The Worst Tool for Evangelism

From Stuff Christians Like by Jon Acuff

A few weeks ago, I drove by a church welcome sign in North Carolina that I thought was a smidge strange. As I am wont to do, I promptly turned it into a tweet and said the following on Twitter:

“If you’re 99% saved, then you’re 100% lost!” Church sign I just drove by. I guess they didn’t have the letters for “Visitors keep out.”

A number of people saw that tweet and replied back to me with thoughts like this:

“Isn’t that theologically accurate?”
“Don’t we need to be convicted?”

I think those were good questions, but I never doubted the accuracy of that idea. I was doubting whether or not a welcome sign is the best place to debate theological accuracy. Is a message of shame the best message for a church welcome sign?

And more than that, what does “100% saved” mean? Who is measuring that? The pastor of that church? The elders? Is there a chart? What is the 1% that makes all the difference? What do you do with the guy in Mark 9 who asks Jesus to heal his child “if you can?”

Jesus replies, “If you can? Everything is possible for one who believes.”

To which the father says, “I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!”

Jesus, sensing that the father was only 78% saved says, “Can’t do it. Disciples, get my boat! It’s time to bounce.”

Or he heals him and moves on. One of those two things happened.

Ranking by percentage the authenticity of your faith is a difficult thing to do, but maybe we all already agree on that point. What about the need for us to be convicted?

I agree with that. I do, but I think that as humans we have an unbelievable ability to transform conviction into shame.

I think that’s part of the reason Jesus left us so little wiggle room in Matthew 22:37-40. When asked what the most important commandment in the law was, he replied:

 “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

Notice what it doesn’t say? It doesn’t say, “Judge your neighbor.” Or, “Convict your neighbor.” Or, “Shame your neighbor.”

The verb is love.

Now the pushback is this: “The most loving thing you can do is share the truth of Christ with someone.”

Agreed. But again, a word of caution about using “shame” as a tool of evangelism. Let’s not forget what we are told in Romans 2:1-4:

“You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else, for at whatever point you judge the other, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgment do the same things. Now we know that God’s judgment against those who do such things is based on truth. So when you, a mere man, pass judgment on them and yet do the same things, do you think you will escape God’s judgment? Or do you show contempt for the riches of his kindness, tolerance and patience, not realizing that God’s kindness leads you toward repentance?”

What leads us toward repentance? Kindness.

Not shame.
Not abuse.
Not anger.
Kindness.

But if you’d prefer to not look at it through that lens, as least answer this question:

Have you ever met someone who said, “I became a Christian when a friend of mine shamed me badly. They shamed me into the arms of Christ.”

I haven’t, but I have heard this story countless times:

“A neighbor loved me when I was so unlovable to them. Their love made no sense. Finally I had to ask them, ‘Why are you so different? Why are you so kind to me? That’s when they told me about this guy, Jesus Christ.’”

Do we need conviction? Without a doubt.

Do we need theological accuracy? Definitely.

Do we need shame? That’s a tough one. But I do know this, we don’t need it on our church welcome signs.

Walking Birds and Hired Hands

By Jon Acuff:
 

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

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

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

Here is what verses 49-53 say:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And the prayer that came from that confession and the hope I have for you and me is simple:
“Help me live in the joy of forgiveness, not the job of forgiveness.”

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

Does God want you to be miserable?

From Jon Acuff:

When people talk to me about geography in Nashville, I do one of two things:

1. I nod my head and pretend I know what part of the city they are referring to.
2. I tell them, “I don’t know where that is. We just moved here.”

Neither one of those two responses is entirely true. Pretending I know is not true and saying we just moved here isn’t true. We’ve lived here for 18 months. So why don’t I know my way around town yet?

Because I kissed geography goodbye when I was a kid.

I decided a long time ago that I didn’t have room in my head for street names or directions or addresses. I realized I had limited real estate in my brain and essentially told geography, “Kick rocks chump.”

Would it be fair to say that, as a young boy, I predicted a future in which we would all have handheld GPS units? Is the term “visionary” one we should use to describe me? Tough to say, but the reality is that years ago I bid adieu to both geography and math.

As a writer, math is my Achilles’ heel. The mere mention of numbers makes me cringe. I am approximately one year away from not being able to help my 8-year-old with her math homework. I hate math.

Which is why I used to think God would call me into the mission field to teach calculus.

My fear was that, if I gave God my life, if I turned over all my hopes and dreams to him, he would instantly make me train to become a “mathlete.” I’d have to get an abacus and complicated calculator and spend my days doing things I hated to do.

Why?
Because I thought that’s how God did things.
And I’m not the only one who thinks that way sometimes.

I do a joke when I speak to church groups. I say, “Every Christian knows that the first thing God does if you give him your life is make you move to Africa to become a missionary. You’ll go zero to hut in about 4.2 seconds.” And folks laugh, but there’s a crazy truth behind that joke. If we think the first thing God will do to us if we come close to him is the worst thing we can imagine, then we serve the worst God ever.

If you’re not wired to be a missionary in Guam, if nothing about that feels at all like what God has uniquely created you to do, why would he immediately call you to that task if you trusted him with your life?

That’s an extreme example, but you’d be surprised how often I saw that happen last year. Because I wrote a book about closing the gap between your day job and your dream job, a lot of people have talked with me about figuring out what they’re called to do.

And it’s amazing how many people think being a Christian means doing the opposite of what you’re passionate about.

A chaplain told me that one of his college students came to him and said, “I’m conflicted. I really want to serve the Lord, but I love film making. I don’t know what to do.”

That word “but” is such a beautiful trick by the enemy. That young man felt alive and filled with joy when he made films. In those moments, though, he couldn’t imagine that God was happy about that, or enjoyed him making films or could be served and glorified through film making.

He didn’t say, “I really want to serve the Lord, and I love film making.” He said, “I really want to serve the Lord, but I love film making.”

I don’t know how exactly we got here. I think, in some ways, it’s an extreme over-correction to the prosperity gospel. When you talk about how good God is, people can’t wait to say, “He’s not an ATM machine in the sky who magically gives you whatever you want?” But who ever said that? Who said that a life filled with the joy of God was devoid of hardship or never full of moments where you must mourn as loud as you dance?

I’m sad for a culture where there is serving God on one side, and on the other side of that is joy. Where those two things are believed to be separate. Where we are forced to take our individual talents, put them under our bed, apologize about them and try to fit the handful of “serving opportunities” that match our definition of Christian.

I think back to the conversion of Paul.

Do you remember before he became a Christian? When he was called Saul?

He was a bold, powerful, vigilant persecutor of believers. And then God met him on the road to Damascus and turned him into a quiet, meek bookkeeper who spent his remaining days in a cave alone transcribing ancient texts.

Not at all! God turned him into a bold, powerful, vigilant promoter of belief.

He didn’t squelch what was inside Paul. He didn’t ignore the talents he himself had placed there. If anything, he called them out in deeper, louder, more beautiful ways. He showed Paul what it really meant to be Paul!

Maybe you will be a missionary. Maybe that’s the call you will get. But if it’s not, please don’t for a second believe that God wants you to be miserable. That he wants to call you into an adventure where your true gifts will shrivel up and die. That his chief aim is to make sure you never experience joy in his presence.

Because that’s not the kind of God who would ever love you enough to send his son to die for you.

How do you make cobra wine?

Another good piece By Jon Acuff at Stuff Christians Like:


How do you make cobra wine?

I’m glad you asked because recently on our trip to Vietnam, I learned the recipe.

Step 1 – Catch cobra.
Step 2 – Put cobra in jug of rice wine.
Step 3 – Seal lid on. Tightly.

From what I can tell, the hardest part of making cobra wine is catching the cobra, but isn’t that true of most cobra-based beverages?

What’s that you say? You’re more of a scorpion wine guy? You feel like it tends to have better undertones of raspberry and oak and scorpion? I’ve heard that myself.

But I can’t say for certain, as I didn’t taste either variety of wine. (Although I hear 2009 was a particularly excellent vintage of cobra.)

Snapping photos of the fun sights in the mountains of Vietnam was a blast, but it wasn’t my biggest takeaway from the trip. Despite my obvious penchant for snake jokes, seeing those jugs of wine was not what I will remember most from the trip. In addition to the miraculous story I told you about a guy named Hoa, what stuck with me from the trip most was something someone said off hand one day.
Tim, an American who has lived in Vietnam for 18 years as a missionary, mentioned something while we were driving around Hanoi. Here is what he said:

“You know, when the Vietnamese bump into Christ, they go deep in their faith really quickly. They get gifted deeply and really build a strong faith in a short amount of time.”

That surprised me a little, and I asked him why. His answer surprised me even more:
“Well,” he said, “the Vietnamese are a spirit-based people. They grew up with animism and ancestor worship. They get that we’re spirit beings living in a world that is not our final destination. They’re in touch with the role of the spirit in our lives. They get the Holy Spirit. Sometimes Christians in America have a harder time grasping that part of faith.”

That short conversation caught me off guard and exposed something in my own life.

I’ve got a whole lot of religion, but very little spirituality.

For the last year, I’ve worked as hard as I possibly can on being a good steward of the talents I feel like God has given me. I’ve spoken all over the country. I wrote Quitter. I balanced my family and my dream and hustled more than I ever have before. And the truth is, I put blood, sweat and tears into my own effort-based natural results.

Hustle, I understand. If you work hard, certain things happen. If you work harder than the next guy, certain things happen. If you push and strive, good things can happen.

But, along the way, I feel like I lost touch with the Holy Spirit. I got so focused on my own natural results, of seeing the progress of my effort, that I lost sight of the supernatural.

My faith became mechanical and mathematical. Here’s the thing, though: I don’t want to live a life based on my efforts.

It’s exhausting. Before I was a Christian, trying to fix myself and numb the things that hurt was
exhausting. Now that I’m a Christian, trying to make life work on my own is just as tiring.

I don’t want that kind of faith.

I want spirit-driven faith. I want deep, soaked-in-the-Holy Spirit faith. I don’t want to experience the best of what Jon Acuff is capable. That’s small and tiny and insignificant. I want to experience the best of what God is capable. A supernatural God who breathed life into me and set the stars in place and moves with as much mystery and creativity as he did when he wrote a message on the wall for a king or burned a talking bush for a prophet.

I don’t want to be in charge of my growth, with effort-based faith that hollows me out and leaves me shiny on the outside and empty in the middle.

I want Christ to be in charge of my growth. A Christ that didn’t say to the disciples, “Come and you will learn how to be fishers of men.” A Christ who said, “Come and I will make you fishers of men.”
If you and I believed for a second that the same power that raised Christ from the dead was in us, can you fathom how different that day would be?

I wish I could wrap this post up with three neat little steps on how to fix the situation and live a spirit-based life. But to do so puts me right back into effort mode.

Today, my prayer for me, and maybe for you if you’ve been living a 2D faith too, is that we won’t get comfortable in the natural. That we’ll learn to rest and return to a God who is, always has been, and always will be supernatural.
 

Cop Cars and Grace

 By Jon Acuff at Stuff Christians Like

I recently hit A-list status on Southwest.

Which means, well, absolutely nothing.

When the packet of info came in the mail announcing my new status, I kept flipping through the brochure looking for the benefits. “I already check in early, so A-status check in isn’t special. But surely there’s something?” I thought. Nope. There is nothing.

There’s no special club at the airport that smells like lavender.
There’s no first class for you to sit in.
There’s no diamond, platinum or gold package you earn.
You get to receive 25% more miles every time you fly. And you can apply those miles to … nothing.

I’m fine with that, though, because that’s what I love about Southwest. They’re cheap. They’re low priced. They give you great service and very little else. It wouldn’t make sense for them to be low priced and have some blinged out rewards programs.

I get it. I do. But my oldest daughter L.E. didn’t. A few weeks ago, we flew out to Las Vegas for a speaking engagement. On the flight home she asked me, “Will we get a meal on this plane?” In a classic father/daughter moment, I turned to her slowly and said, “L.E., let me tell you a little about Southwest.”

We’re getting peanuts. If all goes well, the peanuts will have a light glaze of honey roast. But it’s just going to be peanuts. And that’s OK.

During the four hour flight home, I answered a lot of other questions for L.E. She’s 8, and 8 year olds are full of questions. That’s kind of what they do. And in the middle of the flight, looking at L.E., I thought of one of my own:

“Why did Christ say we needed receive the kingdom of God like a little child?”

Have you ever thought about that? We often talk about “faith like a child,” from verses like Luke 18:17 that says, “I tell you the truth, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.” or Matthew 18:4, “Therefore, whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.”

Kids are interesting role models though. I guarantee you’ve never been in a meeting at work and someone said, “In order to hit our sales numbers this quarter, we’ve got to have discipline like a child.” No politician has ever said, “If I’m elected, I’ll run the country with wisdom like a child.” No coach has ever said, “In order for us to win Saturday’s game, we need to work hard like a child.”

It’s difficult to find another context in life where being “like a child” is held up as something to emulate. (Except for maybe the arts.)

So why then, of all the examples Christ could have used, are children the example he picked? I’ve heard someone say it’s because kids are dependent and in need of being taken care of, and God takes care of us like that.

But I think there’s an even simpler possibility.
Because kids get grace.

Grace makes sense to kids. They’ve got the imagination and creativity and “anything is possible” attitude that can accept the unbelievable nature of grace. We adults are the ones who have a hard time with it.

We’ve spent 10 or 20 or 30 years learning how “things work.” There are consequences, cause and effect, A+B = C situations. Grace doesn’t fit those.

We get something we don’t deserve. Something we can’t control. Something we can’t earn. Something that makes no sense when you try to break it down logically. So you’re saying that when I make a mess of my life, when I wreck everything in it, that there’s a God who loves me so much that he sent his only son to die for me so that I could repent and be forgiven?

That’s crazy.
But not to kids.

McRae, my youngest daughter, reminded me of this a few months ago.

While we were leaving Chuck-e-Cheese, the only place she ever picks for our daddy/daughter dates, we heard a police siren. Into the dark fall night the blue lights of a cop car sped by. In the backseat, I heard McRae sigh and say,

“Ohhhh, I love that sound.”

That’s a strange thing for a six year old to say, so I asked her why. Without missing a beat she said,

“Because that’s the sound of someone getting rescued.”

Have you ever thought that?

I haven’t. When I see a cop car with the lights on behind me, my first thought is “Was I speeding? Oh no, he’s coming for me. There’s no way I was going as fast as that other guy. I just kind of ran the red light. He really ran it!” If the cop passes me, I wonder who he’s going to get. I imagine someone has broken the law and is about to be caught.

Kids? They get rescue. They get grace.

And in case I wasn’t paying attention that night, God gave me another example from McRae. One day she told me about a boy in her pre-school class who was really bad last year. (Bad in pre-school usually means you’re a biter.)

In the midst of telling me how bad he was, McRae said,

“He used to wear really soft and fuzzy slippers to school. Even when it wasn’t pajama day. I bet his mom heard how bad he was, and she let him wear those fun slippers because she wanted him to know that no matter how bad he was, she loved him.”

That’s how kids think. If you’re loved, you’re fully loved. If you’re in need of rescue, it’s coming. If you’re bad, you can still come home.

Kids get grace.

I think Christ wants us to get it too.

That’s why I think he wants us to have faith like a child.

Because those guys aren’t just Kevin and Danny.

By Jon Acuff at Stuff Christians Like 

My wife and I own an unbelievable amount of junk.

Had you asked me how much junk we owned a year ago, I would have said, “Not much.” And I would have been gravely, gravely mistaken.

I realized just how much nonsense we owned when we decided to move twice in a year. In the first move, we boxed and packed our entire house ourselves. Then a group of 7 men with nicknames like “Tiny” put it all on a truck. Then they had to add an extension to the truck to fit other stuff. And then add a trailer.

It was like watching a prequel to an episode of the show “Hoarders.” In my defense, we don’t have any pets so we’ll never be on the even scarier version of that show, “Animal Hoarders.” I once saw an episode where a guy was living with 60 full-grown chickens inside his house. If I ever tweet out a picture of a chicken sitting next to me on the couch watching TV, please come over my house and have a poultry intervention.

After our move from Atlanta to Nashville exposed the innards of our attic, we decided to get rid of a lot of stuff. We gave it away. We sold it. We threw it away. So when it came time to do a cross town move in Franklin, TN, I thought it’d be a lot easier.

It wasn’t. We still had a tremendous amount of stuff, including a ridiculous amount of books. Have you ever carried 800 or 900 books? Not all at once, you’re not huge like me and Tiny, I get that. But have you ever had a moment when you actually wanted to punch your stuff in the face? That’s where I was after my wife and I made 59 trips in our cars across town to load and unload the small, random stuff we could carry.

For the bigger items, we hired a moving company that our friend recommended. This turned out to be a mistake.

For starters, they showed up an hour after they were supposed to be there. My wife told me that was actually early for movers. It always drives me crazy that there are still some professions where an hour behind schedule is considered early or on time.

But after 60 minutes of tracking them down, they did show up. Both of the guys got right to work. They started hauling things out of the house quickly, but there were some things they tried to talk us out of owning. They looked at some potted plants we had in our courtyard and said, “I’m not sure if those are going to fit on the truck.” Which is a weird thing for a mover you’re paying by the hour to say. The plants were three feet tall. If they didn’t fit on the truck on the first run, we’d just bring it back and make a second run.

Then they started to complain that they were having to carry heavy items. Again, weird thing for a mover to be surprised by. I assume that carrying heavy items is one of the first things they teach you at moving school. If you’re an accountant and you showed up at work and someone said, “Can you please move that fridge to the truck in the driveway?” you’d probably be thrown a little. As a mover, carrying things kind of comes with the territory.

The grumbling got louder and louder throughout the day, the pushback from the movers more direct and off-putting. Finally my wife, who had literally dealt with the mafia on a job site in Boston when she was in construction, said, “I don’t feel comfortable being around these guys. Can you please handle everything from here on out, even if things get put in the wrong place?”

So I did. And we came to a bit of a crossroads. The truck was so full we had to make two trips. The movers started talking about coming back tomorrow to finish the job. But the remaining items at our old house were our beds. And, if I paid them that day for the job, the chances of them driving back out the next day to finish were slim at best. So I convinced them we were completing the job today and drove them back over to the house to empty it out.

On the way, I was praying about my attitude, which stunk at that point. (Even reading those paragraphs above, I sound whiny and ridiculous.) And I prayed that God would let me see the movers Kevin and Danny the same way he did. I was kind of hoping that would be a prayer he slowly answered, so that I could still be grumpy that day. Then maybe a week later he’d reveal how he saw them, and I could write a post about it without actually having to change the way I behaved that day.
But I felt like his response was almost instant.

“How do I see Kevin and Danny? They’re two of my favorite people.”

Dang it. They were. I saw Kevin and Danny, the belligerent movers. The guys who were an hour late. The guys who took a bajillion smoke breaks. The guys who banged and bruised our furniture. The guys who creeped out my impossible-to-creep-out wife. The guys who seemed determined to complicate moving day.

But that’s not who God saw.

He saw Kevin and Danny.
 
He saw two guys he loved.

Two guys he sent his son for.

Two guys he was crazy about.

Two of his favorite people.

After we got back to my house, Kevin asked me if I could pay in cash instead of a check. The owner of the company called and asked me to do that too because the banks were closed and Kevin wouldn’t be able to get his money that night. In a near empty garage, Kevin quietly told me, “Tomorrow is my eight-year-old son’s birthday, and I don’t have anything for him yet. If you pay us tonight, I can get him something.”

Kevin was carrying my furniture all day, but he was also carrying the weight of being a dad without a gift for a little boy’s birthday. And that was heavier than anything I owned. He was carrying the realization that on a Saturday he wasn’t at home with his family, he was at work with someone else’s.

I don’t know if you’ve got a grumpy mover in your life. Someone who feels like an opponent to your day. A coworker whose hobby seems to be making your life difficult. A neighbor who walks their dog into your yard to use the bathroom. There are a million possibilities, and ultimately I don’t know who that person is for you. But I do know how we’re called to respond.

With love.

With prayer.

With more compassion than they deserve, more forgiveness than they’ll ever ask for and more kindness than they’d ever expect.

Because those guys aren’t just Kevin and Danny.

They’re two of God’s favorite people.

The perfect formula for God.

By Jon Acuff at Stuff Christians Like Blog. If you haven't visited his site, it is worth a read. Hilarious and inspired.

God keeps refusing to fit into my formulas for him.

Just when I think I’ve got him figured out, he throws a curveball.

For years, I’ve secretly believed that if I do my quiet times the “right way,” God will be happy with me and bless me and not smite me.

What’s the right way? What’s the recipe for a quiet time that “counts.” I’ll tell you:

30 minutes of prayer
Smidge of writing in a moleskine notebook
At least three pages of Bible reading

Debate all you want about the moleskine, but I’m pretty sure the book of Joel specifically mentions those notebooks are extra holy.

I used to set my timer on my iPhone to 30 minutes, sit down and then try to get my quiet time on. If for whatever reason I could only grab 15 minutes that day, I felt like God was 50% less happy with me. If I missed an entire day, I imagined he was picking out the right lightning bolt to get me with like a golfer picking a club.

My formula was:
“10 minutes of prayer + 10 minutes of writing + 10 minutes of Bible reading = Happy God.”

That sounds so silly when you write it out. That God’s heart is controlled by how I spend my morning is ridiculous, but I honestly thought that. That was my formula and for years I held on to it.

But the more you actually read the Bible, the more difficult it is to hold onto formulas about God. Especially when it comes to the thief on the cross.

Remember that guy? You should. Every time you mutate James’ “faith without works is dead” into “works equals salvation,” you should think about the thief on the cross.

He makes a brief, but spectacular, cameo in Luke 23. As Christ hangs on the cross, the two thieves next to him have a conversation:
One of the criminals who hung there hurled insults at him: “Aren’t you the Christ? Save yourself and us!”

The first criminal tried to use a formula on Christ. Here’s what he was saying:
“The power of God + Threat of a brutal death = Get down off the cross.”

I understand what he was saying. Why would you suffer the worst possible death if you had the power
not to? That is so illogical.

The second thief responds to the first:
But the other criminal rebuked him. “Don’t you fear God,” he said, “since you are under the same sentence? We are punished justly, for we are getting what our deeds deserve. But this man has done nothing wrong.”

He uses a formula too:
“Criminal deeds + justice = death on a cross.”

They were getting what they deserved. The formula for that one was easy. He continues speaking:
“We are punished justly, for we are getting what our deeds deserve. But this man has done nothing wrong.” Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”

That’s his second formula. He’s saying:
“The innocence of Christ + justice = freedom from the cross.”

By all forms of earthly logic, it made no sense for Christ to be on that cross. We are criminals. We are exactly where we should be. This man hanging next to us, is not.

What does Christ say in that moment? When formulas are flying? When formulas are ruling the conversation? When formulas are loud? He breaks them all.

Jesus answered him, “I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise.”

Jesus Christ is the formula killer. He won’t behave according to our formulas. He won’t fit into our incredibly tiny expectations. He refuses to be controlled by our logic.

How do we know? Because the thief didn’t get off the cross in order to pay for his grace. The thief didn’t climb down and have the right types of quiet time. He didn’t volunteer for 14 activities at his church that year. He didn’t join a small group.

All he did was bump into Christ and receive grace.

At some point, a voice of doubt, the voice of the enemy, the voice of fear is going to try to tell you that you’re not a good enough Christian. That there’s a formula to God. That if you’d just try harder to be perfect and quit messing up, maybe, just maybe you’ll be good enough.

But when you hear that voice, think of the thief, think of Christ, and think of grace.

Question:
Have you ever thought you’re not a “good enough” Christian?



 

Grace (not snakes) on a Plane

Jon Acuff at Stuff Christians Like Blog.  Always funny:

You know that small dog that barks at cars, ’cause they’re large, loud, moving objects? He’s got that shrill, sharp bark that chips away pieces of your soul each time you hear it? But you don’t mind because you drive by him pretty quickly and he’s gone. You know that dog? He was on my flight last week. And he was pretty sure that, if he barked long enough, he’d be able to scare away the large, loud, moving object we were all on. Or he was doing the dog version of an NFL touchdown dance, showing off to all the other dogs that had to ride in the back of the plane with the luggage, while he relaxed in an aisle making frequent visits to “barktown.”

Hard to say, but in that moment I was not bubbling over with grace and kindness. But then I remembered the post I wrote about Grace Spots.

The idea was that there are some places where I have to be really deliberate about showing grace to people. The post was inspired because I was a jerk to someone at a restaurant.

That was a dangerous post to write, though, because it’s easy to blog about grace and less easy to actually live it out. Especially on a plane. So now that I’ve been traipsing about the country and doing terminal writing, I thought it might be good to figure out a few people I needed to show some Grace on a Plane.

1. The person who seems surprised we landed.

I feel like dropping out of the sky from 35,000 feet, giving 19 “please put up your tray table” announcements and making contact with the crust of the earth would be enough of an indication that the flight was over. But sometimes I get stuck behind passengers that seem surprised it’s time to get their carry on luggage out of the overhead and move on. Let’s be honest though, at worst, that’s costing me 3 minutes of wait time. I need to quit being such an impatient punk. If someone’s having trouble getting their luggage down, I should help, not fume. Grace on a plane.

2. The person who jumps out of their seat when you land and cuts in front of you to get off.

That’s the great thing about being ungracious, you get to be frustrated by both situations. You get to complain about the person who takes too long to get off the plane and the person who gets off too quickly. The truth is, that guy might have a connecting flight he’s going to miss if he doesn’t get off. Or he’s been out of town for a month on a business trip and his three year old is down at baggage claim waiting for him with his wife and he’d pop the emergency exit and use that awesome slide to get out faster if he had to. I don’t know his story, and some punk writer named Jon Acuff said on a blog called Stuff Christians Like that it’s easy to judge someone when you don’t know their story. Grace on a plane.

3. Chatty McGee.

I’ve got headphones in. They’re bright white and could not be more obvious looking. I’ve got a bunch of writing to do right now. I can’t talk. I’m really busy. What’s that you ask, what am I working on? I’m writing a blog that’s about Jesus and being compassionate to people and reaching out to people and … oh. Dang it. Grace on a plane.

The more I write about my frustrations and my lack of grace, the sillier it all seems to me. But maybe there’s hope. A few weeks ago, a lady spilled a glass of white wine on me and my backpack. I got off the plane smelling like a box o’ wine. And I just laughed it off and helped her clean it up. Maybe I’m becoming less of a jerk. Maybe.

Question:

Have you ever needed grace on a plane?

The Hands of Christ at Applebee's (Grace Spots)

By Jon Acuff at Stuff Christians Like Blog. If you haven't visited his site, it is worth a read. Hilarious and inspired.

A few weeks ago, my family and I went out to dinner together on a Friday night. The goal was to have a family meal, hang out, and possibly even enter into the Q realm. Quality Time.

Apparently every person in the greater Nashville are also had the same idea.

At the first restaurant we went to, we couldn’t even find a parking place. We circled a few times and then tried a second restaurant. When they told us the wait time was 45 minutes, I groaned and set the timer on my iPhone.

I’m a little OCD about numbers and sometimes watching the time helps keep me focused on something other than waiting in the lobby. I’d like to say that while waiting there I realized our goal of hanging out as a family was already being accomplished, that we didn’t need food to bond together as a family, we had each other! This was why we came out in the first place. The night was already a success as we talked and laughed about our week in a moment that would have made even Norman Rockwell jealous.

I want to say that, but that would be a lie.

In moments like that, I tend to become a jerk. I don’t know if it’s because I’m competitive and want to “beat other people to dinner” or maybe it’s because I’m impatient. But I started to get really frustrated and tired of waiting and angry that I did not possess the super powers to force the little beeper we were holding to go off. Flash red already!

When it finally did go off, I walked up to the hostess and said, “I feel like I won the lottery. I’m so happy I want to give you a hug.” Her response?

“That would be great, I had a really tough day with my teenager.”

Slap in the face. Stomach punch. Throat chop. However you want to say it, she misinterpreted my passive aggressive/whiny statement as genuine thankfulness. And that was pretty convicting.

It made me realize that there are some moments in life where people aren’t getting any grace. There are some places where people aren’t being shown any kindness, ever. There are some times in the day where people aren’t getting any love. And although I might like to think I am graceful in those situations, I’m not.

But what if showing grace to someone was like anything else in life, you had to be deliberate? What if I could consciously pick ahead of time “Grace Spots” where no matter what, I was going to do my best to throw out wild amounts of grace? Would that change somebody’s day? Would that show someone Christ in a really unexpected way? Maybe, so here are three I identified:

1. At the airport.
Flight attendants, the TSA guards, the gate attendants, these folks are constantly surrounded by the most impatient, frustrated people on the planet. What if every time I flew, I went out of my way to treat the airport like a grace spot?

2. The Post Office
I’ve never had a fast experience at the post office. I’ve never walked out and thought, “that sure was easy.” But the one guy running the counter while 80 of us wait in line with packages didn’t demand, “I want to be understaffed today. I’d prefer to not have any help with me today.” That guy needs grace.

3. The DMV
You’re going to want to work your way up to this one. Don’t start with the DMV. Practice grace on a few Friday nights at restaurants first. Fly a few times and make a TSA guard laugh or smile before you practice grace at the Department of Motor Vehicles. This is PhD level grace and kindness, but they deserve it too. Lots of it.

There’s a chance that you are a fountain of grace and the idea about deliberately labeling and praying about grace spots is silly to you. You already show grace everywhere. The planet is your grace spot. I wish I could say the same thing about my life, but I can’t. I need to keep grace spots in mind and I’ve already seen it change things.

When I was in the ninth grade my mom made me write an apology note to the dentist. He swore he’d never see me again as a patient because I was such a jerk to him. So when we moved to Nashville, I determined I’d pick the dentist’s office as a grace spot. After a few visits of showering everyone in that office with grace, a new hygienist handled my appointment. She said, “I was so excited to finally meet you today. Everyone was talking this morning about how much they enjoy when you come in for a visit and I hadn’t met you yet.” Then a few days later she sent me the first hand written thank you note I’ve
ever received from a dentist’s office.

Why?
Because the dentist’s office is one of my grace spots.

What would you say is one of the places you have a seemingly impossible time extending grace?

What grace spots could you pick?

You are not Naked

From Jon Acuff:

Easter is about grace. And when I think about grace, one of the things that stops me short of believing in it is shame. This post, written last year, is about shame and grace and the reason we’re not naked:

I don’t want to brag, but I’m pretty awesome at applying band-aids. And make no mistake, there is an art. Because if you go too quickly and peel them the wrong way, they stick to themselves and you end up with a wadded up useless mess instead of the Little Mermaid festooned bandage your daughter so desperately wants to apply to a boo boo that may in fact be 100% fictional.

Half of the injuries I treat at the Acuff house are invisible or simply wounds of sympathy. My oldest daughter will scrape her knee and my 3-year old, realizing the band aid box is open will say, “Yo dad, I’d like to get in on that too. What do you say we put one on, I don’t know, my ankle. Yeah, my ankle, let’s pretend that’s hurt.”

But sometimes the cuts are real, like the day my 5-year old got a scrape on her face playing in the front yard. I rushed in the house and returned with a princess bandage. As I bent down to apply it to her forehead, her eyes filled up with tears and she shrunk back from me.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“I don’t want to wear that band-aid.” She replied.
“Why? You have a cut, you need a band-aid.” I said.
“I’ll look silly.” She answered.

Other than her sister and her mom, there was no one else in the yard. None of her friends were over, cars were not streaming passed our house and watching us play, the world was pretty empty at that moment. But for the first time I can remember, she felt shame. She had discovered shame. Somewhere, some how, this little 5 year old had learned to be afraid of looking silly. If I was smarter, if I had been better prepared for the transition from little toddler to little girl, I might have asked her this:

“Who told you that you were silly?”

I didn’t though. That question didn’t bloom in my head until much later and I didn’t understand it until I saw God ask a similar question in Genesis 3:11. To me, this is one of the saddest and most profoundly beautiful verses in the entire Bible. Adam and Eve have fallen. The apple is a core. The snake has spoken. The dream appears crushed. As they hide from God under clothes they’ve hastily sewn together, He appears and asks them a simple question:

“Who told you that you were naked?”

There is hurt in God’s voice as He asks this question, but there is also a deep sadness, the sense of a father holding a daughter that has for the first time ever, wrapped herself in shame.

Who told you that you were not enough?
Who told you that I didn’t love you?
Who told you that there was something outside of me you needed?
Who told you that you were ugly?
Who told you that your dream was foolish?
Who told you that you would never have a child?
Who told you that you would never be a father?
Who told you that you weren’t a good mother?
Who told you that without a job you aren’t worth anything?
Who told you that you’ll never know love again?
Who told you that this was all there is?
Who told you that you were naked?

I don’t know when you discovered shame. I don’t know when you discovered that there were
people that might think you are silly or dumb or not a good writer or a husband or a friend. I don’t know what lies you’ve been told by other people or maybe even by yourself.

But in response to what you are hearing from everyone else, God is still asking the question, “Who told you that you were naked?”

And He’s still asking us that question because we are not.

In Christ we are not worthless.
In Christ we are not hopeless.
In Christ we are not dumb or ugly or forgotten.
In Christ we are not naked.

Isaiah 61:10 it says:
For he has clothed me with garments of salvation and arrayed me in a robe of righteousness.

The world may try to tell you a thousand different things today. You might close this post and hear a million declarations of what you are or who you’ll always be, but know this.

As unbelievable as it sounds and as much as I never expected to type this sentence on this blog:
You are not naked.

The Problem with the Pigpen.

By Jon Acuff at Stuff Christians Like

January was a good month.

I’ve been doing regular quiet times.

I’ve been meeting for breakfast with a good friend I trust.

I finished the first two versions of my next book.

I took my kids on dates and made more time for my wife.

I lost 10 pounds and have been eating healthier.

I was mentally reviewing that list in my head the other night walking out of the office when I bumped into a tragic lie I was unaware I still believed.

As I left work, I thought to myself, “God must be really happy. He must really love me right now.” In the space of a single stride, I felt like God leveled a long held belief and asked me simply, “Did I love the prodigal son more when he was in the pigpen or in my arms?”

Ugh. Sometimes I feel like those old commercials where they say, “I’m not a doctor but I play one TV.” Only I would say, “I’m not a Christian, I just play one on a blog.”

Why? Because my thought that God loves me when I have a “good month” is so opposite of what grace is. In my version of the prodigal son story, I am covered with mud. From a long way off I can see the father’s angry face. He is enraged. He is disgusted with me. His scowl seems to radiate from miles as I walk. As I walk, I shout out promises to him:

“I’ll do better this time!”

“I’ll stop being so cocky!”

“I won’t mess up again!”

“I’ll stop gossiping!”

“I’ll be more consistent with my quiet time!”

“I’m sorry!”

With each step, every shout, his face shifts a little. His anger seems to dissipate the closer I get and the louder I make my promises. I walk and shout, shout and walk until at last, I cross his property line and collapse on his farm. Not in his arms, but at least in his presence.

He gives me his love, in the form of a shiny token. I clutch it close and swear to never lose sight of it again. For weeks, I hold my breath, afraid to mess up. For weeks I white knuckle my way through life convinced that living on the farm is about being perfect, not forgiven. I hold it together. For a while at least, but then the pressure of performing crushes me. Being perfect gets so heavy. I can’t do this. I can’t.

So I lean on the fence and look back over the horizon to the pigpen. I just want to relax. I can’t be perfect. This feels really hard. So late one night, when I think everyone is asleep, I use the token, the coin that is God’s love to prop open the gate. I can just barely squeeze through the gap if I’m willing to leave the father’s love propped in place.

And then I’m gone, running out into the night, the father’s love, the coin, the thing I earned left far behind. I deserved it when I was perfect, I lost it when I was not. Weeks or months later, I’ll realize the misery of the pigpen again and start to walk back home. And the cycle continues.

I’m tired of that kind of faith. I’m tired of believing in a God who gives “sometimes love.” As in sometimes he loves me, sometimes he does not. And above all, I’m tired of believing in a God who does not love sinners. Especially since there are a billion verses in the Bible that say just the opposite. One of my favorite is Matthew 9:10-13.

“While Jesus was having dinner at Matthew’s house, many tax collectors and sinners came and ate with him and his disciples. When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” On hearing this, Jesus said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice. For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”

Falling down, being broken and a sinner doesn’t prevent me from his love, it makes me perfect for his love. It makes me exactly who Christ came for, not the righteous, but sinners. And it’s not a gift he gives once, because I sacrificed and had a good January. It’s a gift he gives continually, like mercy.

Why?

Because he loves us.

In his arms.

In the pigpen.

He loves us.

Judah, David, Paul and Me

The repetition of redemption.

by Jon Acuff at Stuff Christians Like

Sometimes, I treat God like a gun.

When I want to approach him, when I feel the need to be close to him, I imagine there is a waiting period, much like buying a handgun.

I can’t go right in. I need to string together a good week first. I need a month of clean living. I need to not look at porn or lie or get angry or any other long list of sins for at least a few weeks before I go back to where he is.

In my head, I imagine that God wants me to return to him redeemed. The prodigal son did not just come home, he came home with a plan. And like a boss who wants me to provide solutions, not just problems, I must do the same.

This is how I think sometimes, when the world is quiet and I’ve already read all the shampoo bottles in the shower and there is nothing else to distract me. And I have thought this way for years. But, I think this might be wrong.

I’m starting to believe this because the Bible is such an overwhelmingly powerful redemption story. That is the drumbeat message that sounds out again and again and again.

One of my favorite examples is the story of Judah. He was one of the older brothers of Joseph. And his life, like many of the lives we see chronicled in the Bible, was a mess.

He sold his brother into slavery. This is a tremendous act of betrayal that sometimes gets lost in the general wildness of the Old Testament. But think about it this way, have you ever had a fight with a family member? You gossiped about them or missed their kid’s recital or some other offense? It was tense and ugly and made Thanksgiving a little awkward. But you didn’t sell them into slavery. You might have sworn in front of their kids too many times, but you didn’t make some cash by selling their body to some slave traders in Ohio.

The second part of Judah’s life is even less glamorous. He’s the worst parent on the planet. I know your kids might lose the chapstick top in the car all the time and probably make a Mexican restaurant just look disgusting, like a grenade of rice and chips went off, or they refuse to put their shoes on at the most inopportune times, but they’re better than Judah’s kids. I promise.

Here’s what we’re told in Genesis 38, which is one chapter after Judah has sold his brother into slavery. (Is there a worse double header in the Bible for anybody?)

“But Er, Judah’s firstborn, was wicked in the Lord’s sight; so the Lord put him to death.”

How bad do you have to be for God to just kill you? Just flat out kill you? If it happens once, Er was just a punk. Maybe it wasn’t the parenting. Maybe Judah was not to blame for some of the problem. Oh, but then we come to Judah’s second son. And, “What he did was wicked in the Lord’s sight; so the Lord put him to death also.”

I don’t care if you think you’re a horrible parent, you’ve never had God say, “Wow, I didn’t even know that level of wickedness is possible. I need to take that one out. Yikes!”

So far, Judah is not that much of a hero and the third strike is possibly the worst.

In the same chapter the Lord has killed two of his kids, Judah goes to a prostitute. (We’re not even told he mourned the loss of his kids.) He sleeps with her and gives her some items as a down payment. Only it’s his daughter in law in disguise and she gets pregnant. When he hears she is pregnant, and does not realize he is the father, he proclaims, “Bring her out and have her burned to death!”

Is there anything more vocal and neon than the righteousness of folks leading secret lives? He wants to kill her. His daughter in law, who he failed by not finding her a husband. He wants to burn her.

This is Judah. A failure. A mess up. A train wreck of Biblical proportions. But he is not alone.

King David murdered a man after having an affair with his wife and ended up getting a village of priests killed because of his lies.

Gideon was hiding in a hole from his enemies when God approached him.

Paul held the coats of the people who stoned Stephen.

Peter denied Christ three times after promising undying love.

Moses was a murderer.

Adam and Eve broke the only law they had.

Samson took a blessing of strength and corrupted it.

The list of lives God redeems in the Bible is long and exhaustive. If the Bible was just a book, a publisher would read it and say, “It’s a bit repetitive. Lot of people getting redeemed over and over again.” If the Bible was a song on American Idol, Simon would say, “We get it. You like redemption. That performance felt a bit indulgent.”

Over and over again we see it, and we see it clearly in the final chapters of Judah’s life. When faced with the prospect of losing his younger brother Benjamin, Judah puts himself in harms way:

Then Judah said to Israel his father, “Send the boy along with me and we will go at once, so that we and you and our children may live and not die. I myself will guarantee his safety; you can hold me personally responsible for him. If I do not bring him back to you and set him here before you, I will bear the blame before you all my life.”

Can that be? Is that really Judah? Where is that nobility coming from? How did he change And what does it mean for me?

I think it means we serve a God who loves redemption more than we can possibly imagine. We may feel disqualified for his mercy. We may feel too dirty for his grace. We may feel only a series of white knuckle works will open back up his gates.

But, that’s not what his love letter says. We are not shown a steady parade of heroes who became even more heroic in the hands of God. We are shown a parade of failures who found forgiveness. Losers who found love. Hopeless who found hope.

Christmas is a loud season, but hopefully, you’ll hear the real song.

It’s one of redemption. My redemption. Your redemption. Our redemption.

The God who loved Judah and David and Paul, loves you. And that’s a very redeeming thought.

Packing

Great Post by by Jon Acuff at Stuff Christians Like Blog. If you haven't visited his site, go now. Hilarious and inspired. 

My friend used to deal drugs.

I tell you this, not to add an element of excitement to his testimony, as we are prone to do when we encounter someone who has a really crazy, Jason Bourne like testimony.

I tell you this, because two weeks ago he taught me an important lesson about faith.

We were talking about a famous singer who recently got arrested for having a bag of cocaine on him in a bathroom. The singer told the police that this was the first time he’s ever tried cocaine. When I told my friend that, he said it wasn’t true. He said it was virtually impossible for that to have been his first time. Knowing that my friend didn’t follow this musician or really have any knowledge of him, I asked him why he could be so sure of that.

Here is what he told me:

“No one carries drugs with them the first time they use. No one has the lack of fear it takes to carry a few grams of coke the very first time you try it. No one is alone in a bathroom, carrying a controlled substance the first time they have it. It starts slowly. You’re at a party where it is present. There are a few lines at a friend’s house. Somewhere you bump into it casually. You try it that way long before you decide you’ll be out at a nightclub with a bag of it in your pocket.”

That makes sense to me and more than that, it feels a lot like every other sin in my life.

Nothing I’ve ever done, whether lying or drugs, pornography or gossip, started out with a bag in a bathroom. As I’ve said before, no one wakes up on a Tuesday morning and says, “Today, I’m going to embezzle!” No one says, “At lunch, I’m going to get 10 DUIs and go to jail!” The path to completely destruction never starts out that way.

And neither did the Prodigal Son story. I can’t write about that story enough. It’s the perfect example of small steps to big stupid. In that story, we often like to think that the son got his inheritance from his father and then took a G6 jet straight to hookertown.

But that’s not what Luke 15 says. In fact, this is what we see in Luke 15:13

"And not many days after the younger son gathered all together and took his journey into a far country, and there wasted his substance with riotous living."

Did you see that? The Prodigal Son packed. For days, he packed his bags before he left the father’s side. He took small steps. He made small mistakes and then he left.

So my question to you today, my question to me is pretty simple:

Are you packing?

Right now, today, are you packing your things to leave the safety of the father? Are you getting your things together for a disastrous trip to somewhere you’ve been before, down a path that will leave you wounded and beaten? Is your luggage laid open on your bed and you can’t get things together fast enough?

Are you packing?

If you are, tell a friend. Tell someone who knows you. Did you ever notice that about the Prodigal Son story? He had no friends. Other than the father and the older brother, no one cared that he was gone. His was a friendless existence. He packed alone.

Let’s put the luggage down. Let’s release the baggage. It’s time to stop leaving and instead start living.

Are you packing?

Where Else Can I Go?

From Jon at Stuff Christians Like:

For about a year or four, my wife and I didn’t have a membership to Costco. Correction, we didn’t have an active membership to Costco. We didn’t pay the $45 to renew our card because we used to buy ridiculously large things we didn’t need. So instead, we would just walk around and pretend the food samples were really just a large, geographically scattered buffet line.

And the pizza, who can pass up that cheap, voluminous pizza Costco serves? It’s like a culinary science experiment gone right. Best of all you don’t need an active membership to eat the pizza, so we did. All in all we cobbled together a pretty nice, albeit ultimately fake, Costco membership.

If we loved a sample of pasta or cookies though, we couldn’t buy it. If our kids found a long lost Kim Possible book, the answer was “no.” If we were out of something important, like 42 rolls of toilet paper, we couldn’t get it.cWe had the membership card, but we had a façade experience. Half empty, mostly imagined, part of Costco by name but not reality.

I had the card in my wallet, but it didn’t mean much. And to tell you the truth, for a long time, I could have carried a “Christian” card too. I “grew up in the church,” I’d been baptized, I’d been part of more small groups than I could count. But it didn’t define my day. It didn’t really impact my decisions. I was a Christian by name but not heart.

That changed in 2005. I made some horrible mistakes. As I’ve said before, I did the kind of things that when a character in a movie does them you hope that character gets hit by a car later in the film. I eventually came to a place where I couldn’t fix me, with me anymore.

But something was in my way. There was a wall that I couldn’t scale, a gap I couldn’t fix and it’s actually kind of simple.

I didn’t want Jesus to be my last resort.

He was, make no mistake, my last resort. I was completely out of other options. But for some reason, I was ashamed that I was coming back to him only after every other opportunity had expired.

I wanted to return home with at least my hands clean. I knew there was grime on me that was beyond me. I knew coming back complete wasn’t possible, but I wanted to do everything I could to get cleaned up before.

Have you ever felt like that? Have you ever used the “waiting period” approach to God? Like waiting for the purchase of handgun to clear regulations, you think there’s a waiting period before you can come to him. Maybe if you stack enough days between now and that thing you did, he’ll welcome you with open arms.

That’s where I was. That’s what the summer was about. That’s something I still struggle with some days. Until I read a Bible verse that challenged my belief that God hated me coming to him as the last option.

In John 6, Jesus has just dropped a really difficult message on the crowd. It was about eating his body and blood and folks were freaked out. They all started to take off and you get the sense that while Jesus watched their backs he talked to the disciples without even looking at them. In John 6:67 Jesus says, “You do not want to leave too, do you?”

In my head, I imagine the disciples telling him, “Us leave you? Never. You’re our number one. You are Christ. We are down for the long haul.”

But Simon Peter doesn’t.
That’s not what he says.
Know how he replies?

Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.

I love that. We are out of options. That thing, that love you’ve got, that hope, nobody else has that. We don’t have anywhere else to go. You are not our first or our last option. You are our only option.
I think God wants to be our first option. I think his heart breaks when he watches other options break us. I think he longs for first, but above that, I think he longs for you.

He doesn’t keep score. He doesn’t count your other blown options. He doesn’t tally your mistakes.
Why?

Because you should never underestimate the love of a God who sent his son to the cross for you.

Your wildest, “what if this was true?,” craziest, most imaginative vision of his love is a thimble of salt water next to the ocean.

I hope you’ll stop worrying about what option you’re on. I hope if you’re dirty you won’t waste time scrubbing your hands before you turn home. I hope you’ll embrace repentance and grace.

I hope you won’t be satisfied with being a card carrying Christian.

It’s Time to Stop Trading

By Jon Acuff at Stuff Christians Like

We have a bit of a problem at our house.

One of our daughters is highly creative and one is highly generous. That means at any given time, the creative one is coming up with elaborate plans to trade rocks and sticks to the generous one for candy or toys. Thus lies the central issue at the great “Silly Bandz crisis of 2010.”

Though I swear we have given them both the same number of Silly Bandz, somehow, like a tiny, adorable Napoleon, my 6 year old has acquired most of my 4 year old’s Silly Bandz. She walks around with them all on one arm like some sort of child sized Slick Rick covered in rapper jewelry.

We’ve talked to our youngest about the outrageous trades she often agrees to, but she just can’t seem to understand how it works. You shouldn’t ever trade a lot for a very little. Ten Silly Bandz for the right to enter her sister’s room is a whack trade. Unfortunately though, my daughter is not the only one who makes wildly one-sided trades like this.

I was reminded of this recently while reading through Genesis. I’m trying to read through the Bible for a second time and I’m in the section about Joseph. Something really fascinating happens in chapter 39 when Joseph is confronted by Potiphar’s wife. (Side note, Potiphar’s wife was probably history’s first cougar. Lot of theologians won’t tell you that.)

The story is pretty simple, Joseph is in charge of running Potiphar’s entire house. And he’s all P90X’d and good looking. So Potiphar’s wife tries to seduce him. How did Joseph respond? Having been sold into slavery, he could have caved and blamed his difficult childhood on his busted adulthood. But he didn’t. In 39:8-9 here is what he says:

“With me in charge,” he told her, “my master does not concern himself with anything in the house; everything he owns he has entrusted to my care. No one is greater in this house than I am. My master has withheld nothing from me except you, because you are his wife. How then could I do such a wicked thing and sin against God?”

Do you see what he did? He said, “I’ve got almost everything, why would I trade all of that for the one thing I don’t have? Why would I trade this big thing for that small thing?” If that sounds familiar, it should, Adam & Eve faced the same type of temptation in the Garden of Eden.

They had everything. They had it all. Adam was the Joseph of God’s house. He was in charge of naming all the animals. That is a wildly amazing honor. Do you know how badly scientists desire to discover a new species and name it after themselves? Naming something is a high honor and that was Adam’s. The Garden was theirs to live in and love. But then Satan came into the picture.

And he did something to Adam and Eve that I promise he does to you.

Everyday the enemy tries to offer you an apple, when God has already given us an orchard.

Adam and Eve had the whole garden and traded it for a single apple. Joseph had the entire household of Potiphar and was offered his wife. You’ve got the glory of God inside you and get tempted to trade it for something small and dull each day.

Trading the beauty of God’s intended gift of sex for pornography is an orchard for an apple trade.

Trading the peace of honesty for the quick fix of a lie is an orchard for an apple trade.

Trading the friendship of a neighbor for the short term hit of gossiping is an orchard for an apple trade.

Each day we are faced with dozens of orchard for apple trades. We have something so big and true and wild in us, and we give it away for a handful of temporary coins.

But Joseph didn’t and we can refuse the trade to. We can look at how small and shriveled and worm infested the apple of temptation is. And then we can remember how bright and expansive the orchard of God’s heart is. There are acres of apples waiting for us. Miles of rows of opportunities to be at peace and serve and surrender and repent to a God who gives and gives and gives.

It’s time to stop trading.

Let’s put the apples down.

We’ve already got the orchard.