Its all about Him

Each and every week well meaning men and women go before their churches (or small groups, bible studies, Sunday school classes, etc...) and proclaim truth to the people. They say things that are right and good and dare I say even Biblical. Yet many of them miss the point of why we are to proclaim anything. Simply put it is all about Jesus. Colossians 1:28 teaches us that we should proclaim Him so that we can present everyone perfect in Christ. Colossians 1:29 goes on to teach us that it is not easy to accomplish this task and in fact requires the strength of God Himself.

I know many times I have become reliant upon myself and the abilities/talents/gifts that God has given me. Some times God even chooses to do great things through me even when I am not relying on Him. Yet as I rely more and more on me and less and less on Jesus I find myself become more and more weary of the path laid before me. I find myself questioning the things that I am doing. I find that those things that I have passions for become difficult and laborious. My body becomes so physically exhausted I feel as though I will never recover and my mind becomes so drained that I barely know which end is up. It is during these times that I question God and His plan for my life and the life of my family. Many times I will become frustrated with Him because things do not go the way that I think they should be going. Some times I even get to the point that I want to give up on it all and just simply go away.  When I am in these dark places with God I know they are dark and that thoughts I am having are wrong yet I feel like I can not escape them. It can feel as though I have become trapped in a never ending cycle of regret, guilt, frustration and exhaustion.

Lately, I have found myself in one of those dark places. I have found myself feeling like everyone is against me and that I am unimportant to them. I have allowed my imagination to create scenarios in which people that I trust have become untrustworthy. I have not been allowing myself to give my friends and co-labors the benefit of the doubt. Most of them have no idea that I have even thought this about them because I have learned over the years that some times it is better to not always say the first thing that comes in to my mind. I have learned that I have this terrible habit of thinking the worst of people when they have done nothing to deserve it. I have also learned that once I leave these dark places I can usually forget that I ever even thought such terrible things about that person.

Tonight is one of those nights that I believe will be a time in which I truly begin the process of moving out of the dark place again. It is a night in which I can begin to see things clearly again. It is a night that once again had given me hope for the days that are ahead of me. I have hope that I will become a better husband, I have hope that I will become a better father. I have hope that I will be become a better teacher/leader for teens. I have hope that I will become better at all of those things in which God has entrusted to me.  I know the path out of the darkness will not smooth sailing but I can at least say again that I believe that their is a path out and that I am again on it.

Actions Speak Louder Than Words

All that is required of us to become a child of God is to confess Jesus as Savior and Lord yet the measure of  this faith is seen in our actions. Sadly many people today claim some form of Christianity but their actions speak to a faith in something else besides Christ. All too often we see this kind of thing appear in our churches and it can be one of the most destructive things for a church. It (hypocrisy) is such a powerful thing it is one of the main reasons why so many millennials have little or nothing to do with the church. It is also nothing new to the church. In fact Paul speaks rather plainly about in Titus 1 when he says that those say one thing but act another "unfit for doing anything good" (Titus 1:16).

Can you imagine what would happen if all of churches actually lived this out? Could you imagine what we would happen if we all took this seriously? Can you imagine what would happen in your life if you took that seriously?

I know I haven't always taken hypocrisy seriously enough in my own life. I do not always live up to the things I know to be true. When this has happened to me I know that it has damaged my witness with others and for that there is no comfort other than the immeasurable grace of God. Here's to hoping that I will be able to live my life with less hypocrisy and more authenticity.

Fixer Upper

There has been a lot said about Disney's Frozen. Some people think it is the greatest Disney Princess movie of all time while others think that the message it is sending to young people is one filled with darkness and rebellion. In truth it is just a movie and while I fully recognize that movies and media are powerful I also believe that we as a society tend to overreact and place too much emphasis and importance on those things meant for entertainment. Having said that as a parent of 4 kids I have had ample opportunity to listen to the various songs from the movie and I have found them to have some amazing themes and messages. No song is perfect but one of my favorites from the film is Fixer Upper. The basic premises of this song is that we all have our issues and that true love can conquer over these flaws.

When I hear this song I cannot help but think of my own life and how Jesus, the essence true love, accepted me with all of my flaws and how His true love is changing me. I also think about the true love that my wife gives me in despite of all my many mistakes and flaws. While I know that no song is perfect I believe this song speaks directly to heart of so many people because it admits how flawed we all are and how we need others to helps through this life. This need for others is no accident and in fact it was a part of God's design from the very beginning. We are designed to be social beings and with that comes and inherent need to be supported and nurtured by each other. This song provides some of the balance to other themes from the movie which speak of independence and isolation.

The balance this song provides to the rest of the movie is one of the things that has made this movie so wonderful and good. When taken as a whole the movie speaks to the fact that each one of us has a need to be free. We have a need to be who God made us to be. With this freedom comes a sense of joy and excitement that is in many ways hard to describe. Yet we also need others. We need them to stand by us in or darkest hours. We need them to love us no matter how many times we mess up. We need them to be willing to go in to the storms of our lives to rescue us from ourselves. We have a need for both independence and dependence. This tension makes no logical sense but then again who ever said that God's designs have to always be logical :)

Pain and Sufferring

One of the hardest things that each person must deal with in life is watching people they care about suffer. It is a terrible fact of life that the world we live in is full suffering and pain. Personally, I hate it when I see someone who is in pain even though they believe they did the right thing. Sadly I watched this unfold before me tonight. I have a co-worker who is in emotional pain because she and her boy friend decided to not keep a child (pregnancy in her world). In essence, she bought in to the lie that a pregnancy is something that we can simply chose to abort and that it really isn't a human being that is to be cared for and nurtured. I am watching her suffer in virtual silence because people do not want to hear about how she gets sad every time she sees a baby or that she is hurting. The world has told her such a lie that now she feels like she must suffer in silence. Her boyfriend is in much the same place. He believes the lie even more than she does and because of that he does not even want to talk to her about the emotions that she is dealing with much less any that are probably impacting him. Meanwhile so many of my fellow believers are spending a great deal of energy and effort trying to convince other believers how right they are about some trivial issues.

While I can appreciate the need for these debates I do wonder sometimes if we put too much energy in to them and lose sight of the dead world that is all around us. We fail to see those people who have believed the great lie and now suffer in silence because they are too afraid to believe the truth that they now see deep down in their hearts. It is well past time for the church to rise up and see the world as it is and to get mixed up in the lives of the lost so that they no longer have to suffer alone. To be there to show them that there is another way. To stand-up and say that God loves them and that this world is full of sin and death and that if truly want to be free of that sin then there is only one way and that is Jesus.