There is no way you can fully understand this post without listening to the song “God With Us” by Mercy Me before reading. The inspiration comes from these lyrics:

By now most people have probably heard what Pat Robertson said in response to the tragic earthquake in Haiti. While the snippet about a ‘deal with the devil’ pretty much sums up what he said, I do encourage people to watch the entire clip. While I do not agree with many aspects of what he said, I feel there are a few areas of self-reflection exposed by his callous words. I’d like to elaborate on those before diving into what was so tragic about his words. (more…)

Not communicating is easier than communicating. Assuming that everything is great is easier than checking if it is. The thing about not communicating is that if you don’t (husbands), someday you might get to hear your wife tell you this:

“Some days I have to choose between taking a shower and eating.” (more…)

We were created to love with abandon. Abandon of safeguards and internal chokes.  But we were also created to carry the healer inside us for those times when that love allows us to be hurt. One requires the other. Love, unrestrained, can leave us vulnerable to wounds so deep that they can only be healed by the love of God.

But we were created to love, endure wounds, and to be healed.  Not to build up scar tissue around the part of us that most resembles our creator. (more…)

The problem with quick fixes, miracles, or healing is that they only require a short attention span. And not very much trust. I, however, am a fan of the quick work of God. I love it when He starts, and completes something within a month.  I can wait for a month. I can even trust for a month. (more…)

It’s hard to be led, when you’re still being driven

If you’ve ever tried to push a car with no driver at the wheel, you already know the problems of being pushed.  There’s a reason that cars are towed from in front, rather than pushed from behind.  But more on that in a minute. (more…)

Christians interpreted the movie "The Matrix" the way we interpret a lot of things.  Because of our inexperience, and lack of understanding of what it really means to know God and abide in his love, a lot of us latched onto the most obvious metaphor the movie provided.  Neo was supposed to set people free from the pretend world where people were unconscious slaves to the machines.  Just like Jesus sets us free from our slavery to sin.  And the fact that the "real world" was dark, dingy, full of pain and suffering, hard work, and constant danger, fit very well with a worldview that many Christians hold. 

Sin is glamourous, full of color, bright, shiny, just like the pretend world of the matrix.  But of course anything that glitters can’t be God, so the real world must be shades of grey and black with striving, and suffering everywhere.  But hey, at least we’re not living in that awesome pretend world of sin anymore…

This is a twisted view of reality.  The Matrix had it backwards.  And a lot of us bought it hook line and sinker.

The reality is this.  Sin is not glamourous, it’s not shiny.  Sin is dark, it’s miserable, and it eats you from the inside out.  Our life without God resembles more of the "real world" of the Matrix.  No refuge, no comfort, just a confusing maze of tunnels and robots that like to try and kill us with their long tentacles.  OK, so I made up the part about the robots, but really, we need to stop treating sin like "it looks so good but it’s really not".  Take a look at someone who’s lived a hard life of sinnin, and see how glamourous they are.  And the thing is, sin is not fake. It’s very real, and so is the pain and despair that come along with it.  It’s a cursed land, and people who live there are going to have to deal with all that comes along with being separate from God.

So if sin is like the "real world" in the matrix, what does that make life with Jesus like?  I have found that in the past 2 years, my life looks more and more like the fake world inside the matrix, except that it’s real.  My world is brighter, more joyful, more peaceful, and I can leap from one building to another with a single bound.  I honestly think that the colors of nature around me are brighter and more colorful too, but that could just be because I’m finally able to take time to look at them instead of living my life in fast forward always thinking about the next thing I’m going to accomplish.

This metaphor is far from perfect, but I hope that it makes some sense those who read it.  Life after death to sin is not supposed to be a constant struggle, a dark world of grime and grease and robots.  Rather, Jesus sets us free from a life that looks like that, and opens up the door to constant communion with the Father, and that kind of life is full, overflowing, and abundant.  Maybe not always in the physical sense, but what we experience in Him does not have to match what’s going on around us.

If your picture of "the Christian life" has looked more like the Nebuchadnezzar in The Matrix, ask yourself if this is the kind of thing Jesus really died for.  Sin separated us from God, and we’ve been miserable ever since.  Did Jesus die so we could wake up to a life dirty torn clothes and cold metal beds?  Or did he die so that we could wake up into a new world of uninhibited, unconditional love from our Creator?

I’ve always felt a little bit like prayer had no purpose other than as a ritual to demonstrate how much I loved God.  I was certainly no expert in the in’s and out’s of Omnipresent and Omniscient, but I was pretty sure that God knew everything I was praying about.  So naturally I often wondered, what’s the purpose of this anyway?

Am I reminding God of something he forgot about?  Does he ever get a startled look on his face when I pray "God, so distant and powerful, I want to remind you about that thing that my friend is dealing with right now." He never actually answered me by saying "Oh yeah, that thing…. Don’t worry, I got it covered, thanks for reminding me….", so I always suspected it was kind of pointless to bring up stuff as if he didn’t already know.

But something inside me knew that there had to be a reason to pray for someone.  We’re not alerting God of a situation he wasn’t aware of.  He’s not watching our prayers like we watch the news to get the latest updates.  He’s already ahead of us on all of this stuff, but there has to be some reason he wants us to pray.

In order to understand it, I think we have to look at what his entire purpose of creating us was.  Relationship.  For whatever reason, God keeps wanting to involve us in his will on earth.  Sounds crazy, knowing how good I am at taking care of my own responsibilities, but for some reason he gives me the opportunity to interject my disfunctions into his divine will instead of just letting me sit on the sidelines.

So I think I’m starting to learn that prayer is not about waking God up from his power nap after church to remind him that one of my friends just got fired and needs a job.  It’s about realizing that he’s already working in that person’s life, and all he wants me to do is agree with him here on earth that I want His will to be done in that person’s life.

"Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven".

Recently while Lori was away on a business trip, God sideswiped me with something I was definitely not prepared for. Throughout our almost 5 year marriage, there have been many times when I stepped out of the role of a husband and into the role of a teacher. Talking to her as if she was a kid who needed instruction. She would tell me how much this upset her, but I never really knew why. (more…)

Waiting in line at Subway is not normally the place to have revelation, but I’ll take it wherever I can get it. I evaluated all the meat-containing subs, and was about to choose one of them, when I remembered what Lori had told me the week before. Processed, preserved meats have a connection with cancer. (more…)