It's Time We Talk

I went to the Sox game the other night and was sitting beside this really nice guy, helping him score the game. He and his buddy were drinking beers and I immediately went to a place in my head that is nice and secure: the boxing in of a person. Because of that one beer, I thought to myself: Nice guy - needs Jesus.

I am an idiot. Turns out he's an evangelical pastor, saved as a teen in a youth group in the same town that I grew up in, loves the Lord and has a passion for the lost (and the Red Sox!!). Again - I am the idiot that I never wanted to be.

But my misguided judgmentalism aside, I really think it's time for us to talk about the Christian and drinking. Because as my wife said on the way home: "I think we're in the minority now." I don't even know where to begin half the time. How do I purge all those years of being told "Christians don't drink" from my mindset? Often, the way we've been raised eventually becomes an automatic response that becomes difficult to untangle even after you get to know someone. I don't like this, but I am realistic about it.

I still think that drinking is something that the Christian should be willing to give up for the brothers and sisters that have problems with it. But I don't want to force that down their throats, because that's just going to increase the bitterness and division. What I really want is some reasoned, loving dialogue on this. I believe I'm right in my decision, one that I've blogged about in the past - but I also don't want to be the person I was at the Sox game.

Should that pastor give up drinking simply because people like me exist in the Christian world? Well, scripturally, the answer is "yes." (See Romans 14 and I Corinthians 8) If we are truly seeking peace and the welfare of the other brother, then I think that this is pretty clearly spelled out by Paul.

Should this pastor who has a problem with others drinking prayerfully rethink his response to these situations? The answer to that question is "yes" as well, and I think that this is clearly spelled out in the exact same passages of Scripture.

In other words, we both need to start putting the interests of other people ahead of our own. I would love to hear some dialogue on this issue.

Pulling Up Short

There is a deeper, purer, more meaningful place with God than most of us are experiencing. It is a place of rest (Hebrews 4) in the finished work of Christ. It is a present-tense dwelling place (Psalm 27:14, John 10:10, Titus 2:11,12) and for some reason we continue to sabotage our walks every time we get to the edge of it.

In Numbers 32, the Israelites have finished their 40 years of desert wanderings and are on the verge of the Rest. Just before crossing, the leaders of the tribes of Gilead and Manasseh pull Moses aside and tell him that they like the east side of the Jordan, that they will settle there and not cross. Moses proceeds to take one of the best 'fits' that's recorded in the OT. He is enraged that they will not cross with the other 10 tribes. To their credit, they say that they will send their fighting men over to help - but they want this land, on the other side of the Jordan.

I really feel that this symbolizes my life and probably the lives of most other Christians. We get close to the victory - so close we can taste it - and then for some reason we pull up short. We're afraid of what total commitment might cost us. We like our comfort zone and are worried that really pushing deep into God will require of us things we don't want to give up or get into.

It's time. Seriously - it's time to push deep into the heart of God and quit shooting ourselves in the foot every time we get close to the deeper walk.

You Are Here

In Numbers 33, the Israelites are finally on the verge of entering into the Promised Land, and Moses is told by God to recount the 40-year trip in the desert. (Remember this: the desert is never meant to be the destination.) As Moses lists the places that they've been, he does something that I find very meaningful: he gives no summary of what took place in each setting, good or bad. He simply lists them without explanation.

I like this. Moses basically says, "We were there, and now we're here on the verge of something great." What they went through mattered, but it wasn't worth rehashing. There were times of victory, times of grumbling, times of great faith and times of doubt. But that wasn't the point - the point was now here we are. These places mattered, but we're not going to dwell on past failures or successes (see Isaiah 43:18) we're going to move forward.

I really think it's time we stopped "dwelling" and started moving forward. There are great and wonderful things, present day things, that the Lord wants to move us into. But we are caught up in our past and can't move forward to do them.

You are here - on the verge. Whatever steps and stages of your life that got you here don't matter as much as the fact that you are here. Do something here. Today. At this moment - let God do a wonderful work. He is real and He is alive.

Long Division

I told my two youngest kids (4, 6) that I would play with them the other night. They asked if I would play "Littlest Pet Shop" and proceeded to bring out a bin with about 50 little plastic animals. We spent the next 20-30 minutes dividing up the animals into groups. And that was basically how you play the game.

I guess when you're immature, the game consists of simply putting everything (or everyone) into a group and that's it.

Hope For No Man

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Matthew 21:28 - 31 "What do you think? There was a man who had two sons. He went to the first and said, 'Son, go and work today in the vineyard.'

" 'I will not,' he answered, but later he changed his mind and went.

"Then the father went to the other son and said the same thing. He answered, 'I will, sir,' but he did not go.

"Which of the two did what his father wanted?"
"The first," they answered.

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I am No Man. It's my super-hero identity, and like Superman and Batman, I hide it well. It stays in my head and in my heart, where you can't see it. It's my first response to situations I'm faced with: No. I don't want to do that, I want to do what I want to do and I want to do it my way.

But there's hope for No Man. I find it in this parable (which I know has multi-layered meanings beyond where I'm taking it). There are two brothers, and I know them well. I am the first one - the one who doesn't want to do what the Father wants me to do. But after going into the fields, He changes my heart and I see what I need to do. From what I gather, He is pleased with the fact that His will is done through me.

For example, one night on the subway home from a Sox game, I was exhausted, and all I wanted to do was sit quietly until I got to my car. A filthy-looking man, probably homeless, asked me how the game went. I turned away - I didn't want to deal with him at this point. In my heart I said 'No, not here, not now.' So I prayed to God and said, "I know Your will, and You're going to have to take over this situation." I turned back to the man and I saw him completely different - as a person who just wanted to talk, and I loved him. I spent the rest of the ride talking to him as I should have in the first place. (No, he didn't get 'saved' or 'healed' or anything like that, but he was treated as a human being.)

I don't want to be No Man. I hate him and his cynical nature. I don't want to have the initial critical, selfish response to every situation, every request, every sermon, every poor man I encounter, every extended arm that needs a hand.

I know a lot of Christians like the second son who say 'yes' but never do anything about it. I certainly don't want to be that person. I want to say 'yes' and mean it and do it. I pray for that often, that God will change me. I can feel it happening, slowly but surely - I know it's a process.

But in the meantime, I find great hope for No Man, that even if my initial response is ungodly, if I stop, think it over and turn it over to God, He can still use me and be pleased that ultimately I did obey Him.

Dispense With the Tears

Disclaimer: Don't misread what I'm about to write because I am a big fan of Godly repentance. In Psalm 51 David is in tears, broken to the core of his being at the fact that he let God down. He says that this is the sacrifice that God requires: a broken spirit and a contrite heart.

With that said, there is another aspect of a broken heart - and that's listening to God and doing what we didn't do or not doing what we did do. You know, the thing that caused us to be broken before Him in the first place.

In Haggai 1, the prophet lays it out hard on the people in Jerusalem, telling them to get to work. You've put your comfort above the work of God!! You have no satisfaction in your lives because you're tending to your own work while the Temple lies embarrassingly half-finished!!

Then they do something interesting: They do something. There is no record of a period of repentance, no record of a time of debate and discussion. There is nothing but a simple response: "Okay - well then let's finish it!" And they do, in a very quick amount of time.

I love this!!! When I encourage (yell at?) my kids to stop watching tv and start doing their homework, I don't want an hour of tears, I want an hour of homework!!! I don't want to hear all their 'buts . . .. " I want them to get off their "buts" and get to work.

Sometimes we just need to hear what God is saying and get up and do it. Or stop doing it. Really - sometimes it's as simple as that.

I Need Psalm One To Love

(or "How the Psalms Should Be Retitled: A Year in the Life of a Desperate Housewife!")

I love the psalms, I read them as often as I can and like many people I use them as the kickoff for my devotions. I think one of the reasons I love them is because of the passion of every type of emotion that is found within: love, fear, anger, hope, praise, peace -- and even hate. Not hate in the angry American way, but in the Middle Eastern sense: such a deep love for someone that everything else appears hate in comparison. They show all of the emotions that I feel during the course of an extended period of time with God.

It is a book of total honesty: "This is what I am feeling at this very moment." I love that about it - it's like reading a diary of a year in the life of someone madly in love with someone else. On certain days there is intense love (Psalm 84), impatience (Psalm 4), distress over letting your loved one down (Psalm 51), comfort in placing yourself under their banner of protection (Psalm 23), intense anger over injustice (Psalm 82), and on and on.

That's why it is a dangerous exercise in trying to build doctrine from the psalms. How would you like it if someone pulled a page from your diary and tried to build that as the doctrine of your life? "This person is always angry." "This person worries about nothing." "This person worries about everything." "This is a very bitter person." "This is a very trusting person."

It would be extremely unfair. But understanding it as a 'diary' helps us read the hard psalms and know that it was simply how the author was feeling at the moment. When you think of them this way, they become much more readable.

The Wet Blankety-Blank

Amos 7:7 This is what he showed me: The Lord was standing by a wall that had been built true to plumb, with a plumb line in his hand. And the LORD asked me, "What do you see, Amos?"

"A plumb line," I replied.

Then the Lord said, "Look, I am setting a plumb line among my people Israel; I will spare them no longer.

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I hate being the 'wet blanket' with people. I hate even more being it with myself. You know the 'wet blanket' - they're the one who makes you feel bad when you're having a good time.

But I really feel compelled to say this: I believe that our current Christian culture has embraced and engaged in compromises to the point that we can no longer even see them as compromises. I believe that if a holy plumb line was truly dropped in our lives right now, we'd be shocked and (hopefully) embarrassed at the amount of leaning into the world we have done.

The reason I say this is because of a simple fact of my life: whenever I'm deep into the Word and into God, I can tolerate less and less of the garbage. It actually pains me to watch some of these things and hear them in the music or read them in the magazine. However - whenever I drift away from Him, I can easily chew on and swallow these things. So you tell me - if you experienced that, what would your conclusion be?

Please note: just because we've allowed this drifting into the world, don't assume that God is okay with it, or that it's acceptable Christian behavior. Man's descent does not mean God's assent.

So every once in a while I write something along these lines. More for myself than anyone else. I need to be reminded that this isn't a game and that Satan is a destroyer. He is playing for keeps.

Sorry for being the wet blanket. Or more accurately, the wet blankety-blank. But I think if you're being honest, you know I'm right.

Convertible Holiness: Relent, Repent, Retent

Haggai 2:11 "This is what the LORD Almighty says: 'Ask the priests what the law says: If a person carries consecrated meat in the fold of his garment, and that fold touches some bread or stew, some wine, oil or other food, does it become consecrated?' " The priests answered, "No."

Then Haggai said, "If a person defiled by contact with a dead body touches one of these things, does it become defiled?" "Yes," the priests replied, "it becomes defiled."

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As I'm preparing to preach through Haggai this week, I had a very sharp encounter with God. He revealed clearly to me that in my frustration with the battle of the flesh, I was trying to win through 'outside' sources. Myself. Experiences. Devotions. The Bible. All good stuff, but still a bit sideways. Sideways, in the sense, that holiness is like a convertible - it's top-down. As Haggai 2 states, it is non-transferable - it must come straight down from the Lord. It is a vertical transaction. I can't get it from anyone or anything or anyplace but God.

Defilement, on the other hand, is horizontal. Our lack of holiness can defile our brother, our church, our worship - everything and everyone we come into contact with. It can pass through the garment and contaminate whatever we touch. We pass this on quite easily and without much effort or conviction.

This really affected me this morning, as I prayed. I realized that I needed His holiness to descend upon me and turn me inside out. He told me to:

1. Relent: Quit trying to bring some kind of holy victory in from the side. Stop.

2. Repent: Lay out the problem completely before Him - in total honesty. Quit playing the hiding game with the compromises in my life. Open up.

3. Retent: Like Christ pitched His tent in the world, I need to pitch my tent in Him. I need to stop trying to win the victory horizontally. It has to be from Him, from the top. Dwell in Him.

This was a good and necessary lesson for me, and for the first time in a long time it dropped me face to the floor in repentance. I recognized that faith in His finished work is the key and I recovenanted to tabernacle in Him.

Again: while contamination is a horizontal, holiness can only be a vertical transaction.

The Fool

Job 5:2 "Resentment kills a fool and envy slays the simple."

Sometimes all it takes is the verse. A blog explanation just muddles the simplicity of what God says. So there it is - a verse that was like a dart to my heart this past week. Dying from the inside-out because I was resentful in a situation in my life. And God's Word did what God's Word does: nailed me and left me with no excuses. I didn't have to dig into the theology, the Hebrew, the commentaries, the explanations, the 5-step video series - I just had to read 4 words.

"Resentment kills a fool."

Thank You for revealing my foolishness, and thank You for making it so simple. I repent.

Stop The Competition

John 3 "He must increase, I must decrease."

The competitive nature of Christianity is killing the spirit of Christ in our churches.

There is a game of one-upsmanship that is going on between the local bodies of Christ that is sucking the life out of us and destroying any spirit of unity in the Body. And to make matters worse, it's an impossible game to win.

Last week I had a surgical 'procedure' on my hand, where the doctor had to cut a tendon that was causing problems, and it required four stitches. That night I talked with a friend of mine, saying that I couldn't play in the softball game due to my 'hand surgery' and he proceeded to tell me that he was currently in the Emergency Room because a pit bull had grabbed his entire hand, breaking bones and requiring surgery. Umm..... you win.

Sunday at church we had a group visiting from North Carolina and the leader asked if I coached or played sports. I said, "I played a little bit of high school football." He said, "I played for the Clemson Tigers when we won the national championship and then played pro ball with the Jets and the Giants." Ummmmmmm............ you really win.

You see, the comparison game always reaches a losing point. It has to - because there is always someone better. There is always a bigger church, a better pastor, a more expensive building project - it's a game we can never win.

But it's also a game we should never be playing. Our job is to do what God wants us to do with us right here, right now, with the person in front of us. It's not a contest. This is why so many people are thinking that 'house churches' are the way to go - they're tired of the fight. But big churches can have a positive impact if they're done with the right mentality. There are more resources to send out and support ministries. They can get into the community and do some great things.

I personally like smaller churches, so that I can know everyone and have true fellowship and worship. I don't like the mega-church experience. But that's just a preference. It doesn't make me right or wrong, lesser or greater. However - and I guess I'm finally rolling around to my point: Christ has established the local church as His means of working through communities. It's all through the letters of Paul. So we can't walk away and just sit in our personal Bible Studies, but we also must resist the temptation of church comparison. It's a draining and losing game.

Flabby Indifference

I just got back from the movie Wall-E with my kids. I loved it! It's about American consumerism that devours the planet and the soul of man. I highly recommend it for adults.

One of the many things that they nailed was in their portrayal of the Fat American. Due to their inactivity, the humans in the movie had basically become fat and inert. And as with most fat people, their features had been overwhelmed by their fat, so that they all took on a similar look. It's a common look among overweight people: the loss of their distinctive features.

What a perfect parable of the WACC - the White American Christian Church. Our laziness and consumer mentality has caused us to lose our distinctive features. The fat in our churches has overwhelmed us and we all look the same. This goes against the wonderful diversity that Jesus molded the church out of. Our unity in Christ should consist of beautiful and remarkable differences. Hands. Feet. Eyes. Ears. All different, all distinct, all one.

Don't be afraid to be who God created you to be. Don't force yourself, others, and your church into the flabby indifference that permeates today's churches. Dare to be distinct, to be radical, to live out the Sermon on the Mount. Let His Spirit grab you and mold you, not the church.

Man, I wish I could start all over. There are so many ways I would do it differently.

Oh, wait - I can! That's one of the greatest gifts of God: The Divine Mulligan. So what if you knocked the first drive into the woods, tee it up again and let it rip! Jesus is all about do-overs and restarts. Pare off the fat and be who He created you to be.

I Miss God

A funny thing happened on my way to the pulpit- I kind of lost God.

Let me explain: A number of years ago, before I had any thought of being a pastor, my life had crumbled to a crossroads and after much searching, I took the "road less traveled" and went deep into the heart of God. My prayer life and Bible study were amazing. Honestly, God brought me deep into His Word and into Him and I fell head over heels in love. I devoured Scripture, literally wearing out Bibles.

This led down a natural path - Get into the ministry! The timing was all God, and after three years of this heart-to-heart, I was asked to be the pastor of a small church (around 40-50 people). It was considered part-time, but it involved two (different) sermons each Sunday and a Wednesday night Bible Study. I loved (love) it. But that's where the problem arose. I found my personal devotions to be less about US and more about THEM. Every passage became a sermon study, not an encounter with God. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't remove the weekly Monster(the sermon) from my devotions. And my heart ached for Him. I missed God

I know I need to be in the ministry, but not at the expense of Him. We were built for a relationship. That must be cultivated above all else, because out of that will flow true worship, justice, humility, forgiveness and love. When Jesus was 12, His parents did the right 'religious' thing and came to Jerusalem. While doing this they lost Him. Be careful - do not lose Jesus in your religious activity, like His parents did.

Helpful hint: To accomplish this, you need to let your time with Him extend beyond the "Acceptable Christian Time Allotment" of 15-20 minutes and press deeper into hours with Him. The walls break down, you get past the superficial, and you encounter Him.

Pop-Up Prophets

There is a great value in "pop-up prophets." By that, I mean prophets who appear in the OT without any information regarding their lives. Men like Hosea, Joel, Amos, etc.

The reason I think that these books are so important is because many times we hear a message, read a book, listen to a song and immediately try to find as much as we can about the author's life and then make our analysis on the message based on the life of the messenger. When we do this, we lose a lot of valuable truth. Ask yourself honestly - how many times have you said, "I really don't like other things this person has said or revealed in interviews or the way that he lives his life" and therefore put down something that you initially found some value in.

With the 'pop-up prophets' we don't have that luxury. Here's the message, take it or leave it, but you don't have any information to accept or reject except for what is right in front of you. It's God's Word without any of the peripherals - just the way I like it. The pure truth.

For example, right now I'm reading the book of Joel and it's a little difficult, and I keep looking for something extra to help me understand what he's saying. When I finally relaxed and realized that there was nothing extra - we barely even have a hint at the context of the times he was writing in - then I had to settle down and study the message. I feel that's what God wants us to do - study the message and listen to it, learn from it, and obey it. (WHOA! hold on there big fella - it's one thing for our generation to study a message and sit in our enlightened Bible Study groups and rip it apart from every angle. But it's a whole other thing to expect us to get off our dusty butts and do it! I'm a thinker!!!)

Look - I'm not advocating simplistic Christianity. If God gives us places that we can dig - then it is our responsibility to dig. But sometimes He just lays out a message and says "Here it is!" Then over-analysis actually sucks the life out of it. So thank the Lord for the occasional pop-up prophet. The hit-and-run that leaves us nothing but the Word and no excuses not to do it.

The Christian Right-field

My son Luke is playing for the local all-star baseball team. Yeah! But the problem is that due to vacation, he missed the only two practices that they had, and now he's buried in right field and at the bottom of the order. This isn't just a dad speaking: He's better than everyone else on the team. However, the problem with baseball is that there really aren't situations that allow you to show that, once you're buried. How do you force the action from right field? You have to wait until something is hit to you, and then you simply field it and throw it back in. Coaches don't get overwhelmed by a well-fielded single or the catch of a fly ball. So he's pretty much stuck.

He'll be playing basketball in the fall and that's a whole different story. In b-ball (the world's greatest sport), you can force the action to the point where the coach has to notice. You can steal the ball, get a rebound and move upcourt with it - you really can't get buried unless you bury yourself. It is possible to dig yourself out of anonymity, if you really want to (and have the skills - like a James Capozzi.)

Challenge: Force the action as a Christian. I don't mean by sticking picket signs in people's faces or slapping bumper stickers on cars. In this present Christian climate, you can really stick out by loving, forgiving, helping, healing, worshiping, ceding to your brother on matters insignificant, going out of your way to help a hurting brother. It's like basketball - you can blend if you want, but there is an option of forcing the action to the point where you (or rather Christ) are noticed in a good way. You're not stuck out in right field, waiting hopelessly for something to come to you. Like b-ball, you can go get it.

Be an impact Christian. In the world. In the action.