Quarterbacks

I talk to so many folks who love Jesus, but who are sort of limping through life. They just kinda cross the finish line at the end of each day; emotions frayed, faith unhinged and feeling dead on the inside. And hey, I know exactly how that feels. When I’m in the middle of that, I always feel like everything hurts. People’s comments condemn you, your schedule oppresses you and the futures scares you. It really feels like being on edge and here’s the deal: it’s all from the Enemy. He’s got you right where he wants you.

You see, when you’re in a spiritual stalemate and you feel like an emotional time bomb, you’re basically getting hit by the same old tricks that oily, old, spectral thug always pulls out again and again. Satan lies about who you are and reminds you of who you were. That’s it. that’s all he does. You see how that works? If you forget the promises of God concerning you, every new trial is a catastrophe with no solution. If you are constantly aware of how you’ve screwed up those trials in the past, you’re going to feel like a guilty, pathetic pile of nothing that ought to just get back in the bed. The thing we have to figure how to do is is turn those tricks on their head.

In other words, a Christian has to be kind of like a good quarterback… Now, I know that as soon as I say that, I’m gonna have to break it down a bit since not everyone out there in the tumblrverse watches American Football (one of the reasons I pray for you guys all the time). The quarterback is basically running the show on the field in a football game. He is the one who gets the ball first and he has to decide where it’s going and then he has to get it there. So much of what happens depends on what he does. Now, a really good quarterback has to have a very selective memory. What that means is, he has to remember a lot of things about what he can do and how the plays work and what’s possible, but he has to be able to forget what’s actually happened so that he can put the bad plays that have happened behind him.

The Enemy of your soul is going to try to make you forget who you are, but we need to be constantly reminding ourselves what Jesus says about us and what’s possible because of His life inside us. The Enemy will remind you of your past sins all day long, but Jesus has forgiven and forgotten them. It’s time we forget them too. Keeping your spiritual fervor is about having that selective memory that unravels the schemes of the devil. Forget who you were and remember who you are.

As Paul said in Philippians 3:13-14, “One thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.”

Mandolins

What does God think of my life? How does He see it? Am I a disappointment to Him? Is He sitting on His throne shaking His head and sighing as I stumble through these days? Well, first of all... I know there are probably people who have told you that God is an impossibly hard-to-please critic who sits up in glory scoffing and frustrated at your pathetic attempts at righteousness. I remember being made to feel that way and it sucks. Not only that, it’s not true. The Bible is clear in about a kabillion places that God delights in you. You are the apple of His eye and He doesn’t even sleep, but just watches you all the time. He’s head-over-heels crazy about you. He knows who you are and knows all about your stumbles and struggles. He wanted you anyway and is going to make sure you get to where He has planned for you to be. So, no. God’s not a disappointed cosmic critic. He’s a daddy in love.

So, the question remains, what does He see when He sees me? What does He feel like when He watches me live my life?

Well, check this out: last night I saw one of my favorite musicians live. Christy surprised me with tickets to see Chris Thile and Michael Daves at the Square Room in Knoxville. It’s a small venue where you are literally standing a few feet from the stage and the musicians. These cats played old-school bluegrass without being plugged into anything. They just stood in front of one mic and killed it for two and a half hours. It was face-meltingly great. Now, if you don’t know, Chris Thile is (without any argument or debate) the best mandolin player on planet earth. He’s about 30 years old and he’s been the best there is since he was 12. No lie. He’s a freak show and then some.

The thing that was so cool about last night was that there was a dude in the audience named Lynn Dudenbostel. Now, I know you’ve never heard of him (and most people at the show didn’t notice him being there) but Chris Thile knew it. You see, Lynn Dudenbostel made Chris’ mandolin. Thile plays Dudenbostel #5. The creator of that mando was standing right there in the audience watching and listening as his beautiful work of art was center stage all night. Now, know this: when Thile plays, he has a blast. Period. It’s all laughs, shouts, fun and energy. I guarantee you that nothing made Lynn Dudenbostel more happy than seeing his creation up there on stage having the absolute time of its life, being everything it was meant to be.

God made you. God loves you and there’s nothing He wants more than to see you being the you He made you to be: living your heart out, filled with life and meaning and joy - loving Him more and more. He’s at work in your life to bring you there. He loves watching you become that. He loves who you are.

I'm Hiding

So, I get some form of this question a lot: “Why do I feel so far from God?” You ever asked that one? Here’s the deal: This question has to be translated before it can really be answered. What I mean is, 99 times out of 100, when a person asks that question, they’re really asking something else. What they’re really saying (without actually saying it) is, “I did this thing. I sinned. It was bad. Now I don’t want to go anywhere near God because I’m ashamed and I’m afraid, so I’m basically hiding from Him and avoiding Him. But that makes me feel all disconnected from God which makes the guilt even heavier... so, what do I do?”

Now, don’t get me wrong. Sometimes folks just go through spiritual dry-seasons and they have to walk with God by faith alone, trusting He’s there even though they can’t feel Him. But, 99 percent of the time, when someone says they can’t feel God, it’s because of that other thing - shame. First thing’s first: shame comes from the devil, not from God. Jesus actually bore all your guilt and shame on the cross. He paid for all of it, and because Jesus paid, He fully expects to get a relationship with you that is totally shame-free. Believe me, Jesus wants to get what He paid for. He doesn’t want you feeling shame. When you screw up, Satan tells you that you ought to feel ashamed. He tells you to run away and hide because you’re a disappointment to God and you need to  go to your room and think about what you did. Know this: that is not how God feels about you. When you screw up, God wants you to come deeper in, not further out.

Psalm 32 is a song David wrote when the dust settled after some heavy-duty sinning in his life. In other words, David didn’t tell a couple of lies or vandalize a park. No, this was a period of dark and base coercion, corruption, infidelity, violence, serial murder and misuse of power that lasted around a year. He explains in the song that when his shame caused him to run from God, he was a miserable wreck; but the instant he spilled his guts to God, his heart was light, happy and filled with the relief of forgiveness and communion with God. Then he says this in verse 7: “You are my hiding place; you will protect me from trouble and surround me with songs of deliverance.”

My two year old son Jack loves to play this game where he runs into his bedroom, goes to the same little place between his bed and dresser and then shouts at the top of his lungs, “I’m hiding Daddy! Come find me!” I then stomp through the house toward his bedroom as he laughs. I ‘find’ him, pick him up and we both laugh uncontrollably until he tells me to put him down so he can go right back to the same place again and start the game over. He loves to hide where he knows I’ll find him. He loves to tell me where he is and he loves it when I come find him.  Look, there’s nothing wrong with hiding, but don’t run from God. Hide in Him instead. A hiding place is a place of safety. What I’m saying is, you are going to screw up all the time. God knows this more than you do. When you do, just go straight to God with it. Be completely honest about it. Don’t hide it from God, hide it in Him. He wants you to talk to Him about it. He wants you to be open. If your relationship with God looks like you really being you and taking everything to Him all the time, you won’t be asking me that first question, “Why do I feel so far from God?” 

Ain't Stoppin'

Do you ever just get tired in your walk with God? You know what I’m talking about? You ever just wake up, drag your sorry self into the bathroom, look in the mirror and say to that thing looking back, “Yep, that’s about what I thought.” You know what I mean, right? Your face is puffy, you have dark circles under your eyes, hair all matted in funky positions and just a general crustiness that starts at the corners of your mouth and feels like it goes all the way down into your sad, sagging soul. You feel me on this? You don’t want to get in the Scriptures. You don’t feel like praying. You have no energy to be nice to what’s-his-name in your first class (bless his heart) and you left all your sanctification laying there in the bed before you ever looked in the mirror. Now, I know I’m not the only dude that’s been through this. Sometimes you just get too tired to keep on going in this whole ‘loving Jesus’ thing, and the question is, what do you do when you get like that?

Well, before I even answer that question, Satan is gonna start whispering to you about what a bad Christian you are and try to tell you that when you get worn out Jesus is all disappointed in you; so before that old snake tells you another word, listen up: Jesus is not disappointed in you. Jesus knows you get tired. He knows you are going through a tough time. In fact, Psalm 103 says, “As a father has compassion on his children, so the LORD has compassion on those who fear him; for He knows how we are formed, He remembers that we are dust.” He knows what’s up and He understands your hard times. He cries with you, He writes down your tears, He will never, ever stop loving you, so before we move on, let’s go ahead and cut the head off that little lie right there.

Now, the question was, “What do I do when I am just worn out and over it - too tired to do this whole ‘spiritual walk’ thing?” Well, check this out, a few days ago I was out on a jog and I was out of gas. The sun was hot and the East Tennessee hills were kickin’ my butt. I mean, I was just about to give up and start walking, when a couple stepped onto the sidewalk right in front of me. The lady didn’t see me and almost walked right into me, so I started to hop out of her way when her husband grabbed her, moved her to the side, smiled at me and said, “Honey, watch it... This boy ain’t stoppin’ for nothin’!” And then it happened... I got my second wind. Just like that, with that one little word from that dude, my tank was full and my legs were strong. He saw something in me I didn’t, but when He said it out loud, I kinda swelled up and thought, “That’s right baby! I don’t stop!” The rest of the run was still hard, but I just kept steppin’ and kept saying that thing to myself: “I don’t stop for nothin’!”

There’s a scene in the movie Finding Nemo where Dory starts singing a song that says, “Keep on swimming, keep on swimming, keep on swimming, swimming, swimming.” Folks, a huge part of walking with God is about just putting one foot in front of the the other and keeping on. It’s called endurance and perseverance and the Apostle Paul says that the Holy Spirit is at work in your life to give you just that. (Colossians 1:9-13) Sometimes you are going to feel empty, dry and cold. Here’s what you do: Step. Then step again. Then keep on stepping. This is a walk. Get on up, get in the Scriptures. Talk to God. Just keep on stepping. I promise you the dry season won’t last forever, but you’ve got to walk out of it. The cool thing is, when you just go ahead and persevere, we all see you stepping. Now, you may feel dead on the inside, but we see somebody that ain’t stoppin’ for nothin’!

Use Him!

Some of y’all are just absolutely struggling right now. I read your posts and my heart breaks, because in the words of my friend Bill, “You’re dying in a pile!” And look, I get it. When I read what you guys are going through, I understand why you’re feeling so down and out. I understand why you’re confused and frustrated. I completely feel you on the fact that you are ‘over it.’ I would be too. In fact, I go through those same seasons. Life can get out of control and it can get overwhelming real fast.

And here’s the crappy part: Sometimes when you’re in that hard season, people in church can say really stupid stuff that’s nowhere in the Bible... Like this, “God won’t give you more than you can handle.” - WHAT?! Two things: 1. That is NOT a Bible verse. Period. It’s not in there, anywhere. 2. I absolutely guarantee that God will give you more than you can handle. That’s the way He rolls. And why is that? Because, He wants you to need Him. He wants you to call out for His help. He likes being used. He really does. He loves to take care of you, and He wants you to know you need Him. 

Psalm 46:1 says, “God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble.” Okay, did you catch that? Whenever you’re in trouble, He’s the ever-present help! He’s right there just waiting for you to say, “Help me!” Whatever problem you have, He wants you to call out on Him. God knows your life is too much for you to handle. He likes it that way because He loves to be your knight in shining armor. He wanted to be your helper. He wants you to ask for His aid. Some of y’all are suffering through life on your own steam when God is waiting on you to call out to Him.

Right now as I type this, the grass on my lawn is getting out of control, and my mower is busted. The cool thing is that I have this friend named Thomas who offers to come over and mow it for free just because he’s my dang boy. The absolute dumbest thing I could do in this world would be to go out to my yard, get down on my hands and knees with a pair of scissors and mow my own grass. I mean, Thomas is a phone call away! He wants to mow! He loves to mow! He knows my mower is busted and he loves to help me! Why on earth would I hesitate to call him? Good question.

The Pukes

Everybody wants to be strong, right? Everybody wants to think of themselves as capable and able. Everyone wants to feel that they have the answer if there’s a question. Folks want to feel that they have what it takes and that they don’t even need anyone else to make it. I remember when I was in middle school, everyone wore these t-shirts called “No Fear” and every single one was just a celebration of how strong and fearless we all are. The only problem with this line of thinking is that none of us are very strong or fearless or able.

Yesterday I woke up sick. Now, when I say that, I’m not talking about a little sore throat or a runny nose. I mean, I woke up sick. I’m talking stomach virus, sick. I was basically in a state of pure misery for 20 hours: stomach cramping, full-body sweats and not holding anything down. If you haven’t had a stomach virus in a while, it basically feels like your body is staging a coup d’etat. It is literally a race against the clock where this virus is trying to kill you by ejecting all nutrients. Translation: it sucks. Now, when you feel fine and life is running at full-tilt and stresses abound, it can be easy to fantasize about how cool it would be to have a sick day and be able to just do nothing but lie in the bed and watch Top Gear on Netflix all day long; but then, when you actually do get sick, you remember that you’d rather be dead than feel this way. That was me yesterday.

And let me tell you, there’s nothing like a good, hearty case of the pukes to remind you how weak you are. It doesn’t matter how strong I think I am, because one tiny, little, microscopic virus can absolutely take me out! The only really sweet thing about yesterday was the way my wife took care of me all day long. She brought me medicine and the few things I could drink. She cleaned up after me and prayed for me. She never complained, but just served me. I was basically at her mercy and all day long and she did what I couldn’t do and simply loved me. The only thing that would have been really stupid would be if I had tried to be strong and told her I didn’t need her. If I had ignored her mercy and just tried to take care of all my problems myself, I would have been in a complete mess. 

Folks, we are not strong. We don’t have what it takes. We are needy and broken down. And guess what: that’s not a bad thing. This is how the Apostle Paul puts it in 2 Corinthians 12: “He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore 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. For when I am weak, then I am strong.” It’s good to be weak. It’s good to acknowledge that you don’t have what it takes and that you need the Lord for every single moment of every day. It’s good to rely on His help and to trust Him to meet your needs. It’s good to need him to clean up your messes and just love you. We are at His mercy, and that’s a very good thing.

It's Not You, It's Me

Don’t you just absolutely and completely hate feeling guilty? In my opinion, the weight of guilt is just about one of the crappiest things human beings can feel. I mean, if you did something wrong and you’re guilty, you can’t change it! Whatever you did is now in the past, which means… the moment has passed! Guilt over your past wrongs is an oppressive and cruel feeling that grabs hold of your heart and stomach and just drags them to the ground. I mean, when you’re guilty of some wrong, you can apologize, and (depending on the person you offended) you might even be able to reconcile your relationship, but you can’t ever go back and change what you did. It’s done. You did that thing, period. 

Man, I hate that feeling. Don’t you? I would  rather beat my thumb with a hammer and   then shave my face with a cheese grater than live with that dull, thudding pain of guilt. And folks, that’s what I absolutely love about the forgiveness of Jesus. When Jesus died on the cross, He took away our guilt. He actually bore our guilt on Himself (as if He had done all our wrong) and paid the penalty of all of it. Because of that, everybody who believes in Jesus is declared ‘Not Guilty’ from here on out for the rest of their lives: no penalty, no punishment, no parole… Just forgiven! And check this: the word they used way back in the Bible for ‘forgive’ comes from the word that means “to untie” which is the word the Bible uses for ‘divorce.’ 

In other words, those folks thought of forgiveness like we think about a divorce. It’s a permanent break-up. Wouldn’t you love to break up with your guilt!? Wouldn’t you love to tell your guilty conscience to take a hike!? One time I counseled a girl whose boyfriend had hit her. She was hurt and confused but I told her she needed to be brave and end it. I told her to look him right in the face and say, “This is over. You are not good for me. We are through. Hear what I’m saying and, respect the words. Officially. It’s over. Don’t call, don’t write, end of story.” Trust me when I tell you that was a very good thing, and wouldn’t you love to say that to your guilt?!

When Jesus forgives you of your sins, He wants you to know that they are GONE! As in, He will never remind you of them. Jesus will never bring them up. He says that He separates your sin from you as far as the East is from the West (and by the way, east and west never meet). He says He actually forgets them. And friends, that is what Jesus wants you to do. If you have believed in Jesus, the guilt of your sin is flat-out gone. If you find yourself feeling guilty about some thing that you did in the past, go to a mirror and say, “Listen up, guilt, that’s it. I’m breaking up with you. It’s over. It’s not you, it’s me. I don’t like who I am when I’m with you. Don’t call me, don’t text me. Don’t even think about driving by my house. I’m seeing somebody else, and He loves me. You and I are ancient history. We’re through! Peace!”

Can you imagine how good it will feel to be free of guilt?! Every time you feel guilty about something, go through that break-up speech again and eventually, you’ll get to where you don’t have to say it anymore because you just like being guilt free more than that other thing. And then, when you get that down, go find somebody you haven’t forgiven and untie them from the guilt of whatever they did to you. Take that drama by the horns and get rid of it. Set them free and let them taste the forgiveness you have in Jesus. Who knows… They might even want to know why you are the way you are and then you could tell them about Him.

More Than Meets The Eye

Do you hate your life? Now be honest, ‘cause I’m being completely serious here. You ever look at your life in the mirror and say, “This sucks. It’s not the one I wanted and I want out.” I know how that feels. In fact, I think a lot of people know how that feels. The biggest problem is that we don’t know what to do with those feelings. Usually people completely ignore or suppress those feelings because they think no one else cares, or they think people will see them as too dramatic; or even worse, (if you’re a Christian) you might even think that you’re somehow not allowed to feel those things and that you’re some kind of freak because you’re the only one who does feel that way, so you should just pretend that everything is just peachy even though you’re dying inside.

Let’s do the thing that no one seems able to do in this whole situation, which is, let’s look it straight in the eye. In fact, why don’t you do this: Go to a mirror in your house and say, “This sucks. My life is hard, I hate it and it sucks.” You see, I don’t want to do that thing that you’re afraid people will do, which is, I don’t want to look at your hard time and say, “Come on man, it’s not that bad. It could be worse. Why don’t you stop complaining and just be happy.” Don’t you HATE IT when people do you like that? Me too. Okay, scratch all that. Your life is hard sometimes and you need to be free to say that… Out loud. 

Now, since we’re straight-up looking at this thing in the eye, let’s go ahead and look at everything about it. It sucks, it’s hard, it’s probably not fair and you don’t know how much more you can take, but there’s more. Yep, I said it. There’s more to see here. Here’s the thing: when you stare down the barrel of your hard time, you need to take it all in. When you’re in the middle of something crappy like this, I’m not going to send you a ‘Precious Moments’ greeting card and tell you it’s not that bad. It’s that bad and I hurt with you. But I am going to tell you this, it’s not the only thing going on here. I absolutely guarantee you that in the midst of your pain, God is up to something really cool and deeply good. You can’t always see it, but I guarantee you it’s happening.

When Jesus was carrying His cross through the streets of Jerusalem on his lacerated and bleeding back, people crowded the streets and mocked Him. They spat on Him and laughed at Him. Now folks, it doesn’t get much more tragic than that… The only innocent man who ever lived was tortured, and while heading to His undeserved execution, was being openly and publicly humiliated. What in the world could possibly be good about that?! Well, you couldn’t see it. No one could. And no one even knew it till years later when a brother named Paul wrote this: “He forgave us all our sins, having canceled the written code, with its regulations, that was against us and that stood opposed to us; he took it away, nailing it to the cross. And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.”

Dang! Did you catch that!? While Jesus was being made fun of, God was there in the invisible spiritual realm using that same cross to publicly humiliate Satan and his thugs! God was using that tragedy to have the last spiritual laugh over Satan. He flipped that whole thing upside down! BOOM! Now, I’m not going to tell you that you’re not having a hard time. I’m not going to tell you to just suck it up and deal with it because ‘it’s not all that bad.’ No! What I’m saying is, I hear you. It sucks. But check this, that’s not all there is! God is there and I promise you He is up to something amazing. You may not see it for years and years, but He’s behind the scenes somewhere flipping it all upside down. You’ll see it one day. Till then, let’s hold on to the promise (Romans 8:28) and believe what we can’t see.

Dance Moves

Do you ever wonder if God really loves you? Maybe you don’t tell anyone, but have you ever questioned whether or not God really cares all that much about your lil-ole life? I mean, He’s all, like perfect and everything, and I don’t meet any standard of perfection, so how could I ever be lovable or pleasing to Him? You ever thought that? Because I have. I’ve been a professional at screwing life up and sometimes it’s really easy to doubt that God would see anything He likes in what I’ve got going on. Anybody feel me on that?

If you’re still reading, I guess you’re at least a little bit like me and sometimes you wonder if God really likes you all that much. Well, check this: yesterday I took my five-year-old to her first ballet class. So far she’s never done anything with dance, (unless you count shakin’ it to my Motown playlist) but she was so stinkin’ excited! She was like ‘I can’t sleep’ excited. You see, Norah has been dying to do ballet for a couple years now, so this was like Christmas all over again. Now, I don’t know if you’ve ever been to a ballet class made up of five-year-old girls, but you can probably imagine what to expect - lots of high-pitch giggling and not a lot of technically proficient dancing. The instructor told me to wait somewhere else while they had their class and then told me that they would bring all the parents in for the last few minutes to show us all they had learned. 

Needless to say, I wasn’t expecting much. I walked in with the other moms (I was the only Dad there) and stood with my back against the wall as instructed. The dance teacher started the music and all the little girls looked straight to the teacher - except one. Norah looked at me. I kid you not, for the entirety of the dance, she would glance at the teacher to get a little reminder of the next move and then, BAM! Her eyes were back on me, looking for my reaction. Now, I’m an emotional guy anyway, but this went straight to the heart. I beamed at Norah, giving her the thumbs up, smiling with all my teeth and nodding my head. My heart was exploding with love for that little girl, and to me, there has never been a dancer quite like Norah in the history of ballet. When the class ended, I picked her up and we headed out of there. When we were on the stairs making our way out, I turned to Norah and said, “Girl, you were AWESOME!” She started laughing and gave me a high five. I said, “You did it! You’re a for real ballerina! You’re a dancer!” 

Friends, here’s the thing: I wasn’t proud of Norah because she’s some kind of dancing prodigy. Truth is, they barely did any dance moves at all. But hear me on this: it wasn’t about the dance moves. I don’t care how good of a dancer she is. My heart was not filled and overflowing with love for Norah because she twirled at the right time. My heart was filled with love because she’s my girl and I just love her. God doesn’t love you less if you’re a mess and not doing this well. He loves you because you’re His. Period. End of story. You don’t have to earn it, you can’t make it more or less by being good or bad. Isaiah 43:1-4 says that you are His, you are precious and honored in His sight. He just loves you. It’s like that… believe it.

Stiches

This morning Jack tripped over his own shoes and smashed his face onto the corner of a door jamb, splitting his lip wide open. Needless to say, there was a lot of crying and a lot of blood. At first, Christy and I were at a bit of a loss on what to do. The main objective was just comforting the poor guy. Thankfully we have a very good friend at church who is a Dermatological PA as well as a Jedi of military medicine, so I called his office and he told me to come on down right away. 

What followed was amazing but also very difficult for me. The short version of the story is that within twenty minutes of Jack’s fall, my friend Andrew had Jack all taken care of, with two stitches in his lip and three Toy Story stickers on his shirt. I was thankful, relieved and so glad that I have knowledgeable friends in the medical field! On the other hand, the process itself was torture. I had to hold Jack down on my lap while a nurse stuck a needle in his lip for about 30 seconds. He was screaming his lungs out with a syringe hanging out of his face. Next thing I knew, I was holding him down again while Andrew stitched him up. Jack was straining with all his might against my hold on him and I was doing all I could to keep him steady. At one point, Jack’s eyes met mine and I can only describe the look he gave me as a desperate alloy of confusion and betrayal. It was as if he was saying to me, “Why is this happening to me, and why are you helping them!?!

I tried to hide it from the nurses and my friend, but the whole thing was too much for me.  Every scream of pain from my little buddy brought the tears out of my eyes. Hearing the cries for help and watching the little blooms of blood appear on his swollen lip was so hard. My heart was hammering, and even though I knew this was the best thing for Jack, all my instincts told me to scoop him up and run out of the room at top speed before anything else touched him. And then, right there in Andrew’s Dermatology office, surrounded by professionals all doing their best to help my son, it hit me… this is just a little busted lip and in a minute Jack will be fine, but at Calvary, the Father gave the Son, the Son gave His life and nobody called, “Time Out.”

I think about Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane, rolling around on the ground in the middle of the night, screaming up into the silent sky and saying, “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me.”

The Father didn’t answer. 

The next day, as Jesus was bearing the sin of the world on the cross, He shouted out in a loud voice, frantically petitioning that still silent sky and realizing He was indeed forsaken. I think about the look in Jack’s eyes when I held him down and the pain in my heart as my little boy’s screams cascaded over my own internal struggle, and it was only a couple of stitches! What must the Father have felt on that darkest of days? How did He bear it? How did He endure the pain of His beloved unto death? “See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!”

Blinded By The Snot

Toddlers are messy. They just are. My son Jack is amazing and I love him like crazy, but sometimes he’s completely disgusting. I mean look, he can’t help it. He’s two years old, which means that when he eats yogurt, he wipes it all over his face and all up in his hair. When he uses the bathroom, he does it on himself. When he colors with markers… wait, why in the world am I giving this kid markers?! Lately he’s been sick and that means he’s been congested, which is just pitiful. Little kids can’t really blow their own noses, so when they get congested, the snot just runs down their faces like Niagra Falls, but green. One of the big milestones with babies is teaching them how to blow out when you cover their nose with a tissue. It’s awesome when they finally get the hang of it, but the only problem is that they are so conditioned to do this that any accidental covering of the nose tells their brains to start clearing out the nasal passages with extreme force. Translation: Every time I hug my son I have to change my shirt.

Today I walked by Jack in the living room and he asked me to hold him, while sticking those little arms into the air. I grabbed him and he dove into my shoulder for a super sweet hug. I was basking in the bliss of being a dad when the fleece on my vest touched his little nose and instantaneously I heard the unmistakable sound of mucus flying out of his face! “No!!!” I thought, as I pulled the confused, runny-nosed face off of my ooze-drenched vest. Jack began to cry, “Hold me!” as I extended him out to arms length and ran to the mirror to inspect the damage. There on my shoulder was a substantial spread of glistening goop. I’m not going to lie. I looked at Jack and said, “Really, dude? I pick you up for a hug and you decide it’s time to make a deposit?” I was covered in slime and not happy about it.

Folks, in case you missed it, that was one of the moments I really wish I could have back. I’d like the chance to do that one over again. You see, I’ve been reading the book of Numbers lately and it turns out that one of the things God really can’t stand is complaining. Now, I bet I know what you’re thinking… “Oh great, here comes a big speech about something God hated in the Old Testament. Sounds like a real picnic.” But I’m not trying to give you a big list of God’s no-no’s and then tell you to straighten up. It’s not just a deal where complaining is on the naughty list so we should all just ‘try harder.’ No, there’s a really deep and fundamental reason that God can’t stand complaining, and here it is: When a person complains, they make themselves unable to see and feel all the amazing things God has in store for them.

In other words, God is trying to blow you away with sweetness and kindness and all kinds of blessings you don’t deserve. He’s doing this to provide for you. He’s doing this to protect you. He’s doing this just to show you how much He digs you, but tons and tons of us simply don’t realize He’s at this business at all because we’re so caught up in what we think we should be getting. The one thing that could stand in the way of you realizing how ridiculously good God is to you is complaining about your life. Complaining hijacks your ability to recognize the goodness of God. 

Way back in the 21st chapter of the book of Numbers, God’s people started to complain about their wilderness wanderings and saying things like, “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? There is no bread! There is no water! And we detest this miserable food!” Now, I’m not saying that their lives weren’t hard, but think about what they had come from! Those people had been slaves for 400 years, but God came along and cared about them. He saved them by His own strength, not because they were so cool, but because He just loved them. He personally escorted them through the desert, through hostile armies and through the middle of an enormous lake! Every single day for decades He rained down miracle bread from the clear, blue sky, right out of thin air so they wouldn’t starve, but they were calling the miracle bread “miserable food.” They forgot to be thankful and all of a sudden they weren’t even able to see that they were actually complaining about amazing, logic-defying, daily miracles! I think about my own life, and man, I don’t deserve anything I have. God rescued me from myself and everyday I am surrounded by gifts of God and miracles of God. Sure they can sometimes be sticky and snotty, but they’re way more than I deserve and the only way I could miss that is if I complain and make myself miss it.

Clowns and Ashes

Easily the most ridiculous thing about my town right now is the Jewelry Clown on the Turnpike. By the way, the fact that this town has a clear front runner in the race of ‘most ridiculous’ is in itself ridiculous. I mean, my town is like a Chinese Buffet of outrageous buffoonery. Just when you think you’ve had too much and are completely stuffed full, there’s another piping hot tray of absurd nonsense right there between the sesame chicken and the beef and broccoli. Anyway, back to the Jewelry Clown. Surely at this point you’re wondering what in the world a Jewelry Clown is, right? Well, here goes: There is a jewelry store on the Turnpike that is going out of business, and instead of simply posting “Going Out Of Business” signs and advertising some crazy sale prices, the proprietor of this otherwise completely normal jewelry store actually pays a fully grown human male to dress up in a clown costume and stand there on the busiest street in town all day holding a “Going Out Of Business” sign. 

A clown. In front of a jewelry store. Really?

I mean, I would understand if the clown were advertising one of those jump zones for kids, filled with inflatable castles and comically gigantic boxing gloves. I would still feel bad for the clown, but at least it would sort of make sense, but come on… a clown in front of a jewelry store? It’s just so… what’s the word? It’s just so creepy! Everyday when I drive by and see this poor guy, I think to myself, “Brother, you really should take yourself a bit more seriously.” There’s simply no dignity left when a guy is strutting about in public, draped in enormous, shimmering, yellow pants with a silken jester’s hat someone should have thrown out after the Renaissance fair. We all feel bad for you and are simultaneously creeped out by you. 

On the other hand, maybe the Jewelry Clown is on to something. You see, I think that most people have the same problem. We take ourselves way too seriously. We pamper, promote and protect ourselves as if we are the world’s most valuable commodity. Nine times out of ten, if we are worried or concerned, it’s about ourselves. We spend a lot of time working on our image and reputation. In fact, this last part is so important that it often trumps the self-protection or provision. You see, many people would rather waste away in a private, spiraling pain and depression than reveal a need or weakness. We simply take ourselves too seriously.

A little over a week ago, folks all over the world spent the whole day with a black smudge on their foreheads. It was Ash Wednesday, the beginning of the season of Lent, where a priest draws a cross on a person’s face in ashes while reciting the Lord’s words to Adam from Genesis 3: “For you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

I don’t observe Lent or Ash Wednesday, but I like that particular part of it. What if someone went around like that everyday, with the ashes on their face… not as a mark of  religious self-flagellation or repentant torture, but just as a way to remember that they were dust? It’s kind of the opposite of this whole March Madness thing going on right now, where everyone in the country is filling out brackets and sitting on the edge of their seats, wondering who is the best. Nobody’s the best. That’s kind of the point. We’re dust people. We take ourselves too seriously and that fact is the cause of most of our problems. The other side of that problem is that because we take ourselves too seriously, we take Jesus too lightly. The crazy twist on this whole thing is that if we spent less time protecting and promoting ourselves, and just admitted we were needy little dust folks and then really started taking Jesus seriously, we’d find out He thinks we have infinite value to Him… so much so in fact, that He would rather die than live without us.

Come and See

Jack’s favorite word right now is “Oh.” Actually, I don’t really know that it’s his favorite word per se, but it’s definitely the word he says the most frequently. See, Jack is at the stage of personhood where just about every single moment of every day is a moment of discovery. He is a toddler, which means that he spends all day learning. He’s like a walking, drooling sponge, soaking up vocabulary, making connections and getting a handle on his world one little piece at a time. Christy and I spend our days saying things like, “Jack, this is a Giraffe.” or, “Jack, this is orange.” or, “Jack, this is Paul McCartney.” While Jack spends his days saying, “Oh!” We show him things and we tell him things while he connects with the world through us.

I remember when we were at this stage with Anna and Norah, but we do less and less of that with them now. In fact, with the older kids, the tables are turning. Just about every day or so, Anna tells me about another mystery novel she just finished reading that I’ve never heard of. She’s been devouring them like crazy lately! I remember last year when she told me all about this cool thing in her classroom called a ‘Promethean Board’ that I had never heard of. Apparently it’s like an HD TV, a computer screen, a blackboard and an iPad all rolled into one amazing teaching tool that Anna got to use all year long. I’m usually the technology guy in our family, but she told me what was up with that thing! We used to show our little ones their world one piece at a time. If they engaged with their world, it was by our introduction, but now things have changed. Now, we connect with their world by their invitation. They bring us in.

I noticed something cool the other day in John 11, but before I tell you about it, I need to back up to the very beginning of John… way back in chapter 1, when a couple of John the Baptist’s disciples met and decided to follow Jesus. Check this out: “The next day John was there again with two of his disciples. When he saw Jesus passing by, he said, “Look, the Lamb of God!” When the two disciples heard him say this, they followed Jesus. Turning around, Jesus saw them following and asked, “What do you want?” They said, “Rabbi” (which means “Teacher”), “where are you staying?” “Come,” he replied, “and you will see.” 

Right there at the beginning of their experience with Jesus, He told them, “Come and see.” He was going to show them everything they were really and truly looking for in life. Moment by moment, Jesus would introduce new and abundant life to them. It’s always this way when a person first gets to know the Lord. It’s like they have to relearn what the world is really like - and it can be disorienting at times, like a whole new perspective. And then, after you walk with Him for a while, a new element comes into the picture. Check out this scene from John 11. Lazarus has been dead for four days. His sisters and friends have been in mourning and Jesus shows up. “When Mary reached the place where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet and said, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come along with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled. “Where have you laid him?” he asked. “Come and see, Lord,” they replied. Jesus wept. Then the Jews said, “See how he loved him!” 

The Apostle John (who wrote this down) never said anything casually. For John, words were like brushes on a canvas and their meanings like the paint on the brush. He was composing something deep and beautiful here. When a person first meets Jesus, He says to them, “Come and see” and they begin to see everything they were always looking for. As we grow and change and fall in love with Him, we start to open our world up to Him. We start to invite Him into our pain and hurt and then we are the ones saying to Him, “Come and see.” He shows us the world, and then He comes into ours and feels our pain.

Belief and Bumper Crops

My friend Pottsy has dessert after every meal, without fail. In his view, you didn’t actually eat unless you rounded off the meal with something sweet, creamy and sinful right there at the end. In our house, however, we don’t have dessert every night, or even all that often, so when we do, it’s a treat. There’s only one requirement to enjoying the occasional dessert, and that is, you have to at least make a good effort on your veggies. We don’t make our kids eat every last crumb on their plate. We don’t stir up guilt about kids in China or tell them stories about the Great Depression and the way things were back in our day. In fact, we don’t even make them eat. If they don’t want to eat, that’s their choice, but if they want to enjoy the dessert, then they have to at least make a dent on the veggies. It’s not that hard, and it pays off.

Anna loves dessert. She would climb the walls and eat snow tires if there were some ice cream on the other side, so she always destroys the veggies and always reaps the benefits. Norah is harder to pin down. Sometimes she eats, sometimes she doesn’t and she’s not too fussed about it either way. Jack is a whole different story. He loves the dessert, but hardly ever gets any. Rarely will he slam his food and get the good stuff. Mostly he just refuses to do the one little thing he’s being asked. He just can’t seem to connect the dots between a little broccoli here and a slab of chocolate over there. 

I think most people approach their spiritual life like the dinner/dessert agreement in my house. They think, “Well, if I put in this much, I can expect God to give me this much back.” They build up scenarios in their minds about what they think God will give them or not give them if they do one thing or the other, and many times that invented profit and loss statement determines whether or not they decide to actually follow God on a given day. The problem of course, is that God doesn’t fit inside our carefully constructed mathematical parameters, and when we don’t get what we expected right away, we cut our losses and do our own thing.

See, I think God pretty much always gives us something different than we expect to get after building into a life with Him. Thing is, what He gives is not less. It’s more. It’s always way more. In the 25th chapter of the Old Testament book of Leviticus, God describes something He wanted His people to do called, Jubilee. The idea was to live and work and sell and trade for 49 years and then take the 50th year off. They were told to return all property back to its original owners, free all slaves, cancel all debts and simply stop farming all together. In fact, they were told to take every 7th year off from farming as well. Check this out: “You may ask, “What will we eat in the seventh year if we do not plant or harvest our crops?” I will send you such a blessing in the sixth year that the land will yield enough for three years. While you plant during the eight year, you will eat from the old crop and will continue to eat from it until the harvest of the ninth year comes in.”

Now, the bummer about this whole Jubilee thing is that there is no record of God’s people ever doing it. Not even once. They collectively decided to not do it. The crazy thing is that God said that if they would have done it, He would have miraculously multiplied their crops every seven years so that they would have miracle crops during the times He told them not to farm, but they never saw it, because they refused to believe and just  do what He asked. If God’s people would have just believed Him, Jesus’ miracle of feeding the 5,000 may have looked like just another Jubilee… “Yeah, God always does that miracle food thing… I love when that happens.” What would God do if we just believed Him and followed Him? How would He blow the doors off our expectations?

How Did This Happen, or Help! My Kid Likes NASCAR!

Jack is a NASCAR fan. I don’t know exactly when this happened and I am still in a state of shock, but it’s true. You might as well drape the little guy in camo and rip the sleeves off of his shirts. He is a true Tennessean. This is not something I was aiming for. It’s not the direction I was hoping we were going to go, here. You see, I like the symphonies of Dvorak and Dickensian novels; but everywhere my little boy goes, you’ll see him sporting a hat with a car covered in stickers on it and the number 95 on the bill. Luckily, being only two years old, he doesn’t use tobacco products or have any tattoos… yet. 

It all started with Disney, which (being the naive parent that I am) I thought was completely harmless. They produced a really cool movie about cars that Jack is completely obsessed with. He loves the characters, the story, the soundtrack… you name it. And look, I was down with this. I encouraged it. It’s actually a really good movie that tells a great story. (As a side note, Jeremy Clarkson even makes a Cameo in the UK version) So, when we bought the movie on iTunes, Jack was pumped. When we bought the guy a ‘Lightning McQueen’ toy car, he was ecstatic. When Jack needed a ball cap, Christy found one with ‘Lightning’ plastered all over it, which he loved. He now wears it everywhere and cried last night because I wouldn’t let him take it to bed. The only problem is, (and we honestly didn’t notice this at first) Lightning McQueen is a NASCAR. He is. He’s a dang NASCAR. And boom! Just like that, without realizing what we were doing, we turned our kid into a redneck. 

Now, I’m back-peddling like mad… wondering if I can redirect this course of Appalachian cultural decent! I’m wondering, “What if I only let him watch youtube videos of Gustavo Dudamel conducting the LA Phil? Can I turn this train around?! How did this happen?!”

Maybe you’ve wondered that before… Maybe you’ve looked at your life and thought, “Wait a second! How in the world did that happen?! That’s not what I planned for! That’s not what I wanted!” Last month one of the sweetest and godliest men I know named Sam found out he has a tumor on his pancreas. He found out because the tumor pushed on the bile duct of his liver, effectively shutting it down and making him more sick and miserable than he has ever been in his life. He lost 36 pounds in less than two weeks and was hospitalized a few times with painful procedures that effected no change in his absolute misery. His friends and family were all looking on this situation and thinking, “Wait… why him? Why Sam?”

I have been reading the book of Leviticus lately where Moses gives this nomadic nation a finely-tuned set of guidelines for how life, worship and justice will all work when they finally reach their long-awaited homeland. In chapter 14, the Lord is talking about what to do when you find mold in your house and how to take care of it. To be honest, I was a bit sleepy this morning while slogging through these civil and religious regulations, but something caught my eye and when I read back over it, I was a bit shocked by this: “The LORD said to Moses and Aaron, “When you enter the land of Canaan, which I am giving you as your possession, and I put a spreading mold in a house in that land, the owner of the house must go and tell the priest, ‘I have seen something that looks like a defiling mold in my house.”

Wait… so the mold came from God?! God put the mold in the house? What is up with that?! The instructions for dealing with the mold were complicated and costly, but the problem came from God!? If you’re reading this and scratching your head, you should be. When people try to come up with answers for why this stuff happens, they almost always miss the boat completely. Folks think God is punishing them for their sins, but we know it’s not that, because Jesus said, “He who hears my word and believes Him who sent me has eternal life and will not be judged.” The Bible actually says that God does what He does and we can’t really know why at all. So you see, I can’t answer the question, “Why would God do something like that?” I never know what in the world God is going to do or what He’s up to. As my friend Tom always says, “I never get invited to those meetings.” Things don’t go our way all the time and there’s no revealed answer for the moldy basements and guys like Sam. The only answer we have is that the God who sometimes sends mold into our homes also sent His own Son to die in our place.

Fire Drills and Gatecrashers

When you’re a homeowner, there are certain things that can flat-out stop your day and shift all of the gravity of your life in an instant. There are certain things that demand your attention right now, no matter how late you are for that thing, and no matter how cool that show you were watching may be. Examples include, but are not limited to the following: the heat going out in the dead of winter, the discovery of rats or skunks camping out in your ventilation ducts, water dripping on the dining room table, ancient and enormous trees falling on your roof… Well, the other day, we discovered another one: the smell of smoke. One minute Christy and I were working on dinner while laughing and singing along merrily to the Disney Pixar soundtrack playlist that our kids are obsessed with, and the very next instant we were tearing through the house with hearts racing and adrenaline pumping while furiously asking one question: What’s on fire?!

Thankfully, the house wasn’t actually ablaze. After much searching, we discovered that one of the girls had left a frilly, be-flowered headband on the lamp in their bedroom. the headband had slipped down onto the lightbulb, which proceeded to cook it just like an easy bake oven from back in the day. Thus the smoke. The really cool/funny part happened next. You see, at some point during the frantic search for fire, Christy and I realized that the smoke detector never came on, which was troubling. When it was all over, I figured I better test the smoke detector. Well, when I did, (in the words of C.S. Lewis) many things happened at once. First, an ear-splitting siren broke the peace of the house, followed by the recording of a woman’s voice calmly repeating the words, “Fire. Fire. Carbon Monoxide. Fire.” The siren made Christy jump and even though I was the one who pushed the button, I flinched as well. Next, I noticed that Anna was rolling around on the ground while the other kids were just doing their thing, playing. When I finally turned the siren off, I asked Anna, “What are you doing?” She looked at me incredulously and said, “Dad! Stop, Drop and Roll!” 

Ah, the wonders of public education! As soon as Anna heard that fire drill sound, she instinctively stopped, dropped and rolled, just like she had been taught to do in school. Norah just kept on singing, “You’ve Got A Friend In Me” at the top of her lungs and Jack was running around in circles babbling, but Anna was executing a textbook ‘stop drop and roll.’ In most situations, the three kids are basically the same, but turn on a fire alarm, and you can instantly tell which one has been to school.

It reminded me of a time in Luke 7 when a Pharisee named Simon invited Jesus over to his house for dinner. While they were working their way through what I’m sure was a fantastic meal, a woman gatecrashed the party, ran over to Jesus and began making a fool of herself. She had brought an alabaster jar of perfume with which to anoint Jesus, but before she could get it open, tears started flowing uncontrollably from her eyes onto Jesus’ feet, so she anointed Him with her tears and washed his feet with her hair. Eventually she managed to pour some of the perfume on Him, but only after this complete fiasco of explosive emotion had totally disrupted the dinner party.

Simon looked at Jesus with disgust while thinking to himself, “If Jesus were really a prophet, He would know that this woman is a skank.” Jesus read the guy’s mind and then told him a story about two debtors; one who owed a little money and one who owed a ton of money. They were both forgiven. Jesus said, “Which one of these would love their creditor more?” Simon said, “I guess the one with the bigger debt.” “You got it,” Jesus said. In other words, it’s not hard to tell when someone really knows God and really ‘gets it.’ People who turn their noses up at folks and talk about them and hate them don’t get it. They don’t know God. You see, to know God is to know that whoever you are, you have been as big of a mess as anyone in this whole world and that if you come to Him, Jesus will actually erase all that debt and call you righteous and clean. When you understand that and really know it down in the depths of who you are, it changes you. The folks who get it are not hard to spot. They’re the folks who are overflowing with unceasing gratitude and uncontainable love for Jesus.

An Airbrush and Some Fancy Bling

Have you ever noticed the way art can sometimes simplify very complicated things and even sugar-coat very distasteful things? Paintings are two-dimensional representations of something much more involved than the shading and perspective lead you to believe.  Portraits freeze one solitary moment in the long, convoluted progression of millions of moods and expressions. Films almost always have a bad guy and a good guy, whereas in real life, the line of good and evil courses through every single heart with an indistinguishable blur. When a film is ‘based on true events,’ that almost always means you’re about to watch a sentimental, air-brushed and neatly packaged version of something that slightly resembles events that didn’t exactly happen in that way whatsoever. One example is the making of a movie called, “Facing The Giants,” in which some people in a church hand-picked certain favorable events that occurred in the lives of about twenty different families, and then squished those hand-picked events into the story of one fictitious family for the purpose of the movie they made. Wow.  

I have been reading the book of Exodus lately and I got to the part where God is telling Moses how involved their worship is going to be. He lays out plans for a massive construction project that would include the masterpieces of many skilled craftsmen and artists. Chapter 28 deals specifically with the uniform that Moses’ brother Aaron would have to wear in God’s presence and then pass down to all the generations of high priests after himself. Those priestly garments were extremely intricate and every last detail was important and expressed some truth about what it means to worship God and to come into His presence. The thing that really struck me was a part of the outfit called ‘the breastpiece,’ which was kind of like a golden shield covered with priceless and beautiful gem stones that hung around the priest’s neck and laid right over his heart. It was about the size of an iPad, but square, made out of solid gold and decked out with four rows of three gems a piece. Each gem was different and each gem was inscribed with a name: the names of the twelve tribes of Israel. I’m telling you, this was one deluxe piece of high-rolling bling.

Twelve stones, beautifully set into pure gold, covering the heart of the high priest as He stands before God… It makes for a beautiful story, right? It fills the imagination with awe and brings to mind how amazing and godly those ancient patriarchs must have been, right? 

Well, not exactly. Look, you can dress it up in rubies and topaz, surround it with gold all you want to, but those guys were a mess! I mean, Reuben slept with his dad’s concubine (who was kind of like one of his step moms)! Simeon and Levi tricked an entire village of unsuspecting dudes into compromising themselves so that they could slaughter the lot of them! One time Judah thought he was hiring a prostitute who wound up being his daughter-in-law in disguise. She got pregnant, which meant that Judah’s new son was somehow also his grandson… I mean, even in Tennessee that’s weird. You get the picture. The twelve sons of Jacob were not godly and amazing men. Just the opposite. They were total disasters, just like everyone else. So, if these guys were such messes, why were they featured on the fancy breastpiece of worship? Was God the original Hollywood producer who airbrushes over the messy stuff and makes everything appear neat and pretty while forsaking the truth?

No. It’s not like that. In fact, it’s way better than that. God is the Author of redemption, in which He actually writes a new truth. You see, God didn’t just airbrush over the sins of the twelve tribes of Israel. He came down here and lived a life as a man, in the person of Jesus Christ. Jesus, who was and is God was born into the tribe of Judah and lived a perfect life. He then laid that life down to pay the penalty for all the wrong from Adam, through Judah and right on down to you and me. Now he offers us not only forgiveness and pardon, but His own righteousness tacked on to our account! For all who believe, it’s not just a dramatized fiction, it’s the truth of God. It’s as if we never did anything wrong, but lived our lives as beautifully as Jesus lived His. God looks at our life and sees a stainless, pure, beautiful work of art. It’s not a simplified fiction, but a new truth.

The Best and Worst Moment

Norah and I had a hard night recently. Whew, It was rough. But I’m glad to say, it wasn’t as bad as it could have been. You see, the kids and I were in the midst of the nighty clean-up of the house prior to bedtime when all of a sudden I busted Norah in a big-fat lie. I could see it in her adorable little face as her eyes got really wide and the blood rushed into her cheeks. It was tough, it took a while and we dealt with it, but the thing I was glad about was that I was able to short circuit that parental phenomenon that is the automatic and seemingly uncontrollable pull towards taking the whole thing very personally and getting really angry at the child. For those of you that are parents or have people in your life that are like kids to you, you know what I’m talking about… They lie, you know it, and it fills you with this alarming sense of betrayal as if they have personally smacked you in the face. The temptation is to deal with them out of this wounded, defensive anger instead of just dealing with the lie and moving on.

I’m thankful that on the night in question, we just dealt with the issue and I was able to curb my sense of being offended as well as all the anger that goes with it. As a result, Norah and I were totally cool and restored quickly afterwards, which was awesome. Now, I didn’t pull off this moment of parenting acrobatics because I am some kind of genius at child rearing. Quite the opposite, in fact. It’s just that on that night, in that moment and for some reason I can’t quite pin down, I remembered a time when I was a kid that I told a big-fat lie to my parents and got busted for it. (For those who know me well, the moment in question is also referred to as ‘the buttermilk incident’ which is a story for another time) Anyway, that doozy of a lie from my past was a horrible moment, but it has changed the way I deal with being lied to. 

You see, I am a liar. I have told lies. Sometimes I have told them on purpose and sometimes they sort of slip out without my express permission, but I am a liar and there’s just no getting around it, because I have been busted. And while getting busted stinks, it’s been good for me, because I believe that knowing who I really am and the mercy that I need every day has made me a more merciful and tender person when it comes to dealing with liars.

It’s just like that place in Matthew 18 where Peter asked Jesus, “How many times should I forgive my brother who sins against me? Seven times?” Jesus then unfolded this story about a king settling accounts with his subjects. One guy owed him the equivalent of millions of dollars, but the king forgave the debt when the poor servant begged for mercy. Thing is, that same servant left the king’s palace, found a guy that owed him a few bucks and went off on him, demanding he pay back every last cent or else he would prosecute! The other guy begged for mercy, but none was shown. The poor servant who had once begged for mercy himself now had this other guy thrown into prison.

I sit in front of this keyboard as a man who has been forgiven an incalculable debt. It’s not millions of dollars… it’s a lifetime of damning rebellion against the Holy God who made me and loves me. It’s an infinite debt that I could never, ever repay; and yet He has taken it all away, cleansed my heart and called me righteous because of His mercy in sending Jesus. I don’t have the right to extend anything but mercy to someone who has offended me. I don’t have the right to be angry, wounded or petty about some small moment of offense. In fact, the way you can tell if a person really understands the mercy they have received is to watch the way they give (or don’t give) mercy to others. Getting busted over and over again in my life and being forgiven by God again and again has been both the worst and best thing that’s ever happened to me. I say ‘the worst’ because let’s be honest: it hurts to find out who you really are over and over again; but it’s also been the best because slowly but surely, the mercy that’s always given is making me more merciful.

DNA

On Monday, a woman’s life absolutely changed for good right there on television. If you missed it, Patricia Lee, who has had a rough life and has been down on her luck for most of it just found out that she’s related to Oprah Winfrey. Whoa. It turns out that when Oprah was nine years old and living with her dad, her mother got pregnant and kept it a secret from Oprah. She then gave the baby up for adoption. The adopted baby girl, named Patricia, grew up wondering who her birth mother was but never could find out. One day she was watching Oprah’s show and Oprah was interviewing her mother, Vernita. Patricia knew it was her mom. Somehow, she could just tell; and after trying to figure out the truth for years, she finally tracked down one of Oprah’s nieces, and had a DNA test done. She was right. Vernita was her mother, and Oprah was her her sister. Boom.

The other day I was driving to Chick Fil-A because I was absolutely starving and wanted a sandwich and looked in my wallet. I had two dollars… and that’s actually fairly normal. Oprah Winfrey has somewhere between 2.5 and 2.7 BILLION dollars! What if you found out tomorrow that you were related to a billionaire!?! What troubles and problems in your life would just absolutely vanish on the spot?

Now look, I don’t know how Oprah’s going to handle this or what Patricia and her family are going to expect to come out of this whole thing, but when I first heard the news on Monday, I thought to myself, “Wow, that’s good news for Oprah… and really, really good news for Oprah’s new sister!!!!!!” I mean, what if all of a sudden, after a long, tough life of struggling and straining to make it, you found out that you were related by blood to one of the absolute wealthiest people on the face of the planet, and you had the DNA test to prove it?!? What if all of a sudden, you realized, “I don’t have to worry anymore. I don’t have to struggle anymore. I’m going to be taken care of. It’s all going to be okay. I never have to worry again for as long as I live…” Wouldn’t that be awesome!?

Well here’s the deal: It’s already true of you! You may not be related to Oprah Winfrey, but I have even better news than that for you! If you have believed in Jesus, you are related to Him! You are part of the family of the absolute King of the Universe who rules over everything and owns the whole world! God Almighty is your Dad and He is taking care of everything! You are part of the first and most royal family of all and you’re related by blood… the blood of Jesus spilled for you. 

Listen to what Paul says in Romans 8: “For those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God. The Spirit you received does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again; rather, the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship. And by him we cry, “Abba,Father.”  The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children. Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ.”

So, rejoice! You share in the inheritance of the glorious Son of God! You never have to worry or be afraid ever again! Your fortunes are beyond your wildest dreams and beyond the powers of human reckoning or imagination. You are related by blood to God Himself! Everything’s going to be so much better than okay.

Redwood Trees

The other day, someone talked about Jack in a not-so-nice way. The poor little guy was just minding his own business, playing with toys, when this person just started criticizing him in a questioning tone of supposed concern. Christy was totally taken off guard when it happened and then a few minutes later, the shock of the whole thing rolled over into a motherly, brokenhearted confusion. Who in the world criticizes an irresistibly adorable toddler?! To be honest, it ticked me off, and I’m still sort of fuming from it.  

This emotion is a part of fatherhood that I hadn’t really planned on. That is, when I am completely overcome by a primal and furious, blinding rage that eclipses all sense when someone hurts one of my children. So far I haven’t been arrested; but then again, my kids are still very young and I am still very new at this. Another case in point: For some reason, people used to talk about my Norah a lot. They called her “wild” and said things like, “Well, you can tell she’s the middle child.” or, “That’s the one you’re gonna have to look out for.” People would spend a few minutes with Norah here and there and then think they had her figured out and boiled down; as if you can type-cast anything so incredibly and beautifully complex as a person.  

I listened to people sum up my little girl, and though it caused an internal firestorm within me, I didn’t want Norah to see it. I figured, “Well, she’s so young that she probably doesn’t get what they’re saying about her, so I don’t want to influence her against them.” The only thing is, Christy and I were (and are) convinced that Norah did know exactly what was going on, and it broke our hearts for her. So around the time of Norah’s 4th birthday, I decided to handle the situation in the only way I really know how to process difficult emotional confusion… that is, I wrote a 3 minute pop song about it. 

The song is called “Redwood Trees” and it goes like this: 

REDWOOD TREES

Under my roof and the ceiling , right above the ground

Is the onliest girl behind blue eyes and curls who could bring it all crashing down

I’ve known her for years and I’ve wiped away tears

But I don’t think that I’ve scratched the surface

Everyone thinks they see, but she’s a deep mystery

And no one really knows it, but

Her heart is softer than the warmest summer breeze

And her love is stronger than them ancient Redwood trees

She runs fast and falls hard and folks who don’t know call her ‘wild’

Like anyone could know a girl from a phrase like, ‘the classic middle child’

And stubborn and clumsy, I’m hopeless as can be at learning to love well

But she’s gentle and kisses me, loves and forgives me

When I don’t do so well by

Her heart is fragile and she wears it on her sleeve

And her love is stronger than them ancient Redwood trees

Her heart is lovely like an old-time melody

And her love is stronger than them ancient Redwood trees

Happy Birthday, Norah Rose.

There is a place in the Old Testament, way back when Moses was leading the children of Israel out of bondage, where God displays this same Fatherly affection. All of the regional feudal lords in between Egypt and Canaan were frightened of this massive, nomadic horde Moses was leaing through the wilderness. One such ruler called Balak actually hired a local prophet named Balaam to pronounce a curse over Moses’ ragtag bunch of wanderers. Balak and Balaam climbed a hill overlooking the Israelite camp. The money was paid, the sacrifices were burned and just when Balaam was about to open his mouth to pronounce his curse, Almighty God commandeered the voice of the prophet-for-hire, and Balaam said, “How beautiful are your tents, Jacob, your dwelling places, Israel! Like valleys they spread out, like gardens beside a river, like aloes planted by the LORD, like cedars beside the waters. Water will flow from their buckets; their seed will have abundant water.”

Whatever anyone thinks of you; no matter who hates you or talks about you, there is One who is crazy about you. Your Father in heaven sees you and loves you completely. No matter what anyone else sees in you, or thinks or says, God Almighty delights in you as His very own treasure.