Have a Terrible New Year

Yesterday was New Years Day. It was not a typical New Years for our family, we spent 13 hours in our car driving on New Years Eve, so the only thing we watched drop when we got home was ourselves into bed. And since New Years was a Sunday, we didn’t spend the day loafing around like we might normally, but instead we went to church (which, by the way, was an excellent way to start the year. I thought it was a fantastic service, and God really spoke to me through our Sunday School lesson, the worship, and the message… but I digress).

The one tradition that we were able to continue was a food tradition, which I would argue are the best kind. We ate cabbage and black eyed peas, which are supposed to help you to have a happy and prosperous New Year. I believe the symbolism is cabbage for money and black eyed peas for mad hip-hop beats in 2012.

But this got me thinking. Is a happy and prosperous New Year what God really wants for me? I look at the lives of the disciples. All but one of them was executed for their faith, and that’s because the last one was exiled. Paul was beaten and left for dead, shipwrecked, and imprisoned because of what he believed. Jesus said of the Christian faith that one must approach it like a builder, counting the cost before beginning to build. He says this because there is a cost to truly following Christ, and if we are not willing to pay that cost than we are not worthy to call ourselves His disciples.

Is it too bold to ask God for a terrible New Year in the hopes that as we lose all we have we will gain the eternal blessings that can only come from a life given completely over to the will of God?

Coffee

I said this last night, but I’m going to say it again

I know that many of you begin your day with a big cup of coffee. It is the thing that gets you going in the morning, and without it you are not the same. Coffee is the thing I look forward to most in the morning, knowing that even though I have to crawl out of bed even before the sun does it will all be ok once I’ve had my morning Joe.

When I make myself a pot of coffee, the first thing I do is grab a filter. The filter keeps the coffee grounds right where I want them, out of my mug. The water goes in, picks up all the delicious caffeinated goodness of the coffee, and then comes through the filter much different then when it went in. The filter makes sure that what I want comes through, and what I don’t want stays far away.

Jesus said that as I live my life I am to remember two key concepts; love God and love people. These two relatively simple ideas are supposed to be the filter through which I run every decision I make over the course of my day. When I do this, it keeps the stuff that God doesn’t want in my life out, and it makes sure that my life comes out totally different on the other side.

This morning, after talking about this concept last night, I paused for a moment with my coffee filter in hand. I said a simple prayer “Lord, be my filter today.” This is a good reminder every morning of what my life is really supposed to be about.

Baby, it's Cold Outside

It’s cold today. And windy. When I lived in Florida, we used to say “It’s not the heat, it’s the humidity.” Now that I live in the Texas Panhandle, we say “It’s not the cold, it’s the wind.” I guess there are things to complain about no matter where you live. And where I live, it’s cold today.

As I was getting my daughter dressed for the cold, putting on her jacket, hat, and gloves, we were having a little conversation about things to be thankful to God for. While we were not thankful for the cold, there were still plenty of blessing in our lives to focus on. We thanked God for food and shelter. We thanked him for a mommy and daddy. And we thanked God for the coat that she put on, saying that not all kids had coats and that God was very good to her.

And that got me thinking “Is God not also good to those kids who don’t have coats? Doesn’t He love them just as much?” There are lots of people in your community that need a coat this winter. God is good to them, too, and He wants to use you to show that goodness in someone else’s life. Our family has already donated a coat, and it was a truly awesome experience. If every family that God has been good to by saving their souls could find it in their heart to show that goodness to someone in need this winter, I think everyone in our towns and cities across the nation could know how much God loves them.

iPhone

My wife got a new iPhone recently, which we are very excited about. What is funny to me about this is how quickly our two-year-old learned how to use it. I watched her this morning as she pushed the button to turn it on, used the slider to get into it, moved over to the third screen of apps to find the one she wanted, and then commenced playing her game. All while eating her breakfast. My daughter is the smartest kid that I know.

I think we grow up used to things that our parents consider extra special. We are thrilled about this phone, but for her this new technology is just the way life is. This is why kids are always better with technology than their parents, they take things for granted. I think about the things that I simply accept as reality that my parents were marveled by when they first came out.

I often wonder if I don’t do the same thing to Jesus. I’ve been going to church since I was a fetus, and so it becomes something that I just “do” all too often. Going to church, being a believer, following Christ, these concepts tend to fade into the backdrop of my life as a whole. I have been following Jesus for so long that sometimes I forget what that even means in my everyday life. I take my relationship with Christ for granted because it has been there so long. But I can look into the eyes of someone who is new to the family of God, or someone who once turned away and has only recently rediscovered the love of Christ, and it is a different story. My prayer for myself today is that I would not take that love for granted, but rediscover it in my own life.

Sweat Worship

We finished a project for our youth room that I have been thinking about for about a year and a half. We took all of our chairs that we use in our youth room and we spray painted them. For a fraction of the cost of custom chairs, we took our old chairs that were a mismatched assortment of browns, grays, and even some that were closer to pink, and we totally tricked them out. They are mostly black, with a few bright blue to add a cool effect.

There were several students and even one parent that came out to help us paint last Saturday. It was hot, really hot, and half way through we ran out of paint. We had to get more supplies, and all of us were really tired. My hand ached from holding the spray nozzle down the rest of the day. On top of that, we got pain all over ourselves. I’m pretty sure that between gripping the sandpaper to sand the chairs and the cleaning pad to scrape the paint off my hand, I have no fingerprints left. If anyone needs to commit a crime, let me know.

I really enjoyed working on this project, not just because the chairs look good, but because of the deeper element of sweat worship. What is sweat worship? Simple, it’s me getting dirty, stinky, and sweaty on a project done not for my benefit but for the glory of God. The chairs needed an update so that our youth could feel like they were important and that what we did in that space matters. I painted chairs to have a cool looking youth room, yes, but mainly because I believe in what goes on inside that room. I believe in our students, our church, and most importantly our God. I believe He has done amazing things in the lives of students through what goes on in our youth room, and I believe that He wants to do even more great things. And so that means that I get to worship Him not only through singing and speaking, but also by sweating.

Seeing the Wind

It is snowing today where I live. It started a few hours ago, and has steadily increased. But the worst part is not the snow, it’s the wind. Around here the wind is brutal. When I lived in Florida I used to say “it’s not the heat, it’s the humidity.” Now that I live in the Texas Panhandle, I say “it’s not the cold, it’s the wind.”

The crazy thing about it when it snows like this is driving around. I had to run some errands in the snow today, and you can see the wind blowing the snow around. It’s like driving across the top of a witch’s caldron from the movies or something. The roads look like they are covered in dry ice, as you see the wind moving back and forth, creating these streams of blowing snow that are almost mesmerizing.

Often when we talk about God we compare Him to the wind. We say “you can see the effects of the wind, but you can’t see the wind,” and God works a lot like that. But today, while I know I didn’t actually see the wind, I saw about as close as you can get to it without some kind of weather technology. I saw the wind today when I saw what it was doing to the snow because the snow completely let the wind have its way. It wasn’t anchored to anything, like a flag or a tree might be, but was totally controlled by the wind. I think that while we can’t literally see God, the closest we come is when we are like that snow, allowing Him to move us at His will. We see Him in our lives when we see the effect of His presence on us in such a way that we are holding on to nothing but Him.

Brain Power

So, we’ve been watching this show called “Stan Lee’s Superhumans” and I have to admit, it is pretty cool. I watched it for the first time simply because of the name Stan Lee (you know, the guy who created Spiderman, Hulk, and the Fantastic Four). But the show is actually really interesting. It is about people who can do things no one else can do. We saw a guy slice a bullet with a sword, a guy who doesn’t feel pain, and a guy who lived with wolves.

But one of the coolest things I saw was a guy who could remember anything. They went to a race, where the guy met like 30 new people and learned their names. Then, as they finished the race, he had to recall their names and high five them as they crossed the finish line. Now, I’ve been to a bunch of races with my wife, and just finding one person you are looking for amid a torrent of runners can be a challenge, but this guy had no problem recognizing and calling out 30 strangers. Later, they went to a Home Depot and bough 50 items, and he remembered the price on each one (he was even able to save them a few dollars when the computer got a price wrong).

The reason he can do this is because he is able to use more of his brain power than the rest of us. We only use a small percentage of the ability that our brain has to live our normal lives, but we are capable of so much more. I think as Christians we have a tendency to do the same thing. I think we use only a small percentage of what Christianity is really all about in our everyday lives.

Christians are supposed to have joy, but how many of us live each day looking to our circumstances to make us happy. Christians are supposed to have peace, but how many of us are stressed out. Christians are supposed to have hope, but how many of us fear the future. I think it’s time to start using more of our Christianity by growing deeper in our Christianity. The more I learn, pray, and experience, the more I am able to use in my everyday life.

Making the Impact Last

What an AWESOME week! Having Team Impact here from Wednesday to Sunday, we got so see some awesome things. I went to seven school assemblies and five main events at our church, and let me tell you, it never got old. When he bent that steel bar by gripping it in his teeth, I don’t care how many times I saw that it was still cool.

And the really cool thing was that at each of the main events, they got to talk about Jesus. We had thousands of people attend over the course of five nights, and 204 people made some kind of decision for Christ, either for salvation or to recommit. We saw kids, teenagers, and adults make decisions, and we saw people turn away from sinful lifestyles and turn to Jesus.

And with all that excitement, it’s important to keep focused on where we are going. The moment of salvation is an exciting one, and vitally important, but it is only the beginning. So many people define their faith based solely on that moment, but there is so much more. Paul tells us in Galatians 6:15 It doesn’t matter whether we have been circumcised or not. What counts is whether we have been transformed into a new creation. What he means here is that some momentary decision is nothing compared to the transformational power that Jesus extends into our lives. He doesn’t want us merely to accept the fact that Jesus died for us, God wants us to live in such a way that it changes everything about us. As we move forward from a great week, it is important that we challenge ourselves to continue to go deeper in our faith. It’s time to exchange the excitement we feel for devotion to Christ.

Toilet Paper and a Forgotten Savior

The other day I had a chance to have lunch with a good friend of mine who happened to be in town (and who is an avid reader of my blog). We worked at camp together in 2004, and we had a good time catching up and remembering stories of the summer we spent together. But it was at this lunch that he reminded me of a story of our friend George involving a lonely Sunday and a lack of toilet paper. This is a great story, one that I have told many times and used in many of my talks with students (and one I plan to use in a talk very soon), but I somehow had forgotten it.

I was thinking about this, and I was kind of wondering how I could have forgotten such a great story. As we were talking at lunch, there were plenty of things from that summer that he remembered and I did not. I think we do this in our spiritual lives all the time. We get caught up in all sorts of other things and we forget the things of God.

We see more defeats than victories, and we let our defeats defeat us. When we do this we forget His grace.

We see our present circumstances and we wonder if things will ever improve. When we do this we forget His providence and plan for our lives.

We see our trials and temptations as insurmountable obstacles. When we do this we forget His power.

We look with uncertainty at our future and we wonder if God will carry us through. When we do this we forget His faithfulness in the past.

We think we can do everything ourselves. When we do this we forget our own humanity and His deity.

With so many questions and concerns in life, it’s good to know that there’s a God who is always there for us. The problem is, often in our lives we’ve forgotten more things about God than we currently remember. We conveniently forget the things we have known about Him so that we can justify our own sinfulness or throw ourselves a pity party. My lunch this week reminded me of all the stories I’ve forgotten, but it also reminded me of the Savior that I had so frequently forgotten and so desperately want to remember.

Tighten Your Belt

So, I’ve recently removed soda from my diet (mostly, except during youth events and Fourth of July cookouts where I binge), and the benefit has been huge. After years spent exercising on a regular basis, I’ve finally started to lose some weight. It’s not much, but in my case anything is better than nothing. It feels good to be able to tighten my pants a little. I’ve dropped a couple of notches in my belt, and I’m looking to drop another one here quite soon.

The problem is, there’s that in between time. I’m in a place right now where if I tighten my belt that extra hole then in cuts of the circulation to my legs, but if I leave it then I’m constantly hoisting up my pants as they slowly lower to reveal parts of my anatomy that no one should have to see. I’m not where I was, but I’m also not quite to where I want to be, either.

I think that not only is my waistline in this situation, I think my spiritual life is there as well. I know that I’m growing, but I see the next step in my walk with God and I’m not there yet, either. I still have some of the same old struggles that I used to, though not as often. I feel like I should be done with those things by now, I want to be at the next place in my spirituality, but I’m not. I’m in between. And God is showing me that I can’t get to where I want to be without first being in between, that this is just as much a part of the process of seeking true Christianity as anything else. So I press on, hoping to loose those few pounds as well as the sins and struggles that keep me where I am. I’m in between for now, but I hope to be at the next place soon.

And Another Thing

I’ve been thinking about yesterday’s post since I wrote it. I can’t help but feel that I am right, even more so than I can understand. All my life I’ve grown in my intellectual connection to God, learning more and more from His Word. And now, I’m learning from my 60-60 experiment to connect with God on a deeper level spiritually. But I never thought about connecting with God in a physical way

Until now.

I believe that all people are made of three essential elements; mind, body, and soul. That’s why Jesus told us to love God with our “heart, mind, and strength.” He wants us to love Him with everything. He wants us to connect to Him with all that we are. I’ve connected to Him with my mind a lot, which seems to dominate my relationship with God. And this kind of connection shows us what a relationship with God looks like on an intellectual level. And I’ve known that there were deeper and deeper levels of spiritual connection possible, things that I’m just now starting to tap into. This is what a relationship with God is supposed to look like on a spiritual level.

When Jesus says in Matthew 25 that those who are His sheep will feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and welcome the stranger, He meant it. He is saying that this is what a connection with God looks like physically. So often we limit our faith to the mental and spiritual, and miss the physical. I’ve found that over my life I haven’t seen acts of ministry as an opportunity to connect with Christ Himself in a physical way, I’ve just known that they were good things to do. God is showing me that if I want the true experience of what Christianity is supposed to be about, I need to connect with Him physically by connecting with those around me who are in need.

Routine

In my attempt to connect with God once every hour, I’ve noticed something. When I’m at work, and everything is on my regular routine, I am able to do a lot better. I sit at a desk that faces a clock, and so I’ll often look up and see this clock and be reminded to spend a minute in prayer.

However, when I leave my office, all bets are off. For me, it is significantly harder to connect to God in my off times and weekends. I think that’s because when I’m at work, I’m alone most of the time and can have that constant reminder of the clock in front of me. But when I’m out of the office, I’m with my family or doing other things, and I get so involved in those things that I miss out on my time with God.

There are so many things in our lives that are good things but that offer themselves as distractions to the best things. I love spending time with my family, but often when I do I fail to spend time with my Lord. What I’m working on this week is making time all the time, not just when I can make it a part of a schedule or a routine.

The 60-60 Experiment

So, I’m reading this book called “Soul Revolution” by John Burke. It’s pretty good, but there’s one thing in there that he talks about that really got me thinking. It’s an idea that he got from Frank Laubach, whom I have also read. Burke’s concept is something he calls “The 60-60 Experiment.”

The idea is simple, for sixty days, I talk to God once every sixty minutes (except when sleeping). This doesn’t have to be some huge conversation, although sometimes it can be. In theory, what happens is that every hour I get a chance to refocus my life on Christ. In reading testimonials and from studying Laubach who pioneered this idea over a century ago, the conclusion is that this is the way that Christianity is really supposed to be lived. We are naturally self-focused, and so it is essential to place our thoughts on God through prayer on a constant basis. Without this practice, we revert to our old selves, but when we take God’s command to “pray without ceasing” seriously, we find out what a relationship with God really looks like.

Now, as for me, I have been a part of the experiment for ten days now. So far, I haven’t done it once. But I have connected with God on a much more consistent basis, and I’m seeing the victory and spiritual understanding that I never had before. I am starting to see what true Christianity is supposed to be about, and I like it. I’m living a life that transcends the material and plugs me into the Spirit like never before.

There is more to this life than this life

Yesterday I went to a bookstore for a little while, just wandering around. I looked at all the books they had on the shelves, tons of them. I love to read, and every time I go to a bookstore (or a record store, or a video store, you name it) I get this strong, capitalistic desire to purchase something. But yesterday, as I was beginning my Pavlovian drool, I realized something. God has been changing the way I look at my life in the last few days, and all that STUFF just didn’t seem to matter as much any more.

Colossians 2:6-7 says “And now, just as you accepted Christ Jesus as your Lord, you must continue to follow him. Let your roots grow down into him, and let your lives be built on him. Then your faith will grow strong in the truth you were taught, and you will overflow with thankfulness.”

This shows us how a relationship with Jesus is more than just knowing Him as Savior. That is where the relationship starts, but there is so much more. As we let our roots grow into Him and build our lives on Him, we begin to see life the way He sees it. We begin to drift away from the temporary, the material and start to prioritize the eternal. This is not to say I have arrived, but I’m beginning to take my own faith to a place that transcends ordinary life into the abundant (one unpurchased book at a time).