The Christian Franchisee

So many things in life can feel impossible at times. Those of us possessing melodramatic tendencies know especially well how it can feel overwhelming to do this thing called life. For the Christian, it can be even worse if you, like me, are a hypocan'triac. 

(Okay, okay, I'll pre-emptively oblige my wife's request to explain the geeky made up term: a hypocan'triac - not to be confused with a hypochondriac, someone who always believes they're sick - is someone who's always up against something impossible.)

See, the hypocan'triac suffers from a disease of the mind. It's all in their head. After all, Philippians 4:13 encourages us with the message that "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me." When God's power attends the man or woman who truly wants to be about his will and his business in life, their missions and pursuits cannot be stopped. Successes may not always come in streaks or bunches, and may not be to the scale that our human perspective feels entitled to require of God for us to see proof. But with God, nothing is impossible (hence the name of this blog site). 

But the hypocan'triac just continually feels overwhelmed by something that CAN'T be done. Maybe it's a pesky temptation that hasn't been defeated, and it's become a vicious and debilitating pet sin. Maybe it's circumstantial; the checkbook just refuses to be balanced, the favorite sports team just will not have a winning season, or the spouse fails over and over to meet some very *cough* reasonable expectations about coexisting in the same household. Or it might be more big picture stuff, like discovering a true and defined purpose in life to really feel invigorated by. 

To be honest though, whether you share the symptoms or behaviors of a classic hypocan'triac, or you're just someone who has experienced feelings of impossibility in life a couple times...there's good news for all. 

[Spoiler alert: I already tipped it off in a general fashion with the Philippians passage.]

I've had some things really get in my way this year so far. I realize that much of this hindered feeling is self-generated and overplayed in my mind, but there's truth, too, in the reality that obstacles have sprung up in my way as I seek to move forward as a husband, father, friend, church volunteer, citizen, employee, and grad school student. Just one big example of these things to get me wearing out the word "impossible" again is a year's worth of neck, shoulder, and back pains that have culminated in an MRI diagnosis and surgery recommendation for July. I'm not over-exaggerating when I say that'll throw a bit of a wrench in our summer's spokes. But I've gone farther than that in my mind and heart as I anticipate that event and its before-and-after ramifications. Suddenly, having a good summer and a successful rest of my 2015 seems to be leaning toward "impossible." 

What a wuss I can be! Would I really succumb that easily/quickly to "just getting by" mode, or to having a "damage control" year?

Thankfully Pastor Jason at our church, Hope, recently gave a powerful sermon to close out a recent sermon series called "Undone." His message that particular Sunday, "Right Hand Man" (check it out on hopeinjesus.org - see Messages tab), made a life-giving point:

"Jesus' life is not only to be admired, it is to be experienced."

When hearing again that day about the deeper meaning to the day of Jesus' ascension back to heaven, I was reminded that as a Christian, all this defeatist talk is just so counterproductive. The idea has taken time to set in and take root because, well, we hypocan'triacs are a little too set in our ways sometimes. But God keeps knocking at the door of my heart with his truth-o'-grams, waiting for me to be ready to really let it in. 

Do you get that? Do you grasp that we've got so much important and amazing work to be done, as Christians, that we can't afford to sit around whining and wondering if something is possible or not?? 

Your life is God's work. OF COURSE it's possible!!

Matthew 28's final verses hold something for the reader that's considered by Christians the world around to be the "Great Commission." In other words, if you're a follower of Jesus and you wrestle with the ages old existential query, "Why am I here?" you may want to start with Matthew 28:19-20. It'll guide so much of your ambitions, and begin to heal wounds and solve problems faster than any other manmade philosophy. And the passage of the sermon I'm citing refers to the same account from a different angle, in Acts chapter 1. 

Therein lies the empowerment to "do work, son." Because Jesus left behind his mission for us to carry on, we know we are meant to succeed.  

You see, while it's wrong thinking and false theology to want to act like Jesus because we think it'll put some icing on the cake of our salvation, which only his blood won for us on the cross, it IS acceptable and spiritually enlightening to recall that every Christian is an embodiment of Christ's roles of prophet, priest, and king in our own individual lifetimes. We have been endowed with the mission. We have been left with the humbling responsibility to keep his kingdom growing in the hearts of mankind even today!

When you look at the words of the Great Commission, it's sobering to note that Jesus didn't say it was somehow optional to be an evangelist with your life if you've become a Christian. It's no add-on, custom feature when you buy into following Jesus (and, theologically speaking, for the record, the Bible shows there's no actual buy-in, per se, it's a free gift, a true inheritance). He said in Acts 1:8, "...You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth."

When he said, "...you WILL BE my witnesses," that was a little stronger and more affirmative language than, "You can decide to maybe be witnesses if you want," or "If you feel like you've got the gift of sermonizing, and nothing stands in your way, you can consider being witnesses." 

Also worth noting about this passage is its timing. Christ's words came as an answer. His disciples' question was the same type of question we often ask of God. They were out there in that meadow, gathered together, and as the sensation that Jesus was about to doing something else really big was mounting in everyone's minds, disciples asked, "Are you at this time going to restore the Kingdom of God?" 

Jesus' answer: Nope. You are. You're my witnesses. You know the truth. You have facts, a real actual story of salvation for all people, and YOU get to be the ones to go share it. I'm leaving you behind with that mission. 

We too more often than not spiritually rest back on our laurels and ask this sort of thing. Not necessarily about a full, dramatic restoration of the kingdom (which, in the disciples' case, meant that Christ would ruthlessly overthrow the Roman empire's presence in the Judean province and set the Jews free of their political and earthly oppression). But we have our own preconceived notions, whimsical dreams, or even real issues in life that seem insurmountable to us, and we just want God to solve it. Maybe it's because we're thinking about how powerful God is, and it's as natural to ask him to step in as it is for a pipsqueak little boy to ask an MMA fighter to go take down the neighborhood 3rd grader bully. But maybe it's also laziness. I know for me, it usually is.

But we're meant for more. God had a reason for his plans to not include Jesus converting the entire human race before returning to his home in heaven, next to the throne of the Father. His reason was that he delights even more in having entrusted that huge mission to his children, his redeemed sons and daughters - YOU and ME - and letting us share in the tremendous glory of accomplishing it. We get to be the Lord's tools. We are his hands and feet, bringing that saving word of truth with us. We are his megaphones, calling out hope in the midst of confusion and darkness and spiritual hopelessness. 

There is some serious work to be done. We have been left something big to get done. It won't be all on us to make it happen, because luckily the power of God has also been left behind to us to use in his name. 

Here's an analogy I think is very fitting. The Christian, the Jesus-follower, is very much like a franchisee. 

Think about it. Any entrepreneur is going to automatically be striking out on their own to accomplish their goals of financial freedom and business autonomy. But to buy into a pre-existing franchise and utilize all the tools, resources, programs, services, and reputation of the franchise in one's own individual business endeavor is very savvy. It's the act of harnessing something that was started without you, that you just carry forward, and as long as you stick to the program, you yourself can be a successful embodiment of the franchise's brand which you represent. 

As a Christian, we receive the already existing, undeniably effective, all-important enterprise of the one true faith, and the commission of the Kingdom of God whose reign expands within hearts and minds of people. We're not mere representatives. We're not meek, bored, underpaid employees who don't qualify for any benefits, or can be laid off at any moment. We are the owners of the kingdom too, because it was left behind by the original founder, Jesus Christ. He has given us the rights of children, and with his advocacy and empowerment, we're not meant to fail. 

So if there was ever something to aspire to that could never be labeled futile, or impossible, it's carrying out God's work. You don't have to be a pastor or a Sunday School teacher, you don't have to be a Seminary professor, you don't have to be the most knowledgeable elder of your local congregation. You don't have to be this or that. You just need to be a Christian. 

Is a Christian someone who's morally better than others? Someone who sins less, or commits puny, PG-rated sins? Someone who's memorized every Bible passage? No. Every Christian is someone whose evil heart has been made new by faith, whose slate of unspeakable deeds and thoughts is washed clean, and who now belongs to God instead of being his damned enemy. 

All you need is the laminated tag of being a franchisee of the Kingdom. And you got that handed to you for free - no entrance fee, no capital, no solid credit score requirement - all because Christ found you worthy of his sacrifice on the cross. 

Hypocan'triacs really run clean out of excuses when joining those slack-jawed disciples on that grassy hill, watching Jesus ascend to heaven, with those words fresh in the mind...

"All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age." (Matthew 28:18-20)

There is no "can't." There is no impossible. There is just a mission, a Great Commissioner who set me free with his own death and resurrection, and a promise that I'm never alone in my endeavor. 

I am the Kingdom. I am the temple of God. I am the franchise headquarters. His mission is mine. His power is mine. 

Now that we know that success is promised, and victory is sure, and nothing's impossible, let's get to work!

Pssssssst...Look Up.

I'm going to be really vulnerable, really transparent, and show some brokenness right now. I hope you don't mind. In Euro-American culture - in most cultures, I think, in fact - it's not exactly masculine to lay it out there like this. But sometimes, truths of God, and going along with His "culture," is counter-cultural to everything we know. 

And right now, that's ok. It is Lent, after all, and Lent is when we are stripped to our most vulnerable place, to our core, to where all is made evident and nothing can be hidden anymore. How could our sin, our pride, our facades, and our brokenness remain hidden when Jesus is making his way to that bloody cross, and about to be literally stripped, and to hang there for us, in all his humiliating vulnerability?

So, here it is...

I need people. 

Yeah, so? You shrug as you start humming and clapping to the tune of "Lean on Me" by Bill Withers. We all need *clap* somebody....to lean...

NO. Listen. You don't get it. I NEED people. 

Look, it's nothing I like to admit. A basic need of human living, psychologists may say. We are indeed relational beings. It's why solitary confinement drives prisoners literally crazy. But for some of us, it can go to unhealthy lengths. 

My brokenness is that, lately, I am needing people too much. This is not something I go around thinking to myself about at a conscious level each day. This has been a recently re-recognized disruption of my psyche, and I only truly became aware of it to its fullest extent today in a singular, solitary, painful moment of clarity. More on that in a moment...

Sometimes we're going along and, you know...something just feels....off.  You have some things in place, some critical things have panned out your way, you have the confidence of the love of those closest to you, and yet you just feel off. 

For me, I often find it curious and kind of deranged that anyone can ever feel alone in this day and age. We have social media outlets, shopping malls crowded with people, bustling cities, bars, coffee shops, libraries, bus stops, train depots, subways, churches with fellow church-goers joining you every Sunday morning, workplaces, and, for many of us, people right in our own very domiciles (either a spouse, spouse-and-kids, kids, significant other, or at least a roommate). Getting away from people, for those who value true alone time, is actually a very highly sought after commodity and challenging thing to come by....when you want it. 

And yet, as ultra-connected as we are, with as busy lives as we lead, and with fellow human beings swarming all around, we can still wind up feeling ALONE. 

Maybe you can relate. It's not a feeling of actually not having anyone around, and physically being alone. It's the feeling that no one draws near to you, relationally, and no one understands you; no one knows what you're specifically going through, right NOW. 

If you're me, what do you do about that?

I guess, in retrospect, what I end up doing about it is proverbially scampering around, looking sideways at each person in my life, sizing up their availability to be closer, to "get me" more, and to fill those needs of validation, appreciation, encouragement, respect, loving affection, reassurance, or whatever it may be that my soul feels a lack of inside. It tends to be 'round about that time when my gauges' needles are all quivering up at the top of the meters and I'm red-lining in these pursuits or concerns that I finally hit a wall and sit back and realize I'm doing it, and that I should chill out. 

Only lately, what my friend Josh posted about on Facebook is even more confoundingly true than usual. He said:

" 'Did God really say...' An effective deception that worked on Adam and Eve and still works on mankind today."

I shared with him that I thought this was so true, and definitely poignant about how Satan gets us to fall into many of our sins everyday. I didn't even realize at the time how self-indicting that was for me to say. 

I fall, and fall hard, for the lie Satan uses on me when he whispers with that conniving forked tongue, "Did God really say, 'Surely, I am with you always, even to the end of the age (Matthew 28:20b)'?" No, instead he slowly but surely, over the course of days and weeks, and maybe even months, eases me into a funk where I'm going about my days under the assumption that God, my Savior, has forgotten me. 

So, says my subconscious, since I'm not finding that approval, that validation, that encouragement, that empowerment or respect from God since he is absent and silent, why not search for it in my relationships with a spouse, a family member, a friend, a coworker, or whoever might oblige me? If I have to, why not even demand it or beg for it? Aren't my needs my NEEDS??

And the confusion, the desperation, the loneliness, and even at times, despair, settles in. It winds its way through the ebb and flow of everyday moods. It lurks when I'm tired. It pokes at me quietly yet annoyingly when I'm already on edge from some external provocation, like a child pestering when you're trying to focus on something else for a critical moment. 

And it becomes me. I become a man who believes he is marooned on an island. Surrounded by a sea of people who exist so that I may serve them, and yet my selfish and egocentric wiles driving me to hope to extract something from any interaction with them that I can. And all because...

I'VE FORGOTTEN JESUS. 

Yes, I still know he exists. But when those crunch time moments carry me onward and I can only look inside, or persistently all around at those who are my fellow human beings at my sides, it's as if I'm forgetting who he is, who he means to me, and why he went to that cross for me. 

Until that painful moment of clarity arrives. It may find you anywhere. It may find you on the trip to work, in your pew at church, on the sofa during a quiet evening, in the classroom during study hall; it may find you here, there, or anywhere....or it may find you while you're showering, and the state of relaxation and the ambiance of soothing water running down you to cleanse you somehow finds your fog clearing just enough to see it.

"Pssst....Look up," the Spirit said. 

Freezing in my place, and stopping every tiny motion or thought in my mind, I listen again...

"Why do you look in vain all around? Why do you run and run, and search frantically, my son?"

"Why do you forget me? I haven't forgotten you.........Look up." 

The whisper beckons within my mind. I let the thought run its course. Really, I can't help it. It seizes me and takes hold of me. The tears run with the shower water that already cascades down. 

I forgot all about him. I lost him in my fog. I let myself believe he forgets about me, and I went searching for what only he can provide. He's right there, looking at me, looking for me, waiting, oh so patiently, wondering when I'll wake up and look back up above it all, to see him again. 

And he continues:

"I cannot forget you. I don't know how. I wouldn't forget you, or any of the billions of you and your brothers and sisters, as I walked that bitter road to that rugged cross. It was with YOU in mind that I let myself be staked down, let myself bleed, let myself give up that final breath, and all while knowing the Father forsook me so he wouldn't have to forsake you."

"I know your pain. I know how it feels to be neglected. I know how it feels to be marginalized or forgotten about. I know worse pains, like being rejected vehemently, and being made the brunt of ridicule so fierce you can't grasp its very origin."

"I'm your brother.....I'm your truest friend. I never forgot those who are mine."

"So why have you forgotten me?"


Then the truth returns. It dispels that fog. It quiets the heartbeat that races in urgency and desperation without my even realizing it. The truth says...

What you seek you can ONLY find in me. I've been waiting for you, right here. 

The cross is where I see that Jesus doesn't, and can't, forget about me. Selfish sinner that I am, spiritually blind and prone to straying though I may be, his gaze is always on me, and his words of affirmation and affection are always drifting on the breeze of his holy presence. I can always find him when I simply seek HIM.

The cross is where I am found once again. It's where I get healed again. It's where I remember, with a force like a western wind gusting up to fill the sails of a boat listing adrift, that I am someone, because I belong to Jesus, and because he gave his all for me. 

I needed that truth to come find me again, so badly. I needed the reminder of my need for penitence and sorrow over this sin of self-centeredness, this sin of foolishly believing ancient lies that I am somehow alone. 

I hope that, if you need that reminder too, especially during this Lenten time, that you'll find it as well. I hope that you'll lay down whatever has been weighing you down, stop looking around, and...

"Pssssst......LOOK UP." 

Fixation

"You will keep in perfect peace

all who trust in you,

all whose thoughts are fixed on you!

Trust in the LORD always, 

for the LORD God is the eternal Rock.

He humbles the proud and 

brings down the arrogant city.

He brings it down to the dust.

The poor and oppressed trample it

underfoot, and the needy 

walk all over it.

But for those who are righteous,

the way is not steep and rough.

You are a God who does what is right,

and you smooth out the path 

ahead of them.

LORD, we show our trust in you by

obeying your laws;

our heart's desire is to glorify your name.

In the night I search for you;

in the morning I earnestly seek you."

- Isaiah 26:3-9 (NLT)

Lately the spiritual mantra that I've tried to set forth for my family is to live by the words of Matthew 6:33. This passage basically says, Seek after the things of God first and foremost, and everything else will fall into place. The first 30-or-so verses of that chapter talk about all the possessions and material matters and agendas we chase after, and how God tends to that stuff for us. So verse 33 exhorts us to try fixating on our Lord and Savior, rather than on those earthly needs and issues, since he's promised to take care of it all anyway. 

Always a good M.O. for godly living. But always SO difficult, isn't it? That's why it's great that God provides multiple reminders of the blessings and positives of those who are found seeking God, in many other passages as well, such as this one above, from Isaiah 26. 

The point of that whole passage above, and Matthew 6:33:

Stay busy seeking God, and you'll find everything else. 

I've often wondered why it is that our Father in heaven makes such a concerted effort to convey through Scriptures that we should fixate on him. In my tainted humanity I ask, "Is he narcissistic? Is he self-centered in a vain way and just wants all eyes on him?"

It usually takes us off in all sorts of convoluted tangents and dangerous philosophical rabbit holes when we try to ascribe the same motives to God for the behavior we often display. After all, even though God does some things men are meant to understand and appreciate, many things - nay, MOST - are just wrought from an intellect and center of being that's so much higher than ours that we just can't grasp it. 

So let's use one thing we know is true from God's Word to understand another. If I can honestly say I know the central message of this anthology of ancient manuscripts, the Bible, is God's passionate, merciful, never-giving-up kind of love for mankind, his creation.....then how does this desire of his to always have our eyes on him fit within that?

Eureka! It's cuz he wants us to experience that love! It's cuz he wants us to trust him, and by doing so, to get out of our own way, so the blinders can be lifted and our widened and lifted gaze can fully behold all of the picture of his love. 

I have only managed glimpses of this in my lifetime, because I still fail so often to just trust him. I know in my head that he sent his only son to die for my sins, and that such a love must mean he REALLY has my best interests in mind all the time, so it would naturally follow that he'd take care of all the rest too (see Romans 8:32, part of one of my favorite chapters of the Bible). But does my heart follow? 

Isaiah says in 26:3, "You will keep in perfect peace all who trust in you."

Perfect peace, huh? Hmmm....

(I'm taking a moment to stop what I'm doing, stare out the window long enough to kind of daydream and picture that, and imagine such a thing...hold on a sec.)

*heaving a long sigh* Oh, to feel such a peace all the time. It's not like being zonked out by a hypnotist. It's not like being high or drunk and you just feel no inhibitions. It's not even so much a feeling of any kind, but rather a state of being. It's a knowledge. It's knowing that I'm never in control of all the moving parts of it all, and that's ok. GOD'S GOT IT.

This Isaiah 26 passage gives us the rundown on how each method of handling worries or going after our own agendas works out. Pretty simple stuff:

Be arrogant, think it's all about me, or trample on others in life - Watch! God will humble me (and, as experience shows, I just won't find what I'm chasing after by my own means. Even if I manage to, it'll be fleeting, and will escape me in time...). Trust in the LORD, however, and leave it all up to him, and, as verse 7 says, he will "smooth out the path ahead of them." 

Personally, I'm partial to smooth paths. Whenever I'm going somewhere, literally or proverbially, the smoother the path, the easier and more enjoyable the trip. 

Promises of God are worth my believing. I can keep running in circles and getting dizzy over fixating on my own efforts and accountability for things, even the needs and responsibilities of life...Or I can remember that Jesus himself declared God to be "the one thing needful," and trustingly envision all the rest of my worries and needs being tended to. 

God doesn't play Hide and Seek. He's always right there. My own crazy search and rescue missions of all the other stuff of life take me off into all these other directions, into thickets and bogs and dense dark forests, or into endless deserts or barren, steep mountainsides, or off into unceasing, bobbing, swelling oceans. I seek the "stuff," and I get lost. I get lost, and then I feel lost. 

But then I take my Lord at his word, and go seeking after him. What do I find when I get there? 

That he's already busy taking care of the arrangements and needs and concerns anyway. He just wanted me to trust, seek, and find him to know that. 

He wants me to fixate on him and thereby see him loving me as only God can. He wants me to catch him in the act of loving me. 

That sounds like a pretty awesome design.  

The Newness and the Maker

New Year's Eve can bring some of the most mixed emotions. I don't know what yours are this year, as 2014 ebbs out and prepares to give way to the new tide of 2015, but mine are certainly a mixed bag. There's nostalgia in reliving a few fond memories, remorse over some of the mistakes made or time I can call wasted - the missed opportunities, and there's expectation that comes from wondering how this blank slate before me will be written on. Will it hold many of the things I anticipate, or only a few? Will it be a year I'll look back on in 12 months and call a "good" or "bad" year? Part of my spirit really deeply longs for it to be a good year. 

For some, there's no emotions about New Year's. Some are plain old numb about it. Maybe it's been a moot thing for you for as long as you can remember, and you just want the hullabaloo to pass so normal life can get back into swing. Or maybe you've just recently become disenfranchised with all the fuss made about such things as nostalgia, commiseration, catharsis, and resolutions. 

Or maybe the pain of something that's hovering over your life like the deep darkness of these winter nights, that comes too early and lingers too late, is what's got you numb towards New Year's Eve this year. You just can't shed the dragging heft of this ugly weight in your life, and a calendar flip can't change squat about that. So what's the point? It's another day. So what? Working in retail as I do currently sure brings to light how many people might be, or admittedly are, living that way, as they have no issue spending all their time in a furniture store on a holiday, whether as a customer or employee, or have no special plans to do anything at home with family or friends. 

My friend, I can't account for all that you may be feeling as we sit at the doorstep of another year. I can't be sure exactly what might be cheapening the potential value of another New Year. 

But as I found myself thinking about this concept of "newness," I realized that it's all about the making.

Nothing can be new unless it's made new.

One of the most powerfully moving scenes in the 2004 film "The Passion of the Christ" was when Jesus, played by Jim Caviezel, took another of his nasty spills while struggling to carry his cross out of the city of Jerusalem and up to the crucifixion site on Golgotha. At this particular moment of the movie, the anxiety of Christ's path with the burden of the cross upon him, mixed with surging sorrowful music that mimicked the anguish of those around him who loved and followed him, mounted with Jesus' mother, Mary, running to his side after trying to work through the crowds to reach him.
There, joining him for a heart-wrenching moment on her knees, as her son, the Son of God, panted for his labored breath and peered over to her with blood running all over his face, she tried to console him, and her motherly heart broke for him in his pain. 

Jesus, though, despite his suffering and fatigue, still had his mind set on the purpose of all of it, and showed that he still believed in what he was about to accomplish. He took her face in a bloody hand, gently pointed it towards his so she was close enough to hear his chortled words, and uttered,

"Behold, mother, I make all things new..."

Tonight my point is very simply this:

Jesus Christ is the one who makes this year new, and makes you new too. 

"But I'm broken. I haven't felt whole inside in so long," you say.

Doesn't matter. Christ makes you new. 

"But this relationship is strained to the point of breaking, and I have no fight left in me to work on fixing it."

Doesn't matter. Christ makes you and your relationships new.

"But this addiction I've battled for years just won't let me go. It's got a grip so tight on me that I can't imagine being free."

Doesn't matter. Christ makes you and your behavior new. 

"But I'm so lonesome and feel like I have no one to love me."

"But I'm broke and sick of feeling like a failure."

"But I'm afraid of what my illness, my cancer, my condition, my chronic pain will bring in the days to come."

"But I just doubt that anything good is ever going to truly happen to me."

"But I am numb, and done with trying."

Doesn't matter. 

Christ has made all things new. 

It didn't look very promising in that dire moment when Christ was on his knees, bleeding, aching, sore from beatings, dirty and spit upon, and mentally taxed from all the hateful mocking of his opponents. He knew that death awaited him. But he rose from the ground and got back to his feet, shrugged the cross back onto the peak of his shoulder, and carried forward to that crucifixion site. There, even though his death sentence was carried out, the bitterness and ugliness of an apparent defeat was the victory mankind needed. 

It was a victory YOU and I needed. It made us new. It made everything new and changed everything forever. 

Your newness is not a cape to throw on whenever you feel triumphant enough to play the superhero in life. It's not a badge to wear proudly emblazoned on your chest when you have a day of proud accomplishment. It's not something you can take off and put back on - it's a part of you. 

Even in whatever feels ugly, disappointing, heartbreaking, maddening, or despicable in your life or in your very self, there is a newness that was MADE...made by Jesus on that day he died for you. That newness was assigned to you by his mercy, and whatever things that are weighing on you now as you contemplate another new year cannot erase that from within you. 

I wish for hope for you, my friend. Don't see the darkness. It's a disguise, no matter how real or convincing. The darkness of the world, and our lives that are affected daily by sin, is a shroud that only just barely hides the light beneath. That's temporary. Christ has promised to come back again one day, and take all those who belong to him home to enjoy Paradise, and leave this shroud of darkness and numbness behind. 

Wait on that day, and let that hope and expectation color over the gloom and numbness that sits in your heart. 

You are new. You may not feel it in this moment, but I pray you will realize it again and grab onto its sturdy truth like a bold hiking staff that will help you climb life's mountains. 

2015 may not look like much as it approaches. But remember, the night is always deepest and darkest before the dawn. The light is coming. It's a light of hope, and it cannot be contained. 

It's the light of newness, and it springs from your soul. It was made by someone, to live inside you, and that someone is the Lord, Jesus Christ. 

May your New Year be truly joyful, because of salvation and a home waiting in Heaven, regardless of how happy you are tonight. 

It's a New Year.....and a new you.

Weak is the New Strong

Are you strong? Are you powerful, a conquering warrior who has never lost a fight? Are you the kind of man or woman who strolls with swag into any room and people notice, and everything just goes your way? Are you the owner of a spotless rap sheet, the doer of all noble deeds, with no scars or emotional wounds to speak of? Do you pretty much have life by the tail, and the world is going to be missing out something fierce if it doesn't know about you?

Then stop reading this, and move along. 

But are you weak? Are you always plagued by that thing - you know what it is for you - that sticks in your craw, that keeps you up at night, that rears its ugly, annoying little head whenever you're poised for a personal victory? Are you more on the downtrodden, delicate, self-deprecating side of self-esteem? Do you hate feeling weak, being weak, coming up lame, never coming through in the clutch, and it's all because of that doggone weakness inside? 

Then I'm talking to you....and I know exactly how you feel. 

AND...I have fantastic news for you.

You see, it's ok to be weak. It's ok that you are weak sometimes, and that you have this weakness that taunts you and trips you up in critical times. In fact, it's more than ok. It's a reason to throw a party, for crying out loud!

As your party music of choice starts thumping and the balloons are inflating and the sparkly hats and champagne are being passed around, let me tell you why it's ok that the banner hanging from the ceiling at your personal party says "Congratulations, Weakling!"

.........It's because weak is the new strong.

Let's talk about St. Paul. No one, and I mean no one, had more to boast about than he did. He had the ministry all ministry-minded people would die for, and technically, he almost did die for it a number of times (see: Laundry List of Run-In's, Near Death Experiences, and Hardships of Paul...you'll have to read most of the New Testament after the book of Acts to get that list, but it'll be worth it), and ultimately his faith cost him his life. But the guy was pretty much the main catalyst to the growth of the Christian church around the known world in the Roman Empire in the first century A.D. He was a missionary extraordinaire, and when he talked, or wrote an epistle, people paid attention. From a human standpoint, Paul did work, son. 

But if you know his story of his life as Saul, you'll also know that no one had more reason to be ashamed, and he called himself the Chief of Sinners in his writings. He was a prime persecutor of the church of Christ at first, and about the closest thing to a member of ISIS in his day. Yet he spent his later years in life leading and growing that very body of followers of Jesus after a dramatic conversion. 

Paul spends the first few verses of chapter 12 of his second letter to the church he planted in Corinth talking about boasting. He references a story of amazing church lore where a man was called to heaven and heard [and saw] "inexpressible things." That would be a guy worth bragging about. What a rock star HE must have been. But, Paul says, "Me? Nothing to write home about, unless of course you want to talk about my weaknesses." In verse 5 he says 

"I will boast about a man like that, but I will not boast about myself, except about my weaknesses."

Not exactly something you'd hear many men say, is it? 

It's not like this was a cultural thing. Men in those times in that part of the world - or any part, for that matter - always wanted to be macho. They rarely wanted to show or admit any weakness, and that's no different from men today. In our culture today there's an obsession about power. I can't say for sure that it's only a male thing, but it sure weighs heavier on men to be powerful, and not talk about what's weak in us. 

Nobody likes to talk about their weaknesses, much less admit they have any to begin with.

I've seen it. You've seen it. Most men - and many women too - will run from their weaknesses. If the weaknesses are uncovered by others, the next thing they'll run from is therapy, or any healthy solution.

Power is everything today. It's attractive, engaging, commanding, and sexy. It conveys status, dominance, mastery of something, dependability, value. Power and strength also offer a protective shield for our pride. The rich, famous, and powerful never have to let the world in, or have their weaknesses on display, unless they choose to. Even the average Joe wants to stay carefully protected behind whatever power he can project into his world. Weakness, on the other hand, is a time-waster. It's inconvenient. It bogs down the company, the family, the team, the church ministry...Who wants to deal with that? Just ask Jesse "The Body" Ventura. He ain't got time to bleed. Who of us has time for weakness? 

God does. For the Maker of the Universe, who loves his people immensely and beyond our comprehension, weakness is opportunity for him. Not opportunity to exploit, but to come to the rescue, to shine, and to advertise to the world, that weakness is ok because HE is strong - at all times, in all things, and for everyone. 

Paul says in 2 Corinthians 12:7 that he had a "thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me." 

We all have thorns, don't we? Paul goes on to redefine this thorn as merely a "weakness." Something in him that he preferred not to have or deal with, that slowed him down, embarrassed him, and made him feel inadequate or vulnerable, and Satan routinely used it against him. 

What's your thorn? We all have them. We all have a personal area of weakness that feels to the psychological side like a little, obnoxious thorn lodged in the skin, that can't be pulled out with a tweezers. We've worked to eradicate these thorny weaknesses, and we've covered them up a thousand times, but they just....won't....go...away.

So we turn to God eventually, after all of man's grand efforts fail miserably to renew himself and develop personally into some self-made giant within. We come to that breaking point in life when we just HAVE TO be rid of the thorn or it'll do us in, and cause despair. 

"How many times have you heard me cry out,

'God, please take this'?

How many times have you given me strength to

just keep breathing?

Oh, I need you...

God, I need you now."

These lyrics from a song by the Christian musician Plumb come ringing into my head when I think of my thorn, my weakness (YouTube the song after reading this, it's an awesome, powerful song - seeing her perform it live brought me to tears). 

Did you know Paul cried out to God for his thorn to be taken away three times? Seeing how Paul describes his ordeal with this "thorn in the flesh," and knowing how my own life has gone, I'm guessing this wasn't three times all on Thursday one week, back in Shevat of 57 (that's like saying "January of 2014"). I'm guessing it was at three separate passages of time, in seasons of his life and ministry, when he had good, knock-down-drag-out prayer sessions with the Lord that culminated quieter periods of ongoing inner turmoil, and he pleaded with God to eradicate this weakness from his existence. We all know what it's like to feel like we just can't go on unless the weakness is taken away. The thorn may be a tiny little thing in our emotional skin, but its weight is tremendous.

But just as God didn't choose to remove the cancer of sin from mankind's fabric with a wave of a magic wand, neither did he choose to take Paul's thorn away. Nor does he just make ours go away either - not all the time. Rather, he redeems the thorns. He redeemed us, through Jesus Christ, thus giving us a new standing with God that overcomes the relevance of the thorns.

This is how Paul described it: 

"But [the Lord] said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.' " (verse 9a)

I've had a real weakness in me revealed in recent weeks that sort of defies what I've always thought of myself, and shakes my confidence in an area where I always felt I was strong. It's definitely going to be a thorn going forward. When this kind of thorn shows up - and some days I think of have several others, too - it leaves a man feeling suddenly more vulnerable about the things he wants to take on in his future. The trust in oneself to win life's battles can be eroded so thoroughly when you find yourself staring face to face with a glaring weakness. Is it time to panic? Is it time to crumple up the plans or dreams I've drawn up and throw them aside? It is time to curl up and get overrun with depression?

Not even close. 

It's party time, people. It's cause for celebration! 

"...I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties..." (verse 10)

Why, Paul? How does that make any sense?

"For when I am weak, then I am strong." (end of verse 10)

During all the years of human history, and in all those microcosmic individual moments in fallen people's lives, leading up to the day Christ hung on the cross, mankind was very weak. Sin itself, and the eternal spiritual death sentence it brought along, was the elephant in the room, and the thorn in the flesh. 

What were we going to do?? How were we going to overcome it?? How could it ever be right again?? Why would God our Father in heaven ever want anything to do with impure, weak people like us??

But on that beautifully black Friday afternoon, as Jesus gave up his last breath, uttering "Tetelestai" ("It is finished"), he made it all right. He overcame it. He tore down the heavy veil that hung between us and our holy God, and brought wayward sons and daughters back together again with their daddy. He redeemed us. His unbelievable, sacrificial display of love that we couldn't possibly deserve - better known as "GRACE" - stepped into human history as he died, and it made us -

FORGIVEN. 

It made us strong, though we were weak on our own. 

God used Paul, his rockstar of a missionary, whose name has graced many a chapel or cathedral around the world since his time, as a striking example of a man being kept humble through weakness. If such a man would only brag on himself with respect to the stuff the rest of us would laugh or sneer at, then I think the rest of us can take a page out of his journal. 

So let the party go on. Take a selfie of that weakness. Don't be ashamed of it. Continue to work on yourself, sure, and seek to glorify your Lord through personal growth and a constant maturation of your faith and spiritual life. But NEVER, EVER let your weakness become reason to despair. Let it put a smile on your face. Even though that smile would be an impossible thing for the face of someone who doesn't yet know that Jesus' love is for them too, YOU can smile it up big time. You can throw that party and boast in the weakness that God allows you to live with, because it means something powerful...

It means God is on display. 

If we were strong all the time, in every way, the world would look at us. We don't want that. We want them to look at Jesus. Weak is the new strong. 

When you're weak, God gets to be strong. He gets to do all over again, through you and your thorn, what he once did in the most glorious way as he bought us back from sin and death. He's using you and your weakness as the stage to show how awesome a God he is and how awesomely he can come through for fallen people. 

For people like me, who are so fallen and weak, that's some pretty fantastic news! 

Next time that thorn shows up....Let that initial reaction pass, then go look in the mirror, and say to yourself, "That's right! Now God can show up!"

The Perfect Impossibility

Want to talk about something that's really an impossible mission? How about figuring out what God is up to.

We've all been there. Whether it be the little, almost meaningless things that still get under my skin, like how my dutiful and studious efforts to select the optimal fantasy football roster still blow up in my face...or the big things, like why a loved one would get cancer, why poor children around the world are going hungry, why a certain politician is allowed to remain in office, or why my wheels of purpose in life seem to spin in the mud...So many issues find me staring up at the sky, asking God: 

"What are you up to??" 

A passage of Scripture I bumped into the other day really made me sit back and think about this tendency to strive for figuring God out. It was Ecclesiastes 11:5. Check it out:

"As you do not know the path of the wind, or how the body is formed in a mother's womb, so you cannot understand the work of God, the Maker of all things."

I don't think this crazed desire to have God and his "work" all figured out is anything new. Many of the oldest philosophical works delve deeply into the heart of logic, trying to apply paradigms onto the divine that mankind has established which allow us to make sense of the world around us. There seems to be certain categories of things that science can explain, or other patterns that math or reasoning can rationalize or justify. 

But God is in a category all his own, isn't he? He really is. Sometimes we explain things going differently than we'd expect with light-hearted sayings like "God must have a sense of humor." Sometimes we get downright miffed about things. Other times a person may find him or herself at the winter of their lifetime, looking back across decades of being upset at God all over a single event that shook their trust in him simply because it couldn't be understood. 

The writer of this passage in Ecclesiastes was told by God himself to write these exact words so there'd be no uncertainty. There are just some things we're not meant to understand. By God's grace it's been made perfectly clear what we can understand about his plan to save us by orchestrating human history to create a time when it would be right for his son to come to Earth as Jesus Christ, become our substitute, and die in our place and rise to defeat sin and death. Aside from that, how he operates is really quite a mystery. 

Well, that's not entirely true. There are other principles about God and how he works that we find ourselves being educated on by Sunday morning sermons in church. And those lessons are to be taken seriously. But still, sometimes we just can't know why God did this, or allowed that to happen, or did this thing over here when normally one would assume he'd do that over there instead. 

Why do we try so hard to make sense of every last little thing? There's really nothing we human beings don't want to have figured out, is there? It's even worse with how we view God. We demand answers and explanations. We claim to have him or his behavior defined completely, and then when he breaks our mold, or goes beyond what we can fathom, it perturbs us. Why?

I personally think it's a couple traits in action, possibly simultaneously in some cases. 

First of all, there's PRIDE. We are some seriously egotistical people. Especially nowadays in the 21st century, when so much of the prevailing philosophy of the times indoctrinates us with ubiquitous materialism, antsy instant gratification, and entitlement. 

We want it all, we want it now, and it's because WE DESERVE IT, doggone it!

The discussion of what's wrong with this hubris, as it's long been called, is deep enough for another time. The fact is, simply put, that it's flat out wrong. It's very near-sighted and narrow-minded. It's full of self and no one else, and definitely devoid of God, our heavenly father who has in mind the temporal wellbeing and eternal destiny of each of the 7.13 billion people (give or take) currently living on the planet. When you put it into perspective that way, the relevance of a single event, even as severe as contracting a terminal illness, for the life of just one person, is miniscule in relation to the grander scale of Earth's population. As for something like my fantasy football week not going my way? Well, we won't even go there....

Then there's another factor, FEAR. We simply lack the composure to let some things go on unexplained. We are terrified of not being able to account for all the ramifications of an event, an issue, a change, a loss, an occurrence, a lingering question that seems to be bound for finding no resolution. We can't handle the thought of not knowing why God operates as he does sometimes. 

But trust, as in faith, in our amazing God, is two things:

It's necessary, and it's beautiful. 

It's necessary because, well, as that Scripture passage's author points out, "...you CANNOT understand the work of God, the Maker of all things." It just ain't happening. Just as impossible as it is for us to truly explain, much less comprehend, the miracle of conception of life in the womb, and just as impossible to predict perfectly how the wind and weather will behave - c'mon, meterologists, you know what I'm talking about - so is it with having God pegged. 

And really, why should we? We are, after all, the creation. Not the creator. How could the minds of the beings who were fashioned from the boundless creative genius of an all powerful, divine craftsman POSSIBLY exist on the same par with that Creator's mind and consciousness? That really wouldn't make sense, actually. 

As I said, it's also a beautiful thing to trust God too. Trust without the explanation is something God craves for us to have, as part of the loving relationship he drew up for us and him. He wants us to see him as an infinitely more perfect father than the Earthly ones we all have had, whom many of us have been able to trust fairly blindly because we knew their love, and we loved them in return. The vibrant examples of followers and believers in God who simply fall back and expect God to catch them because of that loving trust, and assured affection, lend themselves as beautiful models for those of us who long for a peace of mind that only those trusting ones understand. 

It's the effortless, fluid, artful image of a dancing partner knowing the other understands the moves to be made, and knowing that the footsteps will fall where they ought, and trusting that when it's time to be twirled in the air, they will be caught and spun on into the next delightful dance move. 

The biggest challenge of faith, that can engender this trust without explanations, might just be a letting go. It's a not-needing-to-know. It's recognition that he's told us, in passages like Ecclesiastes 11:5, "My son, my daughter, you just aren't going to be able to know. You won't be able to understand it. You're not meant to. You're meant to have faith in me, and watch me work."

This is a humbling idea, and an often times abrasive one for very natural parts of our human fabric. But faith is meant to transcend the frailties and shortcomings of what human nature has been ever since the Fall into sin. It's an opportunity to lay down pride, and to push past fear. It's meant to be a confidence that no matter how crazy, or scary, the dance moves, we WILL be caught, and the beautiful dance will go on perfectly. 

This isn't an impossible mission to trust God. With faith, it's all very possible....because with God, all things ARE possible.