'Am-ha'aretz Press

Two Stories of Poor Behavior - Why motive matters more than rules.

2012-02-01T20:50:00.001-08:00

At this time, I would like to thank the Lifehouse youth group with bringing me back down to earth. That is all. Moving on...

I still think Christians ought to ask themselves why they hesitate to talk to their friends and family about Jesus. But how should we look at this from the perspective of grace? I'm not saying you have to tell a certain amount of people about Jesus in order to consider yourself a "good Christian". I want to know why people who experience something as great as salvation wouldn't want to share that with the people around them.

In the wake of all the discussions I've had since Monday, I'd like to tell two stories. One of them happened and I made up the other. Maybe I won't tell you which is which so you can figure it out for yourself.

My brother went to Dallas to attend a church leadership and mission school. They had more rules than the Bible. I don't think that's an exaggeration. If you set the rule book next to an NIV, the NIV would look like the Cliff/Spark Notes. One rule said all men had to remain clean shaven. My brother thought this sounded harmless enough until one of the campus leaders ran the edge of a student ID along his cheek to test for stubble.

Every failure to abide by the rules resulted in demerits. Earning enough demerits could get you kitchen duty or some other kind of Beetle Bailey punishment. My brother and his friends were constantly following rules because they didn't want to scrub burned chicken grease off of pots.

When I went to visit during my spring break, I knew I didn't have to worry about those rules since I wasn't a student. I walked into morning chapel with my shirt untucked. A buttoned up, smiling man said, "Good morning, brother! You should tuck in your shirt." And like a smartass, I said, "I'm not your brother. And I like how my shirt looks." Later, I walked outside and cut across the lawn toward the parking lot. A campus leader on the sidewalk stared holes through me. "You're not supposed to walk on the grass," he called out. So I obliged. I laid down and barrel rolled the rest of the way to my brother's car.

I realize I acted like a jerk. But the point is, I didn't have to listen to them. The rules didn't apply to me.

Much later in life, so much later, I met my future wife at a birthday party. We began talking that night and then talked nearly every night afterward. Within a few months, we decided to start dating.

That first week of our new relationship, we ran into an old crush of mine. And, like a stupid sitcom actor, I introduced my new girlfriend by saying, "and this is... my friend... Chelsea." Of course the old crush could see the BS all over me and the perturbed look on Chelsea's face.

Which story do you think is true? I'm curious to see what you say.

But assuming both stories were true, why would I be more ashamed of the one boneheaded move with Chelsea than breaking every rule on the campus of my brother's school?

Ask Yourself Honestly - A question for other Christians.

2012-01-30T21:01:00.000-08:00

If you're a Christian. I mean if you believe in Jesus. I mean if you believe Jesus is God, and you trust everything He said is, well, God's honest truth, then ask yourself this question.

Do you think the best way to share the gospel is to not share the gospel?

I wonder if this attitude really exists in the American church and not just in my imagination. It seems like Christians have tried to think of all sorts of ways to exhibit their faith without nutting up and telling people about it.

Lots of people toss out quotes to explain why they avoid talking about Jesus. Quotes like this: "Preach the gospel at all times, and when necessary, use words."

St Francis? He preached to birds and squirrels. If paintings tell us anything, I think St. Francis felt most comfortable sharing the gospel with harmless, unresponsive animals. Even you might feel alright telling your cat about your Lord and Savior.

But people? Telling other people? Face to face? Does it fill you with a cold sense of dread?

I wonder why we feel like this. And I do say "we". I have this problem just like a lot of other Christians. Lately, asking myself "why" has led me to think about how I view the gospel. Do I really believe it's the hope of the world? Do I really believe it's good news? How good? Good enough to get excited about it? Good enough to tell people? Do I really believe that Jesus changed my life? Do I believe that He has the power to transform other people?

Do you?

Because if the answer is "no", I think the next logical questions are much, much harder to face.

Listen, I don't want to bum you out. I do want to agitate you, though. Get uncomfortable. Think about what you believe. Think about why you hesitate.

Now, read 1 Peter 3:13-15 as if it were written to you. "Now who is there to harm you if you are zealous for what is good? But even if you should suffer for righteousness' sake, you will be blessed. Have no fear of them, nor be troubled, but in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect."

Maybe it's an Our Daily Bread kind of way to end a post, but I don't think I could say it any better. Thanks, Pete.

Don't You Dare Bury It.

2012-01-28T08:05:00.000-08:00

In my pursuit of re-entering the academic world, I met with an advisor at Tennessee State University yesterday morning. She asked me what classes I had taken. As I went through the list on her form, I realized how little focus I had given myself over the last, like, decade. I sometimes wonder if I set the stage for a drawn-out quarter life crisis somewhere in my adolescence. Seriously.

Music? I can play it. I've lived some of that life.

Writing? Someone besides my dad and I thought the book was good and published it. You can buy it for yourself to the right of this post.

Film? I took some courses and went to Vancouver. My name pops up on imdb (for music, but still).

And now I think I want to finish my BA and move toward teaching higher education.

Looking at the list of courses in the advisors office, I wanted to apologize for taking the woman's time and trudge back to the visitors parking lot all Peanuts style.

So why have I decided to take you, my twelve readers, into confidence? Because, of course, I saw a parallel with my life and the Bible.

In Matthew 25, Jesus tells a story about a business man entrusting talents (a large sum of money in that culture) into the care of three servants. One servant gets five talents, another servant two, and the third one. When the business man returns, the first two servants show how they've doubled the money in their care. Of course the business man is happy. Then the third servant says, "Master, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you scattered no seed, so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here you have what is yours."

I don't think the business man cared so much about the money. The dude had so much money, John the Baptist wannabes probably camped out on the Jericho Road in protest. So why would he react like this? "But his master answered him, 'You wicked and slothful servant!'"

Okay, I know Bible teachers love the ease of comparing money to abilities when it comes to this story. For a long time, as a kid, I thought certainly Jesus was talking about actual talents. Like the first servant could suddenly create oil paintings and play the piano. So maybe it'll sound cliche when I make the same comparison. I don't care. I knew this story and I still treated my talents like something I could hide in the ground and hope God wouldn't mind.

God wants me to use what He's given me, even if it's simply to invest it in other people. I don't think this is a matter of earning God's happiness, but I do think it makes Him happy when we use our gifts and talents. I think this includes creative, administrative, intellectual, and spiritual gifts, among others. Does God measure our success by what we produce? I think not. But if we trust God's confidence in us to use our abilities, I think He takes pleasure in it.

Any other people out there going through a life crisis? What gifts do you feel you have? Are you using them?

"Does It Bum You Out?" - What The Violet Burning taught me about grace.

2012-01-25T16:15:00.000-08:00

First, let me say, I realize I'm a bad blogger. I totally neglected to write Monday's post. But since we've talked about grace so much on the Press, I've decided to not feel bad about it.

As I've thought about last Friday's post, I remembered a story from my past and realized how bad I am at receiving grace sometimes.

I've played music for a long time. I mean, if you want to count the birthday parties I played at the age of twelve, I've done this for seventeen years. For over three years, I only asked for recording time as Christmas and birthday presents. I spent two savings accounts on DIY tours. So I like to think I appreciate what musicians put into their work.

In 1998, I saw The Violet Burning play at a festival. Their show blew my mind despite the tyrannical heat and mid-afternoon time slot. I really wanted to get one of their albums, but I only had a few extra bucks to spend before the end of the week. Getting an album seemed even more hopeless when I saw their prices. They weren't especially unreasonable, but everything cost five or ten dollars more than what I expected.

Meanwhile, Mike Pritzl, the singer, stood there as I examined everything on the table and put it down. Finally, I picked up a cassette and asked how much it cost. "Six dollars," he said. I put the cassette down, feeling totally bummed and embarrassed. As I began to walk away, he stopped me. "How much do you have?"

"Five bucks."

"Here," he said, "you can have it."

"Have it?"

"Yeah, have it." Then he handed me two of their CDs and asked what size T shirt I wore.

"I can't afford these," I said.

"I know that," he said. "Come on. What size shirt do you wear? You look like a medium." And he handed me a rolled up black T. I tried to give him the five dollars, but he refused it. He said he wouldn't take my last few dollars.

The next year, I saved fifteen dollars to buy one of their CDs. When Mike saw me at their table, he sold me the CD and gave me a live VHS. "I don't need that," I said.

"You don't want it?"

"Well sure I want it, but I only saved enough to buy an album."

"Don't worry about it. You can have it."

I took the tape and said, "One of these days, I'll make it up to you."

A few years later, my band had signed a record deal and our label got us a spot at the same festival. We played to a good crowd. We met a lot of people. Things were going well.

Then one day, I saw Mike walking near a friend's campsite. I chased him down and began rambling, "Hey I'm sure you don't remember me but you give me free stuff every year and I told you I would get you back one day so here's my band's album and ten dollars to use for whatever you want or need." I put the disc and ten dollar bill into his hands and felt awesome. I had finally given back to a dude who gave me so much.

But Mike didn't look quite as happy. He stared at the CD and money in his hand. Then he said, "Does it bum you out when I give you free stuff?"

I was stunned. I expected him to appreciate it. I wanted him to thank me, dang it! The question stung. I didn't know how to respond. I murmured something like, "I don't know, I guess." We walked away from each other without another word.

I wonder if God asks us this question when we expect our behavior and will-power to please Him. In Isaiah 64:6, we're told all of our righteous acts are like filthy rags. I've heard more than one person say "filthy rag" was a polite way of saying "used menstrual pad". Imagine putting that in God's hand and expecting Him to be grateful for it.

How many of you struggle with feeling like you need to pay God back?

The Total Unfairness of Grace - Part five of Questions From The Lifehouse Youth Group.

2012-01-20T15:34:00.000-08:00

I know some of the youths at Lifehouse struggle with the concept of grace. I notice when they feel like they haven't been "good enough". I see the look on their faces when confessing something in small groups. I've heard a few talk about observing the Sabbath as if they were wizened Hasidic men arguing over different Rabbinical interpretations. "Nu, does it begin when three or four stars appear in the sky on Friday night?"

So our youth group began reading Terry Virgo's book Enjoying God's Grace, a summarized version of his book God's Lavish Grace. As we talked, the youths asked a lot of questions. We talked for so long parents and younger siblings poked their heads in to gauge how long they would have to wait.

I think our youths expressed widely shared concerns. Teenagers, adults, Christians, we all want to perform well. I'll bet even Stephen Malkmus practices that sweet adolescent crack in his voice. In Enjoying God's Grace, Virgo writes, "The Old Covenant focus was on performance, and Jesus's performance completely satisfied his Father. If God looks on his Son and through him accepts us, how can we gain God's extra approval by returning to a treadmill of dead works? We can't."

People often criticize Christianity as an endless set of rules, and some denominations aren't helping to set the record straight, but I don't think God cares how well we perform or how much we produce. I don't think we'll get a bigger and better golden mansion with hot chocolate fountains in Heaven just because we swore less or refused to drink (let alone enjoy) beer. I have no idea where the concept of Beverly Hills Heaven developed, but I don't buy it.

One of the youths asked if Christians went straight to Heaven after they died or if they would first be judged. As if striving to be good in life wasn't hard enough, he wanted to know if Heaven had a waiting room. I asked him if he remembered the two criminals who died next to Jesus. One of the criminals said they deserved their punishment but Jesus had done nothing wrong. Then the criminal said, "Jesus, remember me when you come into your Kingdom." I asked the youth if he could remember Jesus's reply. The youth couldn't remember. I told him, "Jesus said, 'Today you will be with me in paradise.'"

What did that criminal do to deserve paradise? Nothing. Why did he get to go there? Why does anyone get to go there? It seems unfair, doesn't it? Well, grace is unfair. No one gets what they deserve when it comes to grace because grace by definition is an undeserved gift.

In Jesus's parables, was it fair for the landowner to pay all the workers the same wage, even though some only worked an hour while others worked the entire day? No, it wasn't fair. The man doesn't even argue the point. He simply says, "Don't I have a right to do what I want with my own money?" I can see God saying the same about grace.

Do you struggle with performance? Do you constantly feel like you blew it or that God is disappointed in you?

Do you have a hard time understanding God's total disregard for fairness?

Or do you celebrate it?

Relief Or Responsibility - Wondering about the motive of an argument

2012-01-18T14:36:00.000-08:00

Way back in the days of 2009, I worked at an assisted living home. I didn't make a lot of noise about my faith, but if you talk with me long enough, you'll learn what I believe. Sometimes the residents and co-workers would ask me questions and I would readily answer them.

Once, a girl in the activities department asked me, "Do you think Jesus is the only way to go to heaven? What about people who won't have the chance to hear about Him? Do you think God is just going to send them to Hell?"

If you ask me this question because you want to know what I really think, then I will say this: Yes. Jesus is the only way. Scripture leaves no room for discussion on this. In John 14:6, Jesus, who is God, said, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me."

I thought about my conversation with my co-worker the other day and realized something. I had never considered her motive for asking this question. At the time, I recited the verses and explained the theology to her. But I didn't take the time to look through her question to see the reason why she asked it in the first place.

It's a common enough question, to ask about those who won't hear the gospel. I wonder if people ask because they knowingly or unknowingly want the conversation to stay abstract or hypothetical. Maybe they don't want to talk about where they stand with Jesus and use this as a diversion, sort of like people who want advice for "their friend" who "has a problem".

Do people ask this question because they want me to tell them it's okay to not follow Jesus? That all is not lost if they don't want to follow Him? Are they looking for relief from their conscience and want me to give it to them? I couldn't say it. I can't. I won't deny or diminish Jesus to make people feel more comfortable or make myself more likable.

Whether it applies to my friends or strangers who haven't heard the gospel, I think these questions should constantly remind me of my responsibility to tell them about Jesus. If I really believe the Bible is true and Jesus is the only way, what keeps me from sharing the gospel? I may be quick to answer a question, but I'm not so quick to bring up the topic outright.

Do you find yourself asking those questions about Jesus? Or are you like me, sure in your faith but aware of your shortcomings in sharing it?

"When Should I Pray?" - A trustworthy impulse.

2012-01-13T10:14:00.000-08:00

My friend Funky, yes, Funky, cuts a pretty intimidating pose. He's taller than me, which is fairly tall. He's tatted all over, with a pretty killer one on his throat reading, "Let The Dead Bury Their Own Dead" or something like that. He wears a leather jacket. He played in a great punk band back when he lived in Nashville. What I'm trying to say is the guy always struck me as a tough dude.

So I love it when I get text messages from him every morning with Bible verses and quotes by theologians. After my house caved in, destroying my Bible among other things, this was the only Bible I read. He found out about this and sent me an ESV paperback. He's just about everything I admire in people. He's punk and a solid Christian.

Today, I received a quote via Funky-text: "Always respond to every impulse to pray. The impulse to pray may come when you are reading or when you are battling with a text. I would make an absolute law of this: always obey such an impulse. - Martyn Lloyd-Jones" My pastor made a similar statement recently during a meeting. "There are some things you really don't need to pray about. 'Should I pray?' Yes. 'Should I tell this person about Jesus?' Certainly."

I know I've realized this in my own life. I once felt like God sent me to a particular floor of a particular library so I could pray for someone. I sat in a chair on that library floor without a single person walking in for over an hour. Then a guy popped his head around the corner and asked for directions. I didn't feel a good lead in to pray for him. He didn't have a cast on. There was no look of desperation in his eyes. I felt fear, panic, that I would scare the guy with my asking to pray for him. So I asked God, "Do you want me to pray for this man?" And to both my confusion and relief, I heard, "No." I gave the man directions and decided to wait for someone else.

After a few more lonely minutes, I felt God telling me to go home. I asked Him what happened. "You knew you were supposed to pray, but you were afraid. You didn't trust me even though you were acting obedient. I would rather have someone else pray for him than have you pray for him without faith."

The second half of Funky's text came from Phillipians 4, "Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God." This leads me to think there's never a good time to feel anxious and always a good time to pray.

I wish I could say I've learned my lesson. I wish I could say I always pray for people when I notice the need or feel the impulse. But I don't. Not always. Maybe the more I think about Phillipians 4:6 and the library incident, the more I'll dismiss the discomfort of praying for people.

Feel free to pray for me to get better at this, should you feel the impulse.

Practicing Abiding - How to do anything worth doing.

2012-01-11T10:39:00.000-08:00

According to my weblog stats, I have a few international readers. I can't make any assumptions on your part, but I will say this about Americans: We like to get things done. I mean, we at least like to feel like we're getting things done. Xbox only calls them "Achievement Points".

Activity matters to us. We ask people, "What do you do?" Family and school reunions make a lot of noise over what we've done. Did you get married? Where do you work? have you moved away from home? And while some of us might roll our eyes at such meaningless talk, we also feel compelled to prove ourselves by our activity.

Even our rest is active. What did you do on your day off? Went for a hike? Bike ride? Clean the house? Catch up on reading? We might enjoy those things, but accomplishment underlays all of it. I know this is true in my house. We're always doing something. It's a special day when we sit down without an agenda.

While praying this morning, I felt like God called me out on this. It's a habit for me to ask Him what He wants me to do that day. I don't think there's any harm in asking God to guide my steps, but this morning I felt like He said to me, "Hold on a second. Let's hang out. Sit with me for a few minutes." And, well, it was uncomfortable. I could sense the Holy Spirit. I sat there with him, not saying anything or asking any questions. By the end of it, my anxiety faded and we enjoyed each other's company without my push to do something with the time.

This reminded me of John 15, where Jesus said, "Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing."

Is it possible our drive for activity and accomplishment actually wastes our time? For all the energy put in, do our actions bear fruit? Is it helpful to take what Jesus said as "apart from me you can do nothing worth doing"?

Of course, this doesn't mean people should sit praying and never do anything else. If you try to use this post as an excuse to become lazy, forget it. Lazy people aren't holy. They're lazy.

What do you think it means to Abide? Do you understand it but have a hard time living by it? How do you practice abiding?

I Wonder Where The Wonder Went - Getting used to God.

2012-01-09T04:31:00.000-08:00

Last night, my pastor asked me to read Daniel 3 at our church meeting. I didn't know about it until he got onstage after worship and announcements. He stepped to the microphone and said, "I didn't plan on doing this, but would you come up here, Isaiah?"

All this to say I didn't have a chance to read the passage before the meeting and get the internal commentary out of my system. Even though I read the Bible, which I love, I kept noting the passage's repeat phrases. For example:

"The satraps, the prefects, the governors, the counselors, the treasurers, the justices, the magistrates, and all the officials of the provinces" - 2
The image King Nebuchadnezzar "had set up" - 8
"The horn, pipe, lyre, trigon, harp, bagpipe, and every kind of music" - 4
"Burning fiery furnace" - 7

Seriously, try reading that passage aloud to yourself. You'll see what I mean. While reading it in the meeting, I almost got numbed by this to a point where I could have missed what God was saying. He's mightier than any King. He's able to rescue in the most impossible circumstances. He alone is worthy of praise and we should have courage to declare it.

But it almost happened. I almost missed all of that because I have a tendency to read as if I already know what the author wants to say. "Satraps, prefects, and so on and so on. Horn and pipe, yep, got it." I was getting used to the words, to what God was saying. Getting used to God.

How many of us have become used to our faith, the Bible, or God Himself? We think we've learned all the big stuff and expect the rest of eternity to be commentary, details. Do people lose their sense of wonder for God because He became less wonderful? Or do they decide at some point to "snap out of it" so they can go back to "business as usual" in "the real world"?

Maybe we need to have the truth repeatedly said to us because we're too proud to listen the first time.

Thoughts In Song Form - (Shout out to Greg Privett!)

2012-01-06T10:32:00.000-08:00

In addition to today's post, I thought I'd let the Press readers hear a song I wrote about this topic.

The Summer County
Optimistic Streak

Here's the thing
I've got an optimistic streak
I know that everything's going to go down perfectly
Because my Lord
He is perfect, but
Even Jesus found Himself covered in blood and dust

And these minor chords
Are found in major keys
In the kind of ways that make you want to sing
How it's going to be better tomorrow
Just you see

I'm working hard
And I'm waiting patiently
I'm wading through the space and the commas and ellipses
But I don't feel brave
Even though my book will read
Of how I overcame all the troubles that weighed on me

And the hero's death
Gives context to the scene
In a way that makes you shout triumphantly
How it's going to be better tomorrow

Rejoicing Insofar - Typing out loud about suffering.

2012-01-06T05:29:00.000-08:00

This is going to sound gooshy. Gooshy to the point, the threshold, of bragging. I'm warning you now.

I have an incredible wife. It's true. If you met my wife after meeting me, you would soon use the words "married up" in your inner monologue. And I would agree. If we want to discuss deserving, I admit I don't deserve her. The guy who was once called King of the NCMO (Non-Commital Make Out) by his friends, who didn't have a savings account until he was 25, who drank too much and cussed out strangers? That guy doesn't deserve a beautiful, intelligent, and lovely wife.

That's why I often tell my wife she's evidence of God's grace in my life. Not only has God forgiven me of all my youthful (and adult) foolishness, he gives me wonderful gifts.

In Raised With Christ, Adrian Warnock tells this story. "I remember trying to explain grace to a room full of children. Without warning, I took a large chocolate bar and gave it to the child who had been misbehaving the most all morning. The look of surprise and pleasure on the child's face told me he understood that this was far from what he deserved. A chorus of howls from the other children of 'That's totally not fair!' told me they had grasped it too. 'Exactly,' I said. 'That's grace!'"

But what about when terrible things happen? What about when you or a loved one is sick or hurt? What about disappointment, heartbreak, or betrayal? Does God give me that, too?

Pastor Mark Leech asked that question at The Livingwell House in Grand Rapids, Michigan. "How many times have I had this conversation, even with myself, when you start to feel an ache in your body or something begins to go wrong in your finances? Immediately, our brain goes to the Accuser and says, 'What have I done? What is God trying to teach me? I must have done something wrong. He's punishing me for this sin.' He's not. If He was, you'd be dead. Because there is no other punishment. There is no other judgment. The wages of sin is death. So you'd know if God was exercising judgment because you would be dead."

I know this bell rings a lot here, but I feel like many Christians (and I sometimes include myself in this group) don't understand why God would let us suffer. For some reason, we tell ourselves it doesn't seem fair to have eternal life and yet still have to deal with pain like everyone else.

1 Peter 4:12-13 says, "Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice insofar as you share Christ's sufferings, that you may rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed."

This passage used to baffle me. Rejoice in suffering? Christian masochists? But then I caught the word "insofar". When I had my big toenails pulled off for the third time, and the anaesthetics weren't working, I didn't rejoice at the pain. I didn't love the suffering itself. But I'll admit that at one or two points while the doctor used her foot on the table for leverage, I thought to myself, "If this is bad, I wonder how bad it was for Jesus." Maybe that's rejoicing "insofar" as sharing in Christ's suffering. Whether I'm wrong about that or not, I hobbled away appreciating more of what He did for me.

This isn't a simple topic. I know it isn't. But here's where I've landed while I think about it today. If we've sinned, and we have, then we deserve death. But I'm still alive and I have so much good in my life. I feel like God demonstrates His love for me constantly. I don't understand why the hard stuff happens, but I know He loves me and wants to do good for me. I know that Jesus cried when His friend died, even though He knew He was about to resurrect the guy.

The Great Silence - What do I do when I don't hear anything from God?

2012-01-04T09:24:00.000-08:00

Now that the holidays are over, I'm going to tell you a secret. I don't get very excited about Christmas. I mean, I love celebrating Jesus, but I can do without the trees and cookies and shopping and so on. I can't remember where it started, but I stopped asking my parents for Christmas presents during my teenage years.

Of course they still wanted to give me gifts. So for three years, my Christmas and birthday gifts were hours of recording time at a studio in West Michigan. Over those three years, I made my teenage angst album, The Great Silence.

I knew at the time God spoke to people and I had heard him during times of prayer. But for a while, I didn't hear much. Every Sunday afternoon, my family would take time to pray and listen for God. More often than not, I wouldn't feel the Holy Spirit putting anything on my heart. "Why not?" I would ask myself. "Is God mad at me? Am I screwing up? Have I lost all favor? Should I become a monk and earn His acceptance?" Those years were bleak and I didn't handle them well.

Sometimes I'll get messages from people who have read Stark Raving Obedience and I regularly hear this question: "What do I do if I don't hear anything from God?" My go-to answer is, "Don't worry. God wants to guide you. If you pray and don't hear, make a decision you think would make Him happy. Through it all, keep praying. Then be open to change if you feel Him telling you to do the contrary." But I've never loved that answer. It may be correct, but when you're in the middle of your own Great Silence, it can sound lame.

I went through something like this again when the ceiling of my old house fell. My wife and I lived in spare bedrooms and kept asking God what we should do. For three weeks, I didn't hear much. By the end of the month, we had a great new home and I had a new job. God had orchestrated a huge blessing in the background of a hard trial.

I thought about this again today when I read the latest post on Stuff Christians Like. Please read it. I think it will encourage you.

Year-End Wrap Up.

2011-12-29T10:06:00.000-08:00

Well everybody, it's been a wild year, huh? I know it has been for me, at least. I don't really know what most of you went through in the last twelve months. To reflect on 2011, I've decided to offer you a list of Press highlights:

- I tried encouraging more discussion by trimming the volume of content per post (but forgot halfway through the year).

- Saw the agitation caused by words like "Authority, inerrancy, and sufficiency" when talking about the Bible.

- Lived through my house collapsing on me and my comfortable life.

- Wondered if everyone struggles with worshiping mirrors.

- Compared a primarily religious weblog to Judas Priest.

- Reached 100 posts.

- Then began a fairly regular Mon/Wed/Fri schedule for the Press.

Thanks for reading. We'll see you again on 1/4/2012.

A Phony Tactic Or An Authentic Interest? - My struggle with "relevancy" (or Part five of Questions From the Lifehouse Youth Group)

2011-12-21T08:16:00.000-08:00

I had a brief but difficult time deciding whether to make this an extension of the previous post or a part in the youth group series. I have decided to do both.

I'm over a decade older than the kids in my youth group. Even though I don't feel old and out of touch (except once when a college student called Wayne's World a "classic movie" as if it belonged on TCM), I realized something one day: I have little to no idea of what my kids are like outside of our meetings. I know one guy loves metal. You should have seen the other kids when he walked in wearing his Job For A Cowboy T-shirt. I know one of the girls likes Journey and Zooey Deschanel. Some of them play basketball. From there on, I'm pretty much clueless.

And like Francis Schaeffer said, shouldn't I know their culture? So instead of complaining about it, I've given a look or a listen to nearly everything they mention. I managed to get through a whole episode of Jersey Shore before I decided I got the gist of it. Glee is a little easier to stomach than the reality shows, but I only like characters in wheelchairs.

This goes beyond pop culture. Sometimes they mention stuff going on in religious culture, but I pretty feel the same way I did about Thousand Foot Krutch when they first formed ten years ago.

I feel like I should keep up with my youth group because I want to know how they think. I want to know where they get their ideas. I want to know what issues they have. I want to take all of this and help them understand why the gospel matters for them in their day-to-day lives.

At the same time, I want to do everything in my power to avoid ending up like this guy, especially when my kids might ask themselves those types of questions.

If you work with kids, or have kids of your own, how do you learn about their culture? I'm up for some pointers.

Think What You Want, This Isn't A Commercial - Opening a discussion on the idea of "relevant".

2011-12-19T05:21:00.000-08:00

Francis Shaeffer once wrote, "If a man goes overseas for any length of time we would expect him to learn the language of the country to which he is going. More than this is needed, however, if he is really to communicate with the people among whom he is living. He must learn another language - that of the thought-forms of the people to whom he speaks. Only so will he have real communication with them and to them. So it is with the Christian church. Its responsibility is not only to hold to the basic, scriptural principles of the Christian faith, but to communicate these unchanging truths "into" the generation in which it is living."

I've thought about this all weekend. The Nashville campus of Lifehouse Church recently moved into a building and some of us are beginning to ask, "How can we do more to reach out to our community now that we have a home?"

For my part, this has reignited my enthusiasm to start The Summer Country Podcast. About a year ago, my band had this great idea: We'll start a podcast to tell people about what excites our band without talking about our band. As we developed the idea, it became clear we wanted to specifically focus on exciting things going on in Nashville. Aside from anyone listening, I think it'll do for us what Schaeffer describes.

All that said, how do you feel about the word "relevant" in the context of Christian living, mission, etc?

Meaning In The Seemingly Meaningless - A look at Ecclesiastes.

2011-12-16T13:10:00.000-08:00

At some point, I don't remember when, I wrote a post about people ignoring certain books of the Bible. It seems like horny people read Song of Solomon (or Song of Songs, if the translators didn't want us to get the wrong impression of a dude with 700 wives). Sometimes I wonder if the book of Esther was inspired by God just because He knew, in his Omniscience, it would become the perfect topic for women's Bible studies.

And then there's Ecclesiastes. What a bummer, right? Depending on your translation, you may have been shocked to find the Bible calling everything "meaningless".

Whoa, wait. Everything?

Well, Solomon (the Teacher, or Preacher, again depending on your translation), talks about the futility of man's pursuits on earth. We're born, we die. We try to educate ourselves and end up with more questions than answers. We seek pleasure, but keep enduring pain. We work hard, but our work crumbles over time. All we gain we leave behind when we die.

When it comes to God and His purposes, the text takes a very different tone. 3:14 says, "I perceived that whatever God does endures forever; nothing can be added to it, nor anything taken from it. God has done it, so that people fear before Him." In 5:1-6, we learn that God alone should be taken seriously and has the power to destroy the work of our hands.

While it may seem like Solomon's mood would kill a party in this book, he actually encourages the opposite. Verse 5:18 says, "Behold, what I have seen to be good and fitting is to eat and drink and find enjoyment in all the toil with which one toils under the sun the few days of his life that God has given him, for this is his lot."

My feelings toward Ecclesiastes have changed during the last two years. I used to ignore that book because I didn't expect to get much from a guy saying, "Ah, what's the point?" But now I think this is the big statement of the book - People get too caught up in all the wrong stuff. They worry and work themselves to death for meaningless reasons. If God's efforts are all that will endure, then shouldn't our focus turn to what He is doing and then join in His work? If we have the proper perspective by putting our trust in God despite the hardships, frustrations, sin, and death around us, won't we look at the things in our life differently?

I think God wanted this book in the Bible because it teaches an extremely important lesson many Christians need to hear. At the end of the book, in 7:14, we're told, "In the day of prosperity be joyful, and in the day of adversity consider: God has made the one as well as the other, so that man may not find out anything that will be after him."

Did you catch that? God has made good times and hard times. When things are good, people thank Him. When times are hard, people call Him mean. But He has purpose for everything, He is in control, and He wants you to both enjoy and consider your life.

Could You See If You Were Going Blind? - Why Christians Need Vision.

2011-12-14T04:57:00.000-08:00

Who else out there loves Spotify? If you haven't heard about it yet, it's like Netflix for music. I can search for a whole album, drag it into one of my many well-named playlists, and listen. And if that wasn't neat enough, I can share tracks with people, post a song on my Facebook wall, and check out what music my friends have played recently. I haven't been this excited since Audio Galaxy.

But sometimes, I don't want people to know when I listen to some tracks. Apparently, you can make some playlists private, but I haven't yet seen that completely work. More than one person has already made mention of all the Christina Aguilera I had playing despite my private setting. So instead of relying completely on Spotify for my nostalgia, I've begun to listen to the radio. Once in a while, I'll hear some 90's radio rock and momentarily fall back in love with the format.

I'm sorry if this seems like it's going nowhere, but I felt compelled to explain how it was I found myself listening to Korn.

So, I was twelve years old when Korn put out their first record. If you couple my youth with an overwhelming need for acceptance, then maybe you will see why I listened to that album when it first came out. And dang it, when I heard that opening chord in "Blind" earlier this week while driving home from work, I felt completely exposed. I felt like the radio had pulled out the home videos so I could relive each and every awkward phase.

I made it about halfway through the song and shut it off so I could sing Elvis Costello to myself (Radio Radio, of course). But before I had quit torturing myself, I heard the tagline of the song. "I can see, I can see I'm going blind." "Now that's funny," I thought. "Are people aware when they're losing their eyesight?" And once I thought about eyesight, I thought about vision. And then came the post.

Proverbs 29:18 says, "Where there is no vision, the people are unrestrained, but happy is he who keeps the law." In this verse, the law, or Bible, has a link with vision. I wonder if Christians can read the Bible without seeing God's overall purpose in it and fail to see the vision He has for us. I wonder if this was the situation in Judges 21:25. "In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did what was right in his own eyes."

The people believed in God. They offered Him sacrifices. They had intentions to obey Him. But they were unrestrained. All of the belief and good intentions didn't stop the people from making a bizarre deal with the tribe of Benjamin. I won't get into it, but if you read that passage for yourself, just think about Seven Brides For Seven Brothers. Weird.

This has me asking myself a lot of questions. What is God's vision for my life? What is God's vision for the church? What is God doing in my city? I think I need to know the answers to these questions. I want my decisions to lead to results, and I want those results to help move myself and other people to where God wants us.

Learning To Like My Favorite Book - A thought on Jesus and the Law.

2011-12-12T05:44:00.000-08:00

Have you ever liked something enough to where you decided to call it your favorite? Most people have, I think. Even if there are other books, movies, singers, TV shows, roller coasters, or frozen desserts you enjoy as much, you still call that first thing your favorite. For a long time, I did that with Galatians. I called it my favorite because I liked (and misused) one verse (1:10) on a regular basis to justify my attitude with people in authority.

But this post isn't about my attitude with people in authority.

The point is I learned to like Galatians quite a bit as a book while telling people it was my favorite. And even though I wouldn't call it so nowadays, I still find myself surprised at how much I do enjoy that book. It makes me ask myself hard questions and I like it when the Bible challenges me.

Here's what I read today in Galatians 4:4-5. "But when the fullness of the time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law, so that He might redeem those who were under the Law, that we might receive the adoption as sons."

The phrase "born under the law" stuck out in that passage. If you've read Galatians, you may remember the whole book warns against legalism. But Paul stuck that phrase, "born under the law," into his reminder of our redemption through Jesus.

The law was the standard of holiness set by God, and only God could meet that standard. Jesus was "born into the law" so that He could fulfill the law and show Himself as the only person capable of paying for our crimes. Only He could save us.

This passage tells me the law accomplishes two things. It demonstrates all of my faults and all of God's perfection. Through it all, He offers me forgiveness and life.

Eggshells and Combat Boots - A look at Biblical confrontation.

2011-12-09T05:09:00.000-08:00

One of these days, I think I'm going to write a post about how certain books of the Bible have unexpected endings. You've got 1 John, which doesn't end like most letters with a "sincerely" or "yours truly", but instead says "Little children, guard yourselves from idols." After 21 chapters of Judges, where God uses men to rescue and guide His people time and time again, the writer dusts off his hands with the sentence, "In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did what was right in his own eyes." And then there's Jonah, with some of the best drama of any Sunday School story. God asks Jonah a funny rhetorical question before you turn the page to Micah and realize the book has ended.

I think the book of James also has an unexpected ending. James tells his readers to be humble, mature, and concerned more with spiritual rather than financial growth. Then he signs off by telling them, "My brethren, if any among you strays from the truth and one turns him back, let him know that he who turns a sinner from the error of his way will save his soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins."

This got me thinking about how Christians approach confrontation. I grew up around some people who knew we were at war, and war was all hell. The people around me took James's advice by shouting, gossiping, or in one lady's case, trying to exorcise me. No kidding.

And then you've got the Christians who swing to the opposite extreme. They don't want to appear judgmental. They don't want to offend people or scare them away from Christianity. They saw the movie Saved and decided they didn't ever want to look like these girls.

So how do we take James's advice without becoming spiritual lunatics? First, as always, I recommend praying. Ask God how to talk with someone and then listen for what He tells you. James opens his book by telling people to ask God for wisdom, so I assume that would apply well to these situations. Second, there's always the Matthew 18 model of confrontation. Discuss the problem with the person in private, then with a trusted third party, and then only in public if the person refuses to change. The third thing to keep in mind when confronting people is Galatians 5:22-23, "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law." If these attributes aren't at the heart of your confrontation, it may be good for you to step back and reevaluate your approach.

How do you feel about confrontation? Do you tend to walk on eggshells or walk all over people?

Should I Pray About Everything? - Discussing whether God is a good father or a gang boss.

2011-12-07T05:26:00.000-08:00

Five years ago, someone asked me, "You listen for God to speak, right? And you ask Him what He wants you to do? At what point do you use your brain?" Since then, several people have asked a similar question. It seems natural to ask God for wisdom and direction when it comes to big decisions like where to live, who to marry, etc. But should we go overboard and stand still, waiting for orders? Is it like working the chain gang in Cool Hand Luke where you have to get God's approval before everything? "Getting a drink of water, Boss."

This question came up last night during a Bible study after some friends and I read James 4. Verses 13-15 say, "Come now, you who say, 'Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, and spend a year there and engage in business and make a profit.' Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. You are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away. Instead, you ought to say, 'If the Lord wills, we will live and also do this or that.'"

We talked for a few minutes and asked ourselves, where's the line? Do we avoid boasting 'I'm going to get a drink of water' and instead say, 'If the Lord wills, I will live to get a drink of water'?

Wise people make wise choices because they have wisdom. That makes sense, right? And according to Proverbs 9:10, "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of Wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding." If we seek to know God, we'll know how to live. Fearing Him could simply mean we make decisions we know will make Him happy. We live for His approval.

Of course we should still ask for wisdom and listen for the Holy Spirit when we pray. When I lived at home, I asked my dad for his advice whenever I needed guidance. And yet there were times I chose to do something based on what he had already taught me. At all times, though, I also had to be open to his correction. I may have thought it was alright to dig for treasure in the backyard, but I had to listen to him when he told me to stop and dig in the woods instead.

Do you ever have trouble finding that line between listening and action? Which side do you lean more toward?

Preventative Maintenance - How I learned to appreciate my least favorite prayer request.

2011-12-05T05:10:00.000-08:00

Question: If you went to my fifth grade Sunday School class, what would you say if you couldn't think of a prayer request?

Answer: I don't read my Bible or pray enough.

Believe me, this happened all the time. I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure there was a Sunday where this was the only prayer request anyone had at the end of the meeting. Two things about this request made me cringe every time I heard it. One, it didn't really sound like a request.

Them: "I don't read my Bible enough."
Me: "Yeah? I forgot to brush my teeth this morning. Let's pray."

Two, I wondered if it was entirely honest. Not in the sense where I thought these kids read their Bible or prayed all the time and simply lied. I mean I used to feel there was something bigger they wanted to share, but were too embarrassed to do so.

Now that I've said all that, I feel comfortable telling you this. I don't feel like I read my Bible or pray enough. If I were in a prayer circle right now, I would give it as my request. Before my house caved in last Spring, I used to have a morning routine of reading a few chapters and praying for 10-20 minutes before work. But after the Disaster and having my way of life uprooted, I lost the rhythm of my routines.

Last night, I thought about the Disaster and how I felt the presence of God throughout the turmoil. It helped my wife and I endure the hardest trial we had faced as a couple. I realize it's not the routine I miss, but the regularity of coming into God's presence. So even though I do read the Bible and pray, I want more interaction with the Holy Spirit in the prayer and study.

From now on, I'll try to think of my least favorite prayer request as preventative maintenance. Hard times will come, but I want to feel secure in my new life in Jesus when they come.

Doing What Those Guys Did - Finding motiviation through heroes.

2011-12-02T05:37:00.000-08:00

When my friends and I formed our band, The Summer Country, we spent a day discussing vision. Why did we want to play music in Nashville? What impact did we see ourselves having on the city? How did we want to achieve our goals?

During this discussion, we wrestled through the idea of merchandise. What would we make to sell and why? For the last seven years, all I had ever wanted to sell were recordings and books. I never even entertained the idea I would once again make the standard rock and roll Tshirt/sticker/button spread. If selling records exclusively was good enough for Fugazi, it was good enough for me.

Eventually, I conceded. We could in the future make non-record or book merchandise to sell. But I made a condition. For every normal business decision The Summer Country made, I reserved the right to do one punk thing. If we made Tshirts, for example, I would also have stencils made of our logo. Not that I'm encouraging anyone to commit vandalism. They could spray their car hood or the back of a hoodie. They could create their own merchandise without having to buy it from me.

So the point of that story is this: I have musical heroes. I look up to Fugazi, Piebald and Meneguar for what they created and how they created it. When it comes to music, I want to do the kinds of things those guys do. I know in the past I've talked about people turning musicians into idols, but I read something in James which made me rethink the subject of admiration.

James 5:10-11 says, "As an example, brethren, of suffering and patience, take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord. We count those blessed who endured." Then he uses Job as the example. Later, in verses 16-18, James writes, "The effective prayer of a righteous man can accomplish much. Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed earnestly that it would not rain, and it did not rain on the earth for three years and six months. Then he prayed again, and the sky poured rain and the earth produced its fruit."

It's okay to have heroes. We should find inspiration in what others do. Paul once wrote, "Follow me as I follow Christ." But looking at the condition of the church in America, and definitely the church in Nashville, I wonder how many people here really admire the heroes of the Bible. If we look up to Elijah, David, and Paul, wouldn't we see more people doing what they did? Would it become normal for us to meet a Christian who wanted to tell people about Jesus, pray for them, and expect to see results?

Maybe we would see a change in the dead religious culture of Christianity if we found inspiration from heroes in the Bible. And I don't mean that in a daily-devotional inspiration way where we feel good in the morning as we read about what other men did in the past. I mean it in a way where we allow the stories of godly men to motivate us into action. I want to see Christians read the Book and do what those guys did.

A Question Of How We View God.

2011-11-30T04:48:00.000-08:00

I've been thinking about how we sometimes criticize God. I've heard people try to use the Old Testament as evidence against His goodness or justice. If He says "don't murder" why did He command His people to go to war? If one of His attributes is Omniscience, then how is it possible Abraham and Moses seem to change His mind with their prayers?

And then there's the classic, "Why does God let bad things happen to good people?" I could get into the fact that people aren't good in the first place, but something else has occurred to me. When we criticize Him, aren't we appealing to a sense of "good" over God? But if God is sovereign, then doesn't He set the standard of what is good?

I have a feeling our sense of justice is fueled more by our emotions than our understanding. Who has a better understanding of the law? The person who wrote it, or the people who interpret it?

How Do I Stop Saying Lame Prayers?

2011-11-28T05:26:00.000-08:00

Have you ever felt like a wimp when you pray? Your prayer was trying to enjoy a day at the beach, not doing anybody any harm. Then without warning, someone else says a prayer that walks by and kicks sand in your prayer's face. Doesn't it make you want to feed your prayer raw eggs and give it an album by Survivor?

A few weeks ago, I told a woman at my church she didn't have to feel self-conscious about the way she prayed. Prayer doesn't need oratorical magic. I've heard plenty of stories where people prayed stumbling, half-thought-out prayers and saw God move powerfully. John Wimbur once told a story of a woman who couldn't see. She asked one of the church leaders to pray for her and the man misheard her request. So he prays for God to heal her from the flu, or something, and God restored her sight. I mean, shouldn't that make us feel more confident in God to answer our prayers, even if they don't have a set of free weights?

But I've felt like a wimp when I pray. I don't know how else to describe it. I know that Jesus gave his followers authority in Luke 9:1-2 and Mark 16:17-18, but I don't always pray as if I had that authority. Sometimes, I hear myself asking God to please heal someone or to restore a marriage and yet I don't feel very authoritative.

I wonder if I'm still unlearning my childhood lessons on prayer. The "God, if you would just..." or "Be with them, Lord..." schools of prayer. What if I tried a little more boldness, tried to pray like the people in Acts? Wouldn't it be crazy to hear someone throw out a "Be healed!" during a prayer circle?

But what if it came out wrong? Well, what if they've all been coming out wrong? I have the feeling God already gives us a lot of grace. Why wouldn't He overlook stumbling prayers for the flu and heal a pair of eyes anyway? If I'm listening to the Holy Spirit as I pray, I think I can expect Him to tell me how to pray with greater power and authority. Maybe my first question should be, "Lord, how do I pray for this?" Then it's only a matter of following God's direction in obedience.

Treating God Like A Famous Person

2011-11-23T14:38:00.000-08:00

I can't remember a time when I said to myself, "Hey! A lot of very famous people live in Nashville," and then felt excited at the thought of running into them. Once, Carrie Underwood walked by me in a store where I worked and I didn't notice her, despite her picture on the cover of the magazine directly in front of me. I would not be here telling you this story if my friend Bruce hadn't brought it to my attention. That's how much I don't think about it.

However, I am human, and have experienced a "star-struck" feeling at least twice in my adult life. Once, I stood next to Patrick Stewart in Vancouver. Even then, I enjoyed the moment a little too late. I didn't realize it was him (because he stands about as high as my shoulder) until someone called his name and he replied "Over here" in that spectacular accent.

Then there was the time I found myself standing next to John Davis of Superdrag in a crowded bar. He looked up (also a shorter man. I guess I'm most impressed by people shorter than me) and said, "How's it going?" Instead of saying something normal and friendly, I panicked and asked him if he'd let me through to the bathroom.

We've all wondered what we would say or do should we meet someone famous. I'm sure we have. At least once. Some people think about it more than others. I know because I met them on the Rachel Leigh Cook Fan club message board.

But why? Why do we want to meet famous people so much? Considering the quote referenced in this post, would it have been ironic to feel giddy if I met pre-death Joe Strummer? It's hard to tell. The definition of irony has blurred a little in our culture.

Fame is so weird. You can't measure it. You could argue over a person's ability to produce or commodify fame, but I probably wouldn't agree with you. I think it's most like a currency. Its worth is determined by the faith or value given to it by people.

This could be why I've never really liked the song "You are the Lord, the famous one." I know it's accurate in the sense that a lot of people know about God. Still, I can't shake the feeling it describes God as if He were on the cover of Self Magazine (although, maybe that would be fitting?). If meeting Patrick Stewart and John Davis says anything, I don't want to treat God the way I treat famous people. Would I not realize He was there? Would I panic and go to the men's room?

Is it possible that some Christians treat God like a famous person? Do they think about what it would be like to meet God someday, but not really feel comfortable meeting Him in real life? Is it more of a fantasy than a relationship for them?

Just wondering. What do you think?

The Means and End - Considering the purpose of our efforts.

2011-11-21T05:29:00.000-08:00

A short while ago, I wrote about how people either secretly or unknowingly try to worship idols alongside God. You know, just in case He doesn't answer our prayers the way we want or expect. This morning, I realized I had only addressed the means in that post, but not the end.

The end of James 4 and beginning of James 5 address the attitude of both means and end. James 4:13-16 focuses on the means. "Come now, you who say, 'Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, and spend a year there and engage in business and make a profit.' Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. You are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away. Instead, you ought to say, 'If the Lord wills, we will live and also do this or that.' But as it is, you boast in your arrogance; all such boasting is evil."

We can make plans and never even consider asking God what steps to take. All of our experience and education can flop in a moment, but we still trust our brilliance. I never thought about it like this before, but is it godless when God's not in it?

James 5:1-3 confronts the ends with a heavy hand. "Come now, you rich, weep and howl for your miseries which are coming upon you. Your riches have rotted and your garments have become moth-eaten. Your gold and your silver have rusted; and their rust will be a witness against you and will consume your flesh like fire. It is in the last days that you have stored up your treasure!"

Why do we want money, success, comfort? Do we want to have more to give back to God and bless other people? Do we want a nice home so we can show hospitality to more people? Or have we fallen into America's Biggest Religion and simply want to satisfy ourselves? "Come now, come now," says James, "Consider the purpose of your efforts."

So I wonder, what does it look like for someone to keep God at the center of both the means and end of something like a business, a home, a relationship, or a church? Anything, really.

I Teach More Than I Speak - Part four of Questions From the Lifehouse Youth Group

2011-11-18T08:07:00.000-08:00

In my youth group, all those years ago in the 90's, a guy named Tim helped lead during the meeting. He wasn't a pastor, but he had a little more authority than the twenty-something college intern leaders. And on the four or five Sundays when he gave the message, I sat on the edge of my seat. If beanbag chairs have edges.

Did Tim have really compelling, life-changing messages? Yeah, definitely. Was he just young enough to know what music and movies to reference? Enough, sure. But that's not why I got excited to see Tim take the microphone. On those Sundays, I thought to myself, "Oh dang, anything can happen. Five bucks says he accidentally swears again."

As a youth leader myself, I like to think I'm the Tim of the Lifehouse youth group. Yes, I also have accidentally sworn during a meeting. Apparently Apples To Apples can occasionally pull the "D" word out of me. This past Wednesday, I learned of one huge difference between Tim and myself. Tim may have been a bit of a wild card and have fun with the youths, but he also had great leadership in his teaching.

The elder who oversees the Lifehouse youth group was away on business and gave me the responsibility of leading the meeting. We planned on beginning a series on grace, but I let myself get so busy I forgot to plan an actual message.

My solution? Buy candy as an object lesson, give a three paragraph explanation of the difference between grace and mercy, then ask "any questions?" Guess how many questions I got? Not as many as I needed to fill time. Mostly crinkling Starburst wrappers and smacking noises. Instead of pulling more teaching out of thin air, I decided the best thing to do was play games for an hour and a half.

James 3:1 says, "Let not many of you become teachers, my brothers, knowing that as such we will incur a stricter judgment." I used to read that passage and tell myself he was talking to people who thought they wanted to be teachers, but it applies to anyone. Even if you don't want to be a teacher, think about how much advice you give, or think about how people might watch what you do and adopt your traits. We're always teaching, even if we're not speaking.

Now, I thought I was doing the right thing and not imparting half-thought-out teaching to impressionable teenagers, but I forgot that people teach way more than they speak. Did the youths learn more from how I forgot to pray before the message? Did they learn that having fun is more important than digging into the subject of grace? I don't know, but I hope not.

Thankfully, verse 2 of James 3 says, "For we all stumble in many ways. If anyone does not stumble in what he says, he is a perfect man, able to bridle the whole body as well." So I didn't get a hit this time at the plate. I've taught at least one good message out of the three I've now given, and that's a good average in baseball terms. I'm still learning. That's why church leadership only has me pinch hitting once in a while. They don't just forgive me for the blunders, they keep giving me opportunities.

Now that's a gift I don't deserve. I wonder if maybe I learned more about grace from this experience than any of my youths.

Have you ever found yourself on the spot and unprepared? How did you handle it?

Putting the "Pun" in "Pundit"

2011-11-16T04:34:00.000-08:00

So after bringing up how nobody pays attention to Millard Fillmore, I decided to look up facts about him on Wikipedia. Turns out he put an end to the shame of bald world leaders. Yes, after Millard, you never saw another Whig in the White House.

I should sell that one to Laffy Taffy.

Lying While Shaking Hands - A question on the source of peace

2011-11-16T04:29:00.000-08:00

In grade school, your teachers want you to love your country and its leaders. I had a history book with something nice to say about all but one president (Millard Fillmore, his name wasn't even written in bold face. They just parenthetically threw him in there like I am now. So, just for the heck of it, I want to see what it looks like: Millard Fillmore). When they got to Jimmy Carter, the writers of the book went on and on about how he succeeded in peace talks between Israel and Palestine. I remember thinking it strange to see an illustration of Jimmy smiling with two middle eastern men as they shook hands when I had seen news footage of scud missiles and kids chucking stones in the street. I raised my hand and asked my teacher, "Were those men lying?"

Yesterday, I spent some time thinking about James 3:13-18. Verse 18 says, "And the seed whose fruit is righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace." The verses leading up to this talked about the fruit of human wisdom creating disorder and evil, while wisdom from God brings reason, gentleness, steadfastness, and so on. The fact that James tied up this talk on wisdom with a verse on peace made me ask this question:

Can human wisdom ever bring true peace?

"What Do I Do Now, Knowing What I Know?" - Seeking God in my outrage.

2011-11-14T04:48:00.000-08:00

If you're one of the fifteen people who read my post about anger last month, you might remember my friends Tim and Kelsy. They both have a heart to expose and end human sex trafficking. Kelsy has worked with a group of people making a very important and unsettling movie about the topic. You can watch the trailer here, if you want.

My wife and I went to the Tennessee premier last night and I didn't know how to define what I felt when it ended. I wasn't heartbroken or shocked, exactly. I knew this stuff existed. It took a few minutes to realize I felt outraged.

Emotionally, I've found myself in this place before now. It's possible I'm an easily outraged person. I used to get caught up in campaigns and causes, telling people why they should also care with the same kind of conviction. Every time, without fail, my zeal would fizzle out or get replaced.

Part of this, I think, is because I operated out of my human wisdom. Last night, I was able to recognize this. So I said to God, "What do I do now, knowing what I know? Because I won't do any good unless you give me your heart and your wisdom." Within moments, and I mean just a handful of moments, I received wisdom and direction for how God wanted me to respond. I didn't have emotions zooming around my insides anymore. I had something to do.

At this moment, I can't recall any passages in scripture where God told his people to react in their outrage. Maybe there are a few. If so, you can tell me where to find them. However, I do know that loving God with everything is the basis of all we should do and I know He wants to give us wisdom.

How do you respond to outrage? What do you see happen as a result?

Human Wisdom - How I used to be the smartest idiot.

2011-11-11T06:08:00.000-08:00

You know what I'm doing this weekend? Finishing my FAFSA application. If things go as planned, I'll begin my third year of college this coming August. Nearly six years will have passed since I last went to school, but I'm totally psyched about going back. Any other adult students out there with me?

I love learning. I love it enough to pay someone to teach me. This may explain why I lasted as long as I did in my Baptist background. They may be stiff, they may be legalistic, they may even think it holy to listen to the worst music, but the Baptist church loves to teach the Bible. At four years old, I had already become bored with Sunday School and joined my parents in an adult class as they went through a video series on Francis Shaeffer's How Should We Then Live?

That church shared the gospel with me. I became a believer there. I got my first Bible from them. It was a good place. But when I described Sunday mornings to my classmates, a number of them had the same impression. "It sounds like school." Without saying so, I agreed with them.

Years later, for all sorts of reasons, I began my eighth grade year at an Assemblies of God school. If you don't know what that means, I'll leave it at this: It was a big change. They might have frowned upon social dancing and going to the movies, but they taught me the importance of God's presence in a church meeting.

I'd be a dope if I tried to compare myself to Paul, but I like to think Paul had a similar experience. He grew up as a Pharisee, lovers of learning and scriptural prowess. He studied and studied and studied, but he hadn't yet experienced the presence of God. And when he did, BAM, lights out.

But he didn't toss his learning away. He let the Holy Spirit give him wisdom to finally understand what it all meant. He explains some of this in 1 Corinthians 2:12-13. "Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may know the things freely given to us by God, which things we also speak, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the Spirit, combining spiritual thoughts with spiritual words."

When I first experienced the Holy Spirit, I thought to myself, "Why didn't I ever get this before?" I thought I was a smart kid. I had read the whole Bible. I won scripture memorization awards. But nobody ever brought up the importance of the Holy Spirit. The answer to my young question was this, I thought I was wise, but I was really a fool. I had relied on my intellect rather than the Spirit, thinking He would make me roll around on the floor and babble crazy words. I was the kind of person Paul described in the next verse, "But a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised."

Now I experience God's presence on a daily basis. I've seen miraculous things. I've begun to understand the gifts of the spirit like prophecy and discernment. But more than that, the Bible came alive. I understood it in a more full and complete way.

And looking back on all of this, I wonder, what's the point of reading the Bible and going to church if the Holy Spirit isn't a part of it?

Pray Quickly - Understanding how to bear one another's burdens effectively

2011-11-09T05:50:00.000-08:00

Throughout my years as a Christian, I've participated in a lot of prayer circles. We gather around, share our requests, then pray for each other. Sometimes we call dibs on requests ("I'll pray for Tony's ear thing."), other times we pray as we're lead. If there's a recognized leader, he or she might dictate who opens and closes the time of prayer. Often, the leader chooses one of those spots. The point is, I've done this at least a thousand times in fifty different ways.

Recently, I've thought about one consistent element to prayer circles, and that's the person who unloads all of what they're going through as their request. Now, before you think me heartless, I should say how I really do care about the person's struggle. I feel compassion for their suffering. But my gut reaction says, "I don't need to hear this." When it comes to praying for others, I find my prayers don't much change even after I've been educated on the back-story of the request.

If I'm honest, though, my attitude has tipped toward never wanting to hear about a person's struggles. And I already know it's incorrect. Scripture talks about holding each other accountable. It also tells us to comfort each other. I especially think of Galatians 6:2, which says, "Bear one another's burdens, and thereby fulfill the law of Christ."

My attitude developed slowly during years of prayer circles and other times of ministry. For example, when I was sixteen, I read somewhere that the Greek translation of Galatians 6:2 intended people to bear one another's burdens as if it were their backpack. Literally take on their struggles and give them a break for a while. At the time, I lead worship for six hundred teenagers a week, and some of them would talk to me as if I were their pastor. Seriously, I wish I had never heard some of those things. I remember telling one girl she didn't need the spiritual advice of a teenager, she needed to go to the police. But misunderstanding Galatians 6:2, I kept trying to carry more and more backpacks. One day, I found I couldn't walk with that weight anymore.

I've learned a few things since then. First, I was wrong to take on those burdens the way I had. In a sense, I was trying to be Jesus for those people. But Jesus has already taken on the price and the weight of that evil when he died on the cross. Those people didn't get much help from me in the long run and I ended up wearing myself out.

Second, I never balanced Galatians 6:2 with other verses like 2 Corinthians 1:3-4. "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction so that we will be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God." Yes, I'm supposed to show compassion and care for people who are suffering, but not out of my own power. I need to first receive comfort from God so I can share it with people who need it.

All that said, I still think it best to pray quickly for people in the setting of a prayer circle. The faster we pray, the sooner we give the burden to God, the quicker we see His peace come into the situation. After that, we can listen to their story. It might even change the way they tell it.

Idols In The Threshing Wall

2011-11-07T10:24:00.000-08:00

I went on a mission trip eleven years ago to help Jewish people immigrating to Israel. For one reason or another, though, we only ended up having about four days worth of real work to do in Jerusalem. The rest of the time, we hired a tour guide to take us around the country. So yes, I too have gone on a mission trip that doubled as a vacation.

But even so, in the two weeks I spent over there, I learned more about my faith and its Jewish roots than all of my college religion courses combined.

On several occasions, the guide took us to places where the people of Israel tried to integrate idols into their worship of the one true God. Some were more obvious than others, such as the alter in the city of Dan where the people sacrificed to a statue of a calf. But one day, we went to a large and ancient threshing floor to learn about their agriculture. The builders had left small recesses inside the round wall circling the floor. Someone asked our guide if the people threshing there had put lamps in the walls to light their work after dark. "No," he said. "That's where they put idols to bless and prosper their harvest just in case they didn't see God answer their prayers."

Okay, so I've read the Bible. I know that God's people struggled with idolatry all the time. Maybe the threshing wall shouldn't have shocked me, but that was the moment I realized these people would have called themselves believers in God. They went to the temple. They put on the appearance of obeying God's laws. But inside of their home or their business or their relationships, they had idols. Just in case.

Ezekiel had the same kind of revelation in chapter 8. An angel takes him throughout the temple and shows him where the leaders and all the people really worshipped idols inside.

I know I'm not innocent of this attitude. In the past, I had plenty of days where I said, "God, I trust you, but I'm in real trouble if I don't get enough money for rent." Or, "God, I trust you, but I feel like I'll never get married if I don't do something about it myself." With those instances, and lots of others, I made decisions with a just-in-case mindset. I put idols in my threshing walls.

Have you ever found yourself saying, "God, I trust you, but..."?

What's So Bad About Anger? - And how do you know it isn't righteous?

2011-10-18T14:50:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago, I read a neat little post from Jon Acuff about using out-of-context verses to justify behavior. I especially liked the one about Jesus clearing the temple. I had a friend in Michigan who seemed to "clear the temple" every time the Tigers lost a game. Hopefully he kept his composure last Saturday...

Lately, I've been going through a challenging study on the book of James. One passage in particular got stuck in my head on repeat. James 1:19-20, "Everyone must be quick to hear, slow to speak and slow to anger; for the anger of man does not achieve the righteousness of God."

But why doesn't the anger of man achieve the righteousness of God?

I've come to think that most anger is a form of self-worship. Are you mad at the guy who cut in line because it was a grievous sin against the living God? Or did you get pissed because he dared to slight you when you deserve his respect? Did you get into a fight with your brother because he mouthed off to you? Or did it bother you more that he would dare to mouth off to you about whatever?

Now, if you're one of the six readers who have also read all the way through Stark Raving Obedience, then you'll know I don't consider anger inherently bad. Yes, Jesus got angry without sinning. People call it "righteous anger". That's why James pointed out how the anger of man doesn't achieve the righteousness of God. And in Ephesians, Paul tells the church not to sin in their anger. This is significantly different than if he were to say, "Anger is a sin".

My friends Tim and Kelsy have righteous anger. They work alongside people who want to expose and end human sex trafficking. Kelsy volunteers to help women coming out of prostitution. But beyond the anger, I see them hurting for these people. They're demonstrating compassion for the people while still feeling anger for the sin that enslaved them.

Tim and Kelsy were the first people I thought of when I wanted to find an example of righteous anger.

What do you get angry about? Do you know someone who exhibits righteous anger?

Playing Air Guitar At A Funeral - Exercising spiritual gifts with maturity

2011-09-27T11:29:00.000-07:00

If you won the title of Best Air-Guitarist in the World, would it be in bad taste to give an impromptu performance at a funeral?

Ever since I wrote the post about how I am not a fraud, I've thought about the idea of time and place. The writer of Ecclesiastes wrote about it. He was a smart guy, too, even if most Bible teachers think he's a bummer.

There's a time for birth and a time for death
A time to mourn and a time to dance
A time to watch a Time To Kill and a time to watch Timecop

I've been thinking about time and place in terms of spiritual gifts. I have some friends with strong gifts, and I feel like I can recognize when God uses them with these gifts. Every now and again, though, it gets uncomfortable. And so I wonder, was it a correct thing to say or do, but at the wrong time or place?

This question applies to me just as much as anyone else. I've heard correct words from God while I pray, but have applied them incorrectly to people. A few years ago, I felt compelled to tell my friend, "I think God wants you to know that your disappointment in Him is getting in the way of your spiritual growth." First of all, it was a bad time to do that during the message at a church meeting. Second of all, it really didn't have anything to do with him. He prayed about it for a month and had other church leaders pray about it as well. Everyone agreed, "This isn't for you."

I realized some time later that I was the one who felt disappointed with God. It hindered my spiritual growth. And that impulse to tell it my friend? I was supposed to have him pray for me. Correct words, but incorrect application, and definitely given at a bad time.

Dennis Bennett, an Episcopal Priest from Seattle, wrote about time and place in regards to spiritual gifts. As a pastor involved in a charismatic movement, I'm sure he had more than one disruptive episode of people exercising spiritual gifts. He said some people argued they couldn't help themselves when they felt the Spirit of God come upon them. He responded by saying if a person were in the middle of a prophecy, and someone yelled that the building was on fire, you can bet they would stop prophesying and run out of the building.

Paul had to teach the Corinthians how to order their meetings so it wasn't all chaos. At one point, he says in 1 Corinthians 14:31-33, "For you can all prophesy one by one, so that all may learn and all may be exhorted; and the spirits of the prophets are subject to the prophets; for God is not a God of confusion but of peace, as in all the churches of the saints."

Bennett elaborates on this passage in his book, The Holy Spirit and You, by focusing on the phrase "the spirits of the prophets are subject to the prophets". We do have a level of control over how we exercise our gifts. Bennett compares it to laughing at a dirty joke. We all have an impulse to laugh when we hear one, but a mature person knows when to suppress their laughter.

What do you think about time and place in terms of spiritual gifts? Do you think any suppression of your gift "grieves the Spirit" or "despises the prophetic"? Or do you think it's all malarky? I'm open to hearing all sides.

Look out, Eugene Peterson! - My condensed version of the book of James

2011-09-22T14:03:00.000-07:00

Does anyone remember when I spent six months writing about the Minor Prophets? My friend Abe told me he could summarize the book of Malachi in four words, "Don't F*** With God" Only he didn't say "***" He used the other letters. While you may not hear your pastor say that on a Sunday, I think he'd at least agree with the meaning.

I remember thinking about what it would take to condense the themes of scripture in a way that didn't feel like an Illustrated Children's Bible. This thought occurred to me again on Tuesday with some friends from church. Lifehouse Church has people meeting mid-week to discuss the book of James. The chapter we covered this week had an exercise where we give a title or write a phrase to describe sections of verses throughout James. I haven't actually read the Message, but I thought I would try to Eugene Peterson the crap out of it. More than just paraphrasing the passages, I wanted to see if I could condense the whole book.

I'm not saying this idea is a book deal waiting to happen, but I figure you might like to see what I came up with. Maybe pick it apart.

James - In short

"Look, I don't need to assert my authority. My name is James. You already know who I am.

Don't doubt God's goodness when times are hard. Just ask Him what's going on. He wants you to know. And don't let those hard times justify immature behavior.

You want people to respect your faith? Then help those who are in real distress. Seriously. If you've been freed by grace, then you have to understand it puts a responsibility on you to live like a free person. I need to see some evidence of change.

What you say indicates a great deal of what's happening inside of you, but actions are way more convincing. You've talked like adults but acted like babies. Look at where your version of faith has led you. It's lame. The evidence doesn't line up.

Instead of thinking you have all the answers, you need to listen to what God is saying. He knows how to direct everything better than you, including how you handle your relationships. I mean, what do you know anyway? He's eternal and your life is brief. You're not fooling Him.

So what exactly are you living for? Money? I'm not saying it's bad to have money, I'm just saying how you get it matters to God. If you're in a hurry for genuine gain, just be patient. See all the good God will give you. So don't bet on how great you are or how great you're going to be. Nobody likes a bragger. Ask God for anything in humility.

Now encourage each other in this."

After I finished writing this in my workbook, I thought, "Hey, that's a great way to learn what the Bible says." So simple. So, so simple.

Two questions, then. First, do you have any thoughts on my version of the Message? Second, have you done overviews like this? Sub-question, did you find them helpful?

Celebrating a Milestone.

2011-09-20T14:52:00.000-07:00

Today's previous post marked 100 posts on the Press. Can you believe it? It only took three and a half years, or something.

So even if you're not impressed, I thought I would celebrate by posting a video of the song I sang to myself as I drafted Press Post #100.

Enjoy.

Who, me? - A look at Moses Syndrome

2011-09-20T08:25:00.000-07:00

Last weekend, The Warrior Dash came to Tennessee. If you don't already know about it, imagine a 5K with obstacles like barbed wire hurdles, walls of fire, mud pits, etc. When you get the the end of the race, after having a fire truck hose you down, you get a 32 ounce mug of beer and a giant turkey leg to reward yourself. My company chose this as our yearly team build, and I loved it. Can you tell?

That's me getting sick air over one of the fire walls.

Here's one of me after crawling through mud under barbed wire. Jogging shorts aside, my Finnish ancestors may have looked like this.

Before this race, I had a terrible feeling I was going to embarrass myself, what with never exercising and all. But I felt great. Turns out I kind of like running. When my mom called to ask me about it the next day, I told her, "I expected it to be a lot worse, but I think I could really do well next time if I actually trained."

Then Mom said a very mom-like thing. "You've always been stronger than you think." It's one thing to hear this from someone like Mr. Miyagi from the Karate Kid. I'd probably nod my head without saying a word and continue to catch flies with chopsticks. But coming from Mom, this sort of stuff can still make a guy react like a junior high kid afraid his friends will overhear.

So I fought it. "Nah," hoping a simple dismissal would move the conversation along.

"It's true!" She said, dismissing my dismissal. "I saw you outrun all the athletes on the obstacle course in high school."

My next defense? I fought it. "Yeah, but that was back in high school. And those kids were smokers." This was, of course, a lame defense, since I had only just quit smoking for the second time back then.

Here's what I don't understand. In some settings, I act like the greatest guy in the room, but I act like a nobody when other people compliment me. When I play with the Summer County at some bar, I throw myself into the show. When my pastor asked me to join the rotation of worship leaders for our two campuses, I honestly wondered if I was the right person to ask.

Hesitation is a real problem, guys. And it's nothing new.

Burning Bush: "Moses, I want you to lead my people out of Egypt. You are now my official ambassador."
Moses: "Um, are you sure?"

Voice of God: "Jeremiah, I want you to prophecy to the King and all the people in Judah. You're just the guy I want for the job."
Jeremiah: "But I don't even have a degree, Lord. I'm just a kid."

Angel of the Lord: "Hey, Gid, God wants you to raise an army and overthrow your oppressors."
Gideon: "I'm a part of the weakest tribe and I'm hiding out in my dad's barn. Have you got the right guy? You'll have to give me a sign or something."

I wonder what it was that made Moses or Jeremiah or Gideon balk when God called them great men. Some people have a christ complex and think they're the saviors of the world. Other people have Moses Syndrome. But God saw something in these three guys. I mean, shoot, He created something in them. Think about it.

Does God ever have unreasonable expectations? Is it ever really possible for Him to be disappointed?

Image vs. Person - Considering the possibility that I am not a fraud.

2011-09-16T15:22:00.000-07:00

After my house caved in a few months ago, I got a job as an office administrator. I say that as if I realized I needed better work so I could give my wife a new home, but that's not how it happened. I got the job because a guy saw something in me and offered me the position. I wasn't even looking for it, but then, that's how God blesses people sometimes. Theologians call it "providence".

This post isn't about providence.

I didn't want to confuse anyone when I told you about a startling realization I had as I walked into my office building. It's one of those fancy places with huge windows and glass doorways. I caught a glimpse of myself as I approached the door and thought, "Geez, do I really look like that? Didn't I have a huge beard and limp mohawk earlier this year?"

I sort of felt like a fraud. I'm not a corporate kind of guy. What happened to the fifteen year old kid who sang this song after school?

So this has me thinking about the idea of image versus person. Who I am and what I do doesn't match up to the image many people normally give Christians. I smoke a pipe and drink bourbon and listen to Planes Mistaken For Stars. Those are parts to Isaiah the person. I love Jesus and have given my life to serving him. That is also a part of Isaiah the person. But when people see me shouting on a stage, they might not think of me as the typical Christian. And when people read my weblog or meet me at church, they probably don't picture the dude with a tallboy of PBR singing T Rex on karaoke night.

Does that make me a fraud? Before you decide, let's look at this good idea/bad idea list I made:

1. Having a glass of bourbon and smoking a pipe with other adults, maybe after a meal: Good idea.

2. Drinking/smoking around kids who might already struggle with staying clean and sober: Bad idea.

3. Cranking Mastodon on my turntable: Good idea.

4. Sneaking Mastodon into the pre-service mix on the church iPod: Bad idea.

I don't think of this as hypocrisy. I think of it as a mature sensitivity to the people around me. My co-workers would have a hard time working around a guy who doesn't shower. Clients might not know what to think of the dude at reception with a viking beard. Likewise, there are some people I know who have a hard time with alcohol, rock and roll, my wife in a skirt, and other things I think God made for me to enjoy.

Here's my point. We're taught to consider who we're around in Romans 14:13-23. We're supposed to live in grace and pay attention to our conscience, but still consider how it will affect the people around us.

How do you deal with image vs. person? What do you think about it?

Thanks, Joe Strummer - A Question For Other Christians Who Play Music

2011-09-15T14:03:00.000-07:00

Those who know me well know I love punk music. And even if I don't buy into the fashion or posturing or misguided egalitarianism, the music still greatly inspires me.

I made this video a few years ago to tell people about my introduction to punk and why I think it's so important. Sorry for the swears. and the video lag.

One major archetype in punk music is the anti-rockstar. Sometimes it's just a part of the show while the dudes have their napkin rings polished in the passenger bus. Other times, you'll find guys like Joe Strummer who said, and I think in earnest, "Fame is an illusion and everything about it is a joke."

I think the idea of fame should greatly concern Christians who make music. Musicians, good ones at least, will always struggle with fame and celebrity. Some want to achieve rock-stardom more than anything. Some don't know what to do with it once they get it. They will all have to make a decision of what to do with applause and cheers.

I didn't know why it made me so uncomfortable until I had a conversation with my friend Mirf a few years ago. He ran an all ages venue in Michigan and was deeply involved in the world of music. While talking one night after a show, he said, "You know, I have to wrestle all the time with the fact that I'm in the business of idolatry. I bring bands in to this venue so people will come and adore them. The kids even buy shirts, albums, and posters with the band's image because of their admiration of the artists." I didn't say it then, but this rattled me deep. If he felt conflicted about bringing in those artists, how was I supposed to feel about being one of those artists?

Now, I don't get the impression God feels anger at my writing and performing music. In fact, there are plenty of days where I think He likes it. I'll probably like it when my kid learns how to draw pictures or play an instrument. I wouldn't like it, though, if my kid were to let fame get to his head.

I'm not sure there's a simple answer to this, but I know some of you are Christians who also play music. So what do you think about this? Is the pursuit of fame the pursuit of self-worship?

Membership vs. Ownership - Another look at the fan club idea.

2011-09-14T08:24:00.000-07:00

Some of the first posts I did on the press came directly from my book, Stark Raving Obedience. I put it in there partly because I felt self-conscious about starting a weblog and wanted to appear authoritative. Also, I figured if I was going to say things like "God said such-and-such to me", I should probably have an explanation of my reasoning behind that before people started writing me off as a mentally ill slacker.

One of those early posts came from the introduction of the book and talked about how my relationship with God paralleled my membership in the Rachel Leigh Cook Fan Club. I read all the material, knew all the work, went to fan club chats, wrote her fan mail, but I didn't really know her. We didn't have a relationship, even though I did all the stuff and knew all about her.

Yesterday, MorsIndutus (whom I may or may not know in real life) left a comment which reminded me of another fan club analogy. I joined the RLC fan club at the age of 19 because I got a celebrity crush after watching Josie and the Pussycats. That same year, I joined the Kiss Army because I watched Detroit Rock City with a few friends one night. At first, I think I did it because I wanted to be outrageous and make people think I was interesting. But then, at some point, I thought it might be cool to legitimately get involved in the Army.

If you're not in the Kiss Army, you're probably not aware that they do indeed promote you through the ranks based on a point system. I won't go into detail of what activities earned you how many points, but I will say that I worked on it for while. They start you out as a Kiss Army Recruit. After a few days of mild activity, you can reach the level of Kiss Army Private. I got there easily enough, but no one likes to walk away as anybody's private, so I felt determined to become a Corporal. I wanted to be able to tell people I was in the Kiss Army without sounding like a weekend warrior, so to speak. It sounded more genuine to say I'd been promoted twice.

But after I got that Corporal status, I didn't do anything, and I mean anything, with the Kiss Army. I did just enough to feel like I'd really been a part of things and then I let it go.

Again, like I said yesterday, I don't want to veer toward legalism. But I have paused to think about this.

Is the idea of "membership" so focused on me and what I get out of Christianity that I'm actually a follower of America's Biggest Religion instead of a Christian?

Or is it better to look at Christianity like ownership? Am I serving, contributing, giving, and sacrificing because Jesus has changed me? Does accepting Jesus include a responsibility for demonstrating my faith in Him?

If were to call myself a Christian because I've attended something, is that like telling people I'm a Corporal in the Kiss Army? Would I be fooling myself to say I'm a part of something when I've been inactive for nearly a decade? Is saving faith simply the recitation of a few certain words?

What do you think?

America's Biggest Religion - Part three of Questions From the Lifehouse Youth Group

2011-09-13T10:33:00.000-07:00

It wasn't long ago I used to work at an old folk's home. I had some co-workers who found out about my faith and began to ask me questions. Some of them were simple, like, "Did God really flood the earth?" Some were sort of funny because I didn't expect them, like, "Do you think God could be a woman?" Once in a while, maybe most of the time, I got a serious question that turned into a lunch break-long discussion.

During one dinner shift, a cook went into some fit about churches getting tax breaks and said America's biggest religion didn't need it. "Christianity isn't America's biggest religion," I said.

He stopped and looked at me. "Really? What do you think it is?"

"Sex. More people worship that than Jesus." I think I said it because I knew he was a sex addict and I wanted to shake him up.

Fast forward to a youth group meeting where we got into a discussion about worship and idolatry. One of the girls asked, "What idol do you think people worship most?"

And because half of what I say is rehearsed to death, the word "Sex" began to form in my mouth when two things happened. First, I saw the look on my wife's face because she knew what I wanted to say. Second, I realized it wasn't the right answer. So instead, I told the girl, "Ourselves."

Of all the idols we worship instead of Jesus, I think we worship ourselves. Yeah, sex plays into that. But so does food, relationships, entertainment, and even religious activities like going to church. We do whatever we want to make ourselves feel good.

I wonder if some people hate themselves because something about their looks or personality doesn't please the idol of Self. Does that make sense? Can people hate themselves because they actually love themselves too much? Could it be such a person unconsciously knows they make for a poor god, unworthy of the worship it demands?

After all that, I don't want you to read this and think I'm promoting a new asceticism. Jesus told his disciples not to worry about themselves, but instead to seek God's kingdom first and He would give them everything they needed for their joy and happiness. I don't think Jesus meant, "Don't eat or wear clothes, but worship God," but rather, "Worship God, and you find your contentment and joy in Him."

What do you think is America's biggest religion?

How I discovered the Press is sort of like Judas Priest - the Flashback Episode

2011-09-09T08:01:00.000-07:00

Three and a half years? I can't think of another weblog I've consistently maintained for that long. Xanga, maybe, when I was a younger man.

I first used the Press to keep my writing skills sharp while between other projects. When I realized a few people besides my parents payed attention, I attempted to address questions from readers and friends. That was fun as long as people asked questions. I did some expository stuff, a series or two, and the occasional apology.

Then something happened. My house collapsed and my routine with it. Within a month, my whole life changed. Last week, as I drove from my fancy office job to my beautiful wife, I thought about how badly I'd neglected the Press. I've written enough ideas down for essays. Why hadn't I taken the half hour or so to type it into Blogger?

As I thought about it and prayed, a question popped into my head. "What is it for?"

Yeah. What is it for?

For all of the forms and topics, what purpose did I have for the Press? Wasn't it to tell people what God had put on my heart? Had my pride really made such a simple thing so complicated? Who cares if it's not a running list of theological essays? I've seen the numbers, and I don't have much to lose if I reinvent the Press again.

So, as they say in the PG-13 movies, Eff it. I'm going to post whatever is on my heart, as always, and not worry about dressing it up for Sunday morning. Who says you can't change things up a few years in?

These guys went from this:

To this:

So maybe it's never too late to try something new. However, I promise the Press will not wear studded leather vests or carry a whip. We'll leave that to Mr. Halford.

"What Made You Want To Worship God?" - Part two of Questions From the Lifehouse Youth Group

2011-07-31T14:59:00.000-07:00

My wife, Chelsea, used to manage a coffee shop in Franklin. Before she left for her new job, she hired a sixteen year old girl who lives near the shop. During her first training shift, the girl said she was interested in learning more about Jesus. This sort of stunned Chelsea because they had only just finished going over how to make Gelato. Nobody handed anyone else a wordless book. Chelsea encouraged her to keep asking questions and invited her to church one week.

After a few visits to Sunday services and Youth Group meetings, Chelsea invited the girl to our house to hang out. When they arrived at our house, Chelsea excused herself into the other room. I think I was writing a weblog post at the time, not really paying attention to the teenager I had just greeted. The girl sat down on the other end of our couch and asked, "So what made you go from believing God exists to wanting to worship Him?" I'm not sure she realized I was wearing headphones, so I had to ask her to repeat herself.

"What made you go from believing God exists to wanting to worship Him?"

Having had no time to think about it, I started rambling about the time I began taking Him seriously in prayer and study. Ugh, forty-five minutes of frantic storytelling about stuff that didn't much answer her question. While prayer and study did have something to do with my conversion experience, the simple answer could have been, "When I understood that God is more than real, He's active."

The Civil War was real. Long Division is real. But either those things are either history or they require you to do all the work yourself. In the past, I might have compared my faith to long division. It existed before I did, it's more complicated than I think it is, and it does me no good unless I make it work for me. Like that moral to Aesop's Fable which some people confuse with a Bible verse, "God helps those who help themselves".

The truth is, God moves when He wants and how He wants. Yes, an answer to prayer does mean that I pray first. And learning something from the Bible means I have to read it first. But I also think God created a desire in me to talk to Him and study His word. Besides, He's moved in my life and the lives of people in my family without anyone even thinking to ask. When he rescued my brother from a life of total destruction, when he healed me of a decade long dairy allergy, when he gave my parents the idea to listen when we prayed together as a family, He showed Himself alive and at work.

Realizing God was more than a story or a specter to fear if I misbehaved made me look at Him in a completely different way. He became bigger, wiser, more gracious, and so on. I began to see myself as more selfish, foolish, and bad-tempered. Verses in Psalms began to make more sense. "What is man that you take thought of him, and the son of man that you care for him?" (Psalm 8:4) " O Lord, what is man, that you take knowledge of him? Or the son of man, that you think of him?"

And yet God sent Jesus to bear the burden of our punishment. He doesn't need me, but He still decided to rescue me and adopt me into His family.

That's why I want to worship Him.

Still Sacrificing? - A word about shame.

2011-07-17T10:57:00.001-07:00

On a handful of occasions, some well-meaning people have asked me this question, "You seem like a really smart guy, so why are you a Christian?" And when this happens, I try to remember one of my favorite quotes from Charles Spurgeon, "Defend the Bible? I would just as soon defend a lion. Just turn the Bible loose and it will defend itself." It's a good thing for me to remember in those instances because I've sometimes succeeded only in stumbling my way through a quick explanation of some philosophical part of Christianity while somehow leaving out the gospel.

But the Bible is powerful and alive. It is truth which can speak for itself. As my friend Luther would tell his muslim friends back in Africa, "Just read it, and then you can disagree with me." So for this post, I'm going to leave out most of the rambling stories and shoe-string references. Instead, I'll type out a passage which hit so hard I had to stop after only eight verses.

Hebrews 10:11-18 says, "And every priest stands daily at his service, offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, waiting from that time until his enemies should be made a footstool for his feet. For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified.

"And the Holy Spirit also bears witness to us; for after saying, 'This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my laws on their hearts, and write them on their minds,' then he adds, 'I will remember their sins and lawless deeds no more.'

"Where there is forgiveness of these, there is no longer any offering for sin."

Here are a couple of questions I want you to think about: If you accept the sacrifice Jesus made for the wrong you do, is it right to ever feel ashamed? Do you ever try to "do better" to "make it up to God"?

Three Recent and Hasty Conclusions - My stumbling way of encouraging other restless believers.

2011-06-26T10:18:00.000-07:00

Last week, my friend Jamie and I talked about vision for our church, evangelism, and boldness. At one point, he said, "We should hang out more often. It only took ten minutes of talking with another believer for me to feel encouraged." I felt it too. Spending time with other passionate Christians does encourage me.

I've realized a few things since that conversation.

1. I'm restless and I think more Christians should also feel restlessness. Until Jesus actually comes back, we should always feel a tug in our insides like there's something for us to do. The commission Jesus gave in Matthew 28 to make disciples, baptize people, and teach is called the Great Commission because it's such a dang big job. The world lives in darkness. People walk calmly to their destruction. Doesn't that make you want to do something? It makes me want to do something.

2. I don't feel like I do very well when it comes to telling people about Jesus. I get hung up by telling myself it's not the right timing or that the direct approach would only make the gospel noisome to unbelievers. I felt especially lame after reading Hebrews 10:38. "But my righteous one shall live by faith; and if he shrinks back, my soul has no pleasure in him." Yeah, I know the author was referring to a messianic prophecy given to Habakkuk, but that doesn't make me feel better. It says elsewhere in Hebrews that without faith it's impossible to please God. But isn't faith a gift from God? It has to be. I need encouragement to live out my faith. I need the Holy Spirit to give me boldness.

3. I sometimes allow people to intimidate me. But who intimidates me more? People or Jesus? Lame people like me or the risen and triumphant King of all creation? Where does my confidence lie? I asked myself these questions this morning while reading 1 John 2 when it said in verse 28, "Now, little children, abide in Him, so that when He appears, we may have confidence and not shrink away from Him in shame at His coming." John's tone is gentle, like he's talking to his kids. I think he knew these people loved God. I think he knew these believers may have already recognized their lameness. I think he knew people needed encouragement to live out their trust in Jesus. This is a comfort. God's aware of my shortcomings, so He offers encouragement instead of making me feel like a loser. He wants to help me do good with my restlessness.

You can expect me to think about how to spur you on to live our your faith and tell people about Jesus. And, you know, if any of you feel compelled to do that same for me, I'd totally appreciate it.

Have you ever come to any of these three conclusions?

Has anyone or anything encouraged you to live out your faith in a new way?

My Perfectly Good Explanation.

2011-05-30T11:11:00.000-07:00

Woah.

Okay, let me explain. About a month ago, as my wife and I slept, a crashing sound woke us. It had stormed all day (the same storm that rocked Alabama), so we assumed it was thunder. But then my wife says, "Why does it sound like it's raining inside of our house?" Walking into the living room, I saw that about a third of the kitchen ceiling had caved in and water poured all over our kitchen table.

Goodbye Bibles, goodbye prayer journal. Blurg.

As I stared into the kitchen chaos, the living room ceiling fell. For a moment, both my wife and I thought that maybe the big tree in our backyard had crashed through the roof. It was that loud.

And so began the craziest month I've had since moving to Nashville. We lost some stuff. We had to move out of our home and find a new place to live. We slept on futons and air mattresses in our friend's spare rooms. We daydreamt about having our own kitchen and some time alone.

Now, I've learned plenty about God in the midst of this ordeal, but I want to hear from you (it's been so long, right?) before I jump into a homily. Have any of you gone through crazy stuff like this and wondered if God was sleeping on the clock or had in some anti-septic religious sentiment decided you were too happy and needed a stiff dose of Old Testament suffering?

Have you looked up and asked "what the hell? Why me?"

It's okay. This is a safe place. You can be honest.

As a bonus, I'd like for you to hear a song I wrote before my home disaster, monstrous tornadoes in the south and midwest, or people recently expecting the rapture.

History Lesson at the End of the World by The Summer Country

Sparrows and Lillies, Insurance and Silverchair - A question on living out our trust in God.

2011-04-21T18:09:00.000-07:00

The 90's had better radio rock than any other decade in America. I'll suffer no discussion on this. It's just the plain truth. I love 90's radio rock so much that I've told my wife I'd like to name a daughter Seattle.

But who would have known, who could have known, one of the best 90's radio rock albums would come from a trio of 15-year-old kids in the middle-of-no-place Australia? That's right. I'm talking about Silverchair and their hurricane debut album Frogstomp. Even if the rest of the album sounded like a dry fart, you have to love the song Tomorrow.

Now, I bring this up for one tiny, seemingly unconnected reason. The opening line in the second verse says, "You say money isn't everything. Well I'd like to see you live without it." And there I see a point of tension with a lot of people in the church.

In Matthew 6:25-34, Jesus tells people not to worry about stuff like food and clothing. Several people walk away from Him disheartened by the cost of following Him (as in Mark 10:17-22 and Luke 9:22-24). But does that mean we really give away everything? Give up the security of money, family, and career? Consider the possibility of homelessness, persecution, and death?

If not, why not? Where does Jesus tell us to hedge our bets?

Yes, Proverbs does tell people to make plans, and Paul does tell Timothy how men should work to provide for their families. My problem comes from the attitude culture fosters in us. "God provides, but just in case, there's UnitedHealth."

While writing this, a guy at my wife's coffee shop asked me to talk with him about God. Within two minutes he tells me how he needs to pay his landlord a certain amount of money by 9:00pm or else she would throw him out. As I'm talking with this guy, I tell him what I can do for him. Then I say, "But I really think we should pray. I've seen God answer prayer over and over again when it comes to this sort of thing." And then the guy got mad. He says, "I don't need prayer, I need to pay my rent!"

Before you or I go tsk-tsking this guy, let's be honest. We've all felt that way in very desperate moments. Haven't we all at one point reacted just like him? We know we need God, but in the middle of a crisis we want the material means to alleviate the situation first.

Just so you know, the man did let me pray for him. Within twenty minutes, I worked out a solution with his landlord and the guy got two phone calls for odd jobs. Without looking me in the eye, the guy mumbled, "Maybe that prayer did work." Ha.

Maybe you don't think you would react like that guy. If so, let me ask you this: What if you somehow lost your health insurance? What if you had an emergency that your insurance wouldn't cover? What if it affected your wife or kids? Would you pray, trusting God to take care of you? Or would you honestly wonder if a good God could allow such a thing to happen to you and your loved ones? How would you feel if someone said, "Let me pray for you" when you had 24 hours before the end of your known universe? Is it wrong to say we worship what or who we trust most?

I'm not saying insurance itself is evil (although I can't give the same confidence to insurance companies), but I do think we should consider our heart in light of what we find in the Bible.

What kind of attitude do you think Christians should have?

The Purpose Of Doctrine Is Not Doctrine Itself.

2011-04-10T21:01:00.000-07:00

For those of you who read Stark Raving Obedience or maybe the first post in the Press, you may remember how I compared my relationship with God to joining the Rachel Leigh Cook fan club.

This morning, I heard pastor John Privett say something similar in his message. "It's one thing to know about a person but another to actually know them. Some people try to substitute the Bible for a dynamic, active relationship with Jesus."

At one point in time, I felt like I knew quite a lot about Rachel Leigh Cook, but I didn't know her. In fact, I sometimes think of how I could have only hung out with her if she initiated it. It's sort of like how Jesus told His disciples, "You didn't choose me, I chose you." But that's beside my point here.

I realize that I've put a lot of focus on the Bible lately. I've done so because people seem to have a lot of questions and want to talk about it. A Charles Spurgeon quote comes to mind today, "Defend the Bible? I would just as soon defend a lion. Just turn the Bible loose. It will defend itself." Like Spurgeon, I don't feel like I need to defend the Bible. If you want to wrestle with it, you'll find it hard to overpower.

I mentioned having a point earlier, so here it is. I wrote about this stuff because I want to encourage you to have a dynamic relationship with Jesus. I think knowing doctrine allows this, which may explain why Paul told both Timothy to be nourished on sound doctrine (1 Tim. 4:6) and Titus to hold fast to the Word so he can teach sound doctrine. Now, the purpose of doctrine is not doctrine itself, but to explain how a person can know, love, and have a relationship with God in the way He wants. But it's the very fact of God wanting things on His terms which (I think) scares people most. G.K. Chesterton once wrote "The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried."

What do you think? Would you rather know and love God on His terms? How would a person even know such a thing?

Does Jesus, or even the mention of Jesus, make you nervous?

Does the Holy Spirit scare you, even though He's offering gifts?

How important is your control to you?

One Possible Reason Why People Don't Want To Believe in Scriptural Authority and Inerrancy.

2011-04-03T11:41:00.000-07:00

God bless my parents for reading books. Not just because it fostered in me a love for the written word, not just because reading leads to understanding more of how people behave, feel, and think, but because reading made my parents good teachers. Both of my parents teach inside and outside of the church, so throughout my life I would hear them quote from the books piled up on the sofa end table. I made this connection early, "Reading makes you smart. Smart enough to tell other people stuff they don't know. Stuff they want to know. And when you know stuff they want to know, they'll listen to you. They'll like you." And of course, most of our lives are spent trying to get people to like us...

But really, I'm glad my parents read because I could never buy all of those books on my own. Every time I visit Michigan, some of their books vanish while others mysteriously reappear where mom kept looking all those months. During one visit, I thumbed through a book called "A Third Testament" by Malcolm Muggeridge. He covered writings from several respected Christian authors and gave it this hilariously exaggerated title. I wonder what Lewis or Bonhoeffer would have thought about it...

But I'm getting off topic, and Sarah won't read anything too long on here. The point is, I think my mom bought the book because it contained selected writings of Soren Kierkegaard. That guy wrote more in his life than most people read, so I can understand why mom wanted bite-sized portions. Admittedly, the only Kierkegaard I know I first heard from a Swedish girl commenting on Jon Acuff's Blog. But seriously guys, read this slowly, openly, and questioningly:

"The matter is quite simple. The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand, we are obligated to act accordingly. Take any words in the New Testament and forget everything except pledging yourself to act accordingly. My God, you will say, if I do that my whole life will be ruined. How would I ever get on in the world?

"Herein lies the real place of Christian scholarship. Christian scholarship is the Church's prodigious invention to defend itself against the Bible, to ensure that we can continue to be good Christians without the Bible coming too close."

It's almost disheartening to think about how true those words are, isn't it? So I wonder, does the underlying motivation of Christians to deny Biblical authority and inerrancy come from the fear Kierkegaard describes? What does that say about us as Christians if we tell people, "Read the Bible, but don't take it too seriously"?

"Where Did Sin Come From?" - Part one (?) of Questions From the Lifehouse Youth Group

2011-03-29T13:25:00.000-07:00

My wife and I help lead the youth group at Lifehouse Church. I've been doing this for about two and half years, Chelsea joining soon after we started dating. For a long time, the group only had five youths, three of them siblings. We played games and went on trips and studied cool books like Crazy Love, but nothing seemed to spark real excitement in the group. Then we began studying Wayne Grudem's Bible Doctrine. By this time, our church moved into two locations and we met a few teenagers from the Spring Hill area. Then our youth group more than doubled.

I mean, twelve teens might not seem like a lot to the seasoned youth group leader, but for us, it was a little dizzying.

I don't know if I can credit this all to the church now having a location in Spring Hill or if it's because we're digging into questions regarding deep truth, but the conversations during meetings have changed dramatically. We're discussing Common Grace, Sin, Prayer, the Trinity, the Gospel, and the like. And I'm learning something from them about how I lead a discussion. First of all, nothing makes you feel so much like a dope when you ask a question and hear silence from a room full of teens. But instead of accusing them of disinterest, I try to figure out ways to ask questions about the topic so they want to answer.

It's one big reason why I've changed how I do things on this weblog. Not that you're a bunch of teenagers.

The kids also teach me how to ask good questions by, well, asking me good questions. During our discussion on Sin, one of the girls asked, "But where did sin come from?"

How beautifully simple. So I said, "From rules." Only after I said it did I think about it. Paul seems to say as much on his explanation of sin in Romans. Sin didn't exist on earth until God told Adam and Eve "Don't eat that fruit." That's not to say I think God gave men sin by giving them a rule. I mean to say that God created men with a will that would sin. The Fall may have easily happened if God said, "make sure to eat that fruit every day" because the serpent might have countered with, "Aren't you a little full?" and we'd be in the same mess.

I may be wrong. I may be only partially right. But where do you think sin came from? Do you even think sin is real (I'm looking at you, relativist reader)?

Old Guard vs. Young Guns - Two Ways For Believers To Look At Things Like Biblical Authority, Revelation, And The Church.

2011-03-26T19:42:00.000-07:00

Before writing my last post, I told my wife, "I think I'm going to poke a hornet nest and talk about biblical authority again." Lots of people seemed to have read the post, even though Matt and William became the voices for what I think are the two major camps within the Western church. The Old Guard and the Young Guns.

I used to pride myself in my religious angst. At times, it was justified, like when a high school classmate told me, "You know, maybe you're not doing so well in Algebra because of that music you listen to." And other times, I think I wanted to see holes in the church, holes in the Bible, and "elasticity" to Christianity because it allowed me to justify almost anything. What can I say? My argumentative style is persuasion.

Even though I agree more with William's comments, I think I know Matt's point of view. I tried my best to grind an axe with the Bible, "institutional church," and every aspect of Christianity all the while calling myself a Christian and claiming to follow God. In hindsight, I think I was fighting God kind of like Doug in this sketch (not that I think it's a perfect example. Sorry if you think it's a little blue, but I hope you get the idea). I think I wanted my friends outside of the church to think I was savvy like the Young Guns and not judgmental like the musty, dusty, Bible-thumping Old Guard.

I used to say that human writers and translation errors made the Bible untrustworthy as a perfect book.

I used to say that I trusted the guidance of the Holy Spirit more than the Bible.

I used to say that every Christian was a part of the church, so why couldn't I call a group of believers in my living room "church"?

I gave up that kind of thinking when I realized this: I'm an idiot. I have a serious pride issue when I think I'm the wisest dude in the room.

If God wanted to explain Himself and His ways to men in a way they can understand, wouldn't He have some awareness of human folly and short-comings? If God allowed men to insert anything into the scriptures apart from His perfect truth, doesn't that mean the book is (at least in part) deceptive? Do we really think God is limited by human wisdom or even a deceiver?

If I feel like the Holy Spirit is putting something on my heart, but don't have an authority on the true nature of God, how can I know God is talking to me and not something foolish or evil? How could I know if I was feeling the Spirit's direction or just my own human passions?

If a group of people say they believe in Jesus, gather together in one place, and get drunk like those old friends of mine at our "men's Bible study," should I call that a church meeting? Do I grow closer to God, gain wisdom, or learn how to operate in my spiritual gifts?

But that's my story. What do you think? Do you think the Bible is inherently flawed because people wrote it? Can a person discern the direction of the Holy Spirit apart from Biblical understanding? Do we need the church or is it a breeding ground for antiquated, hateful codgers?

The Popular View of Scripture - A look at the Press reader's perspective on the Bible.

2011-03-20T10:20:00.000-07:00

I've heard and seen the Bible quoted in a lot of places. Sometimes it's poignant, like the scene in Renaissance Man where one misfit soldier quotes Ecclesiastes and says it's the only writing better than Shakespeare (start it around 7:31). Sometimes it's totally weird and misquoted, like in Ghostbusters. It's in books, television, all over popular culture. In a way, it's meant to make us feel a sense of weight. "You should take this moment seriously, they're referring to the Bible."

Then there are people who have respect for the Bible, but in ways that confuse me. In the past three months, I've had two friends tell me they think the Bible is full of errors, but still a perfect book. One friend went on about "the Deuteronomy hoax" and said it was proof the Bible admits its own faults. Last week, a guy at work went into a passionate discussion about his belief in Creationism but then finished with a lament over all of the books the church conspiratorially kept out of the Bible.

Then, of course, there are those who don't respect the Bible at all. Some think nothing of it. Some even hate it. I typically expect some polarization but every now and again get a disinterested shrug.

Since discovering the Stats tab on Blogger, I was surprised to see the second and third most popular posts are the two essays I wrote on the Bible's authority. It seems like a popular, if not heated, topic. Those of you who read my posts have an idea where I stand, but I want to know where you are on the subject.

Let's see what Press readers have about the authority, inerrancy, and sufficiency of the Bible. What do you think?

Saying It And Doing It - A possible super-theme of Nehemiah.

2011-03-09T16:36:00.000-08:00

Through most of high school, I worked at a Marathon gas station down the road from my home. The law in Michigan at the time would only allow me to work 18 hours a week. Because of my schedule with school and church, I took most of the Saturday morning opening shifts.

Okay, so, it's high school. Getting up at 5:30 on a Saturday morning took a little effort, so I had to come up with ways to motivate myself. One routine involved playing a James Brown's Greatest Hits cassette I picked up at a truck stop. I'd sing every one of the songs while sweeping the floor, brewing the coffee, and filling the soda fountain ice dispenser. One morning, while singing For Goodness Sakes, Just Look At Those Cakes into the broom handle, I turned around to see an ancient old woman standing at the door. Admittedly, I gasped a little out of fright. This old lady wanted her very special brand of cigarettes at 6 in the morning and watched my Mr. Good Foot as she waited for me to unlock the door. From that day on, we had an understanding: if she didn't tell anyone about my stiff, suburban "dancing", I'd open the shop early and sell her cigarettes whenever she came to the door.

Well, all that to say, I listened to that cassette a lot. One of the songs had a chorus I especially liked (although I only today learned it was a cover song), Sayin' It An' Doin' It. I like that mentality. Do what you say. Talk the talk and walk the walk. Integrity. But it's a hard thing to decide sometimes, are we always willing to live by what we say we believe?

I think Nehemiah had this conviction. He seems to have demonstrated not only biblical knowledge, but also the courage to follow through on what he knew was right. People often talk about the book of Nehemiah in terms of leadership and serving. I wonder if all that can come under an over-arching theme of following through on what the Bible commands.

What about you, what do you think? Do you sometimes have trouble following through on doing things biblically even when you know the truth? Do you make excuses or say that it was only for a certain time and a certain place? How thin do you slice that slice?

Can't You Just Pretend To Be Nice? - What might happen when we're accountabile to each other.

2011-03-05T14:58:00.000-08:00

It's no real secret. When I was 19 years old, I joined the Rachel Leigh Cook fan club. One of the better songs in the movie Josie and the Pussycats, Can't You Just Pretend To Be Nice, got me singing along the moment I heard it. But something irritated me about the song. Not just because the guy in the song sounds like such a tool, but because the girl would for real find life easier if he faked it.

Earlier, I asked about confrontation. I mean, accountability. It's sort of tied together. When I read the last chapter of Nehemiah, I really had to ask myself which God likes better: Nice people or people pursuing holiness? Wouldn't it be more kind to confront people when they're deep in sin?

I'm not saying I want to tear anyone's hair out, but I am saying I want to know what you think. Is nice always kind?

Two Ways For The Church To Treat The Past.

2011-02-21T12:07:00.000-08:00

I broke up my solo project, IKAIK, after thirteen years. My relationship with the members got weird after all those years. Things just had to change. Now I have a solid, reliable group of dudes to play with me. We're called The Summer Country.

For the thirty or so people who kept up with IKAIK, the new stuff might sound very much like another version of "Isaiah-plus-band". The difference isn't so much the music as it is the focus of this group. For one, I plan on having the same drummer, bassist, and lead guitar for some time. No more revolving door of talented but otherwise occupied friends. For two, the four of us all have a similar vision for our place in Nashville. We want to encourage and influence the spiritual and cultural renewal of our city.

With that in mind, I've worked on a song called "A History Lesson At The End Of The World". In it, I talk about how people tend to forget that the old days were just as crappy as these days. Nostalgia can cause a person to assume they haven't made or won't make any progress in life. They think about how the weather wasn't so crazy ten years ago (when, come on, it totally was), how their high school/college sweetheart was better than nothing, and how we might never have another Great Awakening or Billy Graham.

But maybe that's okay. Maybe we don't want things to be the way they were. Why don't we have an attitude of "Things are different now, so let's work to make the present even better than past." When asked what he would do if the world were to end tomorrow, Martin Luther answered, "I would plant a tree today."

If the world were to end tomorrow, I would still write a song or a weblog post today.

Going back to the Nehemiah 9 thing, much of the prayer looks at the past. God continued to bless His people and show them mercy in spite of their constant unfaithfulness. The leaders praying recognize God's justice in sending them into exile and hardship. This stirs them to makes decisions and a covenant for holiness in chapter 10.

My question is this: in your own life or that of your church, do you look to the past because it feels like the only bright spot of your history, or do you try to learn from your mistakes like the leaders in Nehemiah?

"Fine" Is a Four Letter Word - The importance of confession, repentance, and accountability.

2011-02-19T14:51:00.000-08:00

Jon Acuff has a talent for calling Christians out on their cultural malarkey. The average person doesn't want to broadcast their problems. I get that. But shouldn't Christians feel most comfortable confessing their struggles with other people in the church? Doesn't James teach us to do just that?

In Nehemiah 8, the people respond to hearing the Bible by expressing grief. They've all sinned, they know it, and they know how everybody else knows it too. Chapter 9 records a prayer made by the leaders of the people. This passage shows public praise of God's goodness and repentance for the nation's sin.

Go ahead, read it.

For those of you who took the time for a little Bible, doesn't their prayer read like one of the Psalms? I've been thinking for about a year now how this prayer in many ways captures a major theme of the Psalms: "God, you're awesome. We suck. Thank you for being so awesome."

I have two questions for you about this passage. First, if we know God wants us to confess our sins to each other and accept His grace, why don't we do it more often? Second, what do you think about the leaders confessing on behalf of the people?

A New Era For the Press.

2011-02-13T12:37:00.000-08:00

While driving through Kentucky in a van full of stinky dudes, we all got into an argument. As you do. One guy said I was impossible to talk to because I presented everything as if I already assumed I had the right answers. "First," I said, "I don't always have the right answers. And second, any idiot would agree that..." and I continued to press my point with crushing logic.

My wife and I met with our pastor and his wife over the course of a few months for pre-marital counseling. During one meeting, he had us discuss how we argue. Turns out I'm a persuader. Our pastor told us my ability to persuade isn't wrong, but I need to learn how to use it with humility and grace.

Next month, 'Am-ha'aretz Press will have lasted three years. In that time, I have written (or at least done my best to write) two essays a month about what I have learned in prayer and study. Not a bad format. Better, I think, than some who write about their cat (System of a Meow) or about how much they dislike their classmate in homeroom (John-what's-his-name Memorial High School Rumor Hub).

But now I'm wondering if my format, by default, shuts down conversations because of the way I present it. On a few occasions, I've opened the floor for reader interaction. Once in a great while I'll get a response. Most of the time, I hear from my parents, Dan, or Julia (my Facebook fan). But I want to see something more.

I want to see people get something more.

So here's my proposal. I'm going to continue posting about things I learn in prayer and study, but put up my thoughts and questions on the topic in more readable doses. Instead of writing as if I'd finished another book for you to read, I'm going to post part of my thought process about what I plan to write in the future. That way you can have a hand in what I learn and address.

I also want to increase the frequency of posts. Maybe four times a month to start. Maybe a couple times a week in the future. Who knows...

If weblogs are the future of public discourse, I'd better learn from my Kentucky road trip and allow one of you a word once in a while.

Nehemiah Part Five - Debt. It's about debt.

2011-01-31T16:36:00.000-08:00

I began my attendance at Calvin College in August of 2001. It was, as I called it, the semester of hell. Aside from your usual adolescent frustration dealing with the major life transition of leaving home and starting college, a few airplanes hit some important buildings, Calvin experienced a bomb threat, my grandfather died, and I became physically sick from anxiety. I’m 6 ft. 2 in. tall and I dropped to 126 lbs. That’s barely enough weight to stretch over the height.

When I went home for winter break, I sat with my parents in our living room and finally told them about my struggles. My father heard all about papers and tests and girls and loneliness and stress. After I finished, he said, “There’s something I need to tell you. The company isn’t doing well.” He then went on to tell me how financial difficulties forced the board to remove him as their CEO.

I soon learned that Calvin didn’t necessarily require payment for the semester before classes began. Instead, they let you attend and then required payment at the end of the semester. My family didn’t want to deal with school loans. At the time, I thought, why would we? Dad had a good job and helped my older brothers through school. We had enough to pay for the first semester of school but there were no guarantees for the spring.

Mom and dad insisted that I return to finish the school year, assuring me that we would make it work. Something in me knew it wouldn’t last. I mean, my parents prayed about sending back to school and felt certain God wanted me to go, but I didn’t feel comfortable with the possibility of debt. When credit card applications came in the mail or representatives vied for my attention at booths on campus, I ignored them. No way, you’re not going to put me in debt when I only work a part-time job. But society demanded I get an education for a job that paid well enough to eventually cover my oncoming school debt.

At the end of the 2002 spring semester, I got a few notices from the school about the money I owed. It came to something like $13,000 for the semester. As a 19-year-old kid, the number gave me a stomachache. Dad held the school off until a man donated the money we needed to pay the remainder.

Again, I told my parents that I was willing to drop out and work, or maybe attend the Community College. They prayed about it and felt that I should go back to Calvin. Dad hadn’t yet found steady work and this time there was no angel donor. The bill came like death during exam week. I managed to live on campus and “work” for one of the professors during the January term. The housing department busted me for living on campus without any registered classes. Eventually, they showed me the door.

My grades hadn’t suffered. Nobody ever had to discipline me for bad behavior. I was a dorm leader and helped lead a Bible study. But schools get pissed when you don’t pay them. I spent the next few days packing my room and explaining to the other dorm leaders what had happened. As friends showed up on campus to help me move, the boys in my dorm said their goodbyes. One kid physically blocked the door. “You can’t leave,” he said. I laughed at the melodrama but the scene still stung.

About nine months later, I sat in my basement watching the 2003 World Series when my mother handed me the phone. A man asked if I was Isaiah. He then began an assault of verbal abuse asking me why I hadn’t paid Calvin for my last semester. Admittedly naïve, I tried explaining myself. The collector ridiculed me and piled on the shame. Mom, standing by, realized what was going on and ran upstairs to get dad. He took the phone and left the room.

“I’m so sorry,” she said. “If I knew who was calling you, I would have given it to your father first.” At the time, I was booking a tour for my band and she assumed a venue had called to confirm a date.

A form of hate bloomed inside of me. Who was that guy? What crime had I committed? People ran into financial problems like this all the time. The Kallmans weren’t deadbeats. We’d find a way to pay eventually.

When I last talked to a collector in December of 2007, the late fees and “miscellaneous charges” had pushed $13,000 up past $18,000. By then, I had moved to Nashville and wanted to live responsibly. So of course, I tried to reason with another collector. I gave her the estimated figures of monthly income to monthly expenses, which were nearly the same number, and asked if we could agree on some sort of payment plan.

The woman came back after talking to a shadowy “supervisor” and offered three different options. I laughed aloud into the phone when she told me these options. “Even if I were to sell everything I have tomorrow, I couldn’t make lowest down payment.” I told her I could sacrifice here and there to give twenty dollars a month until I got a steady job and increase my payments with the promise that they would halt any further fees. She refused. I told her I’d get counsel before making a decision. In the back of my mind, I knew those charges and fees were piling up as I waited for the situation to turn.

At this time, I’m still waiting for it to turn. But what can I do? They’ve refused my offer to chip away at the debt because, according to people like Elizabeth Warren of Harvard Law, they will make more money in the end if I’m in debt to them forever.

Please understand me, I don’t want to shame my old college. I know that they want to run the school well and pay their staff. A few Isaiah Kallmans could make it hard for them to function financially. I get that. What hurt was the thought, “These people are a part of the church and they’re coming after me!” Something felt so wrong about this. Like, things shouldn’t work this way. And yet, this is business as usual everywhere.

The Outcry

There’s something else I want you to understand. I’m not poor. Sure, I live paycheck-to-paycheck and I only started intentionally saving money at the age of 26. That’s kind of dumb. But I’m not poor.

My friend Josh told me about conversations he would overhear at Skelletones. These punk kids would always talk about how poor they were. They would sew patches on their clothes with dental floss and talk about how they needed to be resourceful just to make ends meet. Of course, they never thought about how dental floss costs about as much as your typical sewing kit but with less thread.

Then, these kids would talk about getting drunk on forties and how they could score cheap drugs. A lot of these kids weren’t living on the street. Some of them had families or other people who would take care of them. None of them were starving. They chose this life. Josh was so upset by this he designed a T-shirt with a picture of a punk holding a forty and a caption reading “Broke Is the New Poor”.

I became friends with the drummer of a punk band in Nashville while they recorded an album at the old Make Your Own Records house. He recently told me about the struggles he had with old credit card mistakes. “I was young and dumb,” he said. “I got my card and thought, ‘Sweet! I’ll get a Macbook! Dad’s recliner is worn out. I’ll buy him a new one!’ I’m still dealing with that stuff.” This happened years ago, but it still haunts him. He and his wife have begun to cut down on their expenses in hopes they will slowly pay off a little more each month. It’s hard, but he wants to live righteously in his finances.

That’s why I’m telling you, I’m not poor. At this moment, I’m just living on little money. My situation is temporary. Things will get better. I also want to live righteously in my finances and I know God will continue to bless me.

Maybe I’m getting that right, but I also must take care not to condemn all the people who got themselves in over their heads. Maybe I don’t have as much school debt as, say, a law student, but I also don’t have a degree. And their job will eventually pay off the loans. I may not have credit card debt, but I also never built my credit. As a no-credit non-student, it could be far more difficult for me to get a car or home unless my situation changes.

I had to keep humility in mind the first few times I read Nehemiah 5:1-5.

“Now there was a great outcry of the people and of their wives against their Jewish brothers. For there were those who said, ‘We, our sons and our daughters are many; therefore let us get grain that we may eat and live.’ There were others who said, ‘We are mortgaging our fields, our vineyards and our houses that we might get grain because of the famine.’ Also there were those who said, ‘We have borrowed money for the king's tax on our fields and our vineyards. Now our flesh is like the flesh of our brothers, our children like their children. Yet behold, we are forcing our sons and our daughters to be slaves, and some of our daughters are forced into bondage already, and we are helpless because our fields and vineyards belong to others.’”

The outcry in verse 2 could at first sound like a socialistic demand. “Why do the rich Jews have more money while we’re starving? It’s not fair!” But this was not a tantrum. This outcry came from true desperation. Think of this, someone is so poor that they get a credit card with a 14% interest rate just to buy their basic groceries. Bread, milk, maybe some toilet paper. Real necessities.

People were even going into debt just to pay their taxes. During a time of famine. So now imagine using that same 14% credit card to pay a 12% State Tax. The immediate problem isn’t solved, just aggravated and postponed.

Others were mortgaging their homes and land. As a man who well knew scripture, Nehemiah would have been familiar with the laws in Leviticus. God had given the Jewish people rules regarding the sale of land. Leviticus 25 made it clear, the land did not belong to the people but to God. He wanted them to steward it well and handle their real estate in a way that set them apart and glorified Him.

If a person could not financially support himself, he could temporarily sell the land. Then it was the responsibility of a relative to buy back the land so it stayed in the family. In the event that no kinsman could do this, the buyer was obliged to sell the land back to its original owner only. If the seller could not pay off his debt within fifty years, God had appointed a “year of Jubilee” where all debts were canceled and properties returned. God took this so seriously that when the kings neglected the laws surrounding Jubilee at the time of Jeremiah, the prophet foretold of Jerusalem’s coming destruction and their inevitable exile.

Some experienced such financial hardship that they even sold their children as slaves to pay the high interest exacted by their fellow Jews. This went directly against Leviticus 25:39-41. “If a countryman of yours becomes so poor with regard to you that he sells himself to you, you shall not subject him to a slave’s service. He shall be with you as a hired man, as if he were a sojourner; he shall serve with you until the year of jubilee. He shall then go out from you, he and his sons with him, and shall go back to his family, that he may return to the property of his forefathers.” God meant for this to go against the norm of common business practices as a reminder of Israel’s freedom from slavery in Egypt. Not only as a reminder to themselves, but as a testimony to the rest of the world.

The Response

The point was not “We shouldn’t have rich people and poor people. Everyone should be equal.” God had ways for poor people to work and survive (Leviticus 19:9-10) and didn’t demand sacrifices beyond their means (Leviticus 14:21). These rules were put in place to make sure people used their wealth with compassion, acting honestly and righteously with what God had given them. Leviticus 19:15 made it clear to leaders like Nehemiah, “You shall do no injustice in judgment; you shall not be partial to the poor nor defer to the great, but you are to judge your neighbor fairly.”

Clearly, the wealthy Jews had acted unrighteously, ignoring God’s law and financially cannibalizing their own people for profit. Nehemiah realized the gravity of this injustice. I love Nehemiah’s emotional honesty in 5:6, “Then I was very angry when I had heard their outcry and these words.” It’s okay to get ticked at this sort of thing. I spent a summer studying debt, both personal and national, and I got downright pissed. Most people are in debt and creditors want it to stay that way.

Instead of acting out on his emotion, though, Nehemiah took time to consider the matter.

“I consulted with myself and contended with the nobles and the rulers and said to them, ‘You are exacting usury, each from his brother!’ Therefore, I held a great assembly against them. I said to them, ‘We according to our ability have redeemed our Jewish brothers who were sold to the nations; now would you even sell your brothers that they may be sold to us?’ Then they were silent and could not find a word to say. Again I said, ‘The thing which you are doing is not good; should you not walk in the fear of our God because of the reproach of the nations, our enemies? And likewise I, my brothers and my servants are lending them money and grain. Please, let us leave off this usury. Please, give back to them this very day their fields, their vineyards, their olive groves and their houses, also the hundredth part of the money and of the grain, the new wine and the oil that you are exacting from them.’” (Nehemiah 5:7-11)

A few things are very significant about Nehemiah’s response. First, and most notably, Nehemiah repents of his own sin. It would have been too easy for him, in his anger, to blame the rich for their sin. Having removed the plank from his eye, he could see clearly and address the speck in theirs.

This probably inspired the second point in his response. He bought back those sold into slavery. If he bore the same guilt, that would explain his desire to set an example of financial repentance. It does no good to say sorry without demonstrating a change of heart.

Third, Nehemiah presents an opportunity for the men assembled to follow his example. He pleads with them to cancel the debts and return the property. I believe he did this in part to address one of the three areas of brokenness in Jerusalem. The walls and gates weren’t the only parts of the city in disrepair. Hanani had first told Nehemiah all the way back in chapter 1 how the people were held in contempt. By not following the law of God, which they called their own, meant to set them apart, they invited the criticism they found so disheartening.

What follows absolutely amazed me when I realized its significance. When reading verse 8 of chapter 5, one could compare the people to those assembled on Mount Carmel in 1Kings 18 when Elijah challenges the people to choose between God and Baal. Would they choose God or the promise of wealth and prosperity? After Nehemiah’s appeal, the men promise to return the property without further payment or interest. They also want to repent financially. The priests come in as witnesses of this promise and stand as accountability.

In verse 13, Nehemiah makes the oath, “I also shook out the front of my garment and said, ‘Thus may God shake out every man from his house and from his possessions who does not fulfill this promise; even thus may he be shaken out and emptied.’ And all the assembly said, ‘Amen!’ And they praised the LORD. Then the people did according to this promise.”

This oath was serious business. Any man’s failure to keep his promise would result in the loss of all his wealth. Shaken empty. The very thing they tried to build through evil would crumble. And please note that their promise to cancel the debts was monumental. Consider a similar situation today. What if all the banks and credit card companies were to say, “We’ve bled the American people nearly dry. We’re going to forgive all the debts and start over.” As of 2008, that would mean $13.8 trillion dollars of household debt erased. But the casual reader could easily pass over the end of Nehemiah 5:13. The people actually fulfilled their promise.

The New Generosity

True repentance isn’t a simple “I’m sorry”. It requires a change of heart, a dedicated difference in thinking. Where Nehemiah once financially oppressed the poor along with the wealthy Jews, now he operates in a lifestyle of generosity and hospitality. Nehemiah 5:14-16 reads,

“Moreover, from the day that I was appointed to be their governor in the land of Judah, from the twentieth year to the thirty-second year of King Artaxerxes, for twelve years, neither I nor my kinsmen have eaten the governor's food allowance. But the former governors who were before me laid burdens on the people and took from them bread and wine besides forty shekels of silver; even their servants domineered the people. But I did not do so because of the fear of God. I also applied myself to the work on this wall; we did not buy any land, and all my servants were gathered there for the work.”

In these three verses, Nehemiah describes very countercultural attitudes and practices. First, he did not take advantage of the living expenses guaranteed to the Governor and his staff. They denied this benefit to relieve the people of tax burdens. Previous rulers had extorted the people to such poverty that even their servants were better off than the common free man.

Second, it seems the position of governor would have allowed Nehemiah a life of comfort and ease. Instead, he and his staff dedicated themselves to working alongside the people in their effort to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem. This was not merely delegated responsibility. He didn’t take on a series of program development and reform. He had a passion to restore the city and dedicated himself to its needs.

Verse 16 mentions a denial of real estate opportunities. On top of the ability to tax and extort the people, rulers could take advantage of the peoples’ desperation. They could buy land for very little money (say, as forgiveness for that month’s tribute) and later sell it for a high price after the restoration raised the property value. Again, as a man who knew the law, Nehemiah remembered God’s command to not move the boundary stones set by his forefathers (Deuteronomy 19:14).

The remaining passage in chapter 5 tells of a daily feast at Nehemiah’s table. Over 150 people every night came to his residence and ate one ox, six choice sheep, various foul, and several barrels of wine a night. Remember that this man refused the king’s food allowance. We can only assume then that Nehemiah paid for this generosity out of his own pocket for twelve years. Simple, straightforward math shows a staggering cost for this kind of hospitality. 4,380 oxen, 26,280 sheep and foul, and a new supply of wine for 150+ people ordered 438 times. That’s a lot of people for a long time. And not only important leaders. The text says other Judeans and foreign guests came and sat at Nehemiah’s table.

I think it was especially important for Nehemiah to invite foreign leaders to these nightly banquets. If the former practices of usury and extortion only added to the nations’ contempt of Jerusalem, the new lifestyle of generosity would silence the criticism. One more stone put in place for the restoration of the Jews as God’s chosen and special people.

Let this encourage you. Inviting people into your home for dinner or a party can seem like a simple thing but I want you to consider it as Nehemiah did. The new generosity allows people to see Christ at work in your home. This comes through how you freely give to your guests, as a visual example of how you interact with your family or roommates, and opens opportunities to speak into their lives with truth and wisdom.

People need to see the power of the living God at work in our lives. What with the stress of credit card bills and all.

Nehemiah Part Four - Avoiding sham battles

2011-01-31T16:13:00.000-08:00

Until Skelletones established itself as a venue, punk shows in West Michigan had almost no security. Many of my friends and I hoped our common love of the music would keep the peace. But punk music, and soon hardcore music, brought out all kinds of culturally repressed aggression. Not all the shows were safe to attend, whether due to the venue, bands, or fans. The worst part about the fights at these shows was that no recognized authority could step in and arbitrate. Sometimes enough onlookers would jump in and break it up. Other times, kids hurt each other. One of the members of the band Don Knotts got stabbed over twenty times at one show when he tried to stop one of these fights.

With the one exception of a skinhead dragging me toward the Grand River with threats of killing me, I managed to stay away from most of the real danger. My experiences came more from cheap shots in the pit or secondhand threats by the K-zoo Crew from Kalamazoo. I witnessed more than I experienced.

Mirf handled conflict better than anyone I’d ever seen. For him, resolving this sort of thing started before anyone squared off to fight. He showed love indiscriminately, which created a safe atmosphere at Skelletones. If anyone had any brains, they knew to respect Mirf’s authority. You don’t want to mess with the most popular guy in the room. When fights broke out during shows, he could confront the problem and maintain peace.

Of course, there were problems. Early on, a group of guys from Kalamazoo would drive to shows in Grand Rapids and piss off everyone. They called themselves “The K-Zoo Crew”. Their cheap shots and macho intimidation fostered a lot of ill will between people. Grand Rapids kids wanted to have fun. The K-Zoo Crew wanted “real” hardcore. I don’t know exactly why they hated so many of the kids in Grand Rapids. My friends and I often wondered aloud why, if they hated us so much, those kids would spend the time and money driving to our city.

Over time, the troublemakers moved to cities with “better scenes”, and the others ended up becoming well-loved figures at Skelletones. Before I moved to Nashville, I heard stories about another group of kids, the Great Lakes Youth Crew. They were a more aggressive version of the K-Zoo Crew. Where the Kalamazoo kids seemed to talk more than anything, the GLYC actually caused serious trouble. A fifteen-year-old girl apparently crossed one of them at an Eighteen Visions show. The guy cut her in the back with a razor blade. She didn’t notice at first because she assumed the wetness was only sweat. But then she felt dizzy and went outside for some air. That’s where someone finally noticed her blood-soaked shirt.

If the first part of Mirf’s conflict resolution came from loving people, the second part dealt with a refusal to focus on the problem. He addressed trouble when he saw it, and eventually he hired security, but he didn’t want people to think of Skelletones as a troubled place. An attitude of peace had to be the norm with occasional incidents, not the other way around. And it worked.
In 2005, Skelletones moved to the space below the coffee shop, selling the café portion to some kids who worked for him. They renamed it The Euclid, after a pet hamster. I stayed on staff there as I continued to volunteer at Skelletones.

Shortly after the shift in management, things began to change at The Euclid. Younger kids began to hang out as well as more suspicious people. This bothered me. I’d thought we had cleaned up the neighborhood and started something positive on South Division. But worse than some of the shady people who started to come around, I was more offended at the passivity of the new staff. They wanted to retain the good feeling that Mirf and Annette had established with Skelletones but they didn’t address the problems with a loving attitude. People began to take advantage of their politeness, and eventually, the staff began to lash out without the loving relationships Mirf taught his staff to create.

As much as I hate to admit it, I also lost my temper with people. One guy, Gary, could really piss me off. He panhandled on our block and would sometimes come into the shop. He bothered kids and aggressively told them to give him money or cigarettes. I don’t remember how many times I kicked him out, but I’d always give him a chance when he came through our doors. This isn’t an exclusive club, after all, I thought. He can come if he buys a drink and doesn’t pressure anyone.
I worked on the last night we let Gary come to the Euclid. He sauntered through the door and immediately asked a kid for a cigarette. The kid seemed willing, so I decided to leave it alone for the moment. Justin LeQuire was there by the counter talking with me as I worked. Gary asked him for his lighter before going into the bathroom. “There’s no smoking in the bathroom, Gary!” I yelled.

“I ain’t gonna smoke!” he yelled back.

I was busy making drinks and didn’t feel like dealing with the problem just then. Twenty minutes later, Justin said, “He’s still in there.” I looked from mopping the floor and saw two or three kids standing by the bathroom door waiting for Gary to finish.

“What are you doing in there, Gary?” I kicked the door. He didn’t answer. “Get out of there, man!”

The door burst open. Gary was pulling up his pants as he came out to yell at me. “Can’t a guy get a little peace when he goes to the bathroom?” he demanded.

Justin held his hand out for the lighter, which he dropped as soon as Gary returned it. “Ow! That’s hot!”

That’s when I noticed the un-smoked cigarette behind Gary’s ear. Wheels turned. Justin leaned in and said, “There aren’t many reasons why my lighter would be this hot.” I looked at Gary’s eyes. He was doing drugs in our bathroom, around teenagers. After years of convincing parents that their kids were safe inside our walls, I felt a new kind of anger.

I gripped the mop handle and came close to Gary. “Get out,” I said. “Get out of here and never come back. If you even see me on the street, turn around and walk the other way. And if you ever try to come in here again, we’ll call the cops.” I didn’t bother to lower my voice. Gary protested for a minute, saying that I couldn’t tell him what to do as I backed him out of the building, brandishing the mob handle.

The room had stopped to watch. I wanted to protect the kids, but publicly losing my temper made them aware of the situation. Instead of keeping the peace, I had emphasized a need for the peace to be kept. It made everyone uncomfortable, including myself. Half of the kids left soon afterward.

After another night, when I publicly announced a crackdown on people who were selling drugs instead of buying drinks, everyone began to talk about how the coffee shop had changed. We focused on the trouble, and so in the minds of people, The Euclid was a troubled place.

Sham Battles

In the beginning of Nehemiah 4, the rulers surrounding Jerusalem continue to mock and ridicule the reconstruction. Having already addressed these men and their attacks, Nehemiah prays instead of getting drawn into a verbal argument. He didn’t need to further defend the “Good Work”. Already, the people had rebuilt the wall to half its height all the way around Jerusalem.

I heard Ian Ashby, a pastor from New Hampshire, speak on this passage at a Newfrontiers men’s conference in Stone Mountain, Georgia. Ian focused primarily on two points in Nehemiah, the “Good Work” and how the people “Worked with a will”.

The “Good Work”, obviously, was a restoration of the heart as well as the walls. According to Haggai, the worship of God in the temple had all but ceased as people sat around the rubble. Jerusalem still had a high priest, Joshua son of Jehozadak. Temple worship still existed. But Haggai rebuked the people for neglecting God by focusing on their possessions.

This leads me to make a point on subtle idolatry. It is possible to commit the sin of idolatry in the name of serving God. Many people in the ministry, if they’re wise, will admit to the danger of making ministry their number one priority. Instead of seeking God and listening for the direction of the Holy Spirit as they minister, a person can get a skewed idea that serving the ministry is the same as serving God.

I won’t make this personal. Go back to Nehemiah. So God gave him the Good Work in rebuilding Jerusalem’s walls. Imagine if the walls became their primary goal instead of restoring the hearts of the people to God, living in the destiny He promised. When Sanvalat and Tobiah insulted the work, the Jews might have gotten huffy, righteously, of course. “Who do they think they are? King David took care of a certain nine-foot-tall mocker once.” Now they’re rolling up their sleeves and looking to chop off a few heads. But the rulers mocked the work and Goliath mocked God. God told the people to build. If the people fought instead of continuing the restoration, they would have moved in direct disobedience to God.

Okay, I lied. I’m going to maybe make this a little personal. Listen up, worship leaders. Ever had some “holy hecklers”? You know what I mean, those people who criticize the musicianship or song choice? Or what you wear? Or how much vibrato you used to pull out that last “Hallelujah”? Right, they’ve missed the point of worship. That doesn’t mean you should waste any time or emotional energy wringing your hands or punching pillows. Let’s assume God told you to lead worship and worship as you lead. That’s your job. That’s the obedience He requires. God blesses obedience, so what do you have to worry about? Ask yourself these questions. Are you defending God because you love His holiness and desire to give a reasoned answer to people? Or are you pissed because someone attacked your abilities, your ministry, and you feel like that makes you look bad? Are you righteously miffed or just embarrassed? In other words, who is your God? Your music ministry or the God who gave you the gift of music?

Nehemiah already told off the hecklers in Chapter 2. What would he say to these new attacks? “What? A fox knock down our walls? Nuh-uh! That’s stupid. You’re stupid.” What if he shifted his focus to these guys? It would have further damaged morale. And this was an attack on Jerusalem’s morale. Sanvalat & Co. wanted Nehemiah to defend himself as the new leader of a broken community and neglect the Good Work. They wanted him to focus on the trouble they made so that, in the minds of the people, Jerusalem would seem like a troubled place.
What did Nehemiah do in response? He prayed. Verses 4-5 of chapter 4 record his prayer. “Hear, O our God, how we are despised! Return their reproach on their own heads and give them up for plunder in a land of captivity. Do not forgive their iniquity and let not their sin be blotted out before You, for they have demoralized the builders.” Having already credited the work to God in chapter 2, Nehemiah trusted God to answer the rulers’ taunts.

And God did bless their obedience. Verse 6 tells how the people finished the wall all the way around to half its height because “the people had a mind to work”. Other translations say, “they worked with a will”. They knew their God and obeyed despite the circumstances. It feels god to accomplish something, to complete a definite stage.

When I was in grade school, bullies would make fun of me in hopes that I’d take the first swing so they could blame me for the fight. I fell for this trick a few times until my dad told me not to throw the first punch. But most bullies weren’t happy when I denied them a justifiable fight. Several times, they’d start threatening a first move. A clenched fist, a step forward, maybe a shove. They continued to provoke without making the first attack. Bullies have been using the same tricks for millennia. The rulers in Nehemiah decided to do the same thing in verses 7-8. “Now when Sanballat, Tobiah, the Arabs, the Ammonites and the Ashdodites heard that the repair of the walls of Jerusalem went on, and that the breaches began to be closed, they were very angry. All of them conspired together to come and fight against Jerusalem and to cause a disturbance in it.”

Now, surely, Nehemiah has to answer these men, to shove back. He can’t let them get away with this sort of thing, right? It’s not just two guys mouthing off anymore. There are rulers and nations on all sides of them looking for a fight. In verse 10, you can read some of the widespread propaganda.

But Nehemiah stayed focused on the work, responding now with both prayer and security guards. If these guys really wanted to mix it up, they’d have to come into Jerusalem. The Jews would have clearly been on the defense. More importantly, they wouldn’t get fooled into fighting. Obviously, the purpose of the threat was to get the people to stop working, to lose sight of God and His command. If the Jews stopped the reconstruction to train soldiers and go into the field of battle, not only would they waste time and lose sight of the Good Work, Sanvalat would have probably sent word to the king in hopes that he would shut down production. The accusations of Jerusalem’s “rebellious” past would have begun to look like a real problem. Nehemiah would have lost the king’s favor and thus diminished the power of his testimony to the people.
The enemies of Jesus today probably like the present condition of the Western church much like the rulers surrounding Jerusalem. When the walls are broken and the gates are burned, there’s no threat. They can continue living their lives without feeling like God might come in and mess up everything. It’s only when renewal comes, when the Gospel begins to breath life into people and cities, that they rear up and cause trouble. Every movement, every inspired teacher, every church looking to rebuild the body of Christ will face fierce criticism. The criticism will likely turn to insults and maybe threats of harm to persons or property.

Christians can face this opposition in a few different ways. Some decades ago, people formed an organization to show that Christianity hadn’t lost it’s power and authority. The Christian Coalition would use politics to influence culture and take a stand for what they believed. So they fought battles in the media and in Washington against abortion, homosexuality, gambling, liquor sales on Sunday, and so on. Very soon, the culture defined Christians by the things they opposed rather than the God they claimed to serve. It wouldn’t be long before David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons picked up their pens to survey the damage.

I wonder what the Coalition has to say about 1 Peter 3:8-9? “To sum up, all of you be harmonious, sympathetic, brotherly, kindhearted, and humble in spirit; not returning evil for evil or insult for insult, but giving a blessing instead; for you were called for the very purpose that you might inherit a blessing.” And later, in verses 13-16,

“Who is there to harm you if you prove zealous for what is good? But even if you should suffer for the sake of righteousness, you are blessed AND DO NOT FEAR THEIR INTIMIDATION, AND DO NOT BE TROUBLED, but sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts, always being ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you, yet with gentleness and reverence; and keep a good conscience so that in the thing in which you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ will be put to shame.”

Peter tells the church to be “ready to make a defense”, not to look for fights. How often have you felt like somebody suckered you into a fight over religion? I know it’s happened to me at least a few times. And I never felt like I did anything for God in those arguments. Apparently, being defensive isn’t the same as being ready to make a defense.

It appears that readiness is the key. Another example in scripture comes to mind from Judges 7. The story goes that God has Gideon put together an army to fight the Midianites. But the army, God says, is too big. If they win, He says, they’ll brag about how great they were when they defeated Midian. During the winnowing process, God tells Gideon to have all the men go down by a body of water. The men were then divided into two groups, those who squatted down and cupped the water with one hand and those who got down on their knees to drink.

God tells Gideon to keep the men who drank with one hand. I imagine their other hand was free to grab their weapon should trouble come. They were ready while they drank water. The funny part is, come battle time, they don’t even use those weapons. They hold up torches and make a lot of noise, sending the enemy camp into a panic. Still, God wanted them ready.

Of course we shouldn’t turn a blind eye to abortion or give our blessing to homosexuality because the Bible clearly calls those things sin. I’m certain the Holy Spirit directs some people to take up those issues. My point is that the church should address sin and still focus on building the Kingdom of God through the Gospel. Organizations like the Christian Coalition seem to have fallen for the bullies’ trick and gotten themselves into a sham battle. All their arguments and politicizing have caused the average unchurched individual to associate Jesus with hate and politics. If you’re challenged, have a ready answer and make sure they come to you. Don’t go looking for a fight when you’re supposed to be building.

Through the rest of Chapter 4, we see Nehemiah using the strategy of readiness. The people who carry building materials do so with one hand while holding their weapon in the other. Those building on the wall need both hands, so they keep a sword strapped to their leg. In case of attack, there are men with trumpets ready to signal where to gather and defend. Verse 23 echoes back to Gideon’s men. “So neither I, my brothers, my servants, nor the men of the guard who followed me, none of us removed our clothes, each took his weapon even to the water.”

The Time I Got It Right

When Mirf still ran the coffee shop, he told the staff to pray before opening each night. He and Annette would pray in and for Skelletones all the time. I knew that the peace people felt when they entered the door came as a direct result of God moving in those prayers.

I was reminded of Mirf’s reliance on God when I had another confrontation at work. Thinking back on that night, nobody had yet come in after I opened. It was late November and people would sometimes come in just to wait for the bus by our front window. Not everybody caused trouble, but the occasional nut-job would bother customers so we had to enforce the one drink minimum.

So when Frank came in and stood by the window, ignoring my offers to get him a drink, I told him about the one drink minimum. He glared at me and kept his vigil for the bus. “You’ve got to buy a drink if you want to stay in here,” I said.

Frank turned around and shot back at me, “You’re telling me you’d kick an old man out into the cold because he won’t buy a cup of coffee.”

Instead of keeping my calm, I volleyed back, “Well it’d help for the chill.”

We started yelling at each other until I said, “I told you to leave! You’re trespassing. If you don’t get out of here, I’m going to call the cops.”

“Alright, fine!” He shouted, waving his hands around in frustration. “You’re saying I can stand there outside the door? Everything’s fine as long as I stand on the other side of that door?”

“Yeah, that’d be great.”

Frank zipped up his coat and went outside the door. But instead of walking to the corner to wait for the bus, he kept shouting curse words and blasphemes at me through the glass. A thought came to mind. “Pray.” I began to pray where Frank could see me behind the counter. I spoke aloud and told any blaspheming spirit to leave, even away from our part of the block. Frank’s voice dropped to a mumble and then he stopped talking altogether. After a few moments, he left. I had an especially peaceful night at work.

I sometimes wish I’d remembered that night when I chased Gary away with a mop handle. Prayer worked especially well when Frank shouted at me from the doorway. I don’t know why I didn’t stop to pray before I freaked out on Gary. Maybe I was a sucker for getting pulled into that fight. I don’t know. But addressing a problem and focusing on a problem seems to make all the difference.

Nehemiah Part Three - Making the thank you list

2010-12-31T14:06:00.000-08:00

Some musicians love to thank a huge list of people in their album liner notes. I don’t. What if I forget to mention sensitive people who would take offense at the neglect? Or maybe so many people had helped me that listing them would take several pages of a CD jacket. Typically, I leave my thanks to “God and everybody else”.

One complaint many people have with reading the Bible has something to do with the list of names. “So and so begetting so and so,” and so on. It can feel like God is the drummer of your band who wants to thank everyone individually, even if that person only helped load the van one time.

The majority of Nehemiah three covers the names of people who worked on rebuilding the wall and gates. A casual reader may easily let his eyes glide over this passage as if the words had a non-stick coating. When I took a closer look, though, I saw fun asides Nehemiah threw into the thank you list.

In verse five, he takes a shot at people who think that power negates responsibility. “Moreover, next to him the Tekoites made repairs, but their nobles did not support the work of their masters.” A few verses later, he mentions a guy named Hananiah, “one of the perfumers,” making repairs. Can you imagine a chemist building a house? That’s the image I got. One of Jerusalem’s officials worked on the walls with the help of his daughters. Hey, if those nobles won’t do the work, why not some young women?

Terry Virgo, the leader of New Frontiers International, talked about this tendency of God’s to mention all those names. “Everyone counts. They all matter. God doesn’t want a faceless army because God loves every face.”

I think God has a good reason for thanking the guy who loaded the van. He wants to reward those who obey Him. Those people rebuilding the wall took on an enormous task for the sake of God’s glory. Who wants to walk away from a job like that and get an anonymous pat on the back?

We can easily get trapped in a sense of false humility when we do God’s work and say we want no reward for the work that we do. When I led the worship team in high school, I dreaded people telling me that they enjoyed it. Enjoy my worship? It felt like being spied on in the shower. That’s between me and God, thanks. At the same time, I couldn’t get angry with the people saying these things because they wanted to express how the worship blessed them. How could I deny their joy? So I’d tell the people, “I’m just worshipping God like the rest of you. The only difference is who has a microphone.”

What a load. I especially knew it with people who were either more musically capable or totally tone-deaf. God gave me a gift and asked me to use it. He hadn’t asked them to do what I did on those nights. Not as far as I know. Why did I feel so awkward about something that should have encouraged me?

I find it interesting how God made it clear in scripture that He intends to reward us when we do His will. 1 Corinthians 3:9-13 even uses a metaphor of building.

For we are God's fellow workers; you are God's field, God's building. According to the grace of God which was given to me, like a wise master builder I laid a foundation, and another is building on it. But each man must be careful how he builds on it. For no man can lay a foundation other than the one which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if any man builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw, each man's work will become evident; for the day will show it because it is to be revealed with fire, and the fire itself will test the quality of each man's work. If any man's work which he has built on it remains, he will receive a reward. If any man's work is burned up, he will suffer loss; but he himself will be saved, yet so as through fire.” (emphasis mine)

I don’t want to get into a discussion about what reward God gives for our good service. The point is that He wants to bless us. It’s one thing to do a good job and receive a reward, and another to do your work with a sense of entitlement. For example, look at the man who hired people throughout the day to work in his vineyard in Matthew 20. He paid everyone equally, even if they worked half as long as the others. The people who worked all day were bummed out that the latecomers were paid just as much as them, so they figured the owner should pay to scale. For some reason, they assumed that their labor had appreciated in value. Instead, the owner gave them what pay they accepted before the work began. His blessings weren’t based on a scale of equality, but generosity.

Jesus ends the parable by saying, “So the last shall be first, and the first last.” Can you imagine a well-meaning worker telling the owner, “Oh no, I don’t deserve this. Not if these other people did more than me. Here, give them half of my wages.” Sadly, I can imagine this because I have that attitude sometimes. “Hey, if I came here last, I should be last. Fair’s fair.”

Pretty stupid, huh? Aside from losing out on a great reward, I’d also subtly question God’s goodness. Not His goodness to me, but others. It’s passive aggression, the most awful kind of aggression. If we were to look at this attitude for what it really is, the supposed egalitarian stance really tries to put us as God’s equal or superior. We know best. We have the right to tell Him when He’s wrong.

Ten chapters before this parable, Jesus promises something to His disciples that would totally outrage the egalitarian mind. Matthew 10:41 says, “He who receives a prophet in the name of a prophet shall receive a prophet's reward; and he who receives a righteous man in the name of a righteous man shall receive a righteous man's reward.” Look at the mechanics of that statement. The people taking care of the prophet or righteous man receive the same reward as their guests! They’re getting paid for a job they didn’t necessarily do!

But from where does this false humility come?

I suspect that it comes from one of several places. It can come from a place of hurt in our lives. The reason I began to play music had to do with love for music. The reason I started playing in a band had more to do with getting people to like me. The girls who wouldn’t date me. The dudes who wouldn’t let me play ball with them. The kids who threw rocks at me. Those people. I wanted to show them how they had rejected the coolest guy on the planet. When I heard the song “Stop” by Against Me, I felt so exposed. It summed up my secret agenda so well. “All of our lives in waiting. All of our lives traded for their roses and applause. All of our lives dedicated to shoving it right back in their f*ing face.”

But I knew that worship differed from playing in a punk band. I took on this Reverend Dimsdale kind of posture where I served God but secretly beat myself up for all the horrible things I’d hidden from the church. Would they have made me the worship if they knew I was still experimenting with drugs only a year before, or masturbated daily, or had language that could draw blood? In punk music, I could talk about all this stuff. But in church, I let it corner me into thinking I didn’t deserve God’s grace. I didn’t deserve His attention, let alone His pleasure. So I acted like a guy who loaded the van and shook hands instead of the beloved son for whom Jesus died.

Two Pictures of Humility

Humility first begins with understanding our proper place in creation. God is the ultimate, perfect, and self-sufficient being. We are His creation, given dignity because we are made in His image. Even though He gave man authority in nature (Gen. 1:28-30), man’s authority still came from and was accountable to God. We can see this in how He set boundaries of right and wrong for man. In every covenant that God made with man, God set the terms without negotiation. I’ve told people that the true sin of Adam and Eve came from the lie that they might be “like God” (Gen. 3:5). They wanted to define good and evil for themselves, to have a say in what God determined. The world has suffered the consequences ever since.

Going back to the sermon by Terry Virgo, he gave an excellent explanation of Moses’s journey from prince of Egypt to Hebrew deliverer.

Think about Moses as the prince of Egypt. He has one of the strongest nations in the known world at his fingertips. Not bad for the adopted son of a Hebrew slave. Keep that in mind as you read this passage from Exodus 2:11-14

“Now it came about in those days, when Moses had grown up, that he went out to his brethren and looked on their hard labors; and he saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his brethren. So he looked this way and that, and when he saw there was no one around, he struck down the Egyptian and hid him in the sand. He went out the next day, and behold, two Hebrews were fighting with each other; and he said to the offender, ‘Why are you striking your companion?’ But he said, ‘Who made you a prince or a judge over us? Are you intending to kill me as you killed the Egyptian?’ Then Moses was afraid and said, ‘Surely the matter has become known.’”

I believe that Moses went under cover during these four verses in order to help his people. He killed an abusive Egyptian and hid him in the sand. That’s some serious vigilantism. Moses, the savior of Israel. But instead of getting a hero’s reception, as I’m sure he expected, the other slaves showed him contempt. “Who made you ruler or judge over us?” asks the equally abusive Hebrew slave. If Moses were still dressed in the royal robes of Egypt, there’s no way a slave would have talked to him that way. To do so would mean certain death.

The slave asks another question, which I read with a sneer. “Are you intending to kill me as you killed the Egyptian?” Moses wanted to be a hero but worked according to his own power and wisdom. Because of this, his people saw him as a bully and a killer.

Later, we read how Moses flees punishment and becomes a shepherd in the land of Midian. This job was only slightly better than that of a slave. Culturally, children worked as shepherds. The forty-year-old prince just opened a lemonade stand.

Then on day, Moses sees something interesting. Any change from the day-to-day may have caught his attention. He saw a bush burning on a mountain, but the fire didn’t consume it. As he approaches the bush, God speaks to him in Exodus 3:10. “Therefore, come now, and I will send you to Pharaoh, so that you may bring my people, the sons of Israel, out of Egypt.”

Hey Moses! You wanted to be a hero to your people. Now’s your chance. But Moses says, “Who am I, that I should go to Pharaoh, and that I should bring the sons of Israel out of Egypt?” This response echoes what the slave told Moses before he fled Egypt. “Who do you think you are?” It seems that Moses has answered with, “Nobody.” Moses spends so much time telling God that he’s the wrong man for the job he forgets that God is offering the fulfillment of the dream. He also misses the part in Exodus 3:8 where God says, “I have come down to deliver them from the power of the Egyptians”. God’s doing the work, Moses only has to go and send the message. Instead, Moses protests and God gets pissed.

At first glance, it may seem that Moses displayed humility in his question, “Who am I?” But Virgo points out that this humility was a cover for disobedience. In many ways, it sounds like the lie Adam and Eve bought in Eden. What Moses really meant was, “I know better, God. I can determine between right and wrong just like you and I say you’ve got the wrong guy. I don’t want to do this.” Moses didn’t properly recognize God’s supremacy and his own place in creation. False humility is really a passive aggressive pride. It’s sin.

Now let’s look at Jesus. You may see some parallels with the story of Moses. God the son came down to earth and became human to act as our deliverer. Like the quarrelsome slave, most people didn’t recognize Jesus as the Messiah and treated him with contempt. But when God told Jesus to go to the cross and offer salvation to those enslaved in sin, He went in obedience. Of course it was agonizing. Of course it was humiliating. But then Jesus got up. As one writer put it, “He arose victorious”. God won and got the glory.

This leads me to believe that true humility comes out of obedience, where we recognize God’s authority and submit to it. That doesn’t mean we reject God’s pleasure in us, or like Moses try to diminish our calling. We can be proud when it comes to doing what God wants.

The band Roadside Monument wrote a song with the line, “May we not be forgotten!” I had no idea what the song was really about beyond the desire we have to make our mark on the world. That lyric ran through my head all through high school. Some of it came form the wounds of rejection, like I mentioned earlier, of having something to prove. Some of it came from fear that my life would have no meaning, no impact. But when I thought about God, my attitude would change. At church, I would think, “Maybe nobody should remember me. John the Baptist said that he must decrease so Jesus could increase…” So I took on this tortured servant attitude. It seemed noble at the time. But like Moses, my attitude got in the way of obedience when God gave me opportunities for success. I wouldn’t let people find joy in my music, worship or otherwise. I didn’t want that attention anymore. That kind of thinking drove me into hiding for a while and I stopped blessing people with the gifts God had given me to use.

It surprises me how often I forget that God wants to bless us. There are countless examples and promises where God blesses obedience. Jesus said in Matthew 10:32, “Therefore everyone who confesses Me before men, I will also confess him before My Father who is in heaven.”

The parable of the talents in Matthew 25 gives us a picture of God’s pleasure with those who do His will. To the two servants who used what the master had given, the master rejoices, “Well done, good and faithful slave. You were faithful with a few things, I will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of your master.” But to the one who used humility as a cover for fear and pride, hiding his talent and returning to the master “what was his”, the master goes into a rage. He takes the talent from the servant, giving it to one of the faithful servants, and banishes him. That servant believed the same lie as Adam and Eve.

Let me put this in another light. If we are right in only taking what we deserved or earned, then we’re doomed. Paul writes in Romans 3, referring to Psalm 14, “as it is written, ‘There is none righteous, not even one; there is none who understands, there is none who seeks for God; all have turned aside, together they have become useless; there is none who does good, there is not even one.’”

We’ve all at one time or another believed the lie that we might know better than God. All sin is based in this lie, it drives us to do what we think is right. And this is what separates us from God. This is what God, in His justice, could not tolerate. We all deserve punishment for this rebellion.

Salvation comes only through Jesus and what He did by dying on the cross. We didn’t deserve it. We didn’t earn it. And yet He offers salvation to us. Speaking of Jesus, Galatians 4:4-5 says, “But when the fullness of the time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law, so that He might redeem those who were under the Law, that we might receive the adoption as sons.

And a loving father names his children. He doesn’t adopt them and expect them to stay out of the way, or to be a “faceless army”.

It’s true that we must give God all glory, honor, and praise. But that doesn’t mean we act as if He’s wrong for showing people favor. He made the album, let Him thank who He wants to thank.

Nehemiah Part Two - Prayer and persecution.

2010-12-31T13:52:00.000-08:00

An initial answer to prayer

The beginning of chapter two in Nehemiah’s book says,

“And it came about in the month Nisan, in the twentieth year of King Artaxerxes, that wine was before him, and I took up the wine and gave it to the king. Now I had not been sad in his presence. So the king said to me, ‘Why is your face sad though you are not sick? This is nothing but sadness of heart.’ Then I was very much afraid. I said to the king, ‘Let the king live forever! Why should my face not be sad when the city, the place of my fathers’ tombs, lies desolate and its gates have been consumed by fire?’” (Neh. 2:1-3)

As a cupbearer, Nehemiah knew the risk what he planned to ask of the king. In his prayer, he asked God to show favor because to anger the king could mean his death. Putting myself in his shoes, I imagine psyching myself out before I walk into the same room as the king. “Okay, okay, you can do this. Just tell him what’s going on. He’ll understand.” But would he understand? Essentially, Nehemiah would ask the king to give him the authority of a ruler. Ever wonder if the janitor asks for a promotion to an executive position?

Then, when the king saw Nehemiah’s face, he knew that his attendant dealt with an inner struggle. I wonder if the king wrongly suspected Nehemiah of betrayal. It was the job of a cupbearer to test the king’s goblet for poison. The position required absolute trust from the king, so of course the king would ask that Nehemiah share his thoughts.

I wonder if Nehemiah suspected this possible suspicion. If they were just buddies, wouldn’t the king’s question about a “sadness of heart” sound like concern? Why would that cause him to fear?

Nehemiah proclaimed, “May the king live forever!” Or, as I read it, “I don’t want you to die! I’m for you, not against you!” Since his body language gave away his emotion, Nehemiah had no choice but to explain the meaning of his sadness, namely the ruin of Jerusalem.

Verse four has two important parts. First, the king responds to the news of Jerusalem by asking, “What would you request?” God is answering Nehemiah’s prayer! He had asked for favor, and here the king opens a discussion.

Because Nehemiah had requested favor in his first prayer, I believe he knew what he wanted. He wanted to go rebuild Jerusalem. But even when we have been gripped by the vision God gives, we can’t assume that we know how to make the vision a reality. This leads me to point out the second have of verse four, where Nehemiah throws an aside into the text, “So I prayed to the God of heaven.”

It’s crucial to understand the importance of prayer in a situation like this. The king and queen are sitting there, waiting for an answer, and Nehemiah has his chance. Instead of simply asking for what he desired, he took a moment to pray.

Have you ever done the right thing the wrong way? There have been times where I’m so certain of the direction and vision that God has given me that I will run over anyone that gets in my way. I’ll hurt family and loved ones. I’ll trumpet the vision to people who would of course ridicule me, which makes me think I can justify calling my pride “righteous anger”. I’ll even forget that God, who gave me a vision in the first place, has to show me the steps I need to take in order to get there. But even in a situation of pressure, Nehemiah prayed.

In verses 5-8, Nehemiah requests a letter giving him authority, assurance of safe passage, and the right to surrounding resources for his project. The guy works as a wine butler, as you may recall. What an insane request! But the king showed him favor. Nehemiah says in verse 8, “And the king granted them to me because the good hand of my God was on me.”

Haters

Grand Rapids used to have the greatest all ages venue in human history. My friends Mirf and Annette opened Skelletones in 2000 in the Heartside District on South Division, setting up shop right next to the homeless shelters, working girls, and hustlers. The day after they opened, I was about a mile away at the community college taking my SAT exam. Because I was too arrogant to bother myself with preparation tests, and because I find it difficult to skim while I read, I thought for sure I bombed what everyone called the most important test of my life.

Afterwards, I walked south on Division Avenue toward a hole in the wall record shop I’d spotted once when I wandered around the city. The owner, an old man named Dodd, roused himself from what may have been a sleeping position when I walked in the door. He mumbled out a “hello” and I braced myself for an hour of flipping through unorganized piles of dusty records. Before long, I found a sealed copy of Anthrax’s Attack of the Killer B’s, factory stickers and all. When I paid the man at the counter, he looked at the record as if he vaguely remembered having it in stock for fifteen years.

My friend Justin called me on my way out the door. “What are you doing right now?” he asked.

“I’m at Dodd’s trying to buy happiness after failing the SAT.” I exaggerated.

“Dude, I’m right down the street. Mirf and Annette opened a coffee shop. I stopped by for lunch. Come over.”

From then, I hung out at Skelletones just about every weekend if not every day. Within a few weeks of opening their doors, Mirf began booking shows. A couple named Bob and Marcia would bring a PA and microphones for bands that didn’t have their own sound system. Bands had to do all of their own advertising. Skelletones had essentially provided the space and opportunity for young bands to play.

At first, this seemed familiar to underground musicians in Grand Rapids. We had played all sorts of places like barns, basement and garage parties, rented halls on the brink of condemnation, financially unstable coffee shops, and uninviting bars. Nobody expected Skelletones to last any longer than those other places. Mirf told me a story about a guy who worked at one of the bigger venues predicting his failure because he wanted Skelletones to be an all ages venue instead of a bar. “You won’t last six months,” said the guy. “Not without a liquor license.”

On top of this, many people knew that Mirf and Annette were Christians. They prayed before opening every day. They played Christian punk and hardcore records on the stereo. Even though they let just about anybody play on the weekends, rumors spread that Skelletones was a Christian venue that only booked Christian bands. I heard people making fun and even expressing their hate for a few years over Skelletones.

But the vision Mirf and Annette had for South Division began to work. Shows got bigger. Bands from all over the country began to stop there on their tours. Businesses began to open in the old, abandoned buildings up and down the block. Still the haters kept talking.

Like Nehemiah, though, Mirf had been gripped by a vision. Even when the city of Grand Rapids made it purposefully difficult for him to open, he kept going because God had given him work to do. And when people within the Skelletones family made mistakes or lost heart, he and his wife challenged them, comforted them, and many times reawakened the vision in them.

Every good story has an antagonist. Nehemiah had a handful. Some of these haters are introduced in verses 9 and 10.

“Then I came to the governors of the provinces beyond the River and gave them the king's letters. Now the king had sent with me officers of the army and horsemen. When Sanballat the Horonite and Tobiah the Ammonite official heard about it, it was very displeasing to them that someone had come to seek the welfare of the sons of Israel.” (Neh. 2:9-10)

Already, Nehemiah saw the benefits of asking God for direction before leaving on his mission. He had asked the king for a letter of authority because of other territorial governors like Sanballat and Tobiah. It’s possible they would have killed Nehemiah had he not presented a letter from the king or found protection with the army escort.

It amazes me how God works in perfect time but we always feel like He’s late. Graham Cooke once said, “God is never late. He just misses a lot of opportunities to be early.” For Nehemiah, it seems that God broke down the steps for him by prompting him to ask for a letter of authority and the right to natural resources. It prepared him for obstacles he may not have foreseen. I sometimes wonder if God prepares people for their own preparations.

As we read on, Nehemiah prepared for the work of his vision very carefully. He stayed in Jerusalem for three days before even inspecting the walls. One night, with only a few men and one riding animal, he walked around the perimeter of the city to take the full range of ruin into account. He had not told the people of his vision at this time, which would explain the undercover walk at night. A few men and one animal wouldn’t make a lot of noise to draw attention.

In those first three days, I believe Nehemiah also had time to survey the ruin of the peoples’ hearts. Why were they held in contempt? Why had they not begun the restoration themselves? The prophet Haggai had once called these people out on their priorities. The people kept saying, “It’s not time to build the temple of the Lord yet.” Instead, they tried to establish their homes and businesses before taking care of God’s house and serving Him. Haggai said, “Now therefore, thus says the LORD of hosts, ‘Consider your ways! You have sown much, but harvest little; you eat, but there is not enough to be satisfied; you drink, but there is not enough to become drunk; you put on clothing, but no one is warm enough; and he who earns, earns wages to put into a purse with holes.’ Thus says the LORD of hosts, ‘Consider your ways! Go up to the mountains, bring wood and rebuild the temple, that I may be pleased with it and be glorified,’ says the LORD.” (Haggai 1:5-8)

I think he also wanted to make sure people had time to recognize him as the king’s ruler. That kind of recognition isn’t simply a matter of knowing who’s in charge, either. My punk rock heart often resists trusting an authority based solely on appointment and title. I have to witness qualities of leadership that cause me to trust the person. But don’t worry, people, I still pray for them. I still remember Romans 13:1. My point is that I respond better toward authority I’ve come to trust.

Again, this isn’t an authoritative commentary on the book of Nehemiah. You’re basically reading my inner monologue as I read the book. Maybe the people were so downtrodden that they’d accept authority from anyone bearing the king’s seal. Maybe. But look at the reaction they gave Nehemiah when he told them of his plan in verses 17-18.

“Then I said to them, ‘You see the bad situation we are in, that Jerusalem is desolate and its gates burned by fire. Come, let us rebuild the wall of Jerusalem so that we will no longer be a reproach.’ I told them how the hand of my God had been favorable to me and also about the king’s words which he had spoken to me. Then they said, ‘Let us arise and build.’ So they put their hands to the good work.”

Nehemiah had made sure to know the full extent of the situation and offer assurance of the king’s pleasure in the work. He spoke to the heart of their condition, addressing the gates and walls “so that we will no longer be a reproach”. I love how he cut short this part of the address. Surely, after weeping over this situation for so many days, he must have had so much to tell the people of Jerusalem. Instead, he says, “you see it already”. It’s two sentences to describe what they need to do in order to become the city God intended. He cut to the chase. It’s “Banned In D.C.” vs. “Sister Ray”. One says it all before you realized anyone said anything. The other goes on and on until you beg for the end of the record.

“Banned In D.C.” has another application here. The surrounding rulers were pissed when they saw that Jerusalem began to rebuild. At first, the rulers tried using ridicule laced with threats to shame the workers.

When Skelletones opened, a large anti-Christian music sentiment began to creep into the music scene along with the rumors that Mirf would only book Christian bands. Some other coffee shop owners mocked Skelletones for its punk image and Christian ties. I remember one flyer where a coffee shop (that had the permit for smoking indoors) took a picture of Jesus carrying the cross and dubbed a cigarette into his fingers. The caption read, “Sometimes, you just need a smoke.” The city of Grand Rapids halted the restoration of the building housing Skelletones because of a supposed violation of code. The back door had to open at least eighteen inches wide. The inspector claimed that the last stair in the atrium stairwell prevented the door from opening all the way. This stalemate went on for weeks until Mirf measured the distance for himself. Eighteen inches. The work began again the next day.

I respect the hell out of Mirf. You might hear me say his name an annoying amount of times. He loved people and still knew how to stand up for himself and others.

Nehemiah’s response to the ridicule and threats was no less direct. Verse 20 says, “So I answered them and said to them, ‘The God of heaven will give us success; therefore we His servants will arise and build, but you have no portion, right or memorial in Jerusalem.’”

Nobody actually waged war here, but clear battle lines had been drawn. Although I believe the Church should show compassion, extending love and grace, I also wish it had Nehemiah’s spirit. When opposition comes, claim God’s promises and stand in the face of opposition. And I’m not talking in terms of political platform. The “Good Work” set before us is to spread the gospel and build the Kingdom of God. So many things try to shame us from this work, to threaten us. I think Christians throughout history into the present day have listened to those rulers in their own lives, bringing the work to a grinding halt.

So listen up! You see the condition we are in. God’s favor is on His servants. He will glorify Himself and has commissioned His church to do this good work on earth. But enthusiasm isn’t enough for adventure. It’s the thing that encourages people to begin.

This is the beginning of Nehemiah’s adventure.

Nehemiah Part One - When I heard these words, I sat down and wept

2010-12-31T10:31:00.000-08:00

I first heard punk music when I was twelve years old. A local college radio station played interesting music that my brothers didn’t own, and I felt compelled to explore this side of music previously hidden from me. My parents home schooled me at the time, which meant that I could finish all of my work in about an hour and go through the rest of the day learning how to play the guitar. So I sat listening to this radio station for hours with a blank cassette paused and ready to record should some amazing song come on the airwaves. I’d record the song, missing the first few notes, and then teach myself how to play the basic chords on my dad’s guitar.

One day, I had the radio on while solving some number puzzles for math class when “I Wanna Be Sedated” by the Ramones ruined my concentration. I put the puzzle book down and let my jaw hang slack. I waited for a guitar solo that wouldn’t come. Surely music like this had to have been new, I thought. Even grunge bands had solos. And then it was over before I knew what had happened. Only my quickened heart-rate and a sense of mania remained.

That’s when I realized that I hadn’t taped the song. When the radio station announced the phone number to their request line, I called them every half hour asking for “I Wanna Be Sedated”. Some of the women deejays would be nice to me and give me hope for my request in the coming hour. The dudes would either make fun of me or tell me to stop calling. One even said they didn’t play “classic rock”, which utterly confused me. Classic? Just how old was this music? Anyway, I never heard Ramones on broadcast radio again.

Thankfully, I knew a kid down the road from me who had been to the Van’s Warped Tour and owned lots of punk records. He made me a tape of his favorite bands, like NOFX and Less Than Jake. I ate this stuff up.

Then I started reading articles and books on the history of punk music and punk bands. They typically glorified individuals uniting together to make their own culture. They did everything themselves. They made their own music, artwork, films, and books. Their society felt like a community, one where the skuzzy, weird, and otherwise unloved found acceptance. I ached to belong to something like that.

Eventually, I found that many of the lyrics in punk music contained serious philosophy. Bad Religion might have perfectly explained the despair of existentialism in “Stranger Than Fiction”. “Life is the crummiest book I’ve ever read. There isn’t a hook. Just a lot of cheap shots, pictures that shock, and characters an amateur would never dream up.” I didn’t agree with everything these bands said, but I appreciated music that made me seriously consider how I viewed the world.

The punk kids I met over the next three or four years made me wonder if it were indeed possible to live out those ideals that I had read in punk history. They had cliques and gangs, obligations and grudges, just like everybody else. The only difference between the kids I dealt with when I listened to the Who and Led Zeppelin in elementary school and the punk kids I hung out with in high school was hygiene and fashion.

My friends and I used to sniff at the older punks who were burned out and drank too much. If you don’t believe in it, I said, why do you still call yourself punk? But our generation was riding on the high of discovering something new. We had the folly of youth carrying us through the problems we faced. But we ran into the same problems as our drunken, leathery predecessors. We had never defined the “it” that punks were supposed to believe in.

In the book American Hardcore, Jello Biafra explained a facet of the flaw. He said that people within this supposedly egalitarian movement had a strong sense of “us against them”. The problem was that nobody defined “us” or “them”, so the terms could be used arbitrarily to describe people who agreed or disagreed with you individually. You and your friends were “us”, anybody you disliked was one of “them”. Listening to the song “My War” by Black Flag probably best communicates this despair. In the song, vocalist Henry Rollins is a man panicking at the betrayal of people within the movement. “My war! You’re one of them. You said that you’re my friend. But you’re one of them!”

Entropy, like a conqueror worm, broke down something I thought was beautiful. In time, I gave up on the punk ideals while keeping the attitude. Eventually, I became that dude in his twenties, pessimistic, and drinking too much. I became one of “them”. When younger punk kids scorned me, I really couldn’t argue with them. It broke my heart to think that they would be in my place within five years. Punk began as a vital movement of expression and then splintered into a growing list of impotent subcultures.

Worse yet, I saw instances where one group of kids would have a grudge against another group. Both sides would be at the same show where the band one group supported was opening for a band the other group supported. These two sets of kids would stand on opposite sides of the room sizing each other up and everyone could feel the tension. I couldn’t even have fun at these shows because I was too busy making sure I wouldn’t get caught in the middle of whatever trouble they started. When trouble did start, the bands would typically stop the show and plead with these people from stage to cool it. Any of my friends who weren’t a part of the scene would see stuff like this happening and totally disregard punk in general. I couldn’t blame them for their contempt. From their perspective, it was a bunch of angry, dirty kids taking swings at each other to the sounds of angry, dirty music. All of the talk of unity and celebration of individuality rang false and hypocritical.

I often faced this problem of definition because I had never adopted the punk fashion. Many new friends were surprised to learn that I played in punk bands for the better part of a decade and still listen to the music. In fact, it’s my favorite kind of music. If I were banished to the furthest parts of the nether-regions with my ten-dollar portable cassette player and only allowed to listen to one genre of music – punk, no question. But as an idealistic movement, I’ve given up on it. As far as I can tell, there’s no hope for a universally accepted punk ideal because of that lack of definition. At best, we might agree with D. Boon of the Minutemen in saying, “Punk is what you want it to be,” and leave it at that.

It’s hard for me to think about the history of punk without drawing parallels to the Christian Church. Of course they have their differences, and I certainly regard my faith with much more seriousness than my favorite style of music. But think of this, Christianity began as a vital movement that swept the known world. It changed the course of Western history.

Then it became politicized when Emperor Constantine adopted Christianity as the official Roman religion. As a major political force, the church had the power to introduce the truth of Scripture as a basis for living. Instead, the new power led to corruption, uncompassionate accumulation and use of wealth, and a host of other problems. To make matters worse, the Church forbade the translation of Scripture into common, everyday language. Keeping the Bible written in Latin meant that only the well-educated could read the Word of God. This put the common man at the mercy of the clergy, who could interpret and teach the Bible in ways that secured their jobs and fill their coffers.

All that to say that some splits were probably necessary. The Reformation needed to happen. It reestablished Christ as the head of the church instead of “infallible” popes. The common man could read the Bible to understand justification by faith alone instead of paying indulgences and receiving certificates for salvation.

Even so, nobody defined “us” and “them” effectively at the time of the Reformation. So you have men like Martin Luther, who never intended to split from the Catholic Church, but his ideas inspired revolts against the religious/political system. There were seemingly endless wars fought over things like baptism and communion. The church and state were still considered one and the same. A challenge to the doctrine of a particular region was no mere theological difference of opinion. It was a challenge to political authority. That’s probably why John Calvin was so careful in writing his Institutes to make sure the king of France understood him perfectly. One slip of the pen, so to speak, meant writing his own death sentence. But then even Calvin, as the uncontested leader of Geneva, wasn’t afraid to punish people for theologically disagreeing with him.

When the church formed, it was meant to bear witness to the power, reality, and salvation of God through Jesus. Two millennia later, literally hundreds, if not more, denominations stand as a testimony of bitterness and infighting in the body of Christ. Is it any wonder that people outside (and with the advent of the Emergent Church, many within) the church regard the teachings of the church as false and hypocritical?

I’m going to spend some time relating the church as I see it in the present age with the condition of God’s people in the book of Nehemiah.

The book is written from Nehemiah’s perspective. It opens with him living in Persia as the King’s personal attendant, or cupbearer. A butler, pretty much. One day, his brother Hanani comes to Persia with some other Judeans. Nehemiah asks about the Jews living in Jerusalem. Hanani responds, “The remnant there in the province who survived the captivity are in great distress and reproach, and the wall of Jerusalem is broken down and its gates are burned with fire.” (Neh. 1:3).

Nehemiah says, “When I heard these words, I sat down and mourned and wept for several days.”

Whenever I read this passage in the past, I assumed that he had either overreacted to the situation (considering he already lived in exile and Jerusalem had long-since fallen to Nebuchadnezzar), he mourned out of nostalgia for the glory days of Jerusalem, or something else was implied in the text that I didn’t understand.

Many Bible teachers place a great emphasis on the walls of Jerusalem when they teach the book of Nehemiah. It makes sense for them to do so because much of the story deals with their miraculous reconstruction. As I read the book now, I see the walls as only one facet of Nehemiah’s anguish. First of all, the people were held in contempt and greatly distressed. These were God’s people, called by His name, bearing the promise to Abraham that his children would bless the nations. Second, the walls of a city symbolized its power. We can see this in all that talk of Jericho’s walls in the book of Joshua. Hanani’s news communicated Jerusalem’s powerlessness, its impotence. Third, the city gates were burned. I went to Israel in 2000 and learned about city gates at the ruins of Dan. The gates of a city were the center of civil government. Judicial matters were often settled there. That’s where the money exchange took place. The gates symbolized the authority of a city, and Jerusalem’s authority had been burned to nothing.

When I thought about the magnitude of this statement in light of these three points, I felt Nehemiah’s sadness for the church. The book “unChristian: What a new generation really thinks of Christianity… and why it matters” by David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons presents what people outside of the church think of Christianity. It’s a saddening read. If any of you ever felt like asking Nehemiah’s question for the church today, Kinnaman and Lyons have given Hanani’s answer.

The purpose of the church was to bear witness to God’s existence, love, and the finished work of Jesus. It’s supposed to be a testimony. When Jesus asked His disciples in Matthew 16 “Who do people say that I am?” the disciples gave a few varied responses. “Well some people say you’re Elijah, others say Jeremiah, or one of the prophets.” Then Jesus asks, “Who do you say that I am?” Peter responds, “You are the Christ, the son of the living God.” After hearing this, Jesus prophesies over Peter in verses 17 and 18. “And Jesus said to him, ‘Blessed are you, Simon Bar-jonah, because flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but My Father who is in heaven. I also say to you that you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build My church; and the gates of Hades will not overpower it.’” Some people have taken this passage to show Jesus giving Peter authority as head of the church. As I see it, Jesus may have meant something else. God revealed Jesus as His son to Peter, and Peter proclaimed it. It was this that would build the church in sinful world. 2 Corinthians 5:20 says, “Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were making an appeal through us; we beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.”

But according to Kinnaman and Lyons’ study, it could be said that society holds the church in contempt. When people outside of Christianity think of the church, they speak of the rules and doctrine and dogma. Homosexuality, alcoholism, “secular” media, etc. People who have no understanding of Christ can repeat what they’ve heard preachers on television say about these things, yet they still have no knowledge of Jesus. I don’t have to go too far to hear if people regard Christians as hypocritical, greedy, or delusional. It’s not a universal sentiment, I understand. Those same critics of Christianity often are quick to say, “but I don’t think you’re like that.” They may say that to avoid hurting my feelings, I don’t know. My point is that contempt for the church is a prevalent attitude in our culture and to ignore it would be the same as sitting among piles of burned rubble, powerless and in distress. To accept our current condition would mean giving up on God’s intentions for the church bearing witness to Jesus and overcoming the gates of Hell.

If you look around and see that this is the case, then it would makes sense that many churches have given themselves over to a certain sense of powerlessness. Now that isn’t to say that people are not coming to Jesus or that the Holy Spirit is not at work in the world today. There are movements within the worldwide church that have brought and continue to bring the gospel to life. But for every good example of a Church operating in the power of God, there are a dozen others that prefer to think of God’s power abstractly and limited to matters of belief. Or they believe the Holy Spirit’s work was limited to acts of salvation after the Apostles died. Or whatever. All I’m trying to say is that I’ve walked into a lot of powerless churches in my young life, and by “powerless” I mean they don’t recognize and operate in the authority they have in Jesus.

People in the church need to remember that “belief’ and “faith” are not the same thing. Belief for the Christian means they mentally agree with the statement, “The Bible is true.” Faith means that we actually live our lives by that truth to which we have ascribed our thinking. Faith means taking steps according to belief. It’s an active decision to live not just according to the teaching and promises of the Bible. If you believe the whole Bible is true, then the whole Bible is true for you in real life.

I don’t claim that unless you live perfectly according to the Bible every day, then you are without faith. Faith is a gift from God, and it’s a gift that should grow as we learn more about Him. But think of this. The Bible says in Christ we are new creations (2 Corinthians 5:17). That means we can no longer do things the way we’ve always done them. We need God to show us how to do things His way. And when He does show us, we have a responsibility to act in that new way. Otherwise your “faith without works are dead” (James 2:14-26). Belief is a start, faith is a continuation.

The Bible also teaches us that we’re given power through the Holy Spirit to minister to people. Jesus gave his disciples this authority in Matthew 10 and Acts 1. Have you considered the things he told those uneducated kids to do? Heal the sick? Cast out demons? Raise the dead? And nowhere in the Bible have I found a passage that says Jesus took this gift away from those that put their faith in Him. Yes, in 1 Corinthians, it says that the imperfect passes when the perfect comes, but I don’t think I’ll see evidence of said perfection until Jesus comes again.

Well if this is true, then why aren’t more churches operating in the truth taught in the Bible they say they believe? Surely their evangelism and ministry would explode if they were to experience the things Jesus promised when He gave His disciples authority and power. They go hand in hand like city gates to city walls. One does no good without the other. Sadly, many churches experience neither.

Nehemiah’s prayer

I think it is important to point out what Nehemiah did in response to Hanani’s news of Jerusalem. The remainder of the first chapter, verses 5-11, is Nehemiah’s prayer.

“I beseech You, O LORD God of heaven, the great and awesome God, who preserves the covenant and lovingkindness for those who love Him and keep His commandments, let Your ear now be attentive and Your eyes open to hear the prayer of Your servant which I am praying before You now, day and night, on behalf of the sons of Israel Your servants, confessing the sins of the sons of Israel which we have sinned against You; I and my father’s house have sinned. We have acted very corruptly against You and have not kept the commandments, nor the statutes, nor the ordinances which You commanded Your servant Moses. Remember the word which You commanded Your servant Moses, saying, ‘If you are unfaithful I will scatter you among the peoples; but if you return to Me and keep My commandments and do them, though those of you who have been scattered were in the most remote part of the heavens, I will gather them from there and will bring them to the place where I have chosen to cause My name to dwell.’ They are Your servants and Your people whom You redeemed by Your great power and by Your strong hand. O Lord, I beseech You, may Your ear be attentive to the prayer of Your servant and the prayer of Your servants who delight to revere Your name, and make Your servant successful today and grant him compassion before this man.”

Now let’s take a look at this prayer. Although Babylon had scattered Israel and destroyed the city of Jerusalem, God had ultimately set this into motion. Nehemiah recognized the situation as the natural result of Israel’s sins. Right away, he begins his prayer by recognizing God as the great and awesome God of heaven. Nehemiah also admits that God promised to preserve His people if they would love Him and observe His commands (Deut. 30). So he fasted and prayed, confessing the sins of Israel and asking for God’s forgiveness.

Although Israel’s condition did come as a result of His law, it wasn’t God’s fault. God is never the one on the defensive and we are not His judge. We answer to Him because He is the ultimate and absolute. He’s complete in Himself and perfect. If there’s anything wrong in the world, we are the ones who need to be held into account.

Moses said of God “The Rock! His work is perfect, for all His ways are just; a God of faithfulness and without injustice, righteous and upright is He.” (Deut. 32:4) And in the next verse, he goes on to say, “They have acted corruptly toward Him.” Throughout Israel’s history, they continuously reject God’s commands and “act corruptly”. Since they had broken these commands throughout generations, God had to inflict the punishment He promised in (Deut. 30:17-18) in order to uphold His justice.

And yet, this command God gave to Moses had a condition attached at the end. “But if you return to Me and keep My commandments and do them, though those of you who have been scattered were in the most remote part of the heavens, I will gather them from there and will bring them to the place where I have chosen to cause My name to dwell.” (Neh. 1:9) Knowing the covenant gives Nehemiah hope and it encourages him to pray.

But the part of this prayer that surprised me most was Nehemiah’s personal confession. He repented not only of his fathers’ sins, but also his own! Over a hundred years had passed since Nebuchadnezzar took Jerusalem and sent its inhabitants into exile. How could Nehemiah’s sins possibly have caused Jerusalem’s exile and disrepair?

In Genesis 17:9, God has made His covenant with Abraham and says, “Now as for you, you shall keep My covenant, you and your descendants after you throughout their generations.” And again, when God gave Moses the ten commandments, He says in Exodus 20:5-6, “For I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, on the third and the fourth generations of those who hate Me, but showing lovingkindness to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments.” Nehemiah’s demonstration of his knowledge of God’s covenant with Israel leads me to believe that he was probably aware of these verses. The covenant to obey God wasn’t merely the responsibility of those who came before. It was also visited upon the generations to come. Thus, he felt responsible to repent on behalf of his ancestors for their sins.

But then, why did he repent for himself? The verse in Genesis implies that the generations following Abraham had a responsibility to keep God’s covenant. God had told Moses that He would show lovingkindness to those who love Him and keep His commandments. God had promised in Deuteronomy to restore them if they would turn and obey Him. If the Jews were still living in a broken Jerusalem, held in contempt, powerless, without authority, the current generation had probably not repented on their own behalf and changed their ways.

Some might think that Nehemiah stepped into a role of leadership when Artaxerxes, King of Persia, gave him authority as governor of Judah. I say he became a leader during this prayer. He couldn’t take repent for every individual person living or dead who had broken God’s commands, but he knew of his shortcomings and started there. The exile and destruction of Jerusalem happened because of other peoples’ sin. Some people might have looked at the situation and said, “Well, they screwed up. I guess we may as well learn to live with the world they gave us.” The Jews living in the rubble of Jerusalem may have said just that among themselves. Nehemiah looked at the situation and knew that as a lawbreaker himself, his actions directly affected the whole people under God’s covenant.

When he took this responsibility, he showed a characteristic of true leadership. For him, the problem was surely defined. The people had sinned. He had sinned. God promised punishment for sin, but also spoke of future restoration should the people repent.

At the end of the prayer, Nehemiah asks for God’s favor before he approaches the King with his dilemma. As my friend John might say, God had gripped him with a vision. It would require Nehemiah to take risks and display boldness as well as personal brokenness.

Rules Taught By Men - Why Christians need to lighten up.

2010-12-10T13:01:00.000-08:00

...As an end to this series on basic Christian living, I thought I might talk a little about the Pharisees. Pastors and teachers can easily portray bits of the gospels as "Jesus vs. the Pharisees", even though it seems theologically He identifies with them more than the Sadducees or Essenes. During a time of an elitist priest class (typically Sadducees) and intense cultural pressure to become more like the Greeks, Pharisees devoted themselves to living God's law, not just reciting it. The word "Pharisee" means "set apart".

Jesus didn't have a beef with the existence of their sect. He had more to say about how their hearts had become hard and proud regarding their righteousness. In Luke 18:9-14, Jesus tells a story about two men praying in the temple. The first, a Pharisee, thanks God that he is not like the sinner standing with him in the room. The second man, a tax collector, pleads for God's mercy because he recognizes his own sin.

Coming home from a Torah study group one night, my mother told me about how some rabbis "built a fence around Torah". This means if the law says you're responsible for the death of a man falling off of your roof, you should build a fence around your roof so you don't accidentally break the law. If Torah says something like "don't cook a calf in its mother's milk", then the fence would keep all meats away from dairy, so they don't even come close to breaking that rule of Torah.

So what do you call a Christian who speaks of Pharisees like demons and Christians who say you can't go to the movies or listen to non-church music? There's nothing in the Bible about the Cinema or Slash Records, but I know kids who couldn't appreciate either because their church said it was evil. They didn't want to listen to Pennywise and backslide.

I can understand creating reminders and safeguards for ourselves because every one of us struggles with sinning. Many men, including myself, have software on their computer to alert others when I may be looking at a dirty website. However, if my church said it was mandatory for every man to have accountability software on their computers, I would totally have a problem with that.

Some churches culturally dress in nice clothes because they want to express their reverence of God in that way. In the book Breaking The Missional Code, Ed Stetzer and David Putman tell of churches with cowboys reserving seats for their hats and holler at every good point in the message. That sort of thing wouldn't have happened in my grandfather's church. But is one church right with how they celebrate God's presence and the other wrong? Is it sin?

The Bible tells us to remember Jesus through communion, to be baptized, to give generously. How we do these things is not so explicit. Is it wrong for the Presbyterian church I visited to dip a hunk of fresh baked bread into wine while another church might opt for a cracker crumb and thimble of grape juice? No. I don't think God frowns on either because He wanted people to remember Jesus by communion. Yet, nations fought wars over this stuff.

The Pharisees tried hassling Jesus about something like this in Matthew 15. They ask Him why His disciples broke the tradition of the elders by not washing their hands before eating. Jesus then points out how the Pharisees had chosen tradition over God's commands. For the Christian today, this begs the question, are we trying to build a fence around God's commands or are we building a cage of man-made laws? Christians would do themselves well to remember the grace by which they've been saved from their sins. It is possible for one to never even realize his heart has hardened in self-righteousness.

Now, I'm aware that some can take the idea of grace too far and forget Romans 6:1-2. By no means should we intentionally live in sin and ignore the Holy Spirit's conviction. Scripture says this too will harden the heart. All I'm saying is that Christians shouldn't build a cage of rules to guard against grace itself. If a person genuinely wants to follow and serve Jesus, we should believe the word in Hebrews when it says Christ's sacrifice has made us perfect and blameless before God. I think the proper attitude would include encouraging, challenging, and praying for God to work in the hearts of our fellow believers.

Oops.

2010-12-05T05:10:00.000-08:00

A few decades ago, I heard a story in Sunday school about Mary and Joseph leaving Jesus behind at the temple. Since I didn't have many friends at regular school, and my brothers terrorized me at home, the story made me think about how I liked church better than anywhere else. My parents always had us meet together by the front entrance after church, but I sat on the back steps near where we parked. In a way only very dramatic people do, I hoped my life would play out just like the story.

And it did, sort of.

I watched my family's big, blue, diesel suburban rumble away and smiled. I got to stay at church! But instead of sitting with rabbis discussing the Bible, I had three adults asking me if I was lost and where my parents were. It didn't take too long for Mom and Dad to realize they were a kid short. Mom says she asked God where to find me, and He told her, "At my house".

Like the sneaky child I was, I feel like this weblog would hang out on the back steps waiting to be left behind. And like my then beleaguered parents, I could possibly overlook it in the headcount because of the other children demanding my attention.

If I remember right, my parents made it up to me not knowing I wanted to stay at church in the first place. I think they took me to 7-Eleven or Dunkin' Donuts, or something. They were both on the same corner. Following their example, whether or not you wanted to be left behind, I plan on making it up to you.

December will have four essays posted. The first will finish the Basic Christian Living series and the last three will begin my next series. After writing We're In This Together, my friend Abe encouraged me to study more of Nehemiah and begin another writing project. Nearly two years later, I'm still studying Nehemiah (now along with the rest of my church) and only halfway through writing about the book. I figure posting each chapter will encourage me to both stay current with my delinquent weblog and finish at least a first draft of this book idea.

Now, moving on...

The Sunshine Vitamin - Why Christians need the Holy Spirit.

2010-10-31T16:10:00.000-07:00

One afternoon when I was twelve, my grandmother drove me to a friend's house. She asked me, "Have you ever spoken in tongues?"

I didn't know what she meant, so I told her I hadn't. "What is that anyway?" I asked.

"Well, some people say it's praying, but they speak in gibberish over and over again. If anyone asks you to do it, don't. It's not right. Matthew 6:7 says we shouldn't babble like the pagans do."

Since none of it made sense to me, I let it go. A few months later, I read 1 Corinthians and wondered why my grandmother didn't talk about this part of the Bible when she mentioned speaking in tongues.

Growing up in the Baptist tradition, we didn't talk much about the Holy Spirit. Then, when I began attending an Assemblies of God school at the age of thirteen, I heard about the Holy Spirit all the time. On one hand, the Holy Spirit was the part of the Trinity we talked about during baptism, or He was the thing that helped me make sense of the Bible. On the other hand, the Holy Spirit made church a party and everyone got awesome gifts. It was hard to know which side was right.

Emotions can run high with a topic like this. I've written on the Holy Spirit before, once or twice, but today I want to talk about some basic reasons why Christians need the Holy Spirit.

Yes, yes, I know. The gifts and work of the Holy Spirit have been abused or counterfeited enough to freak out some more conservative Christians. And yes, some of their objections are legitimate. Of course, some of those objections have caused people to overreact. I've seen something of both sides in this conflict. That's why I want to look at what scripture says and see how it can answer some questions from both sides.

First, the Holy Spirit is a part of the Trinity. He is not only a distinct person but also the active presence of God in the world. Genesis 1:2 notes the Spirit separately from God the Father in verse 1. Verses like Exodus 35:31 with the Hebrew craftsmen, Numbers 11:25 with the tribal elders, and Judges 6:34 with Gideon show the Holy Spirit coming upon men and giving them special ability to do God's work in the world. Priests, judges, prophets, and kings were typically men who moved in the power of the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament. More than this, though, the Old Testament gives a very special key to understanding the importance of the Holy Spirit.

The Tabernacle in the law of Moses, and later the Temple in Jerusalem, served as the place where God's Spirit dwelt with His people. God instructed Moses to build the Tabernacle for this purpose in Exodus 25:8, "Let them construct a sanctuary for Me, that I may dwell among them." In a world where sin separated man from God's presence, the Temple was the only place where man could come into the presence of God.

Terry Virgo noted this as the primary reason why the disciples followed Jesus. They wanted to be with Him. When Jesus told His disciples of the day when He would leave, He said in John 16:6-7, "But because I have said these things to you, sorrow has filled your heart. But I tell you the truth, it is to your advantage that I go away; for if I do not go away, the Helper (that is the Spirit) will not come to you; but if I go, I will send Him to you" Sorrow filled their hearts, said Virgo, because of the thought they wouldn't be with Jesus, God the Son, anymore. Jesus understood this, which is why He knew it would comfort them to know, "I'm leaving, but God the Spirit will come in my place." And this was better, said Virgo, because though Jesus could be with some people some of the time, the Holy Spirit could be with all believers all of the time.

In the New Testament church, Jesus promised the Holy Spirit would give His followers power to spread the gospel (Acts 1:8). This was first demonstrated on Pentecost in Acts 2 when the Spirit moved among those praying in the upper room. The Apostle Paul taught on the gifts of the Spirit, ways in which the Holy Spirit manifested among people to glorify God, in 1 Corinthians 12-14. In this section of scripture, Paul talks of prophecy, speaking in tongues (or other languages unknown to the speaker), interpretation of tongues, and healing. These are just some of the gifts mentioned throughout the epistles.

It's obvious that Christians should value the Holy Spirit, not only as God, but also in terms of His presence at work among them. Jesus thought it important enough to encourage His disciples with the coming Spirit. Paul felt it essential for the Ephesian disciples in Acts 19 to be filled with the presence of the Holy Spirit. In the Acts 2 sermon, Peter said those who believed in Jesus would receive the Holy Spirit.

My objection to some of the things I saw in the charismatic movement had nothing to do with the gifts themselves, but rather the lack of fruit I sometimes saw in people. By that, I mean the fruit of the Spirit Paul listed in Galatians 5:22-23. "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law"

In The Holy Spirit And You, Dennis and Rita Bennet made an appeal for maturity in the charismatic movement. Bennet said he heard some say they couldn't control themselves when the Spirit came upon them. First, he quoted 1 Corinthians 14:32, "the spirits of the prophets are subject to the prophets." That's not to say we control The Spirit, but rather people experiencing a legitimate prophetic gift should exercise self-control, one of the Galatians 5 fruits of the Spirit. Bennet compares it to how a person responds to a dirty joke. A mature person will exercise self-control and keep himself from laughing if it's inappropriate.

What have your experiences been? If you grew up in the church, did you have any experience with the Holy Spirit? Or was the experience of God your only topic? Do you know if you've received the Holy Spirit into your life, allowed Him to work in you? Or, if you're not a Christian, do you have some confusion between the Holy Spirit and any other spiritual experience you might have encountered? Do you think there's a difference? At this stage, I hope you now know we can't ignore the Holy Spirit. He is as essential to Christian life as sunlight to vitamin D, our faith isn't much good without Him.

It's Not The Band I Hate, It's Their Fans - Why Christians need the church.

2010-10-20T12:20:00.000-07:00

"I believe in God, but I don't agree with organized religion."
"Isn't the church supposed to be anybody who believes in Jesus? Why do we need an institution to believe in Him?"
"The church burned me, so I don't go anymore."

You've probably heard this sort of thing on more than one occasion. You may even say it yourself. When I was a teenager, the men running the youth group compelled me to become the worship leader. I was sixteen. two years later, when I realized I had serious sin issues to deal with, I told the youth pastor of my decision to step down from leadership. He tried everything to get me to change my mind until finally he said, "If you stop leading worship now, you'll never lead worship again." He told me I would lose the gift. I tried attending meetings once or twice after this happened, but I couldn't handle the stress of people trying to force me back on stage. As a result, I stopped going to church altogether for a long time.

That's my burn story. I think just about everybody has at least one story telling of how someone in the church hurt them. Some are more subtle, like feeling overlooked and unloved. Some are just puzzling, like how my brother was kicked out of a youth group for smelling like smoke. Still others are horrifying, like the stories of molestation and other abuse.

In the last decade or so, I've seen a growing number of people tell me they love God but hate the church. At first, this sounds as logical as liking a band but hating their fans. "Lord, save me from Your followers," and all that. A few years ago, I worked on a film with director Rik Swartzwelder. He and I got to talking one day about the Emergent Church movement. He told me, "It seems like this whole thing happened because some people were hurt and decided they had an axe to grind with the church. But I wonder if what they're doing is going to turn out any better."

So what should followers of Jesus do? Should we respond to the failures of men by rejecting the church or by understanding and seeking a biblical church with good leadership?

To start, I think we should read the Bible and see what Jesus said. In Matthew 28:19, He told His followers to make disciples. That doesn't mean to simply make converts, dunk them in water, then move on to the next unbeliever. Jesus spent years pouring into the lives of his disciples, teaching and correcting them. For that to happen, the disciples had to gather. I think Jesus always intended to establish the church. He told His disciples of it when Peter proclaimed Him as the Messiah in Matthew 16. In chapter 18, He told them how to deal with conflict among believers, telling them to present a case before the church if the offender refuses to repent. Most importantly, Jesus repeatedly told His disciples to treat each other with humility. He did so in Matthew 18:4, John 13:14, and Luke 14:11.

Many of the epistles in the New Testament are instructions on how the church should function. Paul opened his letter to Titus with guidelines for appointing church leaders, or elders. James 5 says elders are to pray for those in sickness. Paul also told Titus and Timothy to teach sound doctrine to the church and warned them against deceivers.

I especially like 1 Peter 5:1-5 as a guideline for good church leadership. "Therefore, I exhort the elders among you, as your fellow elder and witness of the sufferings of Christ, and a partaker also of the glory that is to be revealed, shepherd the flock of God among you, exercising oversight not under compulsion, but voluntarily, according to the will of God; and not for sordid gain, but with eagerness; nor yet as lording it over those allotted to your charge, but proving to be examples to the flock. And when the Chief Shepherd appears, you will receive the unfading crown of glory. You younger men, likewise, be subject to your elders; and all of you, clothe yourselves with humility toward one another, for 'God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble.'"

There are those who today would say the church shouldn't have leaders who hold office, that there's no hierarchy in God's church. I would agree that the church shouldn't have leaders acting like princes, lording power and influence from "the people". I don't think it should be a matter of control, but rather of servant-leadership, following Jesus' example.

A biblical church will have members and leaders who demonstrate humility and participation. I feel like this would be a good time to quote C.J. Mahaney from a section called Just Being Together Isn't Sufficient in his book Humility. "I hope you're meeting regularly with others for fellowship and accountability, but please know that for this to be a means of grace and growth in your life, two things are required as an expression of your faith.

"First, humbly recognize your need for others. I'm convinced that left to myself, if I'm seeking to grow by myself, I'll only be deficient in discerning the sin within, and I'll therefore experience only limited growth in godliness. That's why I need the care and correction of my wife and fellow team members, and why I must pursue their care and correction. I need help, and so do you. You can't effectively watch yourself by yourself; you need the discerning eyes of others.

"The second requirement for effective small-group fellowship and accountability is that you and I must aggressively participate. Don't assume that by merely attending a group, by merely associating with those who are godly, you're therefore satisfying God and growing in godliness. That is deception."

Participation is scary, though. It means letting other people into your life and having the courage to join people in theirs. After my own bad experience, I left the church and treated it with much cynicism. Only when I asked Pastor Craig Brown why anyone would want to become a "member" did I finally understand the importance of participation. He said, "Let me ask you a question. You have a lot of spiritual gifts, don't you?" I told him I did. Then he asked, "But you don't have anyone in authority over you teaching you how to use those gifts effectively?" I laughed nervously and admitted I didn't. Not only that, but I realized I had no place to use those gifts in a way that would bless others and allow for others to bless me. That's when I knew God wanted me in a church.

What about you? What's your experience? What do you think about the Bible's emphasis on the church meeting together? Are you like many, struggling to act with humility and aggressive participation? Know this: you're not alone in your pain and confusion with the church. The question is whether or not you plan to do anything good about it.

Drawing A Clearer Line - Some thoughts on the difference between a Christian and a person who talks about Jesus.

2010-09-30T16:22:00.000-07:00

When I began to write this series on basic Christian living, I knew I would primarily address those who attended church or claimed to believe in Jesus, calling themselves Christians. For some, I hope this series gives them understanding on why Christians do and believe certain things like the Bible, the effectiveness of prayer, etc. I began with another goal for these essays, to draw lines between those who admire Jesus as a spiritual teacher and those who worship Him as God the Son.

Something stirred during the last few weeks while I continued to live in a home without internet access. A person left an anonymous comment on Back To Boardgames using language I have heard from people who believe in Universalism or what Francis Schaeffer called "Paneverythingism". It looks like a continuation of an earlier comment that for one reason or another isn't available.

But there you can see why I chose to draw these lines. This kind of thinking denies Jesus as God and His work of redemption, the foundation of Christian belief. In Romans 1, Paul introduces himself as one who lives to tell the gospel and defines it as the gospel promised through the Bible. He also makes clear this gospel deals with God's son, Jesus. In verses 18-20, Paul talks of evil men suppressing truth made known to them by God. Then, in verses 21-23, we read why wicked people denied the truth of God. "Although they know who God is, they do not glorify Him as God or thank Him. On the contrary, they have become futile in their thinking; and their undiscerning hearts have become darkened. Claiming to be wise, they have become fools! In fact, they exchanged the glory of the immortal God for mere images, like a mortal human being, or like birds, animals, or reptiles!"

One great definition of sin says we do so by worshiping, or glorifying, anything but God. It is to place anything above God. To think of something as more beautiful, trustworthy, or ultimate than God is to sin against Him. Satan's downfall came when he said to himself "I will make myself like the Most High" (Isaiah 14:14). He then planted the same lie in Eve's ear when he told her in Genesis 3:5, "you will be like God". Some claim that man's consciousness (whether the power of an individual mind, collective, vaguely defined spiritual "force", etc.) or thinking need only be corrected in order to achieve enlightenment. This kind of belief, and others like it, in one way or another conclude that we are, or are like, God. This kind of thinking is the very core of sin.

But these people who deny the God of the Bible must also deny the doctrine of sin. If we are our own gods, or if god is an impersonal force, than we have no outside standard from a perfect and unchanging God to which we must answer. If there is no sin, then Jesus had no need to die as payment.

My objective at this moment isn't to debate the existence of the biblical God, the reality of sin, or the redemptive work of Jesus. I want people to realize that they may sit in a church meeting next to people who agree with the kind of things said by my anonymous critic. They might sing the same songs of worship, recite words from the Bible, or help with community outreach.

But do not be fooled. Jesus did say He was God the Son. The Jews recognized this in John 5:18. He also made it clear that people had to believe in Him in order to gain eternal life when He said, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through me" (John 14:6). Jesus talked about Hell more than anyone else in the Bible, He said He was the Messiah (meaning He knew He would pay the price for man's sin), and He believed in the authority of scripture because He quoted the Tanakh (Old Testament) as such. Some people can say they believe in Jesus and yet miss His whole message.

If a person believes in Jesus as God the Son, then he will live a life of repentance and worship the God of the Bible alone. If he merely calls Jesus a spiritual teacher or a "good guy who set an example for us all", he should stop pretending to agree with Jesus and never refer to himself as a Christian.

I'm glad the person leaving the comment chose to remain anonymous because I want to attack the thought and not the person. My response to people like my anonymous critic, Wiccan neighbor, and Jehovah's Witness co-worker is to pray for them. I believe the Holy Spirit can turn their hearts to repentance by revealing both the ugliness of their sin and the goodness of God's grace. It's the reason I never addressed the critic directly. I do have an adversary, but he's not flesh and blood, and he's the reason I draw the line.

*Believe it or not, this experience has encouraged me to next write on why Christians need the Church. See you next month.

Is This Thing On? – A brief message on why Christians pray.

2010-09-09T16:39:00.000-07:00

I knew at some point in this series on basic Christian living I'd have to talk about prayer. Christians do it all the time. But has anyone explained to you why? Haven't we all heard people describe feeling like their prayers hit the ceiling and fall splat on the floor like an undercooked pancake? Haven't we felt once or twice like our prayers don't do any good? Still, those who read the Bible and live by what it says can't ignore verses like Psalm 5:3. "In the morning, O Lord, you will hear my voice; in the morning I will order my prayer to you and eagerly watch." Not only should a Christian pray, but he should expect God to both hear and respond to the prayer.

Early in the drafting process of Stark Raving Obedience, Dad and I added a Lily Tomlin bit somewhere in the text. "Why is it when a person talks to God it's called prayer, but when God talks to a person it's called schizophrenia?" The first half of our book deals with the reality of God speaking to people. I could easily rattle off the verses we cite about God speaking, people hearing His voice, the verbal guidance of the Holy Spirit, and so on. When I thought about verses talking of God hearing people, I had a harder time coming up with examples.

I mean, it's in there. The Bible definitely talks about God hearing prayers. In my search for good examples, I went where anyone would go: The Beginning. Nobody makes an explanation of prayer in Genesis. No, "Adam heard the Lord and called out, 'Who said that?' And thus did Adam speak the first prayer unto the Lord." Nope. People and God talk to each other as if that sort of thing happened all the time. Adam, Eve, Cain, Noah, all sorts of people. It doesn't even sound like prayer was anything different than simply talking to God until Genesis 4:29, "At that time people began to call upon the name of the Lord." I don't think this means God couldn't keep up with all the people trying to talk to Him at once. Prayer isn't like Santa's workshop, receiving millions of letters and sorting them based on importance and a naughty/nice list. It would make more sense to see this text as people realizing just how much sin had caused separation in their relationships with God. Maybe they felt like their prayers hit the ceiling and it freaked them out.

As my research went on, I found lots of passages where God hears the prayers of Kings and Prophets. In 1 Kings 9:3, God tells Solomon he heard the King's prayers. When King Hezekiah finds out he'll probably die of a particular illness, he prays for God to heal him. God tells Hezekiah in Isaiah 38, "I have heard your prayer, I have seen your tears; behold, I will add fifteen years to your life." The leaders of Jerusalem asked Jeremiah to give them a word from the Lord and Jeremiah, knowing they had wrong motives, responded, "I have heard you. Behold, I am going to pray to the Lord your God in accordance with your words; and I will tell you the whole message which the Lord will answer you. I will not keep back a word from you." I can relate to Jeremiah's frustration. Why didn't the rulers just pray to God themselves? In another passage, Ezekiel tells the people of Edom that God hears more than prayers when he says in 35:12, "Then you will know that I, the Lord, have heard your revilings which you have spoken against the mountains of Israel." In Micah 7:7, the prophet says with straightforward confidence, "My God will hear me."

But those men had special distinction. They were recognized Prophets and Kings. Of course God would hear their prayers. Then I reread a verse in Habakkuk 1. The Prophet feels like his prayers hit the ceiling, too. You can hear his confusion in 1:2 when he says, "How long, O Lord, will I call for help, and you will not hear? I cry out to you, 'Violence!' Yet you do not save." Once in a while, even men of spiritual distinction ask God, "What the eff?" This passage should give us some comfort. God never promises to answer our prayers quickly or in the way we expect.

Isn't that great? I spent all of July talking about the authority and need for the Bible because it lays a foundation for our understanding of a relationship with God. The Bible doesn't just say God will hear and prayers and respond to them, it also says we'll sometimes feel like He's not listening. But that's just how we can sometimes feel. Scripture is clear. God hears us. This is why He laid out the plan of redemption. It makes Him happy when we pray.

As for God talking back to us, I feel like I've written at length on that topic already. Suffice to say for now the Bible also tells us we'll hear from God. I bring up July's discussion on scriptural authority because some people have expressed concern over the topic of listening prayer. One lady told me I was playing a "dangerous game" listening to voices in the spiritual realm. "How can you know it's really God and not something evil?" She wasn't trying to put me in my place. The look on her face told me she genuinely cared about my soul.

I tried to explain, as I often do, "Everything spoken from God has to line up with the Bible."

She didn't seem comforted by my response. "I know you mean well. Just be careful with that sort of thing."

As long as I'm talking about prayer, I may as well attempt to clear this misunderstanding. God will only say things that confirm what He said in the Bible. Listening prayer, hearing from the Holy Spirit, isn't new revelation. It's just personal. It's as if the Holy Spirit was telling you a personal application of the Bible in a way that doesn't feel like a freakin' Sunday School lesson. The more a person reads the Bible, the more they recognize the voice of God because it agrees with what He said in scripture. It might even help us to get over that ceiling-effect. We'll always hear God respond to our prayers in the Bible, even if it's just to say, "Don't worry. I hear you."

A Notice To My Readers

2010-08-01T12:33:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone. This month, I will become a married man. Those of you who are married will probably understand the intense transition that comes with marriage. It only began to occur to me last week, "Everything about how I lived will have to change." I'm thrilled, seriously, but I don't want to take my new responsibilities lightly. So, at least for August, I'm going to put the Press to the side and get to know what life is like with my new wife.

In the meantime, I want to make another offer for readers to ask any questions they might have about scripture, basic Christian living, or hearing God through listening prayer. Maybe you're a relatively new reader. If that is the case, you may also consider this an opportunity to catch up on some of the older essays.

Otherwise, you can all look forward to September's discussion on prayer. Until then...

Back To Boardgames - Why Christians need the Bible's authority

2010-07-26T06:46:00.000-07:00

About a year ago, when I figured out I was probably more of a Calvinist than I ever wanted to admit, I wrote an essay on the Bible's authority. It would probably do for me to include this topic in the Basics Series. Instead of coming up with an entirely new analogy, though, I've decided to revise and repost the original.

My friend Joe has a sick sense of humor. He told me one day to read a particular post and the subsequent comments. This post dealt with a line in 2 Peter 2:7 calling Lot "righteous". Of course, you had the people who talked about justification versus sanctification. Others rejected the passage as "a misunderstanding", because how could God call Lot righteous when he offered his daughters to gang rape, then later got drunk and committed incest with them? Eventually, and Joe intended this, the conversation came to the authority of the Bible, its inerrancy, comparisons of Old to New Testament, and Universalism.

One man created a sub-argument about a supposed misquotation in Mark where the writer "quotes" Isaiah, but actually quotes both Malachi and Isaiah. I wonder if it would do any good to tell him that ancient Greek writing didn't have quotation marks or that they used indirect quotations. For example, if Joe tells me "Dinner is at six tonight. Come over with the guys and join us." I might tell my friends, "Joe wants us to be at his house for dinner at six." Even though I didn't directly quote Joe, I correctly communicated what he said.

For most of my life, people outside of the church have told me the Bible is just a book full of contradictions and inconsistencies. When I was seventeen, I wondered if these people were right. So I read the whole thing, looking for a contradiction or inconsistency. I think my Bible teacher knew what I was doing because he invited me to challenge the Bible's authority and inerrancy openly in class whenever I thought I had found proof. Believe me, I tried. But he always had answers that both cut through my cynicism and satisfied my questions. Soon enough, I began to ask him to explain hard passages because I wanted to know more of how the Bible truly was authoritative and without error. By the end of the school year, I knew without a shred of doubt that the Bible is God's book. To disbelieve or disobey the Bible meant I disbelieved or disobeyed God.

If any of you ever want to take a poke at me the way I did my Bible teacher all of Senior year, please feel free. I'm certain that, given time, I could find a sufficient answer for you. For now, I want to set a foundation for the Bible's authority with a few scriptures. Hebrews 1:1-2 says, "God, after He spoke long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many portions and in many ways, in these last days has spoken to us in His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the world." This sums up the Old Testament writings and the words of Jesus. Whatever the prophets said in the Bible, God said through them. That's not to say they themselves were always infallible. Even if Moses thought the world was flat, he never said so in the Bible because God oversaw every word written in scripture and kept it truthful. Going back to 2 Peter, it seems the writer shared Joe's intentions. 2 Peter, 3:1-2 says, "This is now, beloved, the second letter I am writing to you in which I am stirring up your sincere mind by way of reminder, that you should remember the words spoken beforehand by the holy prophets and the commandment of the Lord and Savior spoken by your apostles." This adds the writings of the Apostles into the category of "Authoritative". In the same chapter, Peter equates Paul's writings with scripture and calls those who distort Paul's teachings "untaught and unstable". Paul refers to Luke's and Matthew's gospels as scripture in 1 Timothy 5:18 "The laborer is worthy of his wages."

The whole controversy over Biblical authority and inerrancy reminds me of board game tantrums. You know what I'm talking about. We've all played Monopoly and accused the banker of cheating before flipping the whole board into the air. My favorite checkmate in chess was the one where I swept all the pieces to the floor with my spindly arm. I get the same feeling every time I hear arguments for or against the ultimate authority of anything.

While studying Wayne Grudem's Systematic Theology, I read, "It is one thing to affirm that the Bible claims to be the words of God. It is another thing to be convinced that those claims are true. Our ultimate conviction that the words of the Bible are God's words comes only when the Holy Spirit speaks in and through the words of the Bible to our hearts and gives us an inner assurance that these are the words of our Creator speaking to us." Then he quotes 1 Corinthians 2:14, "The natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned (Grudem's translation)."

Essentially, what Grudem said was this, "If you don't believe the Bible, it's because God hasn't revealed it as truth to you." And think of this, if we claim that the Bible is our absolute standard of truth, then we can't appeal to another kind of standard to validate it. To do so would put the outside standard on par or greater than scripture. So what difference is there between us saying the Bible is true because it claims to be true and the claims of ultimate authority for an Atheist who supremely values science or historical accuracy? They think science is authoritative because it's scientifically proven. They think history is accurate because of the accuracy of historical documents. If you think about it long enough, you want to kick the game table, knock over the pieces, and shout, "No, I'm Sorry!"

The difference I can see comes from what I said long ago about Xerox copies. We are not ultimate beings. We're limited. Blaise Pascal had this realization and said that man was merely a point on a line. We can't comprehend the extremes of anything in nature, and yet those extremes exist beyond our comprehension. From there, he explains that a being must comprehend those extremes and only God is ultimate enough to do so.

So where else but the Bible could I find a standard of truth? I can't base my standard of truth at all on myself. My perception, my logic, my experience, it's all limited. And I can't base my standard on other men because I recognize their limitations as well. The Bible, with the Holy Spirit's instruction, convinces me of its own truth. I believe its truth to such lengths that I allow the words of the Bible to offend my reason and change the way I think.

Some people might think that I worship the Bible rather than God when I say these things. Let me assure you I do not. God reveals Himself to man through the Bible. God also says that He reveals Himself to man through nature. In fact He reveals Himself to us in all things. But God doesn't want us to worship nature or any other means of revelation. There can be no other gods before Him, not even His book. My point is that the Bible is a complete, though not exhaustive, way in which God revealed Himself.

Cornelius Van Til said that in order for us to truly know God, He would have to reveal Himself truly to us. If the Bible were not the absolute, authoritative, perfect standard of truth, then my understanding of God would be incomplete. No one could truly know God. If the Bible contained any falsehood, the pluralist claim of all religions worshiping the same god might have some merit. God would be subjective to our perception. So if you claim to be a Christian, you absolutely must recognize the authority of the Bible.

Have you thrown the game table yet? I know I've seen and thrown enough board game tantrums to wonder if I should even bother playing in the first place. But it wouldn't do any good if I surrendered by saying, "It's a Christian thing, you wouldn't understand," or, "Just take a leap of faith," or, "We don't ask those questions." The Bible I claim to believe makes it clear I should still work to understand my faith and reason with people. But 1 Corinthians 2:14, as well as other verses, tell me I don't need to convince anyone. I can leave that up to the Holy Spirit and find comfort in knowing He'll do a much better job.

The Comfort Of A Narrow Path - Why Christians need the Bible

2010-07-19T19:13:00.000-07:00

Last month, I wrote about the need for people to understand the basics of Christianity. Since every post regarding this topic will have its foundation in the Bible, I wanted to first write about the Bible itself.

In Romans 10:2, the apostle Paul teaches about people having genuine zeal for God, but zeal "not based on correct understanding". Verse 3 says, "for, since they are unaware of God's way of making people righteous and instead seek to set up their own (way of making people righteous), they have not submitted themselves to God's way of making people righteous." They didn't correctly understand God's message of salvation so they created their own. Elsewhere in the Bible, you can read about this man-made version of salvation. It based itself on the merit of good deeds (Matthew 23:2-4, Galatians 2:16), ethnicity (Luke 3:8, 1 Timothy 1:3-4), and painful surgery (Galatians 5:6-12).

Paul goes on to use several Old Testament references explaining Jesus as the only source of salvation, ending with a quote from the prophet Joel in verse 13, "everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be delivered." Starting in the next verse, Paul gives us a strong argument for the need of the Bible in understanding the truth of God and the salvation He offers. "But how can they call on someone if they haven't trusted Him? And how can they trust in someone if they haven't heard about Him? And how can they hear about someone if no one is proclaiming Him? And how can people proclaim Him unless God sends them? - as the scriptures put it, 'How beautiful are the feet of those announcing good news about good things!'"

God told specific men to proclaim the truth of His words, to write them down. These writings are the Bible. The Bible truthfully and sufficiently tells us about who God is, what Jesus has done, and how we can know Him with the help of the Holy Spirit. If a person reads the Bible and comes to believe its words are true, he can put his trust in Jesus and receive salvation. Romans 10:17 sums it up this way, "So trust comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes through a word proclaimed about the Messiah."

This is a very controversial and emotional topic for people. I think it's probable every person who reads the Bible has or will come across a passage offending their reason or emotion. The idea of scripture as the unchanging standard of truth can cause panic. People like flexibility. But when people resist the teachings of the Bible and come up with a different explanation of God or how He wants us to live, they almost always deviate toward some form of humanism, nihilism, pluralism, or universalism. These appeal to human reason or emotion and make them the final authority. For example, the Bible says that Jesus is the only way to find forgiveness for sin and spend eternity with God in Heaven. Jesus said in John 8:24, "Therefore I said to you that you will die in your sins; for unless you believe that I am He (the Son of God, the Messiah), you will die in your sins." But then, some might say, what about people who will never have a chance to hear about Jesus? Does that mean they'll go to Hell, even if they never had a chance for salvation? According to the Bible, even they have no excuse for their sin and face an eternity in Hell (Romans 1:20).

Most objections to scripture tend to occur because of this sort of specificity, not because of vague generalities. Time and culture don't determine its truth. Jesus said in Matthew 24:35, "Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away." Jesus knew some would struggle with this when He taught in Matthew 7:13-14, "Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who enter through it. For the gate is small and the way is narrow that leads to life, and there are few who find it." One of my favorite interpretations of this passage comes from Dennis and Rita Bennett's book, The Holy Spirit and You. Bennett compares the narrow way to the flight path of an airplane traveling from Los Angeles to Honolulu. The plane must follow a specific route to make its destination, otherwise it will end up somewhere way off course near Fiji. If the pilot follows the correct directions given him, he can fly without fear of losing his way.

Talking to people in Nashville, one of the country's most heavily-churched cities, I'm amazed at all the pilots thinking they can travel north to go west. If they're really nerdy, they might argue, "It's like Star Wars when Luke flies his X-wing into the Death Star trench. I'm just letting the Force guide my hand. It works so much better than the navigation device." Or, if they're less nerdy, they might say, "I'm more spiritual than religious."

Okay, I get it. The stiff and hypocritical church pissed me off enough to say the same thing a few times when I was younger. I talk to people all the time about how they need to hear the voice of the Holy Spirit for guidance while they pray. Until recently, I didn't stop to think about how many people assume I'm talking about guidance apart from the Bible. Let me make this clear: the Holy Spirit always agrees with the Bible. Yes, you might hear something regarding a personal situation or an edifying word for the church meeting you attend. That doesn't mean the prophetic word can defy or contradict scripture. Paul says just as much in 1 Corinthians 14:36-38. "Did the word of God originate with you? Or are you the only people it has reached? If anyone thinks he is a prophet or is endowed with the Spirit, let him acknowledge that what I am writing you is a command of the Lord. But if someone doesn't recognize this, then let him remain unrecognized."

In the next post, I'll discuss more on the Bible's authority and inerrancy. For now, I want you to think about man's need for the Bible. I hope with this post you will begin to think of it more than a positive moral influence. I want you to see it as a detailed guide, vital to your life and relationship with God. Without it, every decision made will come from man's own fallen reason or fickle emotion. Man needs an authoritative, objective truth and I believe God revealed it in the Bible.

Bringing It Back To Basics.

2010-06-29T15:01:00.000-07:00

A few months ago, I helped train a kid who quickly made it known he'd just come out of rehab. He told me some of his story during our lunch break. A relationship with a girl soured, he found himself deep into substance abuse, and he couldn't always control his anger. When I asked him what changed, he told me about the progress he made with AA. He used the phrase "God as you know Him" at several points. I casually asked him what he meant. "Well, I believe God's real, but we all recognize him in a different way. Whether it's Allah, Buddha, Jesus, or whatever."

"I don't think Jesus would agree with you. He made it pretty clear He was God and the only way for people to have a relationship with God." I kept my gentle, friendly tone. The kid didn't seem upset. He acted as if I had somehow agreed with him.

On December 10, the Tennessean printed an article full of quotes similar to my trainee's. A concerned Methodist pastor discovered how many of the people attending his church also claimed to be Buddhist and Wiccan. "Spirituality has become so individual," he said. "We can no longer assume that people embrace even the basics." Later in the article, Alan Cooperman, associate director for the research at the Pew Forum said, "It is as much now the norm as it is the exception for Americans to blend multiple religious beliefs and practices." According to the Pew Forum, a significant number of church-goers believe their interests in reincarnation, astrology, pantheism, necromancy, etc, don't conflict with Christianity. For a while now, I have thought about another quote from the Methodist pastor regarding his attitude toward the situation. "We spend a lot of time talking about the basics," he said.

Nashville has a lot of churches, Christian publishers, Christian musicians, and historically Christian colleges. Having lived here for a few years, talking to locals, and reading articles like the one in the Tennessean, I wonder how many people going to churches know about the basics. The trinity, the death and resurrection of Jesus, sin, salvation, the person and work of the Holy Spirit - some people growing up in the church don't know anything concrete about these simple Christian truths.

I feel like God has put it on my heart to learn how to explain the basics of Christianity. I'm not talking about all the details of a specific theology. I think every Christian should agree that Jesus is God, the Bible is true, stuff like that. So I guess this post in the Press has two purposes. One, I'm going to study on some basics for upcoming essays. Two, I wonder what Press readers think about some of these basics. 1 Peter 3:15 instructs believers to remain "always ready to give a reasoned answer to anyone who asks you to explain the hope you have in you - yet with humility and fear." If someone approached you and asked how you knew the Bible was true, or why you thought Jesus was God, what would you say? That's why I want to know more of why I believe what I believe. At the same time, I want to approach this with humility and fear. That is, I want to allow for grace toward others while keeping full respect toward God.

What do you all think about this? Have you ever felt trapped by questions about the basics of your faith? Have you thought maybe agreeing with a universalist mentality would make it easier to "deal" with the confrontation of people who don't understand these basics? I expect the next few months will do a few things. First, people who don't know Jesus will have answers to questions and come to know Him. Second, Christians who didn't know the foundation of their faith will grow into greater love and trust for Him. Third, nominal, no-faith church-goers will get called out on trying to blend or dilute Christianity.

We'll see you all next month.

Well-versed and Empty-hearted - Some thoughts on religious dullness.

2010-06-19T13:29:00.000-07:00

Remember when I spent six months writing about the Minor Prophets (and yet gave you no links to Non-Prophets)? Instead of the now-familiar format where I share something I learn, I want to tell you about some meditations I've recently had while reading the Bible.

Last week, my friend Greg spoke at church about the presence of the Holy Spirit. In the message, he made two important points. One, the Bible is not enough. Yes, the Bible is completely necessary as a means for us to know God. But some people make the mistake of having a relationship with the Book and never get to know the Author. It's sort of like RLC Fan-club Christianity. There is a great danger in this. Modern man has tried for generations to understand God in strictly human terms. They use the Xerox copy as their standard of the total landscape. The picture is nice and all, but it's separate from their experience. So they use words like, "It's good to have faith, but..." As if faith were a pleasant virtue instead of a new way of life.

Two, the Holy Spirit changes lives. Some men from the church in Ephesus knew about repentance and baptism, they tried to "do" the stuff but hadn't received the Holy Spirit, let alone heard of Him. Acts 19:1-6 tells the story of these men finally meeting God, the Author, experiencing the presence of the Holy Spirit. Their faith went from works to relationship in the space of a breath. Imagine watching this take place. They instantly began to speak in other languages and prophesy. How do you think they they would have explained it? Don't you think something like that would have changed their lives?

The Christian Church has seen its share of well-versed and empty-hearted people. In 2 Timothy 3:2-5, Paul warns the young pastor, "People will be self-loving, money-loving, proud, arrogant, insulting, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, uncontrolled, brutal, hateful of good, traitorous, headstrong, swollen with conceit, loving pleasure rather than God, as they retain the outer form of religion but deny its power." Don't slide your eyes over this list. I know I sometimes see words like "brutal" or "traitorous" and think the message couldn't possibly apply to me. The truth is I recently repented of a huge area of pride in my life, and I know I've insulted people. This warning should cause us to stop and consider if we are those who retain an outer form of religion while denying its power. Have our lives genuinely changed or have we merely memorized data about Him?

I grew up in dry and dusty Baptist churches and almost never heard anyone mention the Holy Spirit. This version of faith was a list of rules and guidelines, no matter how passionately I tried to tell my non-believing friends otherwise. Before I met the Holy Spirit, my faith, my life, was dull. I seldom repented because my heart was hard and I didn't understand the purpose of conviction. During a conference in 2004, Graham Cooke noted how Paul's last sermon in Acts was a message against religious dullness. "The Holy Spirit spoke well in saying to your fathers through Isaiah the prophet, 'Go to this people and say, "You will keep on hearing but never understand, and you will keep on seeing but never perceive, because the heart of this people has grown thick - with their ears they barely hear, and their eyes they have closed, for fear that they should see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their heart, and do repentance, so that I could heal them."'"

Since Greg's message, I have asked God to keep my heart sensitive to the Holy Spirit, to keep me from dullness. I don't want to go from a life of Stark Raving Obedience to the lukewarm, practical atheism of nominal Christians.

How do you feel about this? Are you content with once-a-week Christianity? Does the thought of God speaking to you fill you with anxiety? Do you want life with God, living in His presence as you work and eat and study and socialize, or do you just want to go to a nice place after you die?

If You're Down With P(erseverance)...

2010-05-31T07:25:00.000-07:00

My pastor used the word "perseverance" in his sermon a few weeks ago and I started singing this song in my head. I missed the following point he made, but in that time I began to think about the topic of this essay.

Since writing on Deuteronomy 8, I have put much thought into God's motives for trials. My initial response says God does everything to glorify Himself. Lately, I considered another motive for testing. God allows trial in our lives to produce endurance demonstrated through perseverance. According to my dictionary in MS Word, endurance is "the ability or power to bear prolonged exertion, pain, or hardship." But we can make endurance a passive action, like waiting out a storm. "Perseverance", on the other hand, describes "steady and continued action or belief, usually over a long period and especially despite difficulties or setbacks." It's not enough to sit there and take the pain. God wants us to seek Him, build His kingdom, and keep moving forward.

Trials come to our lives in many different forms. Some must wait for God to rescue them or fulfill a promise like Jonah and Joseph. Others experience loss of material possessions or loved ones like Moses and David. Then there are those who go through long periods of suffering like Job. I have talked in the past how nothing surprises God. According to John Piper, God is incapable of risk because He knows the outcome of every action.

When God put these men through their particular hardships, He did so with purpose. God put Jonah in danger to change his attitude and turn him in the right direction. Joseph may have been sold into slavery and put in prison on false charges, but scripture says he worked diligently and gained favor everywhere he went. God used all those circumstances to train him for the day he would oversee Egypt and save many lives. Moses lost all the material benefits of a prince but God used him to liberate His people. David had his own wilderness experience when Saul chased him into the desert. Cut off from his family and loved ones, David wrote many psalms rejoicing in God. The king needed to know who truly rules over men. Job's story stands as a sober reminder of God's goodness and supremacy. He suffered all kinds of loss and illness to learn these lessons before God restored everything. God could give these men responsibility because they learned to trust His character and promise. They looked to the truth above the circumstances.

Scripture talks about the benefits of perseverance. Starting with Deuteronomy 8:11-19, Moses tells the people, "Look, God needed to put you through all the hardships of the desert. You needed to learn how to depend on Him while enduring blinding heat, venomous snakes, and scorpions. He sustained you while you lived out there and you were able to see it because of your obvious need. Remember this! No matter where you live or how good your quality of life, God alone sustains you. Follow Him." The actual text tells the Israelites the trials came to do them good, even if they felt like hell sometimes. Moses explains how God used these lessons to keep them from proud and lukewarm hearts.

In Stern's translation, 1 Peter 1:5-7 speaks of another value in perseverance. "Meanwhile, through trusting, you are being protected by God's power for a deliverance ready to be revealed at the Last Time. Rejoice in this, even though for a little while you may have to experience grief in various trials. Even gold is tested for genuineness by fire. The purpose of these trials is so that your trust's genuineness, which is far more valuable than perishable gold, will be judged worthy of praise, glory and honor at the revealing of Jesus the Messiah." Stern uses the word "trust" where many translators use the word "faith". Trials test the genuineness of our faith. I have talked with some people in the church who wonder about the authenticity of their faith. How do they know that they know they are saved? According to Peter, it seems perseverance is a good indicator.

Whether to keep us from sin, prepare us for responsibility, or remind us of our faith's genuineness, we should listen to Peter, James, and Paul when they tell believers to rejoice in trials. Yes, the situations themselves might suck but we can thank God for the Holy Spirit working in our lives. Be encouraged, my friends. Jesus didn't only save us from sin, He gave us the regenerative power of the Holy Spirit to live through hardships in ways that glorify the Father and do us good.

Who Do You Love When You Love Yourself?

2010-05-27T08:55:00.000-07:00

Self-hate, I think we can agree, is a less than positive trait. Some might regard it as harmless, maybe ignorable, because it doesn't seem to affect anyone else. But self-hate isn't merely a trait and it is far from harmless. Self-hate is sin and it causes nothing but damage.

Most kids have their worst horror stories from jr. or sr. high. My stories began in elementary school. During my five years in public school, the other kids picked on me, harassed me, or beat me up three times a week. At least, that's my conservative guess. It didn't take long for me to develop a poor self-image. I know it sounds like the usual formative years tragedy - nobody picking me for the basketball team, sitting by myself at lunch, having five kids beat me unconscious - so I won't go into all of it. One story in particular can sum up the five years of emotional wreckage leading to a lifestyle of self-hate.

After the last day of fifth grade, a few kids invited me to a tree house. When we got there, they had fireworks and sodas. I couldn't believe other kids wanted to have me join in their fun. Then another classmate came with a stack of dirty magazines. Dirty in every sense. Like, grimy and torn, but with content that even today makes me sad to recall. Immediately, I felt a mixture of embarrassment and nausea. I told the other kids I didn't want to look. They laughed and asked in mocking tones, "What's the matter?" One kid held me down and tried forcing me to look. I closed my eyes and kept them clenched despite his attempts to pry them open. Another kid began to read aloud the story surrounding the pictures. I clapped my hands to my ears and felt them pulled away. Eventually, the kids let me go and I walked home dazed. I didn't talk to my parents when I reached my home.

I realized many years later how I allowed this sort of treatment to birth an attitude of powerlessness in me. If I ever looked at porn again, I had this tiny reminder of the time I couldn't escape. Maybe, I would subconsciously tell myself, I should just let it happen and avoid the fight. The feeling of powerlessness quickly eroded my security. Any love I had for myself crumbled. I looked for ways to pretend confidence, to feel loved, to look cool. Smoking, gateway drugs, chasing (but seldom catching) girls, applause, academic achievements, heavy drinking - none of it rid me of those nagging feelings of powerlessness. I tried to enhance my identity so much I began to wonder if it made me a fraud. This only made me feel worse about myself and I redoubled my efforts in what I thought would fulfill me, only increasing the damage.

Of course, I still went to church. I studied my Bible. I prayed and even heard from God during this period. If anyone asked, I could tell them the two greatest commands as Jesus taught them in Matthew 22:34-40. Love God and love your neighbor. It appeared as if I love loved God. Maybe not the way Deuteronomy 6:5 instructs, what with my whole heart, soul, and might. I tried to be nice to other people, an attempt at following the command to love my neighbor. But if pushed by anybody, I would defer, cower, explain, or flee. I didn't show kindness. I showed niceness - the pleasant and non-combative behavior of a castrated church-goer.

It wasn't until my early twenties when I finally agreed to talk with someone about these issues. A pastor friend of mine, someone I could trust to challenge me, made two major points as we talked about my history. Genesis 1:26-27 tells how God created man in His image. First, my friend said this truth gives us dignity. We are image-bearers of God, special in this way from all creation. In hating myself, I despised His image and questioned His goodness. This led to my friend's second point when he asked, "Do you really love God when you hate His image? How is it possible to love your neighbor when you hate yourself?"

At first I wondered vainly if I had to love myself before I could love God or neighbors, as if it were a prerequisite. But reading more into scripture, I realized how loving God first allows me to love myself. To truly love God, I have to know Him. To know Him, I have to know something about Him. God tells of Himself in the Bible and while it doesn't exhaustively reveal Him, it does truly reveal Him. It was easy in my Baptist upbringing to understand God as perfect, righteous, and just (Deuteronomy 32:4), creator of the world, (Genesis 1), deserving all glory, honor, and praise (1 Peter 1:7). I wondered how such a magnificent being could care about a cowardly, sinful person like me. But when I read in the Bible how I am hidden in Christ (Galatians 2:20), how God cleanses me from my filth (Zechariah 3:3), and sees me as holy and blameless when i put my trust in Jesus (Colossians 1:21-23), I must believe these things are also true.

1 Peter 1:3-7 ties these passages all together. "Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In His great mercy He has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil, or fade - kept in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God's power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that your faith - of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire - may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed." But then verses 8 and 9 explain what this truth should do to us. "Though you have not seen Him, you love Him; and even though you do not see Him now, you believe in Him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are reveiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls."

The truth of God's nature and the salvation He offers fills me with joy. It shows me His love for me. 1 John 4:19 says, "We love, because He first loved us." I received the love He offered and it allowed me to love Him in return. If I love Him and trust His word in the Bible, then I have to believe He created me in His image and sent Jesus to die for me. I find a great measure of worth in this. 1 John 4:20, however, makes a very serious statement. "If someone says, 'I love God,' and hates his brother, he is a liar; for the one who does not love his brother who he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen." Is it possible to substitute the word "brother" here and replace it with "myself"? Am I a liar if I say I love God but hate myself?

Earlier, I referred to Zechariah 3. In that passage, the prophet sees the High Priest wearing filthy clothes and standing before God's throne. Satan stands to the side accusing the priest until an angel of the Lord rebukes him. I believed all sorts of lies about myself thinking I was powerless, unlovable, and a fake. But when I put my trust in Jesus, I was cleansed and dressed in clean clothes like the priest. What would it mean if I were to find myself cleared of charges but then protest and agree with the accuser? If someone takes my trashed second-hand clothing that smells like another person's B.O. and offers me a tailored suit, how would my benefactor feel when I refuse to wear it because I don't consider myself worthy? It makes me think that self-hate, for the Christian, especially displeases God because it shows contempt for the salvation He offers. It makes me wonder if a person can receive salvation if they insist on showing it contempt. If you say you love God but hate yourself, then you're in danger of having God judge you as a liar.

Just wear the suit and let the Judge acquit you already.

I Wanted So Much To Be A Man I Forgot How To Be A Child.

2010-04-26T07:49:00.000-07:00

Early on in my church-going life, Sunday school teachers gave a lesson on "Faith Like A Child". They told the story of Jesus scolding His stupid adult disciples when they tried to keep the pure-of-heart children from surrounding Him. The lesson ended with my friends and I assuming we had stronger faith than our parents and maybe even our pastor. I'm not making this up. We discussed these things over graham crackers while we waited for our parents to pick us up after the service. Our six-year-old arrogance came from all the self-esteem lessons we learned in elementary school. Public school said we deserved to be treated like the center of the universe. Sunday school taught us, whether intentionally or not, we had a knack for faith. We were naturals.

I can understand why those Sunday school teachers didn't teach us Proverbs 22:15 in the same lesson. "Doing wrong is firmly tied to the heart of a child, but the rod of discipline will drive it far away from him." Our parents may have found us crying into our crackers if we heard that sort of thing. You're all sinners and need correction. It's true, though. From birth to old age, everybody sins. We tend to do what we want instead of what God wants, trusting ourselves over our Creator. That's sin. I didn't learn the sin lesson at Sunday school nearly as well.

In the following years, the pride I put in my faith settled in like a syrupy stain. Without realizing it, I became just like one of those disciples pretending to know better than Jesus. My interpretation of the Bible was better, my shortcomings ignorable, and my reasoning irrefutable. It's a dangerous attitude.

My pastor taught through a series on Proverbs last summer. The sermons paired with personal prayer and study made a significant change on my attitude. I decided to take more responsibility and seek wisdom. The church places a high value on discipleship and I began meeting with an awesome guy. He asked me at our first meeting, "What do you want to learn?" I thought about it for a second and said, "How to be an adult." I wanted to become a shining example of biblical manhood after the Proverbs study.

I had a good goal, but my attitude still carried the old stain of pride. If I could learn how to do things right then nobody would bother me to improve. I could give the answers instead of having to answer for myself. Yes, God wants boys to grow into men. He wants them to leave their parents and take wives, to work hard, to lead a family. But the subtle lie I accepted came from a warped idea of "independence".

All those months of reading Proverbs and I missed the number one, basic, first-grade principle from Proverbs 1:7. "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and discipline." Cory Wigal, pastor of Church on Church Street, put it this way, "Learning to fear God is the first smart thing anyone can do."

Without getting too far off track, I'll use a tried and true comparison for how we should fear God. My dad is a big man. He still has two inches and sixty-some pounds on me. I would need at least ten more years before I could take him in a fight. So you can understand how as a child I had a certain level of respect for my dad's strength. I may have mentioned the time I thought he was going to kill my brothers. Well, this image of my dad inspired a respect for his power, but he was also the man who let me sit on his lap while we watched episodes of Nova on PBS. He took me to Tigers games and wrote a song about my name. At times, he'd pick me up from behind and give me loud, smacking kisses on the cheek saying, "I LOVE YOU!"

This is the picture I have of a father. Why wouldn't I trust someone who could wipe me out but inexhaustibly loved me instead? My obedience to Dad was trust put into action. When I think of my relationship to God as Father, the statement still applies. Like the Psalmist, I wonder, who am I that He should be mindful of me? But He's the one who loved me so much He sent Jesus to die so I wouldn't have to pay for my own sin. Do I believe it enough to put my trust into action?

Let's look at the best Father/Son relationship in history. Jesus most certainly grew into a man according to Luke 2:52. His character doesn't lead me to believe He lived in a state of what my sister calls "adult-olescence". But He continued to trust God the Father enough to pattern His every action accordingly. In John 5, answering criticism for supposedly working on a holy day of rest, Jesus said, "Yes indeed! I tell you that the Son cannot do anything on His own, but only what He sees the Father doing; whatever the Father does, the Son does too. For the Father loves the Son and shows Him everything He does." Here is a perfect picture of childlike trust. I have tried in the past to give a solid definition of faith. Jesus, being God, defined a life of faith by trusting His Father and imitating Him.

The lie of independence absolutely denies this kind of trust in the Father. It leads me to believe I can make decisions based on my own wisdom. This lie told me I could rightly discern between good and evil like God. Faith requires me to trust God over everything. If I do anything apart from following His lead, then I fail to imitate the perfect example of a life faith set by Jesus. Romans 14, talking about everyday things like meals and calendars, makes this very clear: "Whatever is not from faith is sin".

Maybe a righteous life isn't defined by a list of do-and-don't. Could it be that righteous living means we become like children and trust God the Father, telling people we want to be like Him, obeying Him out of both respect and love? Fools run from God's wisdom and discipline. If I try to be independent of His oversight and do things on my own, does that make me a bad kid more than a responsible adult? In light of this, Romans 8:1 gives me even more comfort when it says, "There is no longer any condemnation awaiting those who are in union with the Messiah Jesus."

I once told the man discipling me at church how I wanted to be an adult. Here is my new goal: I want wisdom. To get wisdom, I must always respect God above everything. I must accept what He says and learn from His discipline. This will never change. In time, though, I may come to a point where I can read Proverbs 4:1-3 to my children with confidence. "Listen, children, to a father's instruction; pay attention, in order to gain insight; for I am giving you good advice; so don't abandon my teaching. For I too was once a child to my father; and my mother, too, thought of me as her special darling."

Any wisdom I may have to share in the future doesn't depend on a vague level of adulthood, but rather on a humble recognition of God as the source of all wisdom. I was once a child who trusted my dad. I want to continue living as a son who trusts his Father.