Thanksgiving for the Unthankful

Well we're just a couple of days away from the most thankful day of the year in the United States, Thanksgiving Day! Most of us are looking forward to the big meal and the delight of being with friends and family. Surely, there's a lot to be thankful for. I could write a list but we all know we've got a lot going on for us even though life is often hard. But the giving of thanks doesn't really come naturally to us if we're honest, does it? A lot of us go through the motions. Inside, we feel stressed, bitter, agitated, jealous of others, etc. If I'm going to be honest I have to say I'm not that thankful a good bit of the time. When things don't go the way I wanted them to I don't feel thankful. When I get rude customers I don't feel thankful. When depression strikes and I hole up in my room trying to anesthetize myself with movies or TV shows I certainly don't feel thankful. When my bank account is dwindling I don't feel thankful. When I perceive someone that I think of as less intelligent than myself getting ahead I don't feel thankful. Unthankfulness is a fairly common thing in my heart when I really get down to it. And so I come to this time of year noting that there's a sizeable discrepancy between what *ought* to be going on in my heart and what *is* going on in my heart. God urges his people to be thankful. Thankfulness is supposed to be SOP for the Christian. So what do we do when we recognize the gulf that exists between God's will and the status quo? Do we try harder to feel thankful? That's like a person without tastebuds sitting down with a bowl of honey and saying "I'm GOING to taste this honey! And it's GOING to taste sweet!" and trying to will the mouth to experience the sweetness of honey. That's insanity. Simply put, we can't make ourselves feel what God requires us to feel. So then do we despair? In one way, yes, we absolutely should despair. But when we despair, it's a beautiful thing. Because there's grace for people who despair. There's grace for people who know what's going on with them and that it isn't good. Look with me at Luke 6:35. "Love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, *for he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil*." Take that in. Grace. Jumpstarts. Thankfulness. You cannot put the cart before the horse with this. It's so important for your eyes to first jump to the Lord being kind to the ungrateful and the evil. If you try harder to be grateful and good you remove yourself from the group it says God loves in this verse. It doesn't say "for he is kind to the grateful and the good." Read the rest of Luke 6. Jesus has just finished going through an extremely implausible list of commandments. You'll never live up to those commands by trying harder to live up to them. It's so important to take in that last verse. He is kind... to the ungrateful... and the evil. He lends without hoping to receive it back. When you take one thing from God he's bound and determined to make sure you leave with two things. You cannot take advantage of a God like this. This is a God who is discontent to simply let you take what you want. He wants so much to bless you with greater love than you can imagine. The only way you can foil his plan is by refusing to take the extra that he insists you take. Hell is the result of taking only what you want from God and refusing the exorbitant extra he wants to give you. So if you're feeling unthankful this Thursday, give thanks for this! He is kind to the unthankful.

My Testimony

I'd like to share the testimony that Christ has given me. "Testimony" is one of those funny Christianese words we church people use to mean a sort of spiritual biography. This is how I came to my present understanding of what it means to follow Jesus Christ.

I was raised by two Christian parents and have gone to church my whole life. I remember becoming conscious of needing to perform some kind of spiritual action in order to go to heaven when I was only about 6 years old or thereabouts. I had no understanding of who Jesus was or what made Christianity any different than any other religion at that age. Looking back, I don't believe I had any grasp whatsoever of grace or forgiveness. I simply knew that I had to say something to God or do something in order to go to heaven when I died instead of hell. I attended church with my family every week but I don't recall ever understanding that God's love for people (including myself) had no correlation with our behavior. I was quickly growing into a person who would judge others for not following the 10 commandments or attending church each week. My parents enrolled me in the Christian version of the boy scouts (AWANA) and I got more information on what the Bible said about X, Y and Z. I was coming under the impression that knowing enough stuff, memorizing Bible verses, avoiding "big" sins and going to church would make me a person in right relationship to God.

 I grew in this understanding of "Christianity" for many years. Oh of course I would put out the window dressings of grace and talk about Jesus dying for me and forgiving me and my need to be saved... but it was just that... window dressings. All that talk about God's love for me and Jesus' death on my behalf was just smoke and mirrors. When you really got down to brass tacks, what mattered was me being obedient, me going to church, me trying to obey God's rules, me learning more about God... Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. My efforts. My goodness. My faithfulness. So long as I didn't wander too far from God I'd go to heaven when I died. Cause down deep I wasn't *that* bad of a person. I was pretty good. Better, at least, than people who always broke the rules, strayed from Sunday morning worship and decided God just wasn't their deal.

The problem was that the front I put up for other people to see wasn't the real me. When life didn't go the way I wanted I'd get pretty pissed off at God. Or I'd have long, drawn out pity parties. I remember immersing myself in pornography as an adolescent boy. I was growing into adulthood but God being my father meant little to nothing to me. If I wanted to *feel* like a mature man I would delve into the newly fashioned internet and satisfy this new set of urges. My use of pornography was far more for emotional and mental benefit than anything else. I wanted so much to grow up into a man but was lacking the resources to guide me in that process. I was learning to perceive myself as a weak victim in every arena of my life. I was learning that feeling trumps faith every time. So long as I *felt* manly I didn't care if I really was or not. I was using every resource that I had to deal with life but I felt like a weakling, an orphan, a nobody. I was learning to approach life as a hapless victim, unable to do very much in the face of life's great problems.

In 8th grade I switched from private school to public school. A little while after starting at the public middle school the bullying began. It was relentless. I had no idea what to do about it. I told my parents but they weren't able to provide any strong guidance. I was being humiliated by a group of about 5 other boys my age. I didn't know what to do. I just closed in on myself. If I kept my head down at school, retreated to my computer games as soon as I arrived home and rarely left the house (one of the boys lived a few doors down from me) I was okay. God didn't figure into my equation *at all*. I suppose it could be said I was just coasting spiritually. Going to church each week and not committing any big sins had secured my eternity (or so I thought) but provided no resources for dealing with life. There was no *relationship* going on between God and me. He was distant and abstract. For all intents and purposes, I was in this alone and I had to figure out how to keep my own head above water.

In 10th grade I had a fantastic English teacher. Mr. Hale was warm, friendly and a believer in Jesus. Of course he wasn't allowed to share his faith openly in a public school job but he'd convinced the principal to turn a blind eye to giving each of us invitations to our local Young Life organization. Young Life is an organization designed simply to love high school students of all shapes and sizes with the love of Jesus. The group met on a weekly basis to sing songs (some Christian but many secular), watch hilarious skits and hear one of the adults share about how Jesus had changed their life. By the time I reached 9th grade the bullying had mostly stopped but I hadn't yet had the courage to talk to a peer. If you'd asked me, I'd have said that I would never trust someone my age again. You see I was deriving my identity from others' opinions of me and I'd decided that nobody had a positive opinion of me so I would just not have any friends. By the time 10th grade rolled around I was pretty sick of my life being simply school, homework and computer games. Mr. Hale was so insistent with me too. It was almost like I was his special project for the year. He wanted so much for *me* to come to Young Life. So one day I told my parents about it and they drove me over on a Tuesday night. I hated it. Tons of my peers were there. I loathed nearly every second of it. Except for when I could just hang out with the leaders. Kevin (Mr. Hale, that is), Erick and Kurt were 3 of the male leaders and there's no other word to describe their mission at Young Life than "Encouragers". They were there to cheer on teens who were struggling through a very hard part of life, adolescence. They were so friendly to me. They were so insistent on trying to make me go home feeling like I had some kind of a support team. They cared. I mean they really cared. And so at Kevin's insistence I asked my parents if I could go to Young Life summer camp up at Lake Champion, New York in between my junior and senior years. I was still painfully shy around my peers but it was an enormous thing that I agreed to go to a summer camp several hours away from my home.

For the first two or three nights I called home to gripe to my parents from the dinky little payphone near the cabin. One night, Erick pleaded with me not to call my parents and then followed me the whole way to the phone telling me how much Jesus loved me. He went on and on about how Jesus loved me with all the issues and problems and horrible things I was dealing with. All my sins and shortcomings and all my failures couldn't stand in the way of Jesus' love. I remember becoming conscious of the fact that I'd walled God out of virtually every area of my life and that this was not a good thing. I remember being so afraid to let God break through all the little walls I'd erected to keep myself safe and I remember Erick telling me that God loved me even though I'd put up so many walls to keep him out. And I remember watching a video at that camp about Jesus dying for me. Literally dying for me. And I remember praying after that video was over telling God that I didn't want to change. I didn't want to take my walls down. But that he could take the walls down for me if he wanted.

Things changed very, very slowly. Knowing myself, I was battling God every step of the way to keep up the status quo. Like I'd said, I didn't want the walls coming down. God was going to have to go against me to accomplish his work in my life. And he did. The longer I continued walking in relationship to the Lord, the more I understood that God's love comes *in spite of* our actions, not because of them. Though I opposed the changes God wanted to make in my heart the changes came and with them came deeper joy and a deeper trust in God's love.

And then there's what happened in Korea. I'm convinced that my Christian walk consists of a series of crisis points where a new level of darkness is perceived in my heart followed by questioning how God could love such a wicked, sinful human being as me, followed by a new, deeper rest in Jesus and in what he has done for me and in the vast array of resources he purchased to face life with. In Korea I became conscious once again of just how far I'd drifted from intimacy with my Father. My heart was so dark. Pornography had surfaced again and again. I was deriving my identity from others' opinions of me and God wasn't factoring into a lot of my struggles. I was listening to a particularly abrasive preacher talk about the fruit of the Spirit in our lives (love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control) and how lacking these things might mean we don't know Jesus at all and are not saved. I came to the conclusion that I'd never known Jesus. There was such a stark contrast between what a believer is supposed to look like and what I was looking like at that moment. I spent a couple of days in the bottom of a spiritual pit. All I "knew" was that I wasn't saved. I tried to figure out how to get saved. Listening to sermon after sermon on salvation, repentance and grace. Reading the Bible trying to figure out how salvation comes. And then came John 6:37. "All those the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never drive away." That was it. Hah! Of COURSE I'm full of sin and darkness! But this doesn't have much to do with me! It has a lot to do with HIM! All I do is come. I come with all my failures, all my black, black, horrible, wicked sins. I come with a black heart, completely in need of a Savior. Not able to do *anything* to merit his love or *anything* to win salvation. Flawed in every way! Impure motives, flawed repentance, addicted to porn, using people to derive my identity, completely self-centered. Because this is the kind of person that Jesus usually rescues. Not the person who thinks weekly church attendance does something. Not the person who tries their best to be obedient. Not the person who repents completely enough or trusts enough or works hard enough or reads enough or knows enough or memorizes enough Scripture or spends enough time in prayer. But the person at the end of their tether. The person who looks at themselves and says "There's no way in bloody fucking hell I could ever earn the right to be in God's family." The person overwhelmed by the amount of sin in their heart and the smallness of their stature who has almost given up hope that God could ever take notice of or think kindly of them. The person who knows that if one one-thousandth of an inch of their salvation depended on them they would unquestionably be damned for all of eternity. And God comes to these people and says "You don't even know half of how bad you are, but I love you in the face of all your blackness and I love you so much that I took all of your blackness into myself and I suffered so you don't have to and now I can just wrap you in my arms and hold you close to me."

And when that love sank in and I saw that I was loved so completely by the God of all the universe, I could finally forget about protecting myself or improving my life or deriving my identity from the opinions of others and find a rest so much deeper than I'd ever known in my life. And it breaks my heart to see people write off such deep grace as either lawlessness or legalism. There's an entire new world when you see Jesus as he truly is and trust in him for every inch of your life.

And now I'm completely free, though I often return to my chains as they are easy and familiar. I often struggle to see the length and depth and breadth of the freedom I have in Jesus' love but I catch glimpses of it sometimes. And when you catch a glimpse of a love that amazing you always pour yourself out so others can see how amazingly they are loved. It's still an uphill battle remembering that I'm not "in this alone" and that I can keep looking out for the interests of others in the midst of my own difficulties. But wherever freedom is, service and love for others (not to mention the fruit of the Spirit) will inevitably follow.

Mephibosheth

I'd like to open up and share where I've really been, spiritually speaking, for the last several months. It's been a bittersweet place but I feel growth going on down deep inside me, though it is so, so frustratingly small and slow. A few months ago my pastor preached a sermon on 2 Samuel 9, the story of David and Mephibosheth. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the story, here's a brief synopsis. Mephibosheth was the son of Jonathan who was the son of Saul. Now Saul was the very first king of Israel. He was a man of great stature. Everything that a king should be from the perspective of the Israelites. Great power, handsome, strong, tall, etc. But he disobeyed the Lord. His heart was proud. He exalted himself. So God rejected Saul as king and had David, a simple, common shepherd boy anointed to rule next. Anyway, Saul's son, Jonathan, had a son and named him Mephibosheth. Now something happened early on in Mephibosheth's life that changed the rest of his life. While fleeing after Saul and Jonathan were killed in battle, Mephibosheth's nurse accidentally dropped him and he became crippled in both of his feet. Now that David has been given the kingship Mephibosheth is not only crippled and unable to function in normal life, but he's part of a dynasty that David and his family has replaced. Something to know about life in that era... when a new king rose to power it was pretty typical for him to show what kind of man he was by wiping out all others who might be perceived as having a claim to the throne. Mephibosheth was, by birth, an enemy of the reigning king of Israel and had David acted as a normal monarch in that area he wouldn't have lived more than a couple months following David's rise to power. But instead of wiping out this enemy (a crippled enemy no less) he lavishes grace on him. He restores his grandfather's lands to him and has him as a nightly guest in the palace. He treats him as one of the kings sons. A cripple. An enemy. And he's treated as a personal child of the king. Even typing this up makes me misty eyed. Mephibosheth says it so, so, so well "What is your servant, that you should notice a dead dog like me?" This is so often how I feel in my relationship with the Lord. He takes notice of me. I am so pathetically small and unable to cope with things that others seem to be able to deal with easily. And my heart is so dark. I still play the role of enemy so often in my walk with Jesus. I so often keep trying to usurp his rulership and claim the throne for my own but he keeps having mercy on me. He keeps having me for dinner at his table. He keeps telling me "I love you." without any qualifiers or conditions that I have to meet. And every time I come back asking for forgiveness it's given without any requirements or demands for me to change and not fail the next time. He just loves so well. 2 Samuel 9 is the biography the Lord has written for me.

Prayer for a Self-righteous Friend

Father, you know who I've been thinking a lot about for the past long while. You know them better than I do. But, Father, from what I've seen this person is being completely blindsided by pride, self-righteousness and spiritual arrogance. They're living like being a Christian is about knowing the Bible from cover to cover, praying every day, voting for the right political party, attending church and telling as many people about Jesus as possible. Papa, I know I'm nowhere near perfect myself and I'm extremely arrogant and conceited also, but this spiritual sibling seems to be oblivious to these qualities in themselves. They seem to have missed the gospel by a wide margin in his practical life. I pray for both this elder brother and myself today. Please make us humble. Grant that both of us would find complete rest in Jesus and that our lives would not be spent vainly pursuing things that we can never attain in our own strength. Please make us more like Jesus. Open my friend's eyes to how self-righteous they are, how deeply they hurt people through both behavior and words and how they alienate people from your grace by fighting battles that aren't worth fighting and showing grace only to those who repent beforehand. Please grant us the humility to become like Christ and lay aside all our rights in humble love and servitude. Help us to be concerned for the benefit of others, going to great inconvenience and suffering to love others. Change us to love like you have loved us, not requiring any change in us at all to win your affections but loving us when you were getting nothing back but anger and hatred. Thank you, Jesus, that you did not cling to any rights or demand that we respond adequately to your love for us. Help us to love like that. Amen.

Don't Cling

"Do not call to mind the former things,
Or ponder things of the past.

Behold, I will do something new..." --Isaiah 43:18-19

 

 

I know God's words in this passage are speaking mainly on an epic, grand scale about the future of God's chosen people and the advent of the new covenant of the blood of Christ but I don't think it's twisting the words to bring it down to the "mundane", day to day existence of God's children. Something I [and, I think, others] struggle with is looking back toward how things used to be and wishing we could go back to simpler, easier, seemingly more fun times in our lives. God is telling us not to try and hold on to the past. Don't cling to something in your past and expend all your energy trying to keep your life in that place. It's not worth it. Hold your life with an open hand and keep your eyes open to see what God wants to do with you *now*. I really think this is one of the keys to real, lasting joy in life. Don't let your life become about trying to move things back to how they used to be or simply maintaining the status quo. And for that matter, don't try to manufacture your own ideal circumstances for the future. If you have met Jesus you'll know that what he intends for you is ultimately better than what you intend for yourself anyway. By all means, plan your future and have intentions but don't let it crush you if and when your plans fall apart. This verse says that God is the one who is going to do something new. All your plans are, at best, part of God's plan and the last thing your plans falling apart is is an interruption.

You Are So Loved

Do you know how loved you are??? I haven't yet realized how loved I am but I sometimes catch glimpses of it. There is such a beautiful picture of Christ's love for us in Genesis 29. Jacob has just fled the scene after robbing his brother Esau of the patriarchal blessing given by their father Isaac. He runs to his uncle Laban's home for refuge when he suddenly finds his path crossing the most beautiful woman he has ever laid eyes on, Rachel. He is staggered by her beauty. He promises Laban that he will work for 7 years just to pay the bride price for his beloved so he can marry her. "So Jacob served seven years to get Rachel, but they seemed like only a few days to him because of his love for her." Being a shepherd was not easy work. It often involved long days and late nights caring for the flock. Jacob was often out of doors. He constantly had to be on the watch for wolves and bears that threatened his flock. When the female sheep became pregnant, he had to make sure they had the things they needed to give birth safely. He was never off duty. The well-being of that flock of sheep was his entire life focus for 7 years. But it says that this time seemed like only a few days to him. Why? Because he was so excited to marry Rachel. I'm sure he had frustrating days and was frequently exhausted but when he thought about why he was doing this, he really couldn't have cared less about his physical exhaustion. The thought of Rachel kept him going through it all. Jesus told people on more than one occasion that all of scripture was focused on Him. He is the center of all revelation from God. This story is meant to show you how much you are loved. When Jesus came to earth, he came with all of our human weaknesses and issues. The 33 years were anything but a breeze for him. He had to constantly make war against temptation. Real temptation. The thought of returning to the unbroken, intimate fellowship of the Trinity must have seemed SO much more appealing on a lot of days. But you were His reason to keep going. When EVERYTHING was falling apart, He remembered "the joy that was set before Him..." What was He going to have after this ordeal? He was going to have you. You would be His. You are so loved. You have no idea how horrible those 33 years were. Constant rejection. Isolation. Anger. Hostility. Mockery. Unresponsiveness. He doesn't tell you about any of this, though, because He doesn't want you to be pressured by a false motivation into being "a good person". He wants you to rest. He just wants you. The sufferings of Jesus were not God saying "Look what I'm doing for you! You'd better do something REALLY great for me!" There is just love. There is just grace poured out for you. There is just acceptance. And you can't take advantage of it because it doesn't stop! You literally can't take advantage of someone who keeps giving after you've stopped asking. You have no idea the lengths that God went to to claim you for Himself. Back breaking labor. Not to guilt you into better behavior but just to see you rest. That's it.

Review of My Imaginary Jesus

11. My Imaginary Jesus (Matt Mikalatos)

Pleasure: 7/10 Stars
Utility: 7/10 Stars

Relevant magazine described this book as "Monty Python meets C.S. Lewis" and I've got to say that's a very apt description. It's been a while since I really laughed out loud at a book so I was quite surprised to find parts of this one busting my gut. Powerfully honest, humble and challenging, this book is an allegorical description of the author's struggle after realizing that he was following a Jesus that he had largely made up based on popular culture, ancient religious thought and his own personal impressions about who Jesus really was. The story follows his efforts to find out just what beliefs he was holding about Jesus that had absolutely no grounding in reality, destroy them and find out in the process who the historical, real-life Jesus was and what he actually did 2,000 years ago. The basic conclusion of the book is that every single one of us has radically flawed notions about who Jesus is and the most important quest a person can ever go on is to find out what false beliefs they have about the identity of Christ and get to the bottom of the issue. The story is told as the main character (Matt himself, the author) physically interacts with many, many different fake Jesuses. There's "My imaginary Jesus" (the Jesus that the author feels most comfortable with and can relate best to), legalist Jesus, libertine Jesus, diet Jesus(who promises long, happy life if his diet rules are followed), Buddhist Jesus, vegan Jesus, Portland Jesus (the author lives in Portland), Magic 8 Ball Jesus (who speaks nothing but the vague answers of the Magic 8 Ball), macho Jesus, homosexual-rights Jesus, repressive anti-gay Jesus, Perpetually Angry Jesus, and on and on and on! Just when the author thinks he's found the REAL Jesus someone points out a radically flawed mistake showing him to be just another imposter. Throughout the pages, the author relates a deeply personal, excruciatingly painful crisis in his life and one of the plot threads is him coming to terms with how the real Jesus can both be loving and all-powerful with suffering in the world.

Refreshingly honest, side-splittingly hilarious and deeply personal, My Imaginary Jesus will challenge your assumptions about who Jesus is and how well you truly know him. One thing's for sure, I don't know him as well as I thought I did! Certain parts of the book reminded me that he really is not a tame lion... He is good, but never tame.