May 25, 2023

There was a word spoken today that captured my heart.  It was said, “You will become what you choose not to forgive.”  My cynical mind questioned the truth behind this statement and mentally I pushed back with a snap judgment of self-righteousness.  I thought this was trite and simply a cliché that finds itself as s sticker on the bumper of one's life.  But then it found its way into the broken places of my self-absorbed soul. 

 

“You will become what you choose not to forgive.”  I recognize that I counsel and teach people to forgive from the platforms and office spaces of my public profession.  I remind people that forgiveness is not a singular moment, but an ongoing choice.  Forgiveness is a choice that takes place every time that offense is brought to my attention.  Recognizing that I may choose forgiveness today, but falter and fail to extend that same forgiveness tomorrow.  Why?  Because God wired us with the capacity to remember, and our memories produce emotions in the depth of our being.  Memories bind up our wounds or create them.  Memories can ignite our joy or burden our souls.

 

What I began to understand in the quietness of my morning while sitting here at my desk is simply, we are what we know.  My thinking, my actions, and my worldview are heavily shaped by what I have experienced. What I have been immersed in and who I have been surrounded by quietly leave indelible marks on my steps.  It’s why there are moments when what I say or how I respond mirrors that of those that raised or mentored me.  They have left lasting impressions on my soul.  And what is down in the well comes up in the bucket.

 

See, unforgiveness is so poisonous because it becomes my drink of choice.  I nurse it like a solo cup full of emotional comfort in the chaos of indecision and self-deprivation.  I fill it up when I think it’s almost dry simply for the comfort of believing I fit in at a party of people I don’t even like. I think somehow unforgiveness will keep me in the cool crowd.  It will justify my words and attitudes about a person that I feel in some way superior to because of some arbitrary self-serving standard that props me up to be king of my domain. It gives me a false sense of control.

 

When my thoughts about something ruminate for long enough, they give birth to something.  That birth produces something beautiful, praiseworthy, and full of meaning or painful and ultimately full of sorrow.  If what I know and have taught is the practice of unforgiveness then that will be what I return to in my true self.  It might not come out in casual conversation, but it will gnaw at my soul in the quietness of my thoughts and sleepless nights.  As it gnaws at my spirit it shapes me.  It forms my heart.  And now that anger, resentment, bitterness, impurity, or judgmental spirit of another that wounded me so long ago, defines me.  I find myself in a heap scratching spiritual sores with the broken pottery of my self-righteousness, shame, and guilt.  

 

Today I have a choice.  I have the emotional capacity to extend forgiveness even when that forgiveness is undeserved.  I have the understanding that Christ forgave me in the depth of my sin when I was most undeserving.  Today I can pick up my cross and crucify my unforgiveness as I deny myself and follow Him. There is joy in Him.  There is joy in his leadership.  He leads me to forgive because I was forgiven.  I can even forgive myself.

                                                                                                                         May 18, 2023

This morning I heard a friend refer to the claw marks he’s left on all the things that discipleship has called him to give up.  That hit home for me.  The level of truth that comes with that statement is gut-wrenching.  Genuine Christ-centered discipleship calls us into a life that is not our own.  It forces me to look at my story and recognize the litany of claw marks I’ve left behind.    “Deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow me.”  That’s the call.  That’s the cost of discipleship.

 

I’ve never been very good at denying myself.  From my diet, my rhythms, relationships, and financial stewardship, my inner self has always fought to find its way to the forefront.  It clamors for attention like a two-year-old in a candy store when no one is watching.  Me, me, me, is that nature of our souls that we war with.  Self brings frustration and sorrow, yet it never seems to be completely silenced in our pursuit of something greater or something Godly.  

 

When I look back over my spiritual journey there are some things that reveal gnarly, altering marks that when given too much attention bring back a shame that reminds me of my inability to surrender.  See, I believe that the ultimate mark on my life as a disciple is measured by my level of surrender.  My ability to yield to what is greater, grander, and giving of His glory.  To choose His will over my own.  

 

See that is why I believe the cross holds such a presence in the redemptive story.  The cross was and is an instrument of death.  It’s cruel, brutal, and insufferable.  It’s too extreme to bear alone.  And my misperception of the cross has been my greatest hurdle to yielding to His will.  Once I began to understand the reason Christ called us to take up our cross, I began to recognize the freedom that came with my death.  You and I cannot carry our cross alone.  Our crosses crush our joy, our spirit, and our resolve.  Self cannot survive on the cross.  

 

The only way for me to take up my cross is to yield to the one who already overcame the death that the cross gives way to.  Matthew 16:24 reads:  Then Jesus said to his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.”  If you fail to understand the order of Christ's words, then one's life will be marred with painful claw marks.  He says, “If anyone would come after me,” is the deal breaker.  I can’t pursue Christ and self at the same time.  I have a choice to make.  He doesn’t make that choice for me.  He invites me to pursue Him.  He welcomes me, but He doesn’t force the pursuit on me.  

 

My dilemma comes in the perceived weight of the pursuit of self.  The pursuit of self never brings contentment. It only brings a greater sense of my need for more.  He says, “Let him deny himself”.  As early as I can remember I’ve never been fond of being told what I can’t have.  It’s why Jesus says, “Let him.”  He’s giving freedom to freely make the choice of Savior over self.  Let him what?  He says, “deny himself.”  I must acknowledge His invitation of the refusal to give or grant myself what this world tells me I should want.  It’s a refusal of a lie for His truth.  So, he gives me the understanding by which denial is ultimately accomplished.  Death.

 

“Take up your cross” is clear about whose cross this is.  Not His cross, but mine.  He knows what I need to die to which makes my cross personal.  I believe Jesus is saying, once you refuse to pursue your selfish ambition, I’ll give you the strength to die to it, but not until.  The cross is the freedom, but the willingness to die on it, well that’s the hard part.  See Jesus gives assurance in his words, “Come to me all who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”  However, you can’t receive that shalom until you take the steps to come to Jesus.  Once you surrender your will to the leading of Christ, He gives you the strength to endure the cross.  I don’t carry my cross alone.  

 

See, He finishes that statement with, “and follow me.”  If I follow someone in close enough proximity, they will feel my weight.  If I get close enough, they will carry my weight.  How closely I follow Jesus impacts the weight of my cross.  The moments when the Christian life seems too heavy to bear typically have evidence of the marks my claws have left while holding on to myself versus my Savior.  

 

                                                                                                                                 March 23, 2023

Twenty-five hours ago thirteen people stepped into a calling to leave the comfort of our daily lives and fulfill Matthew 28:19 in a small coastal town in Ecuador.  Our desire was to step into the great unknown and use the gifts the Spirit has placed in us in order that He might work through us.  That’s ultimately what Matthew 28:18-19 is calling us to.  That passage is calling us to show the world why we follow Christ.  To demonstrate His redemptive story in such a manner that would draw the hearts of others into the very relationship that has transformed our own. 

 

I heard someone express discipleship this week in terms of what it looked like to follow a rabbi in Jesus’ day.  It was the idea that you would follow a rabbi so closely that the dust from their sandals would cover you to the point that their dust became your dust.  But the only way for that form of discipleship to be real is proximity.  Proximity that requires intimacy.  You can’t be that close to someone without them, and everyone else, noticing.  Yet recognize that is not just a season in one’s life, that is one’s life.  You don’t follow closely one day and then from a distance the next.  To be known as His disciple means I keep His dust on me each day, each hour, each minute.  I don’t leave His presence for my own desires, my own dreams, or my own agenda.

 

See Matthew 28:18-19 seals this idea with the call of baptism.  See baptism signifies my life in 

Christ as one that is sealed.  Meaning that I’m buried with Him in the likeness of His death, and I am raised to “walk” in the newness of His life.  When I walk in the newness of His life, that life never loses its shine.  It never fades.  I must recognize that I’m walking in the newness of His life, not mine.  My life has nothing to offer the world.  For my life to truly matter means I’m walking so closely with my rabbi that people don’t see my life, they see His.    I don’t follow Jesus because it makes my life better.  I follow Jesus because it makes my life matter.

 

I’m not approaching this week in Ecuador asking what I get out of it.  I’m not even truly looking for personal fulfillment during our time here.  I’ve traveled the world from Belarus, Zimbabwe, Serbia, South Africa, China, Thailand, Haiti, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Canada, Honduras and the Caribbean Islands.  The Lord has blessed me with the great privilege of experiencing His church on a global scale.  I’m walking into this moment looking to get dusty.  I want to find where Jesus is at work, and I want to join Him.  I want a conscience experience with the Rabbi I follow.   I want someone to see the evidence of His grace in my life that points them to the Rabbi who’s working through me.  I want someone to get dirty because of the dust on me.  I want someone to find the waters of baptism because they recognized how dirty they are from a broken and fallen world.  I want to witness what happens when someone encounters the grace demonstrated by the Rabbi’s blood washing over them.  Rabbi lead… I will follow.  Let me get dust in my eyes.

 

                                                                                                                                     March 21, 2023

There are certain seasons that seem to come with more questions than answers.  You know, those seasons where the weight and silence seem overwhelming?  It’s not just the idea of things not going my way, it's that I'm uncertain as to what my way even means.  I struggle with my way.  I like my way.  I always have.  I don’t like my way to be micromanaged or dictated to by outside voices.  There is a reason it’s called my way.  

 

There is a selfishness to my way that is captured by my pride, my ego, my ambition.  It wakes up speaking to me even before I fumble in the darkness to find that ever elusive snooze button.  It clammers for space and attention in my mind like the gnawing pangs of an empty stomach.  It finds its way into my identity and purpose, clouding my vision as to who I am as a child of the King, because my King cannot be King in the midst of my way.  They cannot coexist.  He cannot be Lord and yet bow to my way.  

 

I wrestled with my way today as I walked through Romans 1.  Paul attempts to warn and plead with believers to identify this crab grass of my way that sprawls across our hearts like a withered lawn on a hot Texas July day.  See, like an invasive weed takes root, my way begins to produce an unrighteousness even in the best of soils.  It suffocates the truth in my life.  It chokes out His voice and replaces it with mine.  

 

I wrestle with this pursuit of righteousness, like the endless quest of ridding the obstinate weeds from the fresh soil in the garden of my soul.  See Paul makes the claim with a certain ambiguity, which is meant to bring clarity, “The righteous shall live by faith.”  But at first glance that is not as clear as it should be.  Paul is saying, “The one who by faith is righteous shall live.”  I began to see that I don’t have faith because I’m righteous.  My righteousness is the very reason I have faith, but not in my righteousness, His.  My way is rooted in the idea that I’m pursuing my own righteousness, but Christ declared there are none righteous, no, not even one.  

 

I know what it feels like to sense my life slipping away with the passing of each minute, hour, or day.  My joy, my hope running through my fingers as limited grains of sand held by my frail finite fingers.  What do I do with the season where there are more questions than answers?  Where I’m suffocating because of the pursuit of my way, what do I do?  I must recognize what brings life.  

 

I’m reminded of the backyard hose we as kids would drink from on those scorching summer days where we were “encouraged” to play outside.  If you were the unfortunate one to drink from the hose first, you experienced the taste of rubber lava. It wasn’t the water that was different on the front end, it was the hose that made the water less appealing.  The hose had sat in the piercing sun, looped around itself, openly exposed to the heat.  However, if you allowed the water to run for just a minute or two the water would change the environment of the hose.  The water dictated the temperature, not the hose.  

 

My way must allow the water of the Spirit in my life dictate the temperature.  However, that can only happen when I spend the time to let it run through me.  Through my heart, my mind, my soul with the purpose of exposing my way in exchange for His.  Recognizing that silence in my life is the product of my way crushing the beautiful sound of His way.  Its living in the knowledge of His righteousness verse the pursuit of my own.

                                                                                                                       January 31, 2023

The jaded heart is a deadly thing.  It taints the well of goodness and prevents us from seeing the character of God and the beauty of His creation both around us and in us.  The jaded heart is a sneaky thing.  It captures our affections like a slow burn creeps across the low lying grass of an open field.  It doesn't happen overnight and it rarely shows its plan for the future. It simply blinds the heart from seeing what is meant for our good and exchanges it for what is potentialy evil.  The jaded heart is wrapped in a hope that reveals itself as powerless, petty, and pushy.  It robes faith.  It robes joy and ultimately robs our strength.  Why? Because the joy of the Lord is our strength. And when our joy is robed our strength is the unfortunate recipient of those effects.

I've wrestled with a jaded heart in matters of the church and the people that make up the beautiful bride of Christ.  My jaded heart wasn't derived from a moment or a person, but a collective of the sort.  Over time I watched good intentions turn selfish and "goals" masked in vernacular of ministry.  I saw the industry of Christianity and the Christian Church become a machine that created with superb strokes of genius.  The problem was our strokes of genius pointed to the wrong artist.  They pointed to self, not the creator of self.  It drew people to a personality.  I drew people to an art form, not the ultimate Artist.  

But God has continued to show me that "the worshiping heart does not create its Object." A.W. Tozer points out in The Pursuit Of God, "that faith creates nothing. It simply reckons upon that which is already there."  See, my jaded heart wasn't the product of what had happened to me or of that which I had witnessed.  No, it was a product of what I chose to put my faith in.  I had found that I was more intent on following the visible verse the invisible that existed to draw my heart to its passions for me.  I was more content in believing there was God and yet, at the same time, failing to believe in Him.  The visible had become the enemy of the invisible and my heart was captured in a futile faith that couldn't stand in the midst of superb strokes of genius.  It crumbled. The journey of the jaded heart had begun.  

I was seeking the evidence of God in man.  My heart wasn't just jaded, it had become restless and my lens of seeking him had become skewed.  And when we can't see clearly we can't believe accurately.  Hebrews 11:6 states, "And without faith it is impossible to please Him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek Him."  The jaded heart misdirects the object of our faith.  And that heart can only be changed when our mind does.  Only when what I seek is Him not his blessing, not His favor and not my good.  When I want his presence, a conscience experience of His majesty, more than I want a result that gives me a cheap sense of satisfaction the jaded heart shatters. When I seek Him verses the desires of my heart, I recognize the spiritual, invisible strokes of His genius.  See the result of truly seeking Him is not simply the cure for the jaded heart, it's so much more. Seeking Him and His desires for my heart in turn realign my desires to His.  It's a beautiful thing to know that God's heart has never been jaded toward me.