with the task.  Similarly, it is a good idea to bring a quarter to Aldi when you go there and get a cart, rather than trying to hold your whole trip in one big box that was lying around.  On a related note, Marc's doesn't take Visa cards (or any other kind except Discover, it turns out).  What?!?! Who knew?  And who knew how expensive most of the things I really like to eat are?  And who knew that garbage disposal and recycling require a six-page manual?   Paying bills, repairing locks, cooking food... man, I'm starting to feel like a freaking adult.

And it's all exactly where I'm supposed to be.

Devotion

There's an old saying that goes, "Don't put all your eggs in the same basket."  This is commonly regarded as wisdom, since obviously if you drop the one basket carrying all your eggs, you then have zero eggs, which would be the worst possible outcome.

I'm not sure it works that way in God's kingdom, though.  Check this out:

"Until I come, devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture, to preaching and to teaching.  Do not neglect your gift, which was given you through a prophetic message when the body of elders laid their hands on you.  Be diligent in these matters; give yourself wholly to them, so that everyone may see your progress."

--Paul, in 1 Timothy 4:13-15

Paul is asking Timothy to put all his eggs in one basket.  Devote yourself, be diligent, give yourself wholly.  These are all or nothing phrases.

I think we shy away from approaching life like this for a couple of reasons.  For one thing, devoting yourself to anything (which implies complete focus and being set apart for a task--similar to holiness, actually) is hard work by definition.  It is all consuming, and a lot of us have trouble committing to things like that.  So, laziness gets in our way.

Even deeper than that, though, I feel like we avoid this devoted lifestyle because of fear.  We are somehow afraid that it won't turn out to be that great and we'll be left with nothing else after the eggs drop.  We really don't think God's plan is the best, so we follow halfway just in case it is the best, while also making our own plans and holding onto those.  It doesn't seem to work, but that doesn't usually stop us.  Maybe that's why Jesus said we have to lose our lives to save them.

Then another thing we fear is the reaction of others.  Paul comes right out and tells Timothy that everyone will see his progress: little or much, good or bad, it will be right out there.  Streetlights are right out in the open, not hidden.  If we devote our lives to following the Lord, people will be able to tell, and our successes and failures will be much more visible if we're willing to be real.  I think that's why we paradoxically try to save face by not trying as hard as we can.  That way if what we're doing fails, we always have the out that "we weren't really trying our very hardest."  Who knows what would have happened if we were?

So that's where I find myself today.  I know that I want to devote myself to following God, reading the word, and using my spiritual gifts.  I want to be diligent.  I want to devote myself wholly to this.  I am also afraid.  But, I know the times when I am most devoted to God are the times I am most free.  The same decision presents itself every day, every hour, every moment.  All I know is, regardless of my past choices, my current fears, or old sayings, right now I choose devotion.

Witness?

I don't know how much this is true anywhere else, but in Cleveland sports are a religion.

There's really no other way to explain it.  I was reading the newspaper the other day, and they had all these photos of people looking extraordinarily downcast after watching yet another highly touted Cleveland team bomb out of its league's playoffs in spectacular fashion.  In this most recent episode, the Cavaliers essentially rolled over and died against a team they were probably better than, all the while looking lethargic, scared, and relatively hopeless.  Sound familiar?  Those are also a lot of the same problems the city in general has, ironically.

Now, disappointment and heartbreak are pretty foundational to Cleveland sports.  Every time a Cleveland team is getting even remotely close to doing something good, the sports shows inevitably have to air the montage of all of Cleveland's past failures.  I've seen this so many times that I can tell you what's coming and in what order without even watching it-- Willie Mays' catch, the Drive, the Fumble, the Shot, and 1997 game 7 are the standard lineup, sometimes with other humiliating moments thrown in for good measure.  My point in saying all this is that you might think Clevelanders would be getting used to this stuff.

This time, though, there was an extra layer of despondency and fear attached to the loss.  This particular loss happened to be in the last year of the contract of Cleveland's self-appointed savior, meaning that he could end up cutting his losses and leaving Cleveland to join another team with a better chance of winning.  I'm sure you know who I'm referring to-- giant billboard downtown?  arms outstretched in a travesty of the cross? army of fans in shirts that say "WITNESS" right above a Nike swoosh?  Yeah, that's the guy.  The imagery is almost too obvious: Cleveland is looking to LeBron for salvation.

I think somehow people have bought into the idea (read: lie) that if Cleveland could just win a sports championship, the city would be saved or somehow set on the road to recovery.  Now the best chance in years for that to happen might leave town.  You can start to see why everyone is so upset.  There's no denying the fact that LeBron's arrival and time in Cleveland have brought a lot of money to the city that otherwise wouldn't have been there, both in ticket sales and the spending of people who come from across the nation to see him.  But even if he could deliver on his promise and bring a championship to Cleveland, all of its deep, systemic problems would still exist.

It's easier, though, not to think about those real problems.  People who want to ignore them (or at least get a small respite from them) readily turn to sports as an escape, and that's where the salvation problem begins.  I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with sports; if you know me, you know I enjoy both playing sports and watching well-played games (which Cleveland unfortunately supplied very few of in this year's playoffs).  That's the thing though: sports were meant to be enjoyed.  When I saw all those depressed faces in the Plain Dealer, I couldn't help thinking that the point was being missed somewhere.  Obviously, we all want our team to win, and that's fine.  But when it becomes so pivotal to our emotions that we can't enjoy it anymore, then I think we're starting to head towards Jonah 2:8 territory.

Remember that verse? It says "Those who cling to worthless idols forfeit the grace that could be theirs."  I feel like a lot of Clevelanders were and are forfeiting some happiness and grace they could have had by clinging to idols, whether sports, winning, or LeBron himself.  I have to include myself in that group as well.  For a lot of my life, I've lived and died with Cleveland sports.  (I wasn't really sentient for most of those montage of failure moments, but my 10-year old self was crushed after the '97 world series.)  You'd think all the disappointment might get us looking for something better.

But you know what? This isn't just about basketball or even sports in general.  The same thing happens any time we cling so tightly to things that we miss God.  This is the natural condition of all of us in our fallen state, and it's the perfect opportunity to have a real witness.  We all have things we've put our hope in that have dramatically let us down: people, relationships, jobs, money, and yes, even sports teams.  No one is exempt from this, even if they could care less about the free-agent saga of LeBron. 

We can always share our stories of our idols failing to satisfy.  And then... then we can bear witness to the One who is worthy of our praise, who has never let us down, and who will never leave us for another team.  He sees the problems in Cleveland that run much deeper than the ineptitude of our sports teams, and they don't scare him.  Our job is to show him to the people who are looking for him in a team, a relationship, or a freakishly athletic and egotistical superstar.  I think that's what it really means to be a witness in Cleveland.

One Thing at a Time

I just have a quick thought for today, and I realize it might seem like kind of a "duh" moment to everyone else.  It's been a pretty important revelation for me though, so I just thought I would share.  Plus, it's something I need to keep coming back to, so writing it down should really be helpful in that regard too.  Ready?  Here it is:

I can only do one thing at a time.

Pretty earthshaking, no?  Of course, there is always multitasking, and I don't deny it (even though it's a skill that many of you know I possess in very small measure), but that's not what I'm talking about.  No matter how good of a multitasker you are, you still can only be in one place at any given moment.  Whatever you're doing, be it one thing or fourteen, is all you're doing.  Put that up against the countless millions of things you could theoretically be doing, and multitasking doesn't seem to matter as much.  There are still way more things happening than you can ever possibly be part of.

That last thought is one of two things: really depressing or really freeing.  It's just a matter of how you look at it.  I think I've lived a lot of my life with the mindset that I had to keep from missing out on things.  If there was a party or event going on, I felt like I had to be there or I'd be missing out on something I desperately needed, something that would make my life better.  I'm sure my rampant desire for people's acceptance had something to do with that, but that's really another blog for another time.  For the purposes of this one, it's just important that I've often felt like I was missing out.  And of course, as I've said, each moment really does contain millions of things I'm not doing.  It can get a little overwhelming if you start thinking about it like that, and that's where you can start getting depressed if you aren't careful.

On the other hand, the freeing side of this whole thing is that we can choose to focus our attention on whatever we are doing instead of what we aren't.  What if that was all we had to worry about?  How do we choose out of all the possible choices the one thing we are going to do and focus fully on that in each moment?  Actually, that's pretty overwhelming too, on the face of it.  That's why we need the Spirit of God in our lives.

Believing that God has a plan for you and is sovereignly directing your life changes the whole equation.  We can actually ask God for directions, ask him to tell us by his Spirit what we should be doing, and he will!  Then, we just have to be willing to do it, but again that's a different blog.  If we know God is leading us, though, that should certainly raise our level of confidence.  If we actually start believing that his plan is best, we probably will spend a lot less time worrying about missing out on things.

Having a job has really helped put this all in perspective for me.  There are significant amounts of time that I just have to be there, some of which are also times that other things are going on that I might like to do.  Now, I can get all worried about what I'm "missing out" on (the party, the girl, the worship night, the free time, etc.) if I want to.  However, I can also choose to believe that God has called me to work as part of his larger plan to move me into the rest of my life and has provided this job for me to do that.  If that's true, then that's where I'm supposed to be, and it will end up being the best for me in ways I can't even understand yet (and some that I do understand, like $$). 

"We know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose" (Romans 8:28).  All things!  Really, that makes it impossible to miss out on goodness.  Whatever we do, God is working for our good as we submit to his purposes.  That's true even if it doesn't seem good to us at the time because all too often what we feel has absolutely no bearing on what is true.  Maybe that's why we get so worried and upset about many things, when only one thing is needed (see Luke 10:42). 

So, if we feel like we're always missing out, it probably means one of two things: either

a). we don't really believe that what God is calling us to do is the best thing, OR

b). we don't know if what we're doing is actually what God is calling us to do.

The way out of this pattern, then, is to always be asking God what he wants us to be doing (note: even while we're doing things! Check out Philippians 4:6 and 1 Thessalonians 5:17--  Scripturally mandated multitasking!  Looks like I need some practice... yet another thing my job can be good for).  While we're at it, we can also ask for faith to believe that he will lead us and that what he tells us will be the best thing for us.  That's freeing and comforting to me because it puts all the need to make things happen where it belongs--with the One who can actually make them happen.  God doesn't call us to more than we can handle.  Well, actually he kind of does... but then he handles it.  He's in charge of the millions and millions of things.  All we have to do is one thing at a time.

Growing Up

For those of you keeping score at home, this is the 23rd post on my blog! It's interesting that it worked out like that, because this is also my first post as a 23 year old. Hah, I almost wrote "the first post of my 23rd year," but that obviously wouldn't be true because this is the beginning of my 24th... but yeah.

Anyway, I've been feeling for quite some time like this particular year was going to be a big year of change and growth for me. It all has to do with the process of growing up. I realize, of course, that there's no getting around the fact that being 23 years old makes you an adult by any reasonable standard. It's just that I didn't really feel like one.

See, in way too many areas and situations, I've still been waiting for life to come to me. When you're a kid, that's pretty much how things go. Life happens to you, and you roll with it and have as much fun as you can while still fulfilling the demands being placed on you by authority figures so you don't get in trouble. In America, we've managed to extend this phase even further than just grade school or even high school. College is pretty much the same deal; it's like a four-year (or more) extension of childhood and freedom from the dreaded real world. Then you get spit out at the end of it, and (especially if you graduate with a liberal arts degree) you're no closer to knowing how to handle the real world than you were before.

At least that's what happened to me. Anyway, the end result for me was essentially a vague and nameless uneasiness about my life and future. Kind of like, wow, I'm a college graduate, but who am I and what am I doing? And because that's such an open-ended question that has no easy answers, the path of least resistance becomes doing nothing.

Unfortunately, that pretty much creates a vicious cycle: you have anxiety, you ignore it and don't make progress, which makes you more anxious. It sucks. The question, both for me and for others who find themselves in this situation, is whether the crushing weight of expectation and fear will drive you to God or away from him.

For quite awhile, I resisted what God was trying to do through my anxiety. Eventually though, the desperation it created led me to his feet. The funny thing was, he actually wanted to heal me, not make me do a bunch of stuff I felt powerless to do. He wanted to teach me the fear of God and help me get rid of my fear of men, and he also made much more of his love real to me.

I can only be a man because I am his child.

As that truth has been steadily sinking into me, a lot of things have been happening. I'm becoming more truly myself than I have ever been. I care much less about what people think of me. Plus, God has been providing for me greatly, both spiritually and physically. He's giving me strength and vision again, not to mention a job (or two jobs, actually). I'm learning how to be much more purposeful with my time too. I regret the time I've wasted, but I believe God is redeeming the years the locust has eaten (Joel 2:25). He's leading me into a brand new season. At 23, I finally feel like I'm growing up.

Snow and Silence

Hmm... that title sounds like a good name for an Eskimo emo (Eskemo?) band... Can you see the hair across the eyes peeking out from the parkas? No? Ok, anyway...

I find myself a member of a distinct minority (at least here in Cleveland) of people whose favorite season is winter. Maybe it's the fact that it goes on for so long, is generally a uniformly overcast grey, and tends to send snow at just the right rate that you have to brush a quarter inch or so off of your car every time you want to get in it. I can see how it might be a little depressing to some. Whatever the reason, few people here seem to actually like it. For me, I'd much rather be a little cold than a little hot any day, but the main reason I love winter is because of the snow.

Now, I could go on and on about snow, as many have probably heard me do already. I've written poems about it, but I'll save those for another day. The main thing I'm thinking about today is how snow makes everything quieter. There's this muffling it achieves that is completely unique. I'm sure you know what I'm talking about: you walk outside after a fresh snowfall and everything seems quiet, even in the middle of the city. I love stepping outside at about 2am and hearing the beautiful softness. It helps me gather my thoughts, and the stillness seems to have a renewing quality to it.

Maybe the renewal is more in the quiet than the snow, though. It seems like our generation is the generation of noise. We're addicted to it. Just look at all the ways noise comes to us: as if tv wasn't bad enough all on its own, we also have radio for those few times when we don't have iPods (side note: the iPod is becoming one of those few lucky products whose brand name has become synonymous with the entire class of products it represents. Kleenex, Frisbee, Band-aid, etc... quite a marketing accomplishment) or cell phones pumping sound into our heads. Plus, those that can multitask do all this while also managing email, Facebook, or the aptly named Twitter.

Speaking of aptly named, how about this new thing Google (another of those dominant brand names, by the way) just came out with: Buzz. This has come crashing into my attention since it's automatically integrated into Gmail, of which I've become a strong supporter. In fact, this buzz deal will even show my blog posts whenever I update (although hopefully my readers will still visit my actual page... hopefully). We got to talking about it at my men's group though, and what name could sum up the general condition of our generation better than buzz? It's this constant dull hum of noise that we tend to keep around us that Google is desperately trying to become a part of. Thus, Buzz. Personally, I'm thinking seriously about disabling it for my account.

Here's why. It's not just an effort to keep people coming to see my actual blog, I promise. It's more of a symbolic stand. Silence, although run from by many and discouraged by our society, is actually extremely important. Buzz is like the opposite of silence, and the worst thing about it is that after so much noise, even when we do find ourselves accidentally in the quiet (like on a snow-covered street in the middle of the night), our minds are still spinning with all the things that have just been pumped into them. That can be unnerving, being alone with our spinning thoughts before God, so often we escape that by pumping in more noise. It can be quite the vicious cycle.

Anyway, I'm not just making up that stuff about snow and the power of quiet. The Bible has all kinds of things to say on the issue of silence too (although it doesn't specifically mention snow in that context, unfortunately). For example, "Be still, and know that I am God" (Psalm 46:10). Pretty straightforward, I think: we know God better when we are still and quiet. Period. In fact, silence is quite simply the appropriate response to his power and overwhelming glory. "Let all the earth be silent before him" (Habakkuk 2:20); "Be silent before the sovereign Lord" (Zephaniah 1:7).

Or how about this one: "Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life" (1 Thessalonians 4:11). I haven't heard too much preaching about that verse. By the way, the word that is translated quiet here doesn't just mean peaceful-- it's translated as "silent" elsewhere in the New Testament. I mean, Jesus himself went away to quiet places to pray and escape the crowds. I'm guessing he knew that in the Old Testament, one of the reasons judgment came upon Israel was that "the noise of a carefree crowd was around her" (Ezekiel 23:42). Sounds an awful lot like our society today, doesn't it? Buzzzz....

Now, I don't want to seem like I'm bashing the concept of sound here or anything crazy like that. I mean, I was listening to music while writing the beginning of this post (until I started getting convicted about it) and I love making music before God, which we are also commanded to do (see Psalms 66, 81, 98, etc.); "Blessed are those who know the joyful sound" (Psalm 89:15 NASB). It's just that we have to know when to turn off the noise and meet with God in the silence. And really, how else can we expect to hear his voice? You wouldn't have your headphones blasting while your friend was trying to have a conversation with you, so why do we do that to God? True, sometimes he is gracious enough to shout down the noise of our lives, but I bet we'd hear him a lot more if we would just turn it off.

I'll finish with a streetlight lesson, because I can't resist it. What do streetlights do right before they're about to burn out? They buzz. This analogy obviously can't be pushed too far, but maybe buzz is a warning sign for us too. Too much of it, and we may well be getting unhealthy. As streetlights, we shine our best out of the silence.

Godly sorrow

I think one of the driving forces of our culture in America is the desire for constant happiness. Because painful emotions are so, well, painful, we do our best to push them completely to the margins of our lives. For marketers, this is the perfect cultural climate, mostly because happiness is often so fleeting. They go ahead and prey on the idea that we should always be happy and that we should use such and such product to attain that goal, which works well for them because we quickly get tired of things and then have to get more to get back to that elusive happy place. The cruel trick of this system is that we end up feeling like there's something wrong with us, not the system, because we aren't happy all the time.

But what if pain really has a purpose? What if those unsettling feelings are important windows into who we actually are and who we are supposed to be becoming?

I'm reading this book right now called The Cry of the Soul by Dan Allender and Tremper Longman III (by the way, don't you wish you could put "the third" after your name? It makes it sound much more professional and important, don't you think?) that basically talks about using our painful and dark emotions as a bridge to greater relationship with God. It is a fantastic book and I highly recommend it. In light of our American culture, what it got me thinking about was the specific value of the sorrow we are trying so hard to avoid feeling (but honestly, can never truly escape). The Bible has a lot to say on this topic, but here's just one verse that has really captivated my attention:

"Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret, but worldly sorrow brings death" --2 Corinthians 7:10

No wonder the world is trying to avoid sorrow; perhaps they've picked up on the fact that their particular brand of it leads to death! It's perfectly natural, apart from God's intervention, to try to avoid pain at all costs. But do you catch what happens to the progression when God enters the mix? Godly sorrow --> repentance --> salvation. What an unexpected endpoint! Sorrow helps to save us?

Here's how I see that working: it's the difference between two words that are very similar and thus often confused, despair vs. desperation.

The great thing (or one of the many great things) about words, as English majors such as myself will be quick to tell you, is that they have such subtlety of meaning. Very rarely do two words mean exactly the same thing. Even synonyms usually have some subtle difference that separates them or some situation where one is more appropriate than the other; otherwise, why would we need two different words? Anyway, despair and desperation are two words like this. They are commonly used synonymously, but they are different and the distinction is an important one.

Despair means the loss of hope. A more accurate synonym for it would be hopelessness. It's easy to see where that leads: people who lose hope give up. This is sorrow leading to death, or worldly sorrow to use the terms of Paul in the verse above.

Desperation means the state of recognizing that one is in very serious and pressing need. A more accurate synonym for this one is brokenness. This leads people to do whatever is necessary to see that serious need be met. This sorrow, by God's grace, can often lead to repentance and life-- godly sorrow, as Paul would say.

See the difference? Despair looks at sorrow and sees no way out, so it refuses to deal with pain, opting to drown it out or die trying. Desperation looks right at the sorrow, enters in and cries out to be comforted. Despair sees no way out; desperation sees that there is only one way out and clings to its last chance for dear life.

On its own, of course, desperation isn't enough. But, when we realize that God is that way out, all of a sudden desperation leads right to salvation. We pursue God with single-minded fury and passion, turning from all the things that hinder us from getting to him (which is a pretty good definition of repentance, if I do say so myself), and holding onto the corner of his robe (see Mark 5:25-34) like our lives depend on it (which they do). End result: salvation, and no regrets.

Let me finish by going back to my definition of desperation, recognizing that we have a serious and pressing need. Is there ever a time when we don't have a serious need for God? No. Still, sometimes we feel like that need might not be too serious or pressing, that we can maybe handle things on our own for a little while. The trick for us is realizing that desperation is our constant state. There is only one way out of our problems, and it's Jesus. The only power that we have available to walk in comes from him, but he invites us to share it if we'll only admit we need it.

Maybe that's why God gives us sorrow and pain, to remind us that we need him and to give us access to his strength. God told Isaiah that he would give his people "the bread of adversity and the water of affliction" (Isaiah 30:20). Can it be true that these painful things are actually our food, the sustenance that we need to survive? It could be, if they drive us to God in godly sorrow. So, is it possible that by tuning out our pain and sorrow in all the various ways that we choose, we turn down God's great invitation to draw near and experience his power and salvation and life?

It's something to think about.

Your Kingdom come...

Anyone who has ever been even remotely associated with Christians or Christianity will certainly recognize the phrase serving as the title for this entry. In fact, many Christians have probably said those words countless times without really thinking about them, until finally the words are completely stripped of meaning. (As a side note, constant repetition of pretty much any word or words will eventually make you wonder what things mean. It works especially well, I find, with multi-syllable words. For example, just try saying something like "telephone" or "salami" over and over and over. Eventually, you'll be like, "who thought of this word?" and then "what does this word even mean?" until it finally ends up with something like "who am I?"...) Anyway, strange forms of amusement invented by only children aside, I think there's real danger in saying some things without caring about their meaning. Specifically, I'm talking about things with real spiritual significance, e.g. the Lord's prayer.

What are we really saying when we say "your kingdom come" ? Well, first of all, God's kingdom when fully revealed will be the place of ultimate peace. There won't be any more war, or death, or hurt or crying or anything like that. Sickness will be a thing of the past, as will poverty, racism and any other forces you can think of that are currently killing people. The entire old world order of things will be repealed (Revelation 21:4). So obviously that's what we should be hoping for when we ask God to bring his kingdom.

But, there's another whole side to this kingdom thing. We really like the loving and comforting part (as well we should), so it's easy to get stuck there. On the other hand, here's what got me thinking about this whole kingdom issue in the first place:

"In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted, and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above him were seraphs, each with six wings: with two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying. And they were calling to one another: 'Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory.' At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke. 'Woe to me!' I cried. 'I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty." (Isaiah 6:1-5)

The other thing we're talking about when we ask for God's kingdom, whether we know it or not, is his majesty and power. This is why just saying the words is potentially dangerous. We need, as Psalm 34 says, to be taught the fear of the Lord.

Think about it like this: Imagine that you lived sometime in the Middle Ages, and you were a swordsmith (because that would be a pretty sweet job). One day, the king of the whole land shows up at your shop with his heavily armed royal bodyguards and tells you to make him a royal sword. What would you do? I have a feeling you would drop what you were doing and make it as soon as you could. There wouldn't be any other choice. You wouldn't, I imagine, be saying anything like, "Well, I have a lot of other work coming in... busiest season of the year, you know... and I really should be taking some time to myself to relax, if that will even be possible with all the housework I have to do... but I would like to help, so maybe I can fit it in around the end of the month" or anything else like that. You'd be firing up the furnace and asking for the specifications. See where I'm going with this?

It's funny that we have to go back so far to the Middle Ages to conjure up an image of a king with that kind of power. In that day, you just didn't argue with royalty. I wonder why we think God would be any different than that. Why in the world do we think we have any choice in the matter of what he tells us to do? This is THE King we're talking about, the Lord Almighty, from whom angels hide their faces. Angels whose voices shake the earth. Imagine what happens when the King himself speaks! No wonder Isaiah said he was ruined. I bet he was pretty sure he had no right to live.

The next thing that happened to him, though, is that God cleansed him from guilt and blessed him. Here's the thing: that same mighty, fearsome King is the one who loves us. And, "There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment" (1 John 4:18). So where does the fear of the Lord come in? I know we get all excited about the coming blessings of the kingdom, but God doesn't change (James 1:17). He is still the King, high and exalted, seated on the throne as well. How can we reconcile these things and relate to him in the proper way?

I see it something like this. If you think back to my swordsmith analogy, I said that he didn't have any choice about following the king's orders. The king holds the power of life and death, so obviously arguing with him is a bad idea. But, good kings don't derive their power from threats. They are respected for their wise and caring rule and hold the power of command by virtue of that. If it was a good king in my analogy, he probably wouldn't have killed the poor ridiculous swordsmith if he turned down the king's request. He would, however, have taken the huge pile of gold he was waiting to give the swordsmith for the sword and taken it to someone who would do his will.

So, what does it mean to fear the Lord? If he loves us perfectly as his children (which he does, in case you were wondering), it's not a question of punishment, like if the king had his bodyguards kill the recalcitrant sword maker. God just doesn't sit in Heaven with lightning bolts waiting to zap us. Thing is, he doesn't want or need to. Psalm 37:17 says that "the Lord upholds the righteous." If he is constantly holding our world together with his hand of blessing, I think that's a position worthy of respect. But, he gives us the freedom to turn him down. As much as it breaks his heart, he will let us push his blessings away by refusing the mission and call that he has for us. What we find, as we turn our backs on the blessings by taking control for ourselves, is that we have plenty enough problems without God shooting lightning at us. All the chaos and confusion we let in will ruin us pretty quickly. God allows it, through his tears, for the purpose of bringing us running back to his hand of blessing. This is discipline, yet another way he loves us.

The fear of God for us as his children, then, is something more like reverence. (For his enemies, it's a whole different story.) For us, it's not so much that we have to worry about being smited (and yes, I know the correct word is smitten) but that we have great respect for the all-powerful force of blessing that runs our lives. It would obviously be idiotic for us to attempt to live in the dangerous land outside that protection, but it's still something we tend to do. We give the King, the Lord Almighty, all kinds of reasons why his blessing isn't quite as good or important as the other things we've got going on. And, he respects our wishes with what I can only imagine is some type of sorrowful disbelief. "You want what instead of me?"

Incidentally, this attitude on our parts probably has a lot to do with why non-Christians look at us and don't especially want what we have. If we spend our time actively running away from the blessings we are offering, why would anyone else want them? If we won't live like there's a living King in the land, why would anyone else believe it? I mean, if God is real and he is the all-powerful force of blessing we say he is, then we owe him everything. Everything. All of it, all the time, no matter what. Time, money, jobs, relationships; all his. All subject to his leading, every moment spent in his service. If we lived like that instead of like The World Lite™, then maybe more people would realize the truth. In fact, it would be impossible for them to avoid.

So, let's not be naïve when we pray "your kingdom come." We definitely want and should ask for the blessings that are part of God's kingdom: tears being dried, healing from sickness, etc. But why do we think we should just pray about something we're supposed to have a part in doing? How do we expect to gain the blessings of the kingdom without submitting to God's rule? If we want God's kingdom to come, maybe we should think about living like he is the King.