True

(Disclaimer: The following is not me trying to toot my own horn. It’s something I’m writing and putting out there mostly so that I can go back and remind myself of God’s work in me. If it helps you too, then great.)

We moved to SC just over a year ago with no real idea of what was next. While we’ve learned a great deal about ourselves and have grown, we still don’t really have a lot of clarity when it comes to next steps. Should we try getting back into church ministry? If so, where should we go? Should we just pursue “secular” careers?

Recently I was being considered for a ministry position in another state. We had big hesitations about it, but I guess I figured why not go through the process. There was a preliminary interview over the phone where I answered some questions that had been sent to me. As I looked over the questions and thought about how I would answer them, I had this huge sense of relief. Not because the questions were easy, but because I felt like I had the freedom to be totally and completely honest and transparent in answering them, even if I thought it would hurt my chances. Now the only way I can feel this freedom is if I care more about what God might have for me than being chosen for the position. Sadly, I’m pretty sure that that has not always been the case.

Ministry has been an idol to me in the sense that I looked more to it for my fulfillment than to anything else. So if that’s what was giving me significance, then I would always be looking for how it could fulfill me even more, which might be an opportunity different than the one I was in. I needed to give the right appearance to the people who would be making the decision. That’s not too difficult on a temporary basis, but as I kept doing that and not being true to how I’m created, then it birthed some really bad stuff: resentment, mental and emotional fatigue, self-loathing, etc.

However, I’m beginning to be more comfortable with how I’m wired, even if it means there’s not much in the “professional” ministry arena that I’d really be suited for. I think there will be down the road, but the Church hasn’t really gotten there yet.

What is most comforting in all of this is that I am understanding more and more that God is working for my good; not my happiness, not my ego, not my bank account, but for my good. If that means I get turned down for a ministry position, then great. If it means that we never have enough money to get a Wii (my latest object of covetousness), so be it. If it means that my abilities and gifts are never able to be put to the use that I think they could be, fine. I don’t think God is nearly as concerned with my effectiveness in ministry as he is with my love and pursuit of him and if I’m serving my family well.

Pride (In the name of me): Part 2

I have to be honest.  I really didn’t want to do the follow up to part 1, but I think it’s good for me to, so here it goes.

I’ve heard it said that if you want to find out how selfish you are, get married.  If you want to find out how really selfish you are, have a kid.  It is within these two relationships that my selfishness and pride have been most obvious. 

In the standard wedding vows there is a huge emphasis on the giving up of one’s own desires in order to serve and love the other.  When I said those vows seven and a half years ago, I really had no idea what I was saying and what it truly meant.   Michelle was a means in which I believed I would find fulfillment and happiness.  I understand now how twisted and wrong that really is.  What God had intended for my sanctification and Michelle’s joy, I intended to use for my own self-serving ends.  How sick is that?

For the first 7 years of our marriage, I’m really not sure how conscious I was of my mindset and how wrong it was.  After all, this has been my default setting for 32 years.  But once God began to reveal my heart, it was…well, it’s hard to describe because it was a lot of things all around the same time: disbelief, anger, disgust, sadness. 

When you realize how dark your heart really is and how much it has hurt people, it is not a pleasant place to be.  Then you realize the difficult and painful road ahead of God working on your motivations and changing the dynamics of a relationship that is far from what He intended.    

The good news is that God is patient and is every bit of what we need and then some.  He is always working for our good and takes inmmense delight in us.  I think at some points He has to laugh at me when I am just now realizing that there is actual joy in serving others; something that had always been a nice theory to me, but never actually lived.      

In the end, the people who suffer most from a self-focused life are those who are closest to you; the ones that God has sovereignly given you so that you can give of yourself.  When you don’t,  there’s a huge vacuum in their lives that God meant you to fill for the purpose of showing them just how much He loves them.

Wisdom from the prophet Jay-Z

I watched some of the Grammys and they had some pretty good collaborations.  My personal favorite was Coldplay and Jay-Z (with BB King, John Maher, Keith Urban, and Buddy Guy doing a Bo Diddley tribute coming in a close second).  Check out the video.

I’m a big Coldplay fan but I thought Jay-Z’s part was outstanding.  I heard most of the lyrics, but because I’m extremely white bread I had to look the rest up.  Here they are (warning: it contains objectionable language):

Aha, I gotcha, uh…
With the same sword they knight you, they gon’ good night you with
S—, that’s only half if they like you
That ain’t even the half what they might do
Don’t believe me, ask Michael
See Martin, see Malcolm
See Biggie, see Pac, see success and its outcome
See Jesus, see Judas
See Caesar, see Brutus, see success is like suicide
Suicide, it’s a suicide
If you succeed, prepare to be crucified
Media meddles, n—— sue you, you settle
Every step you take, they remind you you’re ghetto
So it’s tough being Bobby Brown
To be Bobby then, you have to be Bobby now
And the question is, “Is to have had and lost
Better than not having at all?”

Basically, if you’re lucky and blessed enough to enjoy success, then you’re inevitably cursed to have people throw stones at you.  Tragic, profound, and artistically awesome.

My son’s favorite toys

My routine right now when I get home at around 5:20 is that I take all the stuff out of my pockets and start playing with my 3 year old son.  Michelle has been playing with him all day and by the time I get home, she’s tired and Will wants to do some more “physical” stuff.

So here’s his favorite things to play with when he plays with me:

A $15 big exercise ball that Will calls the “big ball”.  I swear we have found 59 different games to play with it, including me sitting on it, bouncing, and throwing Will onto our bed and then him jumping off the bed into my arms.  We started playing this game almost a year ago, and, at the time, this scared the poo out of his mother.

A $1 sword that we got at Goodwill.  He’s got another sword that we’ll swordfight with forever.

Our bed, which Will refers to as the “big bed” (ever notice how everything is big to a 3 year old).  It’s a king size that was here when we moved in and I think I’ve spent the equivalent of a week’s time playing with Will on that thing.  One game we’ve done a lot of is “tackling”.  Will stands on the bed and I go just outside our bedroom door.  I then say “down, set….” and we both get in a three point stance a la a defensive lineman, and then I say “hut hut” and run into the room, leap in the air, and cautiously tackle Will on the bed.  However, he always seems to say “I got you Daddy” as if he took me down.

We’ve actually found a way to combine the previous three toys (ball, sword, and bed) as I sit on the bed with the sword, pretend to be an evil character from a movie (like Jafar from Aladdin), and he throws the big ball at me and I pretend to get knocked silly.

The last toy is a dryer sheet.  A dryer sheet?  What, you may be asking, could you play with a dryer sheet.  Well, a few months ago, somehow we started this game of laying flat on our backs, putting the dryer sheet over our faces, and letting out a sudden burst of air, which sends it a few feet in the air and then gently floats back down.  Will thinks this is one of the most hilarious things ever.

I love that what makes Will happiest is to interact with his Mom and Dad. 

By the way,Will’s least favorite toys: a Power Wheels and an educational game system he got from his grandparents for his birthday.

How does anyone become a Christian? (Feb. 2nd edition)

My response would’ve been less Christian than the manager’s.

No tip for you

The Prodigal God

I just finished reading The Prodigal God by Timothy Keller, pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City.  Keller’s kind of a Yoda/Obi-wan for the relevant Reformed and I had heard lots of good stuff about him from my Reformed kin. 

 

I’ll say this about the book: if Keller is representative of Reformed theology, then I’m tempted to be Reformed with a seat belt.  The book focuses on the parable of the prodigal son, unpacks its contextual meanings, helps the reader understand the hearts and minds of the characters in the story, and then applies that to our own context today.  It’s obvious that Keller has wrestled with this passage for years and years and has come to deeply love it.

 

The main point of the book is that while only one brother left home, both were lost.  However, it might be more dangerous for the older brother since he has no understanding of his own need for repentance.

 

Keller also outlines that the two brothers represent the ways in which we seek fulfillment and meaning.  One group seeks it through self-discovery, while the other seeks it through moralism and self-righteousness.

 

Here’s some of my favorite excerpts:

 

“Jesus’ teaching consistently attracted the irreligious while offending the Bible-believing, religious people of his day.  However, in the main, our churches today don not have this effect.  The kind of outsiders Jesus attracted are not attracted to contemporary churches, even our most avant-garde one.  We tend to draw conservative, buttoned-down, moralistic people.  The licentious and liberated or the broken and marginal avoid church.  That can only mean one thing.  If the preaching of our ministers and the practice of our parishioners do not have the same effect on people that Jesus had, then we must not be declaring the same message that Jesus did.  If our churches aren’t appealing to younger brothers, they must be more full of elder brothers than we’d like to think.” (pp. 15-16)

 

“Elder brothers base their self-images on being hardworking, or moral, or members of an elite clan, or extremely smart and savvy.  This inevitably leads to feeling superior to those who don’t have those same qualities.  In fact, competitive comparison is the main way elder brothers achieve a sense of their own significance.” (pg. 53)

 

“To truly become Christians we must also repent of the reasons we ever did anything right.  Pharisees only repent of their sins, but Christians repent for the very roots of their righteousness, too.  We must learn how to repent of the sin under all our other sins and under all our righteousness – the sin of seeking to be our own Savior and Lord. We must admit that we’ve put our ultimate hope and trust in things other than God, and that in both our wrongdoing and right doing we have been seeking to get around God or get control of God in order to get hold of those things.” (pg.78)

 

“We habitually and instinctively look to other things besides God and his grace as our justification, hope, significance, and security.  We believe the gospel at one lever, but at deeper levels we do not.  Human approval, professional success, power and influence, family and clan identity – all of these things serve as our heart’s ‘functional trust’ rather than what Christ has done, and as a result we continue to be driven to a great degree by fear, anger, and a lack of self-control.” (pg. 115)

 

The book was an incredible challenge and encouragement to my own heart.  I have always identified well with the older brother.  So much so that I can remember reading or hearing the story and literally getting angry because the younger brother was accepted back with seemingly no discipline and that the older brother was made out to be the villain.  That just didn’t seem fair to me.

 

I was very much challenged to begin to understand the depth of my own self-righteousness and how jacked up that can make me.  I very much recommend the book and am trying to get my hands on some other stuff from Keller.

Seven Things About Me…tagged by Adam Jones

I definitely don’t do this much, but felt like jumping in on this one.  Here’s the deal: you share 7 things about yourself then tag 7 of your friends to share 7 things.  I was tagged by a friend from college, Adam Jones.

1. I know way too much about pop culture.  I really don’t know why I care about who Scarlett Johannson is with (Ryan Reynolds), or what drug Amy Winehouse was caught partaking in (name it, she’s doing it), or what upcoming movies Will Smith is working on (I Am Legend prequel), but I do.

2. I am a church “junkie”.  I am extremely interested in what’s going on in the church world: trends, rising personalities, strategies, etc.  More than anything, I’m passionate about the church working and functioning as Christ intended.

3. The less important the information, the better I remember it.  I used to be able to tell you the last 30 Heisman Trophy winners, but pretty much can’t remember anything from my New Testament Greek class.

4. I cuss.  I had a pretty awful mouth up until middle school when I accepted Christ.  I basically stopped after that until a couple of years ago.  Now I only do it occasionally and only when I get pissed (a bad call against UNC or the Panthers or a stupid driver) or when it’s appopriately funny.

5. I love being a husband and dad.  I think I love this more than I used to, becuase I’m learning more and more that there is real joy in serving my wife and my son.  I guess Jesus knew what He was saying when He said that it’s better to serve.  Imagine that.

6. I secretly wish I were an actor.  This might help explain #1.  I’ve dabble in it before with middle and high school plays, but the biggest gig I ever had was playing Curly in my college’s presentation of “Oklahoma”.  I really loved it.  I’m not sure how good I could be, but there’s something about the challenge of playing someone that’s not me that really intrigues me.

7. I am a selective perfectionist.  I don’t keep my room and car spotless, but I will go out of my way to keep things in sequential order, even when it makes no real difference.  It can also take me abnormally long to create something, just so it will be just right.  For instance, it took me the better part of an hour to write this. 

Here’s who I’m tagging:

1. My sister, Marian.  She’s one of the most intelligent people I know and her posts are always entertaining.

2. Wade Rogers.  Wade’s a pastor here in SC.  We combined to create perhaps the worst church planting proposal in Church Planters’ Assessment Center history. 

3. Scott Uselman.  Another pastor in SC who saw the light and moved to the South from Indiana.

4. Steve Stanley.  He’s pretty much always the smartest guy in the room and has a heart for people that I envy.

5. My Dad.  No one mortal has shaped who I am more than Him.  That’s a good thing.

6. Phillip Modlin.  Phillip’s a college friend who is humorously and admirably honest.

7. Josh LeRoy.  Josh is probably the funniest dude I know

Preaching the Gospel….to yourself

One of the things my counselor asked me to do was to read a book called A Gospel Primer  by Milton Vincent.  To summarize the book, Vincent basically says that the Gospel is not just good news for those who don’t know Christ, but also for those who do, and that every believer still needs to be reminded of it’s truth and impact.  

The message of the Gospel runs contrary to the message of the world, and if we don’t preach the Gospel to ourselves on a daily basis, then we will begin to believe the world’s message more than the Gospel’s.  The Gospel says that we’ve rebelled against a loving, but holy God and that we can’t reposition ourselves to be in right relationship with Him.  We must depend on Christ and His sacrifiice for that.  The world says that if we just try harder, then it will all work out (American Idol auditions blow this mindset completely apart).

A big part of the problem I was having was that I was beginning to see what a horribly fallen person I was, but instead of resting in Christ’s righteousness, I just felt like I couldn’t be good enough to have intimacy with God, so I didn’t even try.

Once I began to preach the Gospel to myself, I began to slowly believe that it was indeed true.  Now, for the majority of my adult life, I would’ve said that the Gosepel is true and that I believed in it.  However, what I’ve come to understand is that, to quote Donald Miller in Blue Like Jazz, “What we believe is not what we say we believe; what we believe is what we do.”  If you say you believe in the Gospel, but you’re pretty much still relying on your own goodness, then do you really believe it?

Now this is still a struggle.  The world’s message of “earn it” is still very much alive in my heart, but the more I preach the Gospel to myself, the more the Holy Spirit takes that thought “captive”.

Ever wondered who those “DTV” commercials are for?

Seriously, who still does the antenna and rabbit ears thing?  I mean, if you’ve got indoor plumbing, are under the age of 75, and don’t think that ATM cards are a mark of the beast, then you’ve got sattelite or cable, right? 

Actually, those commercials are for me. 

We moved about a year ago and we just haven’t had the money to pay for sattelite or cable.  When they started running those commercials about the “Digital TV transition” months and months ago, I still didn’t think they were for me because, of course, we would have satellite or cable by then.  I mean, college basketball season was coming up and the majority of UNC’s games are on ESPN.

Well, when it comes right down to it, cable TV ends up being pretty low on the priority list.  Fortunately, my Dad had an extra converter so we hooked that up this week.

So here I am watching the AFC championship game with a pretty decent picture and I’m excited about being able to have a channel guide that looks like it would’ve been cutting edge in 1993.  Sweet!

Pride (In the name of me): Part 1

So as I started going to see a counselor some common themes began to appear.  One of them was how focused on vocational ministry I was.  I felt called to ministry during college and pursued a Christian Ministries degree and then went on to seminary a couple of years later.  I’ve worked in a few churches and had most recently been the Senior Pastor of a church near Asheville, NC.

I won’t go into all the details but I attempted to make some pretty significant changes at that church so that it could be more effective and outward-focused.  Things started going bad and it pretty much blew up in my face.  Basically I was left with no choice but to resign a year ago and we left in February.  It was incredibly messy and sad and I’d like to say I responded to the outcome with maturity and grace, but, in actuality, I became pretty bitter and angry. 

Ever since then we’ve really been struggling to figure out what to do next.  Michelle and I are both passionate about ministry and have experience in it, but we felt like we were misfits in the church culture in which we found ourselves in.  Around May and June we were invited by some friends to be a part of a church restart near Kansas City.  We flew out there for a week and looked it over.  I was very much ready to pack up everything, move halfway across the country, look for a job, and basically start over.  Michelle…not so much.

After some hard conversations we decided to not make the move and just sit in God’s waiting room until we knew what to do.  I started working in the mortgage division of a bank and that’s when I pretty much started getting depressed.

So here’s the deal: after a few sessions of seeing the counselor, what I began to understand was that I was a pretty serious idolater, that is, I was putting something in the place that only God should be.  My idol?  Not my wife; not my son; definitely not my job.  My idol was ministry.  To be more specific, my idol was people’s perception of my success in ministry.  Pretty sad.

Want to find out what your idol is?  Figure out what you would react the strongest against if something was taken away or messed with.  Perhaps one of the reasons I was showing so many unhealthy emotions (anger, depression, etc.) was because my idol had been messed with.  Actually, it hadn’t just been messed with; 4 tons of C4 explosives had been strapped to it and ignited.  After what happened at the church a year ago, how could I even pretend that I had been successful?

I had to come face to face with the fact that what had started out as pursuing a God-inspired vision at that church had been twisted into a self-promoting crusade.  Chalk one up for pride.

What I once saw as God not protecting us or as people just being carnal and giving us the boot, I now see as God’s mercy.  What if things had gone well and the church grew and people saw me as successful?  Can you imagine the kind of monster I would’ve been creating?

I now thank God that it blew up, because if it hadn’t I wouldn’t have dealt with the pride in my own heart until, perhaps, much later.  And who knows what I would’ve sacrificed at the altar of that idol by that point?  That’s the thing about idols.  They require and demand so much.

I think God knew what He was doing when he made the first commandment: “Don’t any gods before me.”  Gods (little g) demand so much to the point that they can become all-consuming and we (or those around us) have to pay dearly.  It’s the same with God, except we don’t Him anything.  His demands have already been met in the person and work of Christ. 

The more I rest in that, the more the idol loses its luster.