A Choice: Making the world more like Heaven

Have you ever been having a really bad day – maybe work is stressing you out or you just lost a loved one or perhaps you just forgot to grab your cup of coffee on the way out the door – and then somebody seems to go out of their way to make it even worse? It could be a random person in line at Starbucks who bumps into you, spills your coffee, then looks at you like you are inconveniencing them. It could be a person in traffic who saw the “Lane Closing” signs for the last 3 miles but decided to wait until the last possible second to merge, cutting you off and forcing you off onto the shoulder, effectively causing heart palpitations and a near anxiety attack. It could be a rude customer berating you for not breaking a company policy for them. Or, it could be something less trivial, something much worse. Maybe a friend betrayed your trust. Maybe your partner told you things just aren’t working out. Maybe your drug-addicted family member snuck into your purse and stole cash you worked hard for in order to fund their destructive habit.

Life can be full of these moments. If we’re honest, most of us have some kind of interaction every single day that can leave us feeling like the world is out to get us, like people don’t care about us. Most days confront us with multiple opportunities to feel worthless.

Here’s what’s more interesting. If you look back through that list at the top, you’ll probably realize you’ve been on both sides of those situations. You’ve been the victim at times, but you’ve also been the perpetrator at times. Sometimes its you who are the rude customer. Sometimes it’s you who are the inconsiderate driver. You may not have left your partner, but you’ve surely had days where you haven’t treated them quite right. Maybe you’ve even had your days in the past where you’ve done less than admirable things to support bad habits in your life. We’ve all found ourselves on the giving end and on the receiving end somewhere along the spectrum of malevolence.

Why is that interesting?

That is interesting because it confronts us with the reality that we don’t live in a self-centered vacuum. All of life’s events don’t center around us. In our minds they do, because they’re our minds. But every interaction we have ripples outwardly to the people around us. When you stop to think about how moments that probably meant nothing to the other person actually made your day worse, you start to realize how much your seemingly innocuous little moments may actually be impacting the people around you as well – for better or worse.

Going a bit further, it’s interesting because it presents us with the reality that every single day, in every single interaction, we have the opportunity to make somebody else’s life look a little more like Heaven or a little more like Hell. We can bring peace into situations that may look bleak, and we can share joy with those who are excited about life. We can exhibit patience and self-control when the more natural response may be much more volatile. We can show good will toward people around us when the inclination may be doubt. We can choose to be loving. Or, we can choose something else. We can bring discord and sorrow. We can let irritation and impatience get the best of us, lashing out to those around us because of the turmoil going on inside of us. We can belittle people and treat them mockingly. We can choose to be self-centered, which, if you didn’t know, is the opposite of love.

We live in a world that is filled with brokenness. To see this, you probably don’t need to go any further than your own family, maybe your own household. In our interactions with the world around us, we should be focused on healing that brokenness, not adding to it. Many of the people we scuttle past in our comings and goings have some kind of Hell pressing in on their lives. You know it’s true because you probably do too. If you don’t now, you have before. We have the opportunity to introduce a little piece of Heaven into their day. Maybe it’s just a smile, maybe it’s just holding back and letting that person merge, maybe it’s just a good old, Midwestern, “Ope! Sorry about that!” instead of a scowl when you bump into somebody in Starbucks. Maybe it’s taking a few extra minutes to have a chat with the person you met in line. Maybe it’s praying with them. Maybe it’s talking through why you believe the way you do instead of dogmatically asserting that the person you’re talking to (or talking at) should believe that way too.

Making somebody’s life look a little more like Heaven can look all kinds of different ways. To make it somewhat practical, look at any interaction you have and apply the litmus test of Galatians 5:22-23 (I use the HCSB version here) to it. “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faith, gentleness, self-control. Against such things there is no law.” Did the interaction exhibit any of those characteristics? Or, maybe it’s easier to recognize if the interaction exhibited the opposite of any of those characteristics. Either way, that will help you see to which end you shifted their day – toward Heaven, or not.

We have more power than we realize in moments that seem completely unpowerful. The line at the store, the time-killing conversation, driving in traffic. We also have the ability to turn some of those moments into bigger moments – inviting the co-worker out to coffee, for instance, turns a water-cooler chat into something more. And in each of these instances we have the opportunity to leverage the moment for good or for ill in that person’s life. Let’s look for ways to leverage the moment for the good.

Love Your Enemies

I’m going to be honest for a moment and disclose a little secret about myself: I have a tendency to allow myself to be drawn into debates, especially on social media.

Okay, if you know me well, maybe this isn’t much of a secret.

When I see somebody say something that I fundamentally disagree with, or even that I don’t disagree with but I think the way it was said was wrong or the reason the person chose for supporting it was terrible, I have a hard time holding myself back from engaging with that person! I’ve gotten better over time, but I’m still drawn to it!

Because of this proclivity to confrontation and debate, I’ve encountered a wide range of people and a wide range of reactions. Some people are inclined to enter into a well thought out exchange of ideas. Others just say, “You’re full of ****,” and move on with their day (their words, not mine).

What I’ve noticed more recently, however, is that less and less people are willing to actually dialogue, and more and more people instantly ostracize others based on their difference in ideology. They immediately see the other side as an enemy. And they see the enemy as somebody to be silenced, to be made a fool of, or (in more extreme cases) to be eradicated. (Yes – I’ve seen actual statements made about wiping people out because of their views on certain political issues. Pretty awesome, right?)

This volatility has challenged me to take inventory of how I’m engaging with people when I enter into dialogue with them. But it’s also made a certain excerpt from scripture pop into my head on multiple occasions:

“You have heard that it was said, Love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. For He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. For if you love those who love you, what reward will you have? Don’t even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing out of the ordinary? Don’t even the Gentiles do the same? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” (Matthew 5:43-48 HCSB)

Now, let me be clear — I don’t think this scripture was originally talking about social media quarrels as persecution. I do, however, think it had sociological, political, and nationality differences in mind. Ancient Jewish culture was a very exclusive culture. That’s why anybody outside of that culture automatically bares the title “Gentile.” This scripture challenges it’s hearers to view outsiders, those people who are not considered their neighbors, those people who have different views, different nationalities, and different ideologies as people they are still required to love. Jesus didn’t just challenge the Jews to tolerate them. He didn’t say, “Let them be around, but shame them a little bit for their ignorance.” He said to love them. He said to pray for those who persecute you.

Wow. Where does that fit in our current culture? Just about everything right now is viewed through the lens of persecutor and persecuted. God says to pray for those who persecute you. It turns out that this ancient text is just as relevant and counter-cultural today as it was 2000 years ago. Interesting.

I want to throw a disclaimer out that I don’t think this means we should admit persecution. I don’t think it means that we should shy away from public debate (although, I do question whether or not Facebook debates ever actually do anything – something I have to yell at myself for, often!). I do think that some social ideas are wrong, and that some are right, and that conversation around those ideas are the way to bring resolution and clarification and hopefully progress. But the only way those conversations work is if there is a mutual respect and an admission that you are talking with another person who genuinely believes what they’re talking about and thinks it’s the best way to move forward. Even if you think the person across the table (or the computer screen) from you is completely delusional and has no idea how the world really works, there’s no excuse to dehumanize them and treat them with contempt. It may not be worth having a conversation with them, but that doesn’t mean they’re not worth your love or worth being treated as a human being.

If you are a Christian, here’s what this means: You are called by God to love people, whether they believe like you or not. You are called to love Christians and atheists and Muslims and agnostics and Satanists and everything in between. You are called to love capitalists and socialists and fascists and anarchists. You are called to love heterosexuals and homosexuals and transsexuals. You are called to love pro-lifers and pro-choicers.  You don’t have to agree with them. You don’t have to buy in to their arguments or their social ideals. But you do have to recognize that they are beloved children of God, and the redeeming work of Christ on the cross is just as much for them as it is for you.

I can tell you from experience that it isn’t always (or even generally) worth engaging in conversation with some of the people who have different beliefs than you. But it is absolutely necessary to recognize their worth in the eyes of God, to pray for them, and treat them with love.

 

A Starbucks Conversation: Good News, Or Not?

The other day, as I sat at Starbucks, a guy across from me saw a girl in line that he worked with. They began talking, as people do, and pretty soon I started hearing some scripture being referenced. Starbucks is like the Christian bar, so that didn’t really surprise me and I didn’t really tune in to the conversation. But soon enough, I heard the guy’s voice elevate slightly, his tone get a slightly more intense, and the girl wasn’t saying anything. His intensity got my attention.

What I heard was him asking what she would do if she stood face to face with the God of the universe today. If she were being judged before a God who demands perfection, she would not be found perfect. “Your mouth would be shut,” he told her, “and you would be standing before God, under his wrath.” He mentioned multiple times that she may not make it to work today, she may not make it home, she could die any second and come face to face with a wrathful God. Then he asked if she would repent and accept righteousness in Jesus so that the wrath of God may be appeased.

She was very uncomfortable. She tried to get out of the conversation, to which he replied, “You just waited for your drink, now just wait a few more minutes while I share this with you. You never know if we’ll even make it to work today, so I want to share it now.”

At the end of the conversation, clearly perturbed, the girl said, “You just wasted minutes of my life,” and she walked away.

I think I’m still processing the conversation. I’m processing how he presented what is supposed to be Good News. I’m processing how dejected she felt afterwards. There’s a lot to process just in those two things.

The truth is, when I take apart everything the guy said, there is nothing technically wrong. What he shared is theologically correct. It’s orthodox Christianity. It’s scriptural truth. We are fallen creatures, deserving of the wrath of God, separated from Him by our sin. It is by Christ’s sacrifice on the cross that the penalty for our sin is paid and that we have right standing with God. We don’t know when we will die. Accidents happen all the time. And when we come to judgment, if we are not found in Christ, we have no hope for satisfying the perfect standard of God. If we are not found in Christ, we don’t have His atoning sacrifice to pardon us from the just punishment for our sin.

The Good News is that Jesus made such provision. The Good News is that He took the punishment we deserved so that we could come before God in right standing, rather than marred by our sin.

There’s nothing technically wrong with any of his statements. Honestly, I think his boldness is admirable. So why do I feel like the conversation was not a good one? Probably, in part, because the girl left feeling dejected – a feeling notably absent when sinners encountered Jesus. Also probably because the girl tried to get away, stayed against her will, and her role in the conversation was relegated to the silent listener. None of that feels good. My eight year old daughter doesn’t enjoy being held against her will and talked down to; adults don’t like it either. But, I’m jumping ahead.

Why did she feel dejected when she left the conversation? Well, to be honest, it could be because people don’t like to come face to face with the truth that they aren’t the supreme being in the universe. Autonomy is the philosophy of the West. “Live your truth” is the creed. When you’ve been strolling along in a world where you are the center, where your desires are the desires that matter, and the only offensive things are the things that offend you, it’s a little jarring to hear that maybe you’re actually subject to somebody or something else. To hear that there is a standard, an objective standard, that you will be held to whether you agree with it or not, and that you will certainly be found guilty of missing that standard, is a pretty tough pill to swallow. Add to it that the judge of that standard is an invisible guy in the sky, and to a modern Westerner it’s not just offensive, it’s absurd. No wonder she said the conversation was a waste of her time.

However, I don’t think her inability to break out of the autonomy of the West was the only issue at hand here. The thing that seemed noticeably absent in the conversation was her. Not only was she silent through most of it, not really given the place to speak aside from responding to, “Have you ever sinned? Have you ever told a lie?” but her thoughts, her questions, and her life situations were all absent from the conversation.

When Jesus interacted with people, He acknowledged the person. He spoke to their current life situation. He wasn’t just interested in them getting to Heaven. He didn’t just speak to them about when they stood before God in judgment. He was interested in the here and now. He didn’t say things like, “This world doesn’t matter. Eternity matters,” which was another thing the guy from Starbucks said, which I completely disagree with. Instead, Jesus acknowledged the adultery of the woman at the well and then revealed to her that He was the messiah; Jesus forgave the sins of the paralyzed man and then told him to get up and walk home; Jesus was amazed at the faith of a Gentile centurion and healed his servant; Jesus sought out the woman with the issue of blood who was an outcast and had committed a punishable act by coming in among the crowd while she was unclean, and he healed her. Jesus didn’t tell them about the wrath of God they were under, He acknowledged the Hell they were already in, He healed it, and He invited them to live in that kind of Heaven forever.

The Starbucks conversation was absent of any relevance to the girl’s life outside of the fact that she was destined for eternal punishment. There was nothing acknowledging the Hell she may be going through right now, nothing acknowledging how God wanted to change that for her and for all those around her, nothing acknowledging that God knew anything about her situation at all aside from that she wasn’t worthy to be near Him. Is that the Good News? Is that what Jesus modeled to us? I’m not so sure.

Was the conversation fruitful? I hope so. I hope that the truth of our fallen nature and the truth that Jesus paid the penalty for that somehow hits home for the girl. But I also think there was a big part of the conversation missing. When God made the world, He said it was good. Everything bad – the suffering, the pain, the poverty, the Hell that people live every day – is a result of people making the choice to serve themselves over making the choice to serve each other and serve God. God’s goal is to restore creation back to that goodness. His goal isn’t to condemn people to Hell. The reason Jesus came wasn’t just to get us into Heaven, it was to demonstrate how God wanted to interact with the world, to show what it looks like when a person lives how God wants them to live, to make earth look more like Heaven. Yes, Jesus paid the penalty we deserve for not living that way. He also demonstrated that God wants our lives and the lives of every single person around us to change. Salvation isn’t just about Heaven, it’s about redeeming all of creation and allowing God to use us to make it look like the Heaven he created it to be.

I wonder how the girl at Starbucks would have walked away if she had known that.

Am I Good Enough?

Have you ever looked at yourself and thought, “I should be better than this”?

I have. And, to be honest, I’m often right.

We know ourselves really well. We know where we fall short. We know when we are too busy to do the things that really matter, but then we look back at the day (or week, or month) and see how much time we actually spent doing things less important. We could have been playing with our kids, but we were clocking in from home to check e-mails or plan tomorrow’s meeting. We could have been reading something to grow ourselves, but we binge-watched Netflix instead. We could have had quiet time and rest, but instead we scrolled relentlessly through Facebook and Instagram every five minutes.

We know when we’ve handled situations wrong. We know when we’ve lost our cool with people where we should have been patient. We know when we let our loved ones down, even if we didn’t mean to. We know when we’re falling behind in our goals, even if everybody else thinks we’re doing amazing (even if we really are!). We know when we’ve made moral failures and we know the pain we’ve caused.

So, with all that inside knowledge of where we’re falling short, we can tend to be pretty unhappy with ourselves. And if we aren’t even pleased with ourselves, it can be pretty easy to wonder how God could be pleased with us.

If I’m not even good enough for myself, how could I ever be good enough for God?

Ephesians 2:4-5,8-9 says, “But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love that He had for us, made us alive with the Messiah even though we were dead in trespasses. You are saved by Grace! For you are saved by grace through faith, and this is not from yourselves; it is God’s gift — not from works, so that no one can boast.”

I love this because it teaches us two things.

First, it teaches that God loves us in the midst of our mistakes. The verse says that he made us alive even though we were dead in trespasses. That means that even though we were falling short, which brings darkness, chaos, drama, less-than-the-best — death — into our lives, He still loved us. If you are Christian, you believe that giving place to these death-bringing things in our lives actually alienates us from God, and they are actions punishable by God. While we deserved punishment, God instead gave us pardon. He did so in Christ. And He did so because of His love for us.

Second, the passage teaches that our question should not be, “Am I good enough?” but should be, “Is Christ good enough?” And the answer is, “Yes.” If it is by grace, as a result of God’s own love, not from any action that we’ve done that God has removed us from death and brought us to life, then any amount of failure, shortcoming, missing the mark, or death that we may find ourselves in does not disqualify us from His love. Our actions may deserve punishment, but Christ took that punishment on Himself so that we don’t have to pay the penalty ourselves. When we question whether or not God’s love is still there for us, we’re actually asking if Christ’s sacrifice on the cross is powerful enough to pay the penalty for us; we are actually trying to earn something that was only given as a gift, unable to be earned.

I believe we should be reflective. We should look at our lives and recognize where we fall short, and we should absolutely do our best to remedy those failures. We should strive to do our best with every opportunity, we should strive for moral excellence, we should strive to bring life and not death to the people around us. We should strive to please God. But I also believe we have to remember that we don’t earn God’s love. He loves us because He is Love. He created us to walk with us. When we decided we would rather live our own way, and when we make this same decision multiple times a day through little decisions and actions that are less than loving, less than generous, less than our best, He still initiated love by sending Christ to bring us out of that death and into life.

We have to know that we can do better, and we have an obligation to strive to do so. But we also have to know that God’s love for us is not based on the question, “Am I good enough?” It is only based on the question, “Is Christ good enough?” And the answer to that question, thankfully, is a resounding, “Yes!”

Goodness, Wisdom, and Love

Did you know that every color we see finds its source in the same place? Each individual color is a result of white light — the light we get from the sun, which contains the entire light spectrum — hitting an object and some specific wavelength of the light spectrum bouncing off. Every different color has its source in the same white light.

All around us, all the time, we get glimpses of goodness. Wisdom is found in all sorts of unlikely places. Love is found in all different types of people. What if all these glimpses of goodness, these inklings of wisdom, these actions of love are all just some wavelength of the goodness of God bouncing off the world He created?  If there really were a God who created the world, who was the author of all good things, wouldn’t that goodness be evident all throughout the world? Wouldn’t his wisdom be seen, at least in part, throughout multiple different belief systems, social groups, and civilizations? If God is the author of goodness, the author of wisdom, the author of love, then when we see goodness, wisdom, and love, we ought to recognize that we are seeing something that is godly.

We tend to dismiss the good things in a person because of the things we see that don’t line up. As Christians, we tend to dismiss things that come out of the mouths of people who aren’t Christians. If they don’t hold as their highest value what we hold as our highest value, can we really take what they say seriously? I would like to propose, however, that if an atheist speaks about loving your neighbor (they may word it differently: Coexist; BLM; loveislove; etc), they are still bringing the light of God into the world, whether they want to or not, whether they would agree or not. The way they do it may be like white light reflecting off another surface. We may see Blue when, as Christians, we would like to see the full White light of God, but the Blue still has its source in the White, and the Blue is still better than darkness.

This isn’t an argument to accept all things as Christian or as godly. There will always be things that non-Christian culture will say is wisdom and is love but goes against scripture. Scripture is our guide. Let me be very clear about that. However, I do want to recognize that if the world is God’s, and if He created humanity in His image, then His fingerprint will be all over the place and on all kinds of humans. He made a big, wide world with all kinds of people, and His goodness and love can be found in every nook and cranny. If we can’t accept the truth that we are called to love our neighbors regardless of their nationality, regardless of their religion, regardless of whether or not it is safe, even though the Bible specifically calls us to* because that truth was heard from the mouth (or tweet, or Facebook post) of somebody who aligns themselves on the opposite end of the political spectrum from us, we are ignoring God’s truth. If we can’t hear truth, if we can’t accept wisdom, if we can’t love unless it comes packaged in a way that is comfortable to us, we are allowing darkness, not light, to reign in the world.

Every different instance of goodness, wisdom, and love has its source in the same author of goodness, wisdom, and love. As Christians, we should take the responsibility to make sure that we don’t mistake the part for the whole, but we should also take the responsibility to make sure we don’t dismiss the part as nothing at all. Not only will this help us to see God at work in so many new ways around us, but will also help us get out of the way and let Him go on, unhindered, bringing his goodness and wisdom and love into a broken world.

 

 

* Tim Keller’s “The Prodigal Prophet” is a great break down of the book of Jonah, which deals with this topic. Also, in the parable of the Good Samaritan, part of what makes the story so challenging to its listeners is that the Samaritan acts in a way that opens himself up to much potential harm in order to help somebody he should, according to the cultural norm, be at complete odds with. (As an Amazon associate, I earn from qualifying purchases)

Should I Be Perfect?

If you identify as a Christian, you have probably heard at some point or other that you should model your life after Jesus. Whether you heard it in some kind of sermon, whether you heard the always-lovely “you may be the only Jesus somebody ever gets to see!” quip, or maybe you’ve just seen your fair share of “WWJD” bracelets, the point has been made that your life should reflect Christ. You are, after all, called a Christian.

But wait.

Isn’t Jesus perfect?

Am I supposed to be perfect? Are you supposed to be PERFECT?

Actually, oddly, it seems the answer may be yes.

Matthew 5:48 says, “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

There it is: Be Perfect.

The original Greek word translated “perfect” in Matthew 5:48 – teleioi – doesn’t pull any punches. It literally means something reaching its end, finished, complete, lacking nothing, perfect. That’s hard to swallow. I know I’m not perfect. Far from it. And try as I might, I don’t know if I’ll ever get there.

But there’s another verse that brings me some comfort here. Psalm 103:14 says, “For He knows what we are made of, remembering that we are dust.” God knows our nature. He knows the weakness of the human condition. He remembers that we are dust – powerless, easily sifted, only made alive by the power of His Spirit, by the life of His breath.

It is God’s intention as we journey in this faith walk with Him that we grow toward the perfection He has in mind for us, but it doesn’t catch him off guard when we fall, when we fail, and when we miss the mark. He did, after all, send Christ for us. If he expected us to close the gap on our own, He wouldn’t have provided a perfect sacrifice on the cross for us.

Paul said this, and I think it’s something to take to heart: “Not that I have already reached the goal or am already fully mature, but I make every effort to take hold of it because I also have been taken hold of by Christ Jesus. Brothers, I do not consider myself to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and reaching forward to what is ahead, I pursue as my goal the prize promised by God’s heavenly call in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 3:12-13)

We may not have attained perfection. We may not have reached the goal. But we should make every effort to get there, knowing that we can trust God and rest in his grace and mercy along the way, but also knowing that it is His call on our lives to continue moving forward.

Heaven On Earth

I usually try to have a really articulate thought put together before posting, but I’m honestly not quite there with this thought yet. However, it’s been something on my mind for a while and I just want to get it out there. Hopefully some of you track along with me.

I first had a conversation with a friend about this around a year ago. My initial statement was something like, “I don’t think God is that interested with us going to heaven.” Looking back, I can see why the statement was met with a little bit of confusion. That’s kind of a loaded statement, and without any further clarity it can seem kind of weird. Although it may come off a bit dramatic, and I’m sure there’s a better way to say it, I think I still stand by it. So, I better clarify.

When I say, “I don’t think God is that interested with us going to heaven,” what I really mean is that I don’t think God is as interested in getting us there as He is with bringing there here.

The incarnation is the picture of God bringing Heaven to Earth. Jesus depicted God’s desire to bring hope and healing to humanity here and now, not just there and later. When Jesus taught the disciples to pray, He even said, “Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10).

Jesus also teaches to “love your neighbor as yourself” (Mark 12:30-31). What does that mean? He tells us that too. In Matthew 25, Jesus says that when we see somebody hungry and feed them, or when we see somebody thirsty and give them something to drink, or when we take in a stranger, or we clothe the naked, or we take care of the sick, or we visit the prisoner, it is in those moments that we are loving our neighbor. He goes so far as to say that when we do those things for the people around us, we are actually doing them for Him!

Loving your neighbor means making earth look a little more like heaven for them. There is no hunger in heaven. There is no thirst. There is no stranger, because we are all brothers and sisters in Christ. Nobody is lacking the things they need for protection. Nobody is sick. There is no prisoner. When we see these things on earth, these are part of our fallen reality, and they are exactly what Christ came to remedy. When we encounter these things, we are meant to do whatever is in our power to bring the reality of heaven to that situation.

What would the world look like if when we had food, we shared it, and when we had none, somebody else shared it with us? What would it look like if we were not afraid of the person we didn’t know, and when we were the outsider, we were met with welcome and accommodation? What would it look like if we took care of the sick when we were well, and the well took care of us when we were sick? What would it look like if we recognized that the prisoner is still a person, worthy of love and hope because they too were made in the image of Christ? What kind of world would it be if the prostitute and the addict, the abusive and the insecure, those in high places and those in low places all come in contact with Love and were changed?

Some people are living in Hell on Earth Right now. But if they encountered this, imagine the change!

When I say that God isn’t that interested in us getting to Heaven, what I mean is that God sent Jesus to show us Heaven on Earth. When we were saved, we were then called to bring Heaven on Earth to the people around us. I’m talking about the reality that God has us right here, right now, where we are, with the people around us. He has us here for a reason. He has me here for a reason. If I’m too busy trying to get there, maybe I’ll neglect what He has for me to do right here.

I look forward to sitting in the presence of God, where every tear has been wiped away, where death and mourning and pain are gone (Revelation 21:4). But until then, I want to live my life on earth in a way that the people around me see the reality of God and want to live in that reality.

help my unbelief

Last week I sat and had coffee with a person who told me she was grateful just to be able to be honest with me and not feel like she was being judged or damned for her thoughts and feelings.

I had another conversation with a person who struggles with the idea that her questions and the fact that she doesn’t understand some things when we talk about God somehow changes her standing with God. Does He really accept her? Does she really have faith?

It’s incredible to me that somehow “faith” has come to mean “absence of questions and doubt.” We have people going through life, facing circumstances we couldn’t even imagine. They’re trying to make sense of the world they live in and the God they hear about – a God which, incidentally, can look a lot of different ways depending on the person describing Him. When something doesn’t seem to line up to somebody, their questions are often met with hostility, belittlement, or even scoffing. Instead of understanding and dialogue, or a probing into the nature or cause of their questions, or even an honest, “I’m not sure how to answer that” (which, by the way, I think we’d do very well sometimes to answer with “I don’t know” instead of trying to answer a question we’ve never thought about before), their questions are met with an awkward look, a “why would you ask such a thing?” or worse yet, an answer given in a manner like an adult explaining something really simple to a young child. You almost expect them to give a little pat on the head at the end.

When you’re given a math problem in school, you have to show your work. You have to show on paper how you processed the information and came to your conclusion. For some reason, when somebody tries to do this with their faith, they’re discouraged.

Maybe you’re in this boat. Maybe you’ve heard about a good God who heals, but you’re dealing with a sickness you can’t seem to shake, and you want to know why. Maybe you grew up hearing that God created the world in seven twenty-four hour days and if you believe anything else, you don’t believe in God, but you’ve also seen and read and studied modern cosmology which says the world has been here for millions of years, and you’re just not sure where that puts you. Maybe you’ve heard about a Jesus who says to love your neighbor as yourself and not to judge, but every person you’ve ever encountered who bares the title “Christian” has hated you and judged you because you’re gay, or you have tattoos, or you listen to Nirvana, and the clear disconnect there just boggles your mind. Maybe you’ve grown up believing in a reductionistic, purely material world, but you sense that there’s got to be more going on, there’s got to be a reason for all of this.

No matter what the question is, no matter where your skepticism lies, I’d like to tell you something:Your questions are important. Your skepticism is valuable. Your doubt may very well be divine.

Doubt is our way of saying, “The things around me don’t line up the way I thought they would, and I’d really like to understand why.” And guess what, there’s something really admirable about that. Sometimes we lean too heavily on certainty. Certainty is safe. It’s predictable. Doubt, however, shakes things up. It questions the status quo. It wonders why.

I also believe that when we take the time, and step out with courage, and ask the questions that really exist in our hearts, we can come out on the other side with a more robust understanding of whatever it is we’re asking about. We think skepticism is a weakness. In reality, it can lead to strength.

When I’m talking to people with doubts, there are a few things I always like to tell them after I’ve let them know that there are plenty of people in the boat with them, and that they should absolutely ask the questions they’re asking. I’d like to share them with you.

First, doubt your doubts as much as you doubt everything else. Questioning is important. However, sometimes we can get so caught up in the question and the possible threat it poses to our current understanding of things that we don’t process the fact that our question can be just as fallible as anything else. It can be founded on a false understanding, it can be biased by our upbringing or experiences, it can be based off of an emotional reaction to a Facebook video that’s designed just to make people react. I don’t mean to belittle your doubts, but I do mean you should weigh them with the same measure you’re weighing everything else. They’re fallible too.

Second, do some studying. Look into the topic at hand. When somebody asks me a specific question, I generally give them a place to start reading in the Bible, because when it comes to Christianity, theology, and the character of God, we should start in scripture. Then, I usually give some book suggestions. If you have a real question, putting real time into the answer is how to handle it. Quick answers aren’t usually going to be satisfying for long. Diving into the issue, tearing it apart, and seeing what people have to say who have been studying longer and who have devoted their lives to the topic at hand can help you come out on the other side with a lot more understanding. Not to mention, it will probably affirm to you that there’s a lot more to the issue, hence a lot more reason for your questions, than you initially thought.

Finally, I ‘d like to share a specific Bible verse that has helped me in times of my own doubt and searching. There’s this story in the Bible where a father brings his child to the disciples to be healed. The disciples fail to heal him, so the father brings the child to Jesus and says, “… if you can do anything, have compassion on us and help us.”

Let’s pick up here in Mark 9:23-24 (HCSB): “Jesus said to him, ‘If you can? Everything is possible to the one who believes.’ Immediately the father of the boy cried out, ‘I do believe! Help my unbelief.’”

I think a lot of us resemble this father. We’re coming to God with doubts, with questions, hoping for healing, but unsure exactly what to expect. There’s something in us that believes maybe there’s an answer, otherwise we wouldn’t be asking the question, but when it boils down to it, what we’re saying is, “Help my unbelief!”

What I love about the story in the Bible is that Jesus’ response is to heal the child. And I believe His response to us is the same. We may come with questions, with doubts, with insecurities, with skepticism. But if we are honestly searching, I believe we will honestly receive help for our unbelief.

There is a place for your questions in your relationship with God. Let’s be honest, He knows what’s going on in our heads and in our hearts anyways, right? So when we open up with the doubts, we’re not taking Him off guard. We’re all on a journey of faith. Where you are now is not where you were five years ago, and in five years you’ll likely be in a very different place than you are today. If that isn’t the case, I’d be more worried about that than anything else. Embrace the journey. Ask the questions. God is big enough to handle it.

If there’s one thing I would add to the few points above, it would be an encouragement to go on the journey with somebody. Don’t go alone. Find some people who have been where you are and have found their way through. Find some people who are living now how you hope to live someday, and then ask them questions. Let them speak into your life. Find people of faith who have gone through hardship and ask them how they did it. That will speak to your questions more than anything else. But whatever you do, don’t be ashamed of wanting to learn more and grow closer to God.

Make The Change

I enjoy playing sports. As an American boy, I think it was an unwritten rule to grow up playing basketball every time there was an opportunity. Summer breaks were full of trips to school playgrounds to pick up a game of thirty-three or half-court ball. If a friend got a hoop on their garage, even better! Then you don’t have to wait turns. In dire circumstances where no hoop was available, we would throw balls against signs on brick walls. There was no stopping us from playing.

Despite how often I played, basketball was a sport in which I was never really a contender. I’m not a very tall person, I have an ugly jump-shot, and my basketball game included a little more contact than most people enjoy. Needless to say, I was not usually a first pick in pickup games.

When I got hired at my current job, a bunch of the guys played basketball on lunch breaks or after work. We have a gym in the building, so it was really convenient to get a quick game of thirty-three or a two-on-two or three-on-three game going. When I realized this was essentially an unwritten requirement of the job, I knew I had to up my basketball game. The guys I work with would never have made me feel bad for not being good, but I’m ridiculously competitive and can’t stand losing, so it didn’t take long for me to start working on it.

When I think back, it’s actually pretty funny how much effort I put in to getting better. I looked up YouTube videos on better form and would go in the gym on breaks and just shoot free throws to lock that form down. After work if a game wasn’t happening, I would go in and set a number, then play around the world until I could complete that number of times around without missing a shot. After I finished around the key, I would move to around the arch.

On top of the on-the-court practice, I started working out more at home. I found a Men’s Health article that shared Blake Griffin’s work out for building vertical and tore it out and hung it on the wall. I did that workout religiously. I did the same with other workouts designed for growth in areas that would help specifically with basketball. I was slightly obsessed.

I never did get amazing at basketball. But I actually did get noticeably better. A friend who I hadn’t played with in a long time saw me playing at a church camp with a bunch of the leaders and actually came up to me afterwards to tell me how amazed he was at my improvement. I wasn’t a pro, but the work paid off.

I knew I wasn’t good at basketball. I knew I had bad form. I knew there was a lot I needed to work on. Before I could get any better, I had to acknowledge those areas I was falling short, and I had to be willing to address them and work on them to improve. To unlearn the bad form in my shot, I had to put in hundreds of reps of free throws and jump shots. To make myself a contender for rebounds, I had to focus specifically on building my vertical. To work on explosive cuts in the paint, I had to do sprint drills and suicides. I had to see where I was lacking, make a game plan for how to improve, and put in the effort to get better.

The same rules apply for other areas of our lives. Growth is possible, but it means assessing where we are, making a plan to move forward, and putting in the time and effort to change. It’s really easy to feel stuck and feel like things are out of our control. Most times, there really are factors that are out of our control. But there are still many factors that are in our control that we can change. In basketball, I couldn’t control my height, but I could improve my vertical. In a relationship, you may not be able to control the other person, but you can control your own attitude and tact during a conversation or argument. You may not be able to change the fact that you grew up in an underprivileged home and college was never an option, but you can control whether or not you choose to pick up a book and read and continue learning on your own time now.

John 15:1-4 (HCSB) says, “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vineyard keeper. Every branch in Me that does not produce fruit He removes, and He prunes every branch that produces fruit so that it will produce more fruit… Just as a branch is unable to produce fruit by itself unless it remains on the vine, so neither can you unless you remain in Me.”

I love the challenge and the imagery here. The challenge is this: if we are not producing fruit – producing life-giving, healthy, helpful evidence of our relationship with Him, it says He removes us. Claiming to live a life for God is not the same as living a life for God. Claiming to love the people around us is different than loving the people around us. A claim has no action behind it – no “fruit.” But action is “fruit.” The challenge is that our lives should reflect the claims we make.

But the imagery of pruning that comes with the challenge is something encouraging, even if uncomfortable. When you prune a plant, you cut off unhealthy buds to help the growth and health of the plant. It can actually even mean cutting off healthy buds that are smaller to redirect nutrients and growth to bigger buds that will produce more. So this verse is saying, “Hey, your life should reflect the claims you make that you want to serve God, love your neighbors, and be used by God to bring a positive change in the world. And here’s the best part, God will actually help you get rid of the parts of your life that are unhealthy and keep you from that. He’ll even help you prioritize your life and get rid of the good-but-not-great things you spend your time on to maximize the so-good-it-could-only-be-God things in your life.”

Pruning does mean cutting something away, and that’s not always fun. Pruning means taking an honest look at our lives and seeing where the unhealthy habits are, where we’re stuck in our mindset but shouldn’t be, where we’re wasting time and energy on something we like but that is ultimately going nowhere, where we’re holding on to ideology because it benefits us but doesn’t benefit anybody else. Then it means allowing God to cut that thing away from us so that we can grow into healthier, fuller, more productive versions of ourselves.

Where do you believe God wants to take you in the future? Do you know? Have you prayed about it? Where are you now? What’s in the way of that future? What can you do to step in line with that future and close the gap?

The change is possible. Allow God the space to show you where the change is needed, and be humble enough to accept it. You don’t get better at anything in the natural without seeing the shortcoming and working to change it. It isn’t any different spiritually, except that spiritually, you have God helping you through the process.

Building New Habits Is Possible

This morning, I failed at keeping one of my goals for the new year. As a matter of fact, I failed last night too. I wrote down on my goal sheet for the year that on weeknights I wanted to be in bed by 11:00 PM, and I wanted to be up before work by 6:30 AM. Last night I was in bed around 11:30, and this morning I was out of the bed at about 6:45. So, I failed.

Kind of.

The honest truth is that I was really happy with this shortcoming, because it was still a step in the right direction for me. I have never been great with early mornings, but I’ve wanted to create a better morning routine for quite a while. I’ve wanted to create space for consistent prayer and quiet time, and morning seems the best time for that. This goal would allow me time before my kids get up and we get in the “get everybody ready for school and work” rush. The bed time just allows me to actually be functional at the wake time. And even though I missed the exact minute, which is something I intend to get closer and closer on, I still succeeded in getting up at the alarm, not snoozing until 7:45, and I spent some time in prayer and did my Bible reading.

Tonight I will have the opportunity to intentionally go to bed early again, and tomorrow I’ll have the opportunity to wake up early again and create that space. It’s up to me whether or not I take that opportunity. It’s up to me to work towards creating and keeping those habits, or it’s up to me to let myself stay up late watching Netflix or playing games online with friends and then sleep in because I need sleep to function the next day.

This is a time of year when many of us are trying to do things to change something in our lives or better ourselves somehow. And many of us fail at living up to the standard we’ve set for ourselves. What I’ve learned, and what I want to share, is that we have to keep at it. I don’t mean this just in a feel-good, “You can do it! Just keep trying!” sort of way. I mean there is something fundamental about the role of repetition in building new habits. If we stop a new action because it didn’t catch on right away, we are actually short-circuiting the habit-building process. When we stop a new action because it didn’t catch on, we are actually ensuring that it never will.

As we perform a behavior or an action, we are actually building neural pathways in our brains. The more we perform the behavior, the more engrained that pathway becomes, and the faster and easier and more automatic that behavior becomes. That’s why breaking habits is hard. We are actually working against engrained neural pathways that have become automatic for us.

However, building new pathways is possible. This Forbes article on changing your brain talks about neuroplasticity and mentions that a key to changing your brain is “sustained practice of a new behavior.” And this Health Transformer article talks about how doctors can use this idea of building new neural pathways to help their patients (specifically, diabetes patients) have hope for developing new lifestyles that will enable them to live healthy. Notice in the section “The importance of repetition,” it says that it takes an estimated 3-6 months for a new behavior to become a habit. What does that mean for us? It means that failing one time, or five times, or twenty times isn’t as meaningful to our success as continuing to try again and again and again despite the shortcomings.

The idea of repeated actions forming habits that can change your life isn’t really new. The science may be new, but the idea isn’t. In his Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle tells us that virtue is gained by habitual, deliberate action in specific situations. When we look at all the possible actions we could take, and we deliberately take the one(s) that leads to the achievement of the end goal, and we do that regularly and habitually, we will become better people (I am paraphrasing a lot here!). And in the Bible, what is the instruction from Paul in the Epistles if not an attempt to help people change their habitual actions in order to come closer to God?

1 Corinthians 9:24-27 says:

“Don’t you know that the runners in a stadium all race, but only one receives the prize? Run in such a way to win the prize. Now everyone who competes exercises self-control in everything. However, they do it to receive a crown that will fade away, but we a crown that will never fade away. Therefore I do not run like one who runs aimlessly or box like one beating the air. Instead, I discipline my body and bring it under strict control, so that after preaching to others, I myself will not be disqualified.”

Paul is urging us to train ourselves in order to achieve what God has for us. It’s interesting that in Galatians 5:22-23 it lists self-control among the fruit our lives will show if we are filled with the Spirit. It is also interesting, with neuroplasticity in mind, that in Romans 12:2 it says that we should be transformed by the renewing of our minds. To bring all this together, I believe that training ourselves looks like building habits and intentionally, maybe even painstakingly, sticking to them.

As you step into this new year with all your goals in mind, with all the changes you hope to make, look at it as Paul looks at it. We are all runners in a race. We all go at our own pace. We all have our own trips and stumbles. But what’s important is that we all train ourselves—we all bring our bodies under discipline. We learn and practice self-control and deliberately and intentionally build the habits we know will change our lives for the better.

If you failed today, be diligent and intentional to try again tomorrow!