surrender.

One of Satan’s most brilliant lies is that if you surrender something to God, you’ll receive something less beautiful in return.

If you empty your hands, God will place something less amazing in them.

You’ll surrender gold and, in return, receive dirt.

This is one of the lies of pornography: That when you let go of that secret it will be replaced with humdrum, boring, vanilla, sex with your spouse.

This is the lie of chasing your dream: That when you let go of your plans and trust God’s, he will call you into a mission that you will hate.

This is the lie of holding on to hurts. That when you let go of your wounds, they’ll be reopened, not healed and redeemed.

Adam and Eve believed this lie when they traded Eden for an apple. Letting go of the things we think are wonderful will force us to receive the mundane, the boring, the safe, from a God who always trades down with us, never up.

The rich young ruler who was afraid to give up his riches believed this when he walked away from Christ crestfallen. He had too much good to trade in for so much average from Christ.

But it’s a lie.

It’s a perfect lie.

What father would give us a snake when we asked for a fish?

What father would throw a party when punishment was due?

What father would leave the flock to find the single lost sheep?

When you start to grasp this, a second lie will come and it will tell you, “I shouldn’t come to God just because I’m expecting good things from him.”

He’s no cosmic ATM, I agree. But the danger of this lie is that it quickly morphs into a joyless experience with God. Did the woman at the well say, “No thank you. I don’t want this living water you speak of. I don’t want to come to you just because I’m expecting good things”? Did the cripple who danced away healed say, “Leave me lame. I don’t want to come to you just because I’m expecting good things”? Did anyone in the Bible refuse a gift from the gracious father because they wanted to make sure their motives were pure before they accepted it?

No. They came with open hands and expectant hearts. They knew that the gift of his presence, the gift of his grace, would ultimately overwhelm anything and everything they let go of.

Surrender is not a pretty word, in part because we think it means letting go of something amazing in exchange for something average. But we’re wrong. It’s a lie.

Surrender is not the end of a beautiful life. It is the beginning.

questions.

I'm in a season of life where I am questioning everything.  I am a very "black and white" person and there aren't many grey areas, if any at all with me.  I try and reason out everything and want every situation to somehow all make sense.


I'm quickly learning, once again, that life doesn't work that way.  There will always be doubts and questions.  It's all in how we handle it...


When doubt, questions and worry consume my mind, I am reminded of one of my favorite scriptures..


"Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God." -Phil. 4:6


In all of my worry and stress, I usually forget to even ask God what to do!!  How hypocritical of me, huh?  Deep down I know that God has everything under control and He's just letting me try and figure it out.  Then when I finally realize I can't, He is right there beside me to show me how to handle it.   It is then that the peace of God fills my heart and I know everything is alright.


It's alright to ask questions...in fact, I believe God want's us to ask questions.  It allows us to converse with Him and it let's Him prove His sovereignty.  Just don't let your questions and doubts consume you.  Read John 16:33 for that one.  :)


Oh yeah...one more thing.  Did you see the part in the verse that said "with thanksgiving?"  Yeah...I usually overlook that too.  In this season of celebrating all that we have to be thankful for, don't forget to thank God for prayer.  It's a beautiful way that we can have a conversation with a God that we can't see, but we can sure feel Him!  


Happy Thanksgiving y'all!  

enough.

Ever wonder what is enough?

I often find myself asking that question in so many avenues of life.  

Is my best enough?

When will I have enough?

Do I have enough money?

Do I have enough friends?

Is my job enough?

Is my relationship with Christ enough?

Our human nature longs for satisfaction.  In every area of our lives, we long to be fulfilled by someone or something.  It may be a relationship, spouse, boyfriend/girlfriend.  It may be an addiction, shopping, alcohol, drugs.  We are born with an innate desire to love and to be loved, to satisfy and to be satisfied, to give and receive acceptance.  Some folks search their whole lives for acceptance from people and yet nothing quite satisfies that void inside of us to have enough.  

The answer to my first question is a resounding NO!  Nothing will ever be enough!  We can do whatever, whenever and however in this world to find that acceptance, love and satisfaction, but we will come up empty every time...

...but God.  

That's a beautiful phrase, isn't it?  For as much as you search, nothing will fill the void that Christ does!  Did it ever occur to you that the reason we have such a longing for something greater than ourselves is because we were made in the image of Christ Himself?  He created us with that desire because He knew He would have to come to earth, as a human and reconcile all of humanity with Jesus!  What a beautiful picture of His love for us that He would lay down His life just so we could have Him in our hearts to fill that desire for enough!

It's ok if you never feel like you are enough, like you never have enough, like you'll never be enough.  In all honesty...you won't!  That's where Jesus comes in and fills that void to make you enough...in HIM!

Be encouraged...He is ENOUGH for everything we could ever need!

past.

You know the old saying, "the past is past?"  How many times have we heard, whether through a sermon, the advice of a friend or a song to forget about your past.  It's something that is behind you and doesn't control your future.  I think about this a lot. 

My thoughts came full circle the other day when a friend asked me, “Are you ever worried that your past will catch up with you?”

I think that’s a pretty common thing Christians struggle with. The reason is that when you start to live out your faith, the voices of doubt get pretty loud and aggressive.

“Who are you to tell people about Christ?”

“If the people who used to know you and know what you’ve done could see you now, they’d call you a hypocrite.”

“Eventually, you’ll be found out and exposed as the fraud you really are.”

And rather you’ve written a blog about faith or just tried to do things differently than perhaps you’ve always done them, it’s easy for the specter of the past to haunt the present. There’s a section in Isaiah, though, that is making it hard for me to do that lately.

It’s Isaiah 43:18-19 and here’s what it says:

18 “Forget the former things;

do not dwell on the past.

19 See, I am doing a new thing!

Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?

I am making a way in the wilderness

and streams in the wasteland.

I love those verses because there is so much hope hidden in them. Let’s break them down for a second:

“Forget the former things;”

That’s a command, not a “maybe you should think about doing this.” I often feel guilty for not remembering my past, as if perhaps I should, but here we’re told the opposite. And it doesn’t say, “Learn from them, wrestle with them, figure out a valuable lesson you can take from them.” It says “forget” them.

“do not dwell on the past.”

God knows what we’ll be tempted to do. In this case, it’s obvious: We’re going to struggle with dwelling on the past. With making our home in the past, with defining ourselves by our past. God knows we’ll struggle with that and pleads, “do not dwell on the past.”

“See, I am doing a new thing!”

Don’t you want to hug the Bible when it ends a sentence with an exclamation? This is not something casual or ordinary. This is a new thing! Hope is loud and bright and colorful!

“Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?”

This is my favorite part, because in this we’re told God’s ability to spring it up and change our lives will not be dependent on our ability to perceive it. There are so many days where I don’t see or feel the new thing he is doing in my life, but that matters not. He is doing it nonetheless, regardless if I do not perceive it.

“I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.”

I don’t care how wild your past was. I don’t care about how wasted the wasteland of your life was. Those are the very places God loves to redeem. Those are the very places he puts a way through. Those are the very places he puts a stream.

Sometimes, my past feels big and inescapable. It looms large in my head and my heart, a tattoo that will not fade, a defining moment that cannot be forgotten. But the truth is, the past is not my home. The person in that photo from years ago no longer exists. God is doing a new thing. In me, in you, in us. The old has gone, the new has come!

grace.

Sometimes, hope hurts.

It shouldn’t. The phrase, “hope hurts” should be an oxymoron like “Lil Wayne gospel album.” But I promise you, it’s not.

Sometimes when you’re so deep in a season of hurt, you get used to the bad. You start to think you deserve it. You start to expect it and get comfortable with it and get numb to it. And like a creature that lives so far down on the bottom of the sea, you adapt to it. You cobble together little survival mechanisms that help you get through. You get by.

But hope is tenacious …

Even in the darkest of my days, a fragment of hope was still there.

There was a problem though, there was a painful obstacle between me and hope. You see, I was so far down the path of hopelessness, I was so lost and selfish and bent on destruction that I found myself in a terrible lose-lose situation. For example: If people were kind to me, I felt scared because I believed the lie that if they really knew me they wouldn’t be kind to me and would be horrified at who I really am. If people were mean to me, I felt hurt because they had been mean to me. Any way I turned simply resulted in more fear and more hurt.

And that is one of sin’s goals. Not simply to remove the good from your life, but to have it actually serve as a weapon of mass destruction.

Have you ever felt that way?

Have you ever felt completely unworthy when someone offers you love?

Have you ever been ashamed of the lies you’re living when someone offers you truth?

Have you ever felt undeserving of something good, because deep down, you believed that person wouldn’t really love you if they knew who you were?

It’s very possible that I’m the only one, and that’s OK. But I do need to tell you about the 9 words in the Bible that changed the way hope felt for me. And they’re 9 words you probably missed last weekend during Easter just like I did for so many years. Which is why I remixed this post.

I’m a big fan of “edge verses.” I’m a big fan of looking on the periphery of a scene in the Bible and seeing all the deep truth that often gets hidden amidst a major scene. And in Luke 22 that certainly happens.

Jesus is on the threshold of getting crucified. He has the last supper with his disciples. He is sharing his thoughts on the father and the concept of serving and ruling. There is a sense of great importance heavy in the air. In the middle of that, he has a short conversation with Simon about how he is going to betray him.

It’s going to happen. Jesus knows this, but he wishes it wasn’t. He says to Simon in Luke 22:31-32:

“Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift you as wheat. But I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail.”

And then, in 9 words, he explains a big part of the reason I thought a mess-up like me ever had a chance at being a Christian.

Jesus tells Simon:

“And when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers.”

That’s it, those are 9 really simple words, but they demand a second look.

Do you see what Jesus is saying in that first half of the sentence, “And when you have turned back?” He’s saying:

And when you fail.

And when you sin.

And when you blow it and sell me out like a common thief.

And when you literally and physically turn your back on me.

And when you ruin it all.

When you turn back.

That concept is part of why our God is so different than everything we expect. We can turn back. There’s a return. There’s a comeback. There’s a loss and a brokenness and a state of falling, but you can turn back. That door is open. When I read the phrase “And when you have turned back,” I read a loud, wild picture of what grace really looks like.

Then you get to the part that is so easy to miss, the comma. Thank God for the comma, because that’s not how I would have written that sentence.

Mine would have looked more like:

“And when you have turned back, repent for three years before you try to get within a mile of my holiness.”

“And when you have turned back, don’t think for a second you’re qualified to tell other people about me.”

“And when you have turned back, here’s a long list of works you’ll need to do in order to clean yourself of the mistakes you’ve made and the consequences you’ve earned.”

But Christ doesn’t do that! He throws in a comma. He continues the sentence and simply says, “strengthen your brothers.”

Six years ago I ruined my life, but you know what?

God gave me the gift of the comma.

I have turned back. Not once, not twice, but a million times. And now it’s time to strengthen my brothers.

I don’t know what Easter was like for you last weekend, but I hope you didn’t miss the comma because God wants to give it to you. He wants to give you grace. He wants you to know that when you have turned back, you can still strengthen your brothers.

It’s time to accept the comma of grace.

identity.

As long as I can remember I have wanted facial hair.  When I was a little kid, I would beg my dad to let me shave with him because he always told me, "the more you shave, the thicker your hair will grow and you'll be a REAL man!"  I thought that because I had facial hair, I would be a "REAL" man.  There started the problem...

The problem is that we all start off with an identity. It’s who we are and who God made us to be. Then we have some small degree of success and we add that to our identity. That success becomes our identity. So now, when we try something new, we’re not just afraid to fail, we’re afraid to lose our identity. That’s what’s terrifying. That’s why people are afraid to take risks or try new things. It’s not just failure at stake, we think we’re going to lose our identity and that’s overwhelming.

That mentality is easy to see in a city like Nashville. I have musician friends who released successful first albums and are now afraid to release a second album. Because if success is their identity, if they fail, they’ve lost their entire identity. But I don’t think that’s just something artists struggle with. The truth is, I think on some level must of us wrestle with the temptation to let other things become our identity.

You see this in parents who turn the performance of their kids into their identity. Sometimes parents get crazy with pushing kids in sports or school because more than a soccer goal or a spelling test is at stake. Their identity is up for grabs.

You see this in dating relationships. Sometimes we’re desperate for them not to end for the wrong reasons. With popular song lyrics telling us, “What am I supposed to do, when the best part of me was always you?” it’s so easy to think, “If I lose this boyfriend, I’ll lose my whole identity.”

You see this at work, when someone scraps and fights for a surprisingly small amount of power and politics inside a cubicle. It’s not a bonus at stake or a plaque or a recognition, it’s their identity they’re fighting for.

Over and over again, whether you’re writing a new blog, or dating a new girl or applying for a new job, it’s so easy to fall into the trap of “identity addition.”

But that debate is over. You’re identity has been decided. How you perform in a new opportunity will not finalize that.

You are a son or daughter of Christ.

You are an heir to the throne.

No success or failure should become your identity.

No rise or fall can determine who you are.

And though that feels simple and sometimes even impossible to believe, that is what I remind myself of every day. We are God’s children.

And you and I can rest in the truth of that and be bold in the risks we take and the hope we have. Because our identity is not at stake.

joy.

Sometimes I like to think I’ve got faith figured out. I feel like I’ve learned a few things, had a dramatic return to Christ after years of wandering, read some books, and can clap my hands together and say “done and done.” But these last few months have been a weird time of God exposing to me how broken my understanding of his love is. How twisted and how false my beliefs are. And recently he showed me that with a dead bird, a homecoming and a single letter.

As I’ve mentioned 92 times, I’m reading through the Bible with some friends right now. I’ve joked a few times that the book of Leviticus is the “one year plan killer.” It’s the book that has often knocked my out of the running for actually reading through the Bible in a year. It’s full of mold regulations and verses that tell you how to determine what hair color means in the middle of a sore and oh man, I stop reading. That was the attitude I took with me as I marched into the L.

But because the Bible isn’t a book, but the Word of God, every line, every verse has the potential to blow you away. And Leviticus 14 did. Is it dramatic? Is it earthshaking? Not at first glance. The verses that caught me are about, you guessed it, mold regulations.

Here is what verses 49-53 say:

“To purify the house, he (a priest) is to take two birds and some cedar wood, scarlet yarn and hyssop. He shall kill one of the birds over fresh water in a clay pot. Then he is to take the cedar wood, the hyssop, the scarlet yarn and the live bird, dip them into the blood of the dead bird and the fresh water, and sprinkle the house seven times. He shall purify the house with the bird’s blood, the fresh water, the live bird the cedar wood, the hyssop and the scarlet yarn. Then he is to release the live bird in the open fields outside the town. In this way he will make atonement for the house, and it will be clean.”

I’ve read those verses a number of times before but this time, something hit me, a question I couldn’t shake:

“Do you think the bird who was freed, the live bird who represented being forgiven, walked when it was released in the fields or did it soar?”

The other bird paid the price. Freedom was bought at a cost. Atonement was paid with a life. Knowing that, seeing that, do you think the second bird refused to fly when it was released? Do you think it quietly tucked its wings and scurried about the ground?

Of course not. Having escaped death, having escaped that moment, it probably could not fly high enough or fast enough into the sky. It jumped loudly into the freedom of forgiveness.

I don’t. I don’t celebrate God’s mercy or grace that way. I am like the prodigal son, returning home to be a hired hand. I act like forgiveness is something to be earned, not celebrated. I am not an heir to the throne, I am a hired hand to the throne. But, I am wrong.

That’s why I continue to come back to the story of the prodigal son in Luke 15. When he returns to the farm and finds himself in the father’s embrace, there is only one sentence of his plan that the father will not let him say: “Make me like one of your hired men.”

I don’t think he was allowed to say it because it couldn’t be true. He was his son, that was his identity, not his employee.

I mess grace up so often and have confused it in my head for so many years. I finally just confessed to God, “You know how I think. You know how I’ve trained myself to believe for years and years. I can’t rewire myself. I can’t sanctify me. Only you can. I need you to transform the way I look at grace.” And the prayer that came from that confession and the hope I have for you and me is simple:

“Help me live in the joy of forgiveness, not the job of forgiveness.”

Those two words might feel similar, joy and job are only a single letter apart, but they are worlds away from each other. I pray we will be that bird who does not run, but instead flies. Who looks at what Christ did for us on the cross. The sacrifice, the mercy, the grace and that we will not try to earn it when we return to the farm, but will instead accept it. Fly in it. Celebrate it. And know the joy of forgiveness.