God just put a whew in my life

I had a pretty bad wreck on my birthday, March 24th. Two cars totaled. Whew.

I fortunately was able to walk out of the ER on my own 2 feet four hours later. Concussion. 13 stitches to the forehead.

But I have to ponder ... Why did this happen?

What was God trying to teach me?

What message was there in any of this for me?

Was it truly a random event? are there really ANY random events?

Should I ponder this event at all? Is it just a waste of time to plow through all the endless permutations?

Great questions, huh?

I'm really not able to leave all of this in the land of no ponderings, I am sorry. My DNA just will not permit it.

There has to be something here beyond a driving lesson.

Here's what I have figured out so far ...

1) life can change in the blink of an eye.
2) as an add-on to number one, God can require us at any time to be in heaven immediately.
3) the outpouring of love and support for me has touched me so profoundly.
4) people really do care about me ... You'd think I'd know this by now, right? Wrong. Seems like I am always surprised when someone gives a hoot about me. Go figure.
5) if there are things I need to do because well, they are on my heart to do, I need to do them immediately. Procrastination and eternity make for strange bedfellows.
6) I am expendable.
7) I am not part of earth's permanent staff ... I am just a temp and earth is just a part-time gig (by the way, this is true for you too)

My wonderful little car is replaceable.

My friends gushed toward me. My family was a tsunami of love and support.

God was very present with me through all of this. I felt his love sitting in the car with blood covering my face. I felt his love in the ambulance ride. I felt his love in the physician's care.

I was keenly aware of his presence as I sat on my back porch healing.

Two take-aways:

It can all change in the span of time that it takes a mosquito to hiccup.

When it all changes, he still loves you ... Internally through his spirit and extrnally through family and friends.

Whew!

Masters of exclusion

Something has been on my mind for a while ... why are churches, indeed, the entire raft of Christianity, so focused on defining the basis for excluding others?

Why does much of Christianity seem so locked on to who is not in the club rather than lifting up the life-giving aroma of Jesus Christ?

Why are we so well-versed, indeed, astute, in how to bar others at the door?

I heard a wise man once say that the last thing a drunk needs to hear is that he is a sinner and has a problem.

He knows he is a sinner.

His problem is how to get well, not understanding that he is sick.

What brought me to Christ?

The life-giving reality of a deity who actually existed and would relate to me.

Trust me, screaming at me that I was a sinner and damned to eternal hell-fire would not have yielded a good result.

Lifting up Jesus Christ did, however.

Is there something for us to consider in all of this?

Maybe it has to do with not being a master of exclusion.

Set your heart on being a light to the world, rather than a baseball bat clubbing the world.

The Godliness of Being One's Self

One of the most profound truths I have learned as I have matured in the faith is this: you are never stronger than when you are fully yourself.

I completely understand that this thought will send many ministers running for the exit after pulling the fire alarms.

I find this reaction sad because anything else often results in a short-term intensity with a long-term slowdown, in the life of faith.  If we teach folks that they cannot be themselves when they become Christians, we set the stage for internal chaos in believers.

I will go one further and state that unless a believer fully embraces and rejoices in who they uniquely are, they cannot mature past a certain level.  Indeed, they are, in my belief, dangerous.

I have heard many a teaching through the years that all have the same message, ostensibly based in Scripture (so were the Crusades, btw) but putting the same cruel twist in them.  Here's how it goes:

'Put on the mind of Christ - quit thinking in your own natural realm and put on his mind, not yours'

Folks, can you imagine how confused a new believer would be after listening to this? Let's see ... hmmm ... I'm not supposed to think ... or am I? ... wait a minute, Christ needs to be thinking, not me ... or is it the other way around? ... who am I anyway?

God has so beautifully orchestrated the Holy Spirit inside of us that he is co-mingled with who we are and transforms who we are.  We keep being ourself because ourself is always being transformed.  We do not consciously try to be someone else - we enjoy the transformation ride internally and keep being ourselves ... that way the transformation unfolds naturally.

And that is how we put on the mind of Christ, incidentally.

Here's another snippet that I often hear:

'Die to self! God hates your self - that is why you must die to it. Instead, let Christ be reborn in you.'

Again, scripture is quoted but the like fire, it can be harmful or helpful.

Dying to self means letting the inner work of the Holy Spirit proceed and in doing so, old ways, thoughts and habits are peeled away or transformed.  The self is died to. But that is simply another way of saying the self is transformed in Christ's reflection.

Any other way of interpreting it is fraught with danger - hmmm, let's see ... my self is bad so I must be someone else in order to be good.  I like broccoli so I ... gee whiz ... I need to now hate broccoli.  I have a natural authentic way of expressing myself but now ... oh no! ... that's bad! I need to speak like someone else.  I love hiking but ... I need to die to self ... darn! I need to give that up!

This is why it is so important to teach how to walk with Christ in an authentic way, not in a way that prizes soundbites over substance.

If you were artistic before you became a Christian, you won't lose that in your conversion ... God will transform that attribute and morph that quality into a Christ-touched artistic aspect.  If you were loved the puts and takes of the business world before you became a Christian, trust me, God will not suddenly exorcise that out of you.  Rather, he will bathe it with his Spirit and it will become a transformed and ultimately more satisfactory part of your being.

Or ... my favorite ... if you had a sense of humor before your Christ-encounter, he will not require you to chuck it overboard before you proceed in the faith.  He will use it to enhance your winsomeness and approachability.  You will be even funnier.

All of this lays the foundation for a strong and persistent life in Christ.

Today, be yourself!  And God will come through in living colors!

Tolerating Ambiguity in Christ

GASP!

Ambiguity in our theology?

DOUBLE GASP!

You must not be a Christian! Our theology has to be completely explained, all corners completed ironed out and tucked in, the dust gone and the mirror free of any smudges.

Except it cannot be.

Even Paul recognized this ... ponder 1 Corinthians 13:12 -

"For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known."

Here, let me translate ... there will be ambiguity in your theology. There will be parts of your belief system that you cannot explain.

Let me be more succinct.

Don't even try to pretend that you can explain every nuance of your theology because you can't. One day you can explain it all but by then you won't be on earth anymore.

Remember the movie, "Field of Dreams"? There was a line in the movie that 'if you build it, he will come'. It was referring to if Kevin Costner built a baseball field, he (Shoeless Joe) will come.

Often, theologians, teachers and preachers feel compelled to explain what clearly is unexplainable. So they start building a field (explaining), believing that he (the answer) will come.

Only often it doesn't.

But the power of Christ is not in explanations ... it is in his pervasively transcendent reality. The power of Christ lies not in a litany of details we give to clarify the kingdom ... it is in the overarching threads of himself woven deeply and broadly into our reality.

Can we tolerate ambiguity that the Word of God has assured us will be with us as long as we are on this earth?

I used to struggle with this.

Until one day, in business school, I was listening to an explanation about the causes of variability in the stock market. Here's the explanation:

A certain percentage of variability in the stock market can be traced to know-able events ... earnings, etc. Quite a large percentage of variability in the stock market cannot be traced to anything ... this is called 'systemic risk' ... what that means is that it simply cannot be explained.

And the professor did not feel compelled to invent an explanation for what was clearly unexplainable.

Hmmm ... so the unexplainable is woven even into our economic system.

Augustine, the father of theologians, was walking on the ocean shore and pondering over the truth, "three distinct persons, not separate, but distinct; and yet but one God;" and he came upon a little boy that was playing with a colored sea-shell, scooping a hole in the sand, and then going down to the waves and getting his shell full of water and putting it into the hole. Augustine said, "What are you doing, my little fellow? " The boy replied, "I am going to pour the sea into that hole." "Ah," said Augustine, "that is what I have been attempting. Standing at the ocean of infinity, I have attempted to grasp it with my finite mind."

Do not feel compelled to explain those parts of God's kingdom that are essentially unexplainable. Just let it go or take a risk and say those three words that will endear you to any seeker of truth.

Just say ... "I don't know".

You will have just aligned yourself with Scripture ... and ... you will find your credibility with an unbelieving world, zooming through the roof.

Jesus Christ Superstar and me - a match made in ...

I always find it funny when I hear folks say that such and such a person is not reachable by Christ.

Or that this other person surely has found a way to be beyond God's long arm.

Or that their child is the one person who has finally managed to find a way to elude the hounds of heaven.

I also find it amusing when I hear other folks prescribe exactly and precisely how a person has to come to know Christ. You know the drill, a person HAS TO be baptised in order to be saved ... a person HAS TO go through 3 or 4 steps (depending on who you are talking to) in order to be properly redeemed ... a person HAS TO pray a prayer with certain words and themes before becoming a Christian.

Balderdash!

None of that is true, in my humble opinion.

The Bible is so full of different methods and ways and approaches that folks have experienced in coming to Christ that I can only find one commonality ... the destination, Jesus Christ.

Take me, for example.

I was a teenage agnostic. And I did not subscribe to the theory that the Bible was true.

Until I heard Jesus Christ, Superstar, the irreverent rock opera.

Now, Jesus Christ, Superstar, was condemned and blasted by just about every church that existed at that time. They alleged that it was not accurate ... it was not respectful ... it was too far out ... it made fun of Christ ... and on and on and on. Churches around the nation reloaded and declared it to be of the devil. Churches around the nation authoritatively declared it to be a heretical blasphemy.

But God used it to bring me to himself.

Sobering, isn't it?

When I listened to it at the age of 18, a door in my heart opened that had never been opened. When I listened to it at the age of 18, a desert inside of me began a self-irrigation project. Christ began somehow to change me.

We never know who or what God will use to bring someone to Christ. We may say we know, but we really don't.

Try not to limit God, ok? Try not to prescribe his ways and methods for others since he will assuredly not adhere to your rules that you set for him.

• If God wants to knock someone off a donkey to facilitate their salvation, that is ok.
• If God wants to use a rooster to call the unrepentant to repentance, so be it.
• If God wants to use the terror of a roller-coaster ride in a theme park to draw a person into his kingdom, that's just peachy.
• If God wants to use a rock in your shoe to bring you to himself, then that's just perfect!
• If God wants to use the death of a loved one to brush your face against eternity, super!
• If he wants to use an old-fashioned altar call in a Southern Baptist church to throw his ropes around you, excellent!

Entire denominations are built around prescribing methods of salvation that must be adhered to in order to know that your ticket has been punched.

He will do what he will do and he will use who or what he chooses. GASP! What a novel concept! Some might even say that this is the definition of sovereignty. DOUBLE GASP!

Here's the take-away, gang ... let God be sovereign and you worry about what kind of follower of Jesus you are ... his sovereignty will choose the right approach to bring others into the kingdom.

Keep your ear attuned to him so that you might know how you can help, if, indeed, you can at all.

Who knows, he might even use a rock opera.

A Christian Defense of Doubt

I was born a skeptic.

Didn't ask for it ... just happened.

I questioned everything ... didn't matter what it was, I questioned it. Questions would fly out of me as fast as bullets would fly out of the hot barrel of a frenzied machine gun.

This questioning of everything was in my nature and I, quite frankly, found it to be helpful as I moved through life. I became a varsity debater in the eighth grade due to this quality.

Herein lies the rub ... I became a Christian.

It was a wonderful, real and transformational experience for me.

However I immediately became associated with a group of believers (in Nashville) who did something that I felt was intuitively wrong ... they discouraged me from questioning anything ... read that again ... ANYTHING ... about my new faith or the Bible. To question was to fall away from the faith.

Well, I felt then as I feel now ... you grow as you question.

You see, when you seek truth, you grow. When you seek truth, you question.

When you are afraid, you seek nothing. Too risky.

When you are afraid, you shrink.

I have always felt Christianity was industrial-strength enough to handle anything we can throw at it. We have not stepped into a fragile faith.

Do I have all the answers?

No.

But not even my most acid-test questions have shaken my faith in the least.

Here's an example: I have never heard a good explanation of the Trinity. Oh, I have heard all the traditional explanations - water exists in three states, ice, water and steam yet it is one - I am a son, a husband and a father, yet I am one, etc etc.

None ring true with me. It feels like it is essentially unexplainable but we cannot just say that so we invent metaphors to try to take us into the land of understanding when, sadly, such a land may not exist for some attributes of God.

So do I believe in the Trinity? Most assuredly ... I just cannot explain it. And I am ok with that. Paul writes in 1st Corinthians about 'seeing through a glass darkly but then face to face'. To me that means that only partial understanding is available to us while we are on the earth.

That sets the stage for questions ... at least in my mind. And some of our questions are of such a transcendent nature that they just are not going to be answered with anything other than saying I don't know.

Which brings me back to doubt.

If you find yourself doubting the essentials of the faith, don't freak out. Because we are not equipped to explain every single thing about our faith, having bouts of doubt is normal. Enduring storms of weak faith is part and parcel of our Christian journey.

John the Baptist rode out the storms of doubt. And Jesus held him in particularly high esteem.

Thomas, our most famous of doubters, was not voted off the island by Jesus, who had every opportunity to do so.

Doubt has caused many Christians to fall away because, rather than ride out the storm, they toss their faith overboard.

I say ride out the storm. It is normal. If you feel Christianity is all a big joke or all some sort of collective wishful thinking, just hang on. The Holy Spirit will help you get through it.

So here's the Christian defense of doubt ... it is part of the terrain we must traverse. It is part of the jungle we must hack our way through while on earth. Never put a fellow-believer down who is struggling with doubt. And never chase the non-believer away who dares to ask the tough questions.

He is invisible!

Have you ever awakened and felt that God was not near?

By way of analogy, if you were a nation, was it like God was stopped at the border?

Or maybe even, he was simply and completely nowhere around ... like, nowhere in your universe? A breathtaking kind of no-show?

This happens to me often. Chances are, it happens to you too, right?

Well, hold on to your hat ... I'm going to tell you something that will rock your world.

God is invisible!

Things that are invisible are tough sometimes to sense in any way, shape, form or fashion! Our normal senses do not operate on them.

Of course, God knew all this when he put in place the present we-are-matter-but-he-is-not structure. This did not catch him off guard. This was not unanticipated in the heavenlies. This was not an oversight or miscalculation on God's part.

But it does make for mornings when he might not be anywhere in your neighborhood.

What I'm saying to you is that this is normal, standard, natural ... almost routine. It is not a reason to flip out, doubt the foundations of your faith or run screaming into the night.

If you read the Psalms, David felt the absence of God's presence often. So did many of the major and minor prophets. It is a normal structure for this God-man experience.

I have had stretches of months, where I experienced this kind of 'absence'.

Here's what to do:

1) Relax ... most Christians who have a pulse experience this,
2) Rest in the knowledge that he is pervasive in our worlds, we are the ones who are failing to sense him,
3) Share with other Christians this experience ... as we share our struggles, the body of Christ is built up. (Just not enough struggle-sharing going on now-a-days)

So the next time you awaken and the invisible God is not immediately connected to, remember that the same thing happened to David and Jonah and Moses and Joshua and Jeremiah and Paul and John the Baptist and Mother Teresa and Billy Graham and DL Moody and Oswald Chambers and Jesus (remember the Garden of Gethsemane?) and Isaiah and Peter and Timothy and Abraham and .... now it has happened to you!

Fear and the vapor lion

I love David Letterman's top ten lists.

If I had to list the top ten things that in the past presented obstacles in my life, fear would probably be number one. No, not probably ... it would be number one.

Let's talk about fear.

It has cold hands and can penetrate to the very core of our souls.

Nickelodeon created the concept of being slimed quite a few years ago. Green, goopy liquid would be dumped on an unsuspecting show member, much to the delight of the audience.

It temporarily immobilized the show member, stunning them, paralyzing them, disorienting them as the slime drenched them.

Fear is much like this.

Fear is like getting slimed.

Which brings me to my next point ... God is anti-slime, anti-fear.

If I understand the Scriptures correctly, God does not want fear to play a part in our lives. Because fear brings all sorts of bad things into our lives, all sorts of counter-productive things into our lives. It imports into our souls the anti-matter of all things good.

It is the devil's slime.

But wait, there's more!

Fear will throw you into a psychological prison where no Christian belongs. Fear will bring out the handcuffs that reach way beyond your wrists all the way into your spirit. Fear will wrap you with steel linen and introduce death where life had previously been, turning you into a mummy, only not of the Egyptian sort.

There is a proverb that states, "There is a man who flees when no lion is pursuing."

Think about this: fear has this man running with all his might away from a chasing lion yet there is no lion. Only a vapor lion that fear has constructed in the man's mind.

Fear is like this. Even when there is nothing to fear, absolutely nothing, it constructs a vapor lion that rears up on its hind legs and roars loudly and ferociously. Fear creates scenarios that paralyze us and off we go running - paralyzed to do anything other than run.

The metaphor of running is very instructive here - when one runs, you really can't do much else simultaneously other than run. You cannot, for example, mow the yard, watch football, attend church, or meet a friend at Starbucks while simultaneously engaged in running - running consumes all your focus and energy.

And there you have it!

Our reaction to fear can crowd everything else out. Our response to fear can render us virtually useless for anything else. Fear can taser us and down we go. The vapor lion can maul us and maul us some more.

But it gets even better!

Fear that is unchecked can force us into a corner and cause us to make poor choices that can have hideous consequences on our lives in the present but especially in the future. Unconfronted fear can cause us to avoid life altogether. Unaddressed fear can cause us to pedal our bicycle with all our might trying to outrun the vapor lion, exhausting us and rendering us ineffective for anything wothwhile.

Finally, fear draws a box around any hope we have, then slowly, ever so slowly, shrinks the box, effectively extinguishing our hope. And when hope is gone, our bridge to anything productive in our lives simply collapses and falls into the river.

Are you someone who runs when no lion is actually chasing?

Have fear and dread hobbled you deep in your spirit?

Has fear become the prison in which you are serving a life sentence?

Here's what I did to banish the vapor lion.

I started by taking deep into my spirit 2 Timothy 1:7 which states that 'God has not given me a spirit of fear but of power, love and a sound mind.'

I meditated on it. I read and re-read and re-read it. I pondered it.

I decided that I needed to believe it. So I began saying it out loud. You will never know how much this simple act helps (until you read a book like Brain Rules that gives a neurosurgeon's view of it).

I determined that fear would not continuously invent vapor lions that kept me running, with all the resultant issues popping up in my life that I have outlined above. My faith in 2 Timothy 1:7 was my vapor lion terminator.

Next, I talked about my struggle with fear with folks that I trusted. That simple act really slammed the cage door on the vapor lion.

Why?

Well, God has so designed our souls and spirits that simply speaking of our struggles with a trusted one is therapeutic to a degree that counseling communities have long acknowledged. Simply speaking of it. Not speaking of it and receiving advice but simply disclosing verbally the inner reality.

Long before Freud developed his psychiatric theories, he was astonished to find that when his patients in his Austrian hospital simply spoke to him of their problems, they got better. He usually only listened. And they got better. Simply by speaking of their issues.

There is a divine magic and power in this simple act.

Do you know someone who struggles with simple everyday fear, panic attacks, dread or phobias? Pray for them in faith and let them read this.

Do you struggle with the same? Do you find yourself fleeing when no lion chases?

Reflect on my thoughts above then take action.

Being slimed with fear will soon cease.

That vapor lion that chases you will be sent back to the circus from which he escaped.

And you can enjoy peace.