Who am I?

Who are you? This was the question asked as I shared about the upcoming worship seminar, Splendor and Holiness. It was a strange question, but an appropriate one. Who am I? It is one I would be asking if someone approached me and said they had something to teach me about this faith that I have known from childhood. It is one I have asked as people have stood before me on stages, behind podiums, and across tables and spoke, they claimed, on behalf of God.

There is something in me that rises up with a challenge anytime I hear someone teach, and one I appreciate in others who dare to consider my words. My faith is sacred and something I guard tenaciously, carefully sifting through all outside influences, checking their references and vetting them thoroughly before allowing their words to settle in my heart and mind.

And so here I was, being pinned like a bug with my own question, a mirror of my own skepticism, and it was most uncomfortable even as I respected the questioner’s reserve. Who am I? Or really, and more precisely the question was, why should I listen to you?

How I wish there was some tidy way of summing this up without sounding like an arrogant twit. If there is I haven’t found it. It sounds pompous to site degrees, and even a bit hypocritical, especially since I am far too aware of the number of buffoons who hold multiple degrees. If you know my story but not my heart, I can come across as a pretty dubious character. If you look at circumstance and cold facts, I am not terribly impressive, and I say this not out of some sense of false modesty but based on some rather bitter facts.

It is painfully funny how unaware we can be of our own flaws, and typically not who I am. I tend to over analyze everything, beginning and ending with myself. So I as I was confronted by this question, one I know intimately, I realized that all this time, for decades now, I have been asking the wrong question. The question is not who am I or who are you. It doesn’t matter. And as much as I hate to admit it, the truth of it reverberates through my heart and soul.

So let me tell you why you should listen to the things I shall offer at the seminar. I am nobody, an absolute nobody who for some crazy reason known only to God, has been given a message about hope and grace. A message that he allowed me to live out, to know intimately, painfully so that I may never forget. I speak not from a place of lofty academic summits, but from those times when the truths I gleaned from books and gathered from the mouths of learned men became a reality. I share not a story about a person who pursued God, but of a God who pursued a person, a divorced mom who had no right to speak in matters moral or ethical. I speak as one who was shown grace and the knowledge of redemption.

The message I bring, if I dare use the word message, has little and everything to do with me. But to say too much of myself is like glorifying a microphone for receiving a voice, for what is more important a bit of metal doing what it was designed to do? Or the one who designs and uses the device for greater purposes? I know I am more than a mere utensil, but with each breath I become more aware of how great he is. This is the message I bring. There is a God who adore us, adores you, and he desires to be known by you. He wants to redeem every wound, every heartache, every miserable experience you have ever known. He wants to transform them from your deepest hurt to your greatest weapon. He created you to know him, and when you know him, worship is the only response to this amazing God.

Who am I am? I am someone who messed up their life beyond all human hope of repair. I was someone who lost everything and could see no way out until he showed up. And we he appeared, when he revealed his love for me, I got lost in the chase and caught up in the pursuit. I fell in love and was loved in a way I had never known.

So why listen to what I have to say? Because the wonders of his love are too great to be contained in one life, one small existence, they must be proclaimed. Because maybe when you see him in my story you will find he was there in the middle of yours all along.

My Once a Decade Moment of Sappiness - For my friends

What is friendship? Real and true friendship, is it something that you experience in a moment? A brief fleeting pearl of time when you make a connection so strong that you feel like you have known each other for a life time? Is relationships that tend like a tree in an orchard, carefully pruning away the lifeless branches, giving others room to bloom and bear fruit? Is it stable and strong providing you with a firm place to leap from? Safety and security in a storm? Is it pliable, bending and swaying with the rhythms of life?

Is a friend someone you talk to every day? Someone with whom you have a brief encounter? That person who calls you up in the middle of the night to celebrate a small triumph or grieve over a great woe? Is it the person that only calls every two years, but it feels like you have never been apart? Someone to tell your secrets to, the one with whom all your pretenses easily fall away and sees you for who you really are?

Are they sources of strength in their quiet acceptance? Are they fountains of spontaneity, pulling you into shenanigans you would never do on your own? Do they push you dig deeper, fly higher, and try harder? Give you permission to rest, to cry, to laugh when no one else understands? Can you believe great dreams with them or simply be?

Do you fight, love, and become who you would hope to be in their presence? Do they call you on your garbage, especially when it is aimed at yourself? Do they let you wallow in self pity and then pull you out of the pits of despair when the timer goes off? Is honesty tempered with love? Is strength softened with compassion?

Can you hold their hands and watch as their world crumbles before them, because you know they stood by you when yours came crashing down? Do you ache with their pain when they lose it all? Does their tragedy rip at your heart, even as you hold it together to be a haven for them?

In my life, I have been blessed with a handful of friends. People who have been one or all of these things to me, for me, and ones for whom I hope to be the same for them. For a few of us, our lives are so entangled that you cannot tell where one life starts and the other begins. We have shared it all joy, triumph, heartache, fear, and hope. We dream our biggest dreams together, and we gently ground each other when we try to fly higher than our wings were made to go. We have held each other up when the world has rolled beneath our feet, leaving us to wonder if this life too cruel to be endured.

They are friends who listen to my midnight rants, and for them no call comes to late or early. They are the ones who call me on delusions of grandeur but refuse to let me accept the title of victim. They are the voices that remind me to be honest with myself, but to attempt great things. They are the ones who will pick me up when I need a ride, invade my fortress of solitude, and push me into the deep end. I love them because they are gentle with my frailties, and tough on my stupidity.

I have friends that I met once, and like sisters separate at birth we struggle to fit an entire lifetime of stories into a single afternoon. Laughing and sharing scars as we recognize one who knows us without being told, but taking delight in the telling. These friends are like a glass of fine wine – savored, enjoyed, and remembered fondly with a smile. They are the ones I wish I could call back into my life, but time and distance makes it impossible, so we rest in the comfort of knowing merely that they exist. Waiting for the day when perhaps there will be another few moments of indulgence.

Each friendship so different, valuable and beautiful for their uniqueness, and what they have brought to my life. Each making my world a little larger, a little less lonely, and little more of an adventure. They have helped me see myself better, and they have loved me as I am. You have helped me love me a little better, and with you I have learned to enjoy who I am. It is one of the greatest gifts a human being can give to another.

So there it is, my one moment of sappiness for this decade. I know I can count on all my true friends to torment me unmercifully about it. I love you any way.

Tell me your story

Emily wrote a few weeks ago about telling a story.  I’d like to explore a different side of storytelling: getting to know your Christian and non-Christian friends.  If we take time to engage our friends in telling us something about their life, we able to put our friends into context and better understand them.

Let me give a couple of quick examples.  My wife and I recently had an older couple from church in our home for Sunday lunch.  The husband told me of feeling like he was being called in the ministry at an early age.  He attended a Christian college and worked full-time to support his family.  One morning he woke up, had a couple of cups of coffee, and never went back to college.  He had been negatively impacted by a young minister who said “every time the doors are open you should be here”.  The minister didn’t understand the stress of college, supporting a family and working full time.  Now the good news is my older friend is still in service to his local church and God.  Since he told me a portion of his life story, I can now better understand, relate to him and fellowship with him.

Over the past couple of years, my wife and I have gotten to know a hard working college student.  Sometimes, it seems as if she never sits down and rests.  While getting to know her, we found out she found her father dead on her birthday after having gone to the store, with her mother, to buy a birthday cake.  Add on top of this, her dad had supplied her with family details in case something happened to him.  So, she was the leader of the family and responsible for taking care of the family.  This background illuminates why she is a very focused and driven young person.  I have no doubts that she will achieve her goals.

Before we can touch someone’s life, we must know something about them.  This means taking interest in their life by listening to their stories.  Without their stories, we cannot understand why they believe something, behave a particular way, or live their life a certain way.  Think once again of the classic example: Jesus and the woman at the well.  We don’t have the full, all encompassing story but we have enough to see that Jesus was personally interested in the woman’s life.  Also, Jesus listened to her words to know more about her.

I believe one of the biggest tragedies of modern life is: we do not spend enough time listening to other people’s stories.  We are so busy with day-to-day activities that we do not stop and quietly listen to someone.  We are creating a task list in our head, thinking of where we need to be or trying to think of a reply to the person’s story that we miss the intimate details and sub-text within their story.  So the next time someone begins to tell you their story put your brain in neutral and really listen.  You just might be surprised by what you learn about the person and their life.

So tell me a story!

Deep down inside of each of us is a craving to basic that we often fail to recognize its existence. A need so basic that we gratify without a second thought as to why we need or what we need. We fulfill this need in our children almost through instinct and yet it is considered a basic trait of a good parent. We have turned the fulfillment of this need into a billion dollar industry, and stores across the globe cater to it. Grand halls have been erected to service this need, products in all forms have been created in its honor, we have developed easily transported means to feed this desire, and yet, most of still fail to identify it as need. At best it is an indulgence or entertainment, but hardly ever deemed a necessity.

The need is simple, tell me a story. I need to hear, to see, to experience a time and place that I never inhabited. I need the chance to be a part of something greater, grander, or even more terrifying than the life I live. Tell me a story, be it a fairy tale, a romance, a thriller, or just how you took out the garbage this morning. Tell me a story, your story, another’s story, or one simply imagined.

There is power in a story. The power to influence my perspective, the power to teach, the power to inspire, and the power to destroy. A power so great that lives can be changed, nations moved, and eternity envisioned. Maybe this is the reason that God chose to reveal Himself first in a story. His first words to humanity are not rules, but a narrative of how He desired to create the beings He loved. He tells us of the men who served and failed Him and His unrelenting desire to redeem. And only after He tells us the stories of the first people to know Him does He take us deeper.

God knew that we would learn more from the stories than we would if confronted with rules alone. He understood that we would see the sins of Adam and Eve and know the brokenness of relationship to Him. He knew that if we could see the Ark floating upon the waters we have some idea of His greatness. He showed us how the devotion and heart break of Abraham could inspire us to faith more effectively than a mere command. In Moses, we experience his mother’s agony and grief only to be surprised by God’s grace and protection. In their stories we begin to know the God who is at once holy and loving in a way that only a story can convey.

Today we think of stories as something that belongs in other books, as if the pages of the Bible are too sacred to be read as a thrilling tale, but that is exactly what it is the most thrilling tale of how the creator of the universe chose to be a part of the lives of everyday, flawed people. And it is a story we long for, the one we want to be a part of.

We have tried telling it countless ways. We may replace the names of Scripture with Aragorn or Rooster Cogburn, but it is the same story over and over again. It is the story of people, or single person, who needs a hero. It is the princess in the tower who cries out to heaven praying that someone will come and rescue her from the dragon. It is Tyler Durden trying to make sense of the senseless, and Rigeletto playing the fool while hiding his treasure. No story we tell exists apart from our need to know THE story.

We search out the next big movie, and allow ourselves to know the story for an hour or so. We read a book, and get lost in the flow of words. We listen to the latest gossip, because even a dubious story is better than no story at all. Something inside of us tells us we need the story, so we seek it out, immersing ourselves in stories of all types because we don’t forget the story we are looking for is the one He wrote for us.

And unfortunately, we as a society and culture have forgotten the ability of a story to teach.We began to believe that stories are meant for entertainment. We think of them as amusement, and fail to grasp the significance of this great event. Our ancestors knew different, don’t believe me? Read the original fairy tales, before they were Disneyfied to make the audience feel good and were used to scare children into good choices. Or consider the fables which taught a moral.

Think for a moment of the parables Jesus used to teach, and how His stories reveal to us a Savior’s heart. He knew the value of a story and lived one so that we might know Him better. And He told us that our stories have power and that through our stories the world could come to know Him. So being good Christians we fancied it up a bit, not believing it could be that simple, not having faith in His words or example, we throw around phrases like “sharing our testimony” and lost sight of the fact that our testimony is nothing more than our story. That means that the enemy is overcome through our story, yours, mine, and all who have come before living a life of faith and struggle.

So tell me a story. One that is true but still has room for magic. One where there is still a man on a white horse, wielding a sword, coming to defeat evil. Tell me a story about how God was there in your life, how you came to know Him, and how He has demonstrated His love. Tell me a story that inspires me to keep pursuing Him, and tell me a story where love does conquer all. Tell me your story. I need to hear it because I need to hear His.