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!

Finding My Purpose

Last week I got the opportunity to speak at our college ministry at my church. What I talked about there ties in a lot to my passion for this blog – the fact that we’re here to impact the people around us, and despite often feeling ill-equipped or unqualified to make that impact, we still can with some perspective change and some intentional action.

I don’t usually post twice so closely together, but I wanted to make this available asap for people to enjoy! It is definitely geared toward the college student, but I think you’ll be able to find applicable information no matter what age or season of life you’re in!

See the video here.

Breaking Barriers

Over the last several years, reading has become a staple in my life. Specifically, I’ve made it a point to read things that challenge me to grow or change or expand my knowledge or outlook in some way. I do read some things just for fun as well, so I’m not saying fiction is a no-no, but my focus is on things that will grow me. The reason I started The Endeavor was because I believe we all have some person in mind that we want to become, and I also believe that there are steps we can take to become that person. We aren’t stuck where we are. For me, reading has been one of those steps.

I wanted to share a few reasons why I value reading, then challenge you to pick up some books if you aren’t already an avid reader. Here’s the deal – I know that we don’t all learn the same way. For some, reading is really not the best way their brains retain information. I get it! But I still stand by the fact that there are some things you’ll get from reading that you just can’t get elsewhere. Even if you’re not a “book person,” I think there’s a lot to gain be stretching yourself and reading anyway!

One of my favorite things to do is to sit and hear people’s stories. You can learn from anybody if you have an open mind. Even a fool can teach you what not to do. However, there are some people we are completely removed from, either by time or space. Speaking specifically from the point of view of a Christian, there are so many great men and women of God who have lived in the distant past, and there are so many contemporary men and women of God who, chances are, we will never get the opportunity to see.

Books break the barrier of time and space. They bridge the gap between people us and the people we will never otherwise see. Think about historical figures you’d love to just sit and interview, to have coffee with and ask them questions like you would a good friend. Books are the closest thing we have to that connection! I will never be able to talk to Eugene Peterson or R.C. Sproul or C.S. Lewis or G.K. Chesterton or Dietrich Bonhoeffer or Augustin. It isn’t likely I’ll ever get a face to face meeting with Timothy Keller or Judah Smith or Steven Furtick or John Eldredge or Mark Batterson. Even if I did get that opportunity, who knows if I would even know what to ask! However, I do have their books. I do have collections of their thoughts and stories, the things they’ve seen worthwhile enough to take the time and effort to write down and pass on. Reading books is like having access to a huge number of spiritual mentors you would otherwise have no access to. I think that’s amazing!

Books also break the barriers of our own experiences and prejudices. Part of what makes us all unique is that we all see every event through a different lens. I have a twin sister. We both grew up in the same house, with the same parents and siblings, and experienced the same life events. However, we’ve both done all of those things from our own unique perspectives, which has given rise to different outlooks and different responses. That’s not a bad thing! God made us unique! However, due to that fact, it can be pretty easy to favor our own outlooks and to be confused (or offended, or downright unaccepting) at somebody else’s.

Reading something somebody else has written on a subject you’re already pretty certain of can give you different lines of thought, different angles, a different understanding of the subject matter. Your opinion may not change, but you will at least have a fuller, and often more human, view of the other side of the matter. When you see somebody articulate their thoughts with reason and life experience, it’s a lot harder to just write them off as a whack-job their differences from you. While you may never have agreement, you can at least have understanding, and that is very valuable!

Finally, books challenge us to change our perception of what’s possible. When we see what others have done, when we hear their thoughts and get to witness through their stories where they’ve come from and what they’ve done, it awakens something in us that says maybe it really is possible to become more, to be better, to achieve something that everybody else says we could never do. It’s been done before, so why not again, and why not with me?

Reading the words of some of the people you look up to and put on a pedestal helps to bring them down into the realm of reality, into the same world you live in. You get to hear about some of the things they’ve struggled with, the things they’ve had to overcome, and how they did it. When that person becomes, in your eyes, a person just like you, it helps you realize the implications that you could also become a “great,” just like them. It will take some work, it will take some growth, it will take some change, but it can be done.

So, that’s why I read. There’s a person I want to become, and there are a lot of other people who have some of the characters I hope to embody some day, so why not learn from them on the journey and let them speak into my life rather than trying to figure it out all on my own?

I’ve kept lists of the books I’ve read over the last few years, so I put amazon links to some of my favorites on this page. Take a look! Put some of these on your Christmas list! Here is a picture of my finished books lists from the last three years (2018 isn’t finished yet). There’s a lot of fiction on these too, and that’s okay! We’re supposed to enjoy life too, so I’m all about fun reading as well! If you have any questions about any of these books, let me know! I’d love to chat about them!

books read

I’d love to hear your feedback. What have been some of your favorite books? Why? Leave a comment below and let me know!

Book Review – The Prodigal Prophet

In The Prodigal Prophet, Timothy Keller brings the story of Jonah forward and points out a number of insights that really are remarkable. The breakdown of the book of Jonah given in the introduction, alongside a concise parallel of the book of Jonah with the story of the prodigal son, left me wondering how in the world I could already have so much information (dare I say revelation?) without even breaking into chapter one yet. To say the book is rich is an understatement.

In his acknowledgements, Keller mentions “… the numerous and varied lines of application to contemporary issues and problems…” present in the book of Jonah. I believe he does such a good job of presenting multiple lines of thought that depending on your season of life, you could walk away from the book with a different take-away every time you read it. However, I do believe there was an overarching theme.

In a culture dominated by polarization and an us-versus-them mentality, The Prodigal Prophet has above all been a challenging but needed reminder that Christ’s love is not predicated on sameness. A person’s likeness to myself does not qualify them for the love of God. Their unlikeness to myself does not disqualify them.

God sent a prophet of His chosen people, Israel, to the capital city of their enemy, Nineveh, to deliver them from destruction. These are not people who look like, behave like, or believe like God’s people, yet He sends His prophet to deliver them. Why? It is only by His grace.

Keller challenges us to confront our own prejudices. What are the things that make us hesitate when it comes to loving others? In what ways are we happy to accept grace in our own lives, but quick to deny grace in the lives of others? What are the matters we have made important but God takes no notice of? Race, creed, political affiliation, belief system, behavior – these are all categories we use to place a value system on people around us. Where we see categories, God sees His people — many of whom “don’t know their right hand from their left” (Jonah 4:11) — and He has compassion for them all.

That is really the call to action: have compassion. In a world full of “others,” do not grow cold and callous. We can not reject people based on their differences from us, or even based on their sin against God. He has compassion on them. He desires their salvation. So who are we to deny them?

I purchased this book of my own volition. This is not a sponsored post, nor did I receive any kind of payment for this review. I am a fan of Timothy Keller’s books and enjoy sharing a good book when I read one!
If you are interested in purchasing this book, please click the picture link below. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Charging

I have a phone charger problem. No matter where I am, I make sure I have access to a phone charger. There’s a charger in my bedroom, a charger in the bathroom, a charger in the car, and I keep another in the book bag I carry everywhere. On top of that, I’ve been known to use a portable charger if there’s no place to plug in.

I don’t think this problem is unique to me. Most people my age are like this. Even if we don’t have our own charger readily available, we aren’t shy to ask somebody else for theirs. Just a few weeks ago I left my book bag charger in the office at work, so I had to borrow a charger from the barista at Starbucks. I didn’t think twice about asking for the charger, and the barista didn’t think twice about loaning the charger out. It’s just part of our culture.

We know our devices need charged to function properly and to be ready to go whenever we need them. But how often do we stop and think about whether or not we are being recharged?

We live with a “go” mentality. We’re always moving, always working, always grinding. When somebody talks about a work week with over 40 hours, it’s like a badge of honor. When it comes to why we’re always going, there are different reasons for different people. Some of us don’t have a choice. We have to make ends meet somehow. Some of us get value from our productivity. We equate or work with our worth. Some of us don’t know how to say no. We’re afraid of letting others down, so we take on more than we should. The list goes on and on. But ultimately, many of us are draining our batteries and never taking time to recharge.

I think we need to remind ourselves that God was so intent on us experiencing rest that he made the sabbath a commandment. It was carved into stone with the moral pillars of humanity. Right up there with “do not murder” and “do not steal” is this command: “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. You are to labor six days and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God.” (Exodus 20:8-10 HCSB)

This word “Sabbath” means rest. I think it is very telling that in the same list that tells us to have no other gods before the Lord our God, the same list that tells us to stay away from idols and warns us not to misuse the name of God, the same list that tells us how to interact with our fellow man also tells us that rest is a non-negotiable factor in our lives. It really is that important.

I believe I heard Rob Bell say a long time ago that when God gives this command to the people of Israel, just after they escape from Egyptian captivity, it is a reminder to them that they are human beings, not humans doing. We don’t get our value from our production. The daily grind doesn’t give us our meaning and our purpose. But the daily grind will wear us out, will wear us down, and will cause us to want to give up on the things that God really has for us.

So, what are you doing to recharge yourself? Where do you experience rest? You may not be able to apply this to your job. You may have to work 2 or 3 jobs to make ends meet. But I believe God still has rest for you. What is something that charges your batteries? Is it just spending time with your family? Is it playing a certain game with a certain group of friends? Is it going to the movies? Is it playing music? Is it gardening? Hiking? Sports? Cleaning the house? How can you disengage from the grind and plug in to something that charges you up?

Whatever it is, do it. Make time to do that thing. There are no excuses not to. You can’t afford not to. Your being a healthy person in the long run depends on it. You can either grind and grind and grind until there’s nothing left, or you can unhook, recharge, and keep going after everybody else has burnt out.

Our culture tends to focus on the grind. When somebody asks how things are going, our usual response is to talk about work or the current project we’re working on or what we’re doing to keep busy. We may even just cut out the details and say, “Oh, I’m keeping busy! You?” This means that you may feel some guilt or some shame or just a little awkward when you’re taking time for intentional rest. My advice is this: write out Exodus 20:8-10 and write out Exodus 34:21. When you start to feel that nagging feeling that you need to be doing something, look at the word of God and remember that He designed you for rest and commanded you to rest. Remind yourself that the health of your family, the health of your relationships, and the state of your future rests on whether or not you’re fully charged for whatever you need to do. If your battery is depleted when you’re needed most, then what is the grind worth anyways?

becoming better

A little while back while doing some research I found this article which states that the rational part of the brain, the part that we use to judge the long-term effects of a decision, doesn’t fully develop until around the age of twenty-five. Here’s another article with some good word-pictures stating the same thing.

This got me thinking. Our brains don’t fully develop until we’re in our mid-twenties, but most of us feel trapped by the decisions we made and the identities we took on when we were in high school and college! Isn’t that crazy? We let our lives be controlled by decisions we made before we could even process what we were doing!

I think what makes this harder is that as we get older and start to discern the direction we really want to take in our lives, we not only have to contend with the feeling of wasting our early adulthood (not to mention our college tuition!) on something it turns out we have no interest in anymore, but we also have the added social pressure of how our friends and family are going to respond to the seemingly sudden changes that are happening.

This reminds me of a story from when I was in college. I was working at a Speedway gas station, and an old friend from junior high came in and started talking to me. He ended up asking what I was going to school for. When I answered him that I was going to school to study theology and ministry (I was a Youth Ministry major at the time, I eventually changed my major to Philosophy, then subsequently dropped out of college – what was that I said about wasted college tuition?) he couldn’t believe it! He was a friend I used to get in all kinds of trouble with – vandalizing, smoking, sneaking in movies, the classic junior high mischief – and here he was hearing me say that I was going to school to become a minister. He couldn’t take me seriously.

It’s that exact type of reaction that makes us second guess. We remember all those dumb decisions we made. We know the person we’ve been isn’t at all close to the person we aspire to be. But what’s more is that the people around us remember too! Our old friends remember all the crazy things we did, the parties, the girls or the guys, the off-colored remarks, all of it. And when they see us step forward all of a sudden trying to be something else, they tell us we’re acting “holier than thou” and trying to act “better than” everybody, trying to be all “high and mighty.” But really, inside, we’re just trying to be better than who we used to be.

One Bible excerpt that gives me a little bit of comfort here is found in Matthew 13:54-58 (NLT):

He returned to Nazareth, his hometown. When he taught there in the synagogue, everyone was amazed and said, “Where does he get this wisdom and the power to do miracles?” Then they scoffed, “He’s just the carpenter’s son, and we know Mary, his mother, and his brothers—James, Joseph, Simon, and Judas. All his sisters live right here among us. Where did he learn all these things?” And they were deeply offended and refused to believe in him.

Then Jesus told them, “A prophet is honored everywhere except in his own hometown and among his own family.” And so he did only a few miracles there because of their unbelief.

It turns out that even Jesus had some resistance because of where he came from.

The truth is that some people will only ever see you for who you were or where you came from. In some eyes you will never grow beyond the decisions of yesteryear. But that doesn’t have to limit who you are becoming.

Be comforted in this: yes, you were a different person then than you are now. That doesn’t make you a hypocrite. It doesn’t make you fake. It makes you a human who is learning and growing. If you’re the same person when you’re eighty that you were when you were twenty, that means you spent your whole life being stagnant. That’s not what we’re here for! As young people, we think our lives should be sorted out by the time we’re twenty-five. Our brain isn’t even fully functioning until we’re twenty-five! Cut yourself some slack, and allow yourself to grow!

When you look out ahead and see the person you want to be, the husband or wife you want to be, the father or mother you want to be, the loving friend, the wise leader, realize that you don’t become that person over night. Realize that nobody who ever became that person did so without living portions of their life that they aren’t proud of. And the one person who did, Jesus, still got looked down on by those who knew him in his youth.  So even if you had been perfect, it still wouldn’t get rid of the people telling you you’re not cut out for it.

So don’t let the naysayers stop you. Don’t let your past stop you. Don’t let old titles and labels stick to you. See the person you want to become, the person God has called you to be, and walk towards it unapologetically. Know that you will fail at times. But know that at the end of the day, you will have wisdom and strength you would never have known if you had settled in and never taken a step forward.

YOUR CHURCH NEEDS YOU

I’ve had this part of Moses’ story on my mind lately. In Exodus 18:13-23 Moses and the Israelites had already been delivered from Egypt, and Moses’ father-in-law Jethro was visiting. When Jethro came, he saw Moses seated all day with the people lined up in front of him. They would come to him with disputes and he would be the judge, and he would inform the people of God’s instructions and commands. It actually says that the people “waited before him from morning till evening.”

Either perspective you look from, whether from Moses’ or from the peoples’, this is not a great situation.

Moses is the leader of these people. God has chosen him. He has listened and followed God, he helped them escape captivity in Egypt, and now the weight of the responsibility of caring for these people is on his shoulders. Moses wants to take care of them. He wants them to know God’s instructions and commands. Not only does he want it but he feels that it is his God-given duty to make sure these people are taken care of. If he fails, he’s not only failing them, but he’s failing God.

And he is failing. The people are lined up all day waiting on him, and some never get seen. They come back the next day, and there the line is, longer than the day before with all those who were never seen and all those with new grievances or new questions. As a leader, how could you look out at this group of people and not feel ineffective, not feel overwhelmed, not feel like you’re failing your people?

And imagine being the person standing in line waiting! You’re trying to hear from God through the leader he appointed, but here you are waiting, hoping to be heard but knowing you’re probably going to get pushed off to tomorrow again. It’s hard to feel like a valued, loved child of God when the leader he put over you doesn’t even have the time of day for you. So on top of whatever issue you had going in, now you’re going out with the added weight of feeling passed over, ignored, unimportant, and wondering if God is as distant and hard to reach as the leader he’s put in charge of you.

This is a lose-lose situation, and Jethro knows it. He comes in and sees Moses wearing himself out trying to help the people, and he sees the people waiting and waiting on their leader, and he knows it’s going to end badly if it keeps up. So Jethro gives Moses some wise advice.

“This is not good!” Moses’ father-in-law exclaimed. “You’re going to wear yourself out — and the people, too. This job is too heavy a burden for you to handle all by yourself. Now listen to me, and let me give you a word of advice, and may God be with you. You should continue to be the people’s representative before God, bringing their disputes to him. Teach them God’s decrees, and give them his instructions. Show them how to conduct their lives. But select from all the people some capable, honest men who fear God and hate bribes. Appoint them as leaders over groups of one thousand, one hundred, fifty, and ten. They should always be available to solve the people’s common disputes, but have them bring the major cases to you. Let the leaders decide the smaller matters themselves. They will help you carry the load, making the task easier for you. If you follow this advice, and if God commands you to do so, then you will be able to endure the pressures, and all these people will go home in peace.” Exodus 18:17-23 NLT

Jethro recognizes that Moses can’t do this by himself. He also recognizes that if Moses keeps trying, not only will he get worn out, but he’ll wear the people out too. What was his advice? Get people who fear God to help carry the load!

This has been on my heart because I think it’s so important for us to see it in our churches today. The pastor is the leader, but he can’t do it himself! When he is left to do it himself, not only will he fall, but his people will fall too!

There’s one phrase that really stands out to me from Jethro’s advice. He says, “If you follow this advice…all these people will go home in peace.”

Wow.

We have broken, hurting, hopeless people in our church communities. We have people seeking God, seeking guidance, looking for clarity and looking for hope. And we have pastors and ministers and church staff who are doing all they can do to help these people, but there are still people waiting, feeling dejected, feeling like they haven’t been cared for and haven’t been seen. People wondering if God is distant and wondering if he really cares for them.

What is the answer?

You. Me. We are the answer.

God has shown us in this story that leaders need people, people just like you and just like me, to help carry the load. God never intended the church (or the world) to function through a single leader. He intended us to live in community, with Him as the leader. When we leave the weight of those struggling in our church community to fall on the shoulders of one person, that weight will crush him, and those people will never experience the salvation God intends for them. But if we can see that God wants to use us, that He has a place for us to help the people around us, then we can spread that weight. And when we do that, people will actually experience peace.

Imagine your friends who deal with depression or anxiety experiencing peace.

Imagine your loved ones dealing with grief over a lost child or spouse experiencing peace.

Imagine that instead of them wondering where to go, feeling like they’ve been left alone, wondering if a pastor will reach out (or if a pastor even knows), they have people like you, friends, loved ones who know them closely and intimately, reaching out to them and encouraging them and crying with them and praying with them. You may not be pastor, but you carry God with you. And that is what people need.

If you are reading this, consider it a call to action. God’s move in your church relies more on you than you may realize. This is a call to get involved in a local church. Lead a small group. Serve on a team. Engage in the community of your church. Love the people around you. Carry them when they need it. They will carry you when you need it.

Into The Deep

The life of a Christian is marked by the desire to grow close to God. When I read the Old Testament and see how God overtly engages with his people, something inside longs to experience his voice. When I read the New Testament and see how Jesus heals the broken, I want to see the people around me experience that same healing touch. When I see how God changes Saul’s life and converts thousands through his life and ministry, I aspire to be the always-wise, ever-bold pastor/evangelist leading and inspiring people to follow Christ. It isn’t egomaniacal. I genuinely want to see god move in the lives of people. I genuinely want to see people come to know God’s love and plan for their lives. And I genuinely want to be the kind of person God can and does use to bring change about in a very broken world.

So, with these incredible desires rolling about in my head and in my heart, I can’t help but question the stagnancy in which I repeatedly find myself. Why do I find it so hard to do those things that draw me close to God? Why is it always easier to stay up with friends on Xbox live than it is to go to bed and wake up early to pray? Why do I find myself scheduling times for game nights and making it a point to use my Movie Pass, but when I start to think about scheduling a worship night or a Bible study or just going into my home office to read or pray, I convince myself that my schedule is too hectic and adding something else would just be too much? For all this genuine desire to see God move, I seem to be quite adept at settling into the least challenging routine I can find. It’s easy to desire; it’s not so easy to follow it up with action.

This conundrum has been particularly bothersome for me lately. As I grow older, I am less and less satisfied with keeping up appearances, and I am more and more concerned with the true state of my life and my soul. I don’t want to look like a good father, I want to be a good father. I don’t want to look like a loving husband, I want to be a loving husband. I don’t want to look like a great leader in the ministry in which I serve, I want to have a real and thriving relationship with God. Looking the part just isn’t enough. I’m increasingly aware that my soul longs for more. When I come to the end of my life, I want there to be peace in my spirit because I know I gave everything in me to pursue God and all that he has for me and the people I influence.

In his book Celebration of Discipline, Richard Foster describes the sentiment perfectly: “Psalm 42:7 reads, ‘Deep calls to deep.’ Perhaps somewhere in the subterranean chambers of your life you have heard the call to deeper, fuller living. You have become weary of frothy experiences and shallow teaching. Every now and then you have caught glimpses, hints of something more than you have known. Inwardly you long to launch out into the deep.”1 So, what do I do with this longing? How do I answer this beckoning to launch out into the deep? How do I overcome the urge to fill my time with games and instead engage in the activities of the soul? How do I ensure that the appearance of fullness in my life isn’t appearance only?

In my experience, I have found that there are no shortcuts. It turns out that to have a robust prayer life, you must make it a point to pray. To hear from God, you must make time to listen. To feel at ease in silence and solitude before God, you must practice silence and solitude. In the natural world we know that in order to get to something, we have to take one step after another to cover the ground between us and our destination. To launch out into the deep, to grow closer to God, we must cover the ground of the spiritual disciplines in much the same way.

If I want to grow in my relationship with God, if I genuinely want to be the kind of person God can and does use to bring change about in a very broken world, it means I must deliberately and intentionally disengage from certain things and engage in others. There is nothing inherently wrong with playing games with friends or with having a relaxing night watching Netflix on the couch. In fact, sometimes those things are completely necessary. God made rest a commandment. But if the pursuit of my life is God, then the actions in my life should reflect it.

In effort to live a life marked by spiritual discipline, I have resolved to do two things:

The first is to read. Whether the book is by Judah Smith or Timothy Keller, Brian Houston or R. C. Sproul, C.S. Lewis or Brennan Manning or Kierkegaard or John Eldredge, there are people out there who have had experiences with God that I have not had, and they have written it down for me to learn from. I believe that some of the best moments in life are when somebody shares their God-experience with you, and what are books if not someone’s written God-experience? Only, in the form of a book, we get the opportunity to glean from those who are removed from us in time and space.

The second is to act on what I’m reading. What good is reading Richard Foster’s Celebration of Discipline if I never put his lessons into practice? What benefit is Eugene Peterson’s Answering God if I never dive into the Psalms and allow them to influence and guide my prayer life? If I read in order to check off a box on my yearly goal list, then all I have gained is a checked box on a piece of paper. But if I begin to put action and intentionality to the things I’m taking in, then maybe I stand a chance at living the life with God that I long for after all.

None of us want to look back on our lives and see wasted time and missed opportunity. I don’t want to wait until I’m fifty (or even thirty!) to have an intimate walk with God. What that means is taking some concrete steps towards him. As I continue to grow, I’m sure more and more steps will be added to my list of “Read, Act,” but until then, I hope you’ll join me. The world doesn’t need more people wasting time on Facebook, no matter how enticing those BuzzFeed videos look. What the world needs is passionate people walking with the love and power of God. Let’s be those people.

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Origin Story

Batman is one of my favorite comic book heroes. He may not be a superhero (after all, he has no superpowers), but he is arguably the best crime fighter out there! And he’s definitely the best Earth has to offer. He’s a genius. He’s a warrior. He’s a ridiculously rich person who uses all that money to better other people’s lives. He’s incredible! But what is it that makes Batman who he is? What has driven him to take on the persona of the caped crusader? Why did he put in the effort to learn all he’s learned, to put his body through the rigorous training to become the fighter that he is, to not just settle down and live the comfortable life available to him by inheriting billions? He put in the effort because of his origin story.

All of our favorite heroes have an origin story. That origin is the reason they are who they are. Spider-Man wouldn’t be Spider-Man if he never got bit by the spider and never lost his uncle. Superman wouldn’t be Superman if he never got sent to earth to avoid being destroyed along with his home planet. And Batman wouldn’t be Batman if his parents didn’t get murdered in a mugging when he was a kid. Whether the hero is fighting the guilt of knowing their decisions hurt somebody and vowing not to let that happen again (Spider-Man), whether they’re simply using their abilities to help others because they feel a moral obligation to do so (Superman), or whether they’re doing it to avenge their loved ones (Batman), the origin story is the driving force behind what they do. The origin story gives power to the character. However, the origin story would be meaningless without the efforts that follow it.

If Spider-Man never took to slinging webs around the city and beating Doctor Octopus and the Kingpin, nobody would care about who Peter Parker was. If Superman’s planet never blew up and he stayed there, he would just be another Kryptonian (and we wouldn’t know anything about him on Earth). If Bruce Wayne never trained physically and mentally and went on to battle the Joker, the sad story of a mugging/double-homicide would have just faded in the newspapers. However, the valiant efforts done after the origin story actually give the origin a great deal of it’s significance. If nothing ever happened afterward, the story would be incomplete.

I believe our lives as Christians are the same way. Salvation is our origin. It is the beginning of our story. It is the driving force behind all the things we do. We live our lives the way we do because of what we’ve experienced God do in us. We love others because Christ first loved us. We serve those around us because Christ showed us the example by serving the hurting in his community, by serving his disciples, and by serving us on the cross. But, just as the origin is incomplete without the hero that comes after, salvation is incomplete in us if our lives never change afterward.

I feel like I have to be very careful here. What I am not saying is that our salvation is based on what we do. When I say, “Salvation is incomplete,” I don’t mean that I believe theologically that we are not justified before God unless we have some set of actions that prove us. What I am saying is that I don’t believe it is God’s intention that our story ends with, “… and then I accepted Jesus.” Our story isn’t just supposed to consist of the life we lived before we met God and then end with salvation. Our story is supposed to truly start the moment we come into relationship with God.

Bruce Wayne became a crime fighter because he had first hand experience of the damage caused by crime in his city. In the same way, if you have a relationship with God, you have first hand experience of the life and hope and fullness you get from that relationship. Salvation is the beginning because then we allow that experience to drive our actions and interactions with other people. When we encounter brokenness we can’t just leave it be, because we have experienced the One who heals. When we encounter depression we can’t just brush it off, because we have experienced the One who brings joy. When we encounter those who feel lost we can’t just write them off, because we have experienced the One in whom we are found. Our own salvation experience should drive us to intentional action in the world around us. We are no longer passive participants. We have experienced something different, something new, and we have to use that in order to help the broken world around us.

I know the analogy isn’t perfect. I know there’s a point where it breaks down. But I think this is worth thinking about: Have I looked at salvation in my life as the happy ending to my story, or have I looked at it as a new beginning and a catalyst to bring about the healing and wholeness of God to the world around me?

My goal and my prayer is to live the latter of those two statements. I want to use the experience I’ve had with God to be the driving force in my life. Just as Bruce Wayne didn’t sit back and live the life of a playboy billionaire, I don’t want to sit back and live relaxed knowing that I have God in my life so I’m all set. I want to intentionally engage in the world around me. There are people who need God, people who are broken and lost and discouraged. I want to show them the God that I know. I don’t want salvation to be the end for me. It has to be the beginning, or else I truly believe my story will be incomplete.