I’ve gotten awfully comfortable with God over the past year. As I learned how integrated He is with everything I do, I have experienced a great deal of peace as I stopped running, stopped pushing for more accomplishments.
However I find myself now facing some new things in life that could mean some radical changes to the structure I’ve gotten used to. (more…)
I used to be obsessed with being right. Being right about the bible, being right about the existence of God, and most of all, being right about proving all the godless unbelievers wrong who dared question my beliefs. A funny thing happened though…. I started to experience the love of the God I had tried so hard to defend. And I stopped caring about being right. (more…)
Over the past 12 years, I’ve developed some interesting skills. I developed the strang ability to mimic the guitar style of Stevie Ray Vaughan, arguably the best blues guitarist of all time. I also taught myself how to build websites in my spare time. Another computer related skill set I’ve also learned is the art of studio recording and video editing. To top it off, I was surprised to learn that I make a pretty good teacher on subjects I care about.
So here were 4 fairly disjoint skills that I picked up, and for the longest time I felt like I had a bunch of square pegs and my life was made of round holes. How in the world could all these things fit together? (more…)
There are very few ideas that cannot be imitated, duplicated, copied or bested. But there is one man who had such an idea. An idea so good that it befuddled his competition. Hidden in plain sight. Waiting to be discovered.
The idea was based on a mistake. A mistake that millions of people make every day. In a hurry to type in the .com at the end of some website addresses, an awful lot of people type .cm instead of .com. So you end up seeing a website you didn’t intend to see, or you see a message telling you that there’s no website at this address.
But it seems that ".cm" is a special mistake. Every country has it’s own offical "domain suffix". The UK is ".co.uk", German is ".de", and as it turns out, ".cm" is the offical domain suffix for the country of Cameroon. This small twist made one man, a Christian, very rich. Let’s find out why… (more…)
Yesterday I got 1200 pageviews in one day on my guitar lesson website. At the same time, I got 2300 video views in one day on YouTube. Since December, people have sent me donations, hand made guitar pedals, and asked me to put out DVD lessons for them to buy. I’ve had at least 3 people buy a guitar amp, and one person buy a guitar after watching my videos. Two other people bought the same pedals I use.
What’s even more surprising? 3 months ago, I hadn’t even thought about doing my first lesson. (more…)
Christians in high-profile positions of ministry have suffered some embarrassing scandals and marriage failures. I’m sure the reasons for this are very complex, but I’m going to take a look at an attitude that I think has contributed to it’s fair share of scandals and divorces. (more…)
What is broken? – What do we think of when we read the verse "A broken spirit and contrite heart?" Do we interpret that to mean we give up our strength, and passion? Thank God it doesn’t mean either one.
When a horse is first trained, the process is called breaking. Before the horse has been "broken" it is full of power, energy, and drive. It is dangerous to anyone who dare to ride it. It does what it wants to and cannot be controlled.
It’s strength is basically useless because it knows nothing about using it’s own strength to do anything except exactly what it wants to.
Focused Power – After the horse is broken, it possesses all the power, energy and drive that it did before. The horse has not been impaired, harmed, hindered, or otherwise broken. It is every bit as capable of running fast, jumping high, and kicking it’s legs up as it did before.
What has changed is why it does those things.
When a horse has been broken, it runs when the master wants it to. It stops when the master wants it to. If the master want it to jump, it will jump. When the master calls it, it will come running. It has all the same power and speed, the only thing that has changed is why it uses them.
A Broken Spirit – When God says he wants to break our spirit, it’s not because he wants to take away our passion, our energy and our vision. He wants to change why we do the things we do. Rather than the short-sighted useless things we would do on our own with what he’s given us, he asks us to apply our strength and energy the way he wants us to.
We don’t lose the ability or the passion to do any of the things we can do, all that changes is why we do them.
"Can I have another shot of those eye drops?" I asked the nurse. I had barely slept the night before because my eyes were hurting so bad. It felt like a grain of sand under my eyelid, and nothing I did could get rid of it. I went to the emergency room the next morning where they put some drops in my eye that numbed the pain.
I would have done anything to get rid of that pain. I knew the drops were not good for my eyes in the long run, but I just didn’t care. Once I experienced even a little bit of relief, I just wanted to keep the pain away. Thank God the doctors weren’t allowed to give me what I wanted that day.
Sin is medication – Most things that we consider "bad" are really just pain medication. Most people feel a dull ache in their soul and will do anything to find some satisfaction. That ache comes from a lifetime of missing the one thing that can fulfill us completely.
The ache inside - Most of us crave attention. We long for someone to tell us we’re valuable. There’s a reason for that. We were all born incomplete. There is a need for validation, affection, completion, and affirmation that every single person needs. Parents, peers, children, and friends cannot completely fill this need.
So some people turn to Jesus. They’re promptly taught that the answer to that ache is to serve Jesus. To do good works. But they never really learn to experience God rather than serve him. They continue doing God’s work, thinking that in that work come fulfillment. But the hunger deep inside for approval and validation continues to hurt.
Is it any wonder that so many people turn to alcohol, drugs, pornography, gambling, sex, fame, or any number of other things? What do you do when nothing anyone says takes away the ache in your soul? If you can’t fix it, than you might as well numb the pain.
Addicted to numbness – There is a physical side to addiction, but I believe there’s also an emotional side to it as well. How many people get completely wasted because for a couple of hours they feel free from the cares of the world, and they temporarily stop feeling that something is just wrong without being able to fix it. To feel that temporary freedom becomes an addition. And pretty soon the physical catches up with the emotional and now our bodies are as addicted as our souls are.
Living Water – God is the only thing that can take away the ache in our soul. The feeling of emptiness. But it doesn’t happen by studying the Bible if we still view him as a far-in-the-distance God. Until we come to grips with the fact that he wants to be integrated into our lives like breathing will we experience the fulfillment that only he can bring.
Many things in our lives take hard work. Most of those things give us callused hands. If our walk with God is like that work, eventually we’ll get a callused heart. Unable to feel compassion, contentment, comfort, or conviction, we’ll settle for guilt, condemnation, judgement and anger.
It’s a good thing to stop every once in a while and ask ourselves this question.
A while back Lori and I travelled to Las Vegas. While staying at the Luxor Hotel, we went to a day spa. I had never been to any such thing before, so I didn’t know what to expect. One of my favorite things about it was the sauna, with eucalyptus steam. Sitting in there in the intense heat, breathing in the sinus clearing eucalyptus steam was a refreshing and restful experience.
As I left the sauna, I was sweating, so I went to the huge jacuzzi, where I soaked for as long as I could stand the water. Then I grabbed some juice, a newspaper, and just sat on a lounge chair by the pool for a good while.
I abided in that spa for just a couple of hours and it refreshed me more than anything else on that trip. Imagine if I could pack up that day spa in a box and take it with me anywhere. The next time I need a break from whatever is frustrating me, I take a few minutes to soak in the dense, refreshing eucalyptus steam.
How much more kind, patient, compassionate, and loving would I be if I could experience that anytime, anywhere? I’m getting to a place where I’m realizing that experience the presence of God is every bit as refreshing as that spa. It refreshes my spirit, my mind, and my soul.
Jesus instructed us to abide in him as He abides in us ( John 15:4 ). Should that be something that take a lot of work. Does it take a lot of work to abide in your house? When you sit down on your sofa, is that a lot of work? Do you have to earn the right to be in your house? Maybe your house needs some work done, so it does take some work. But Jesus ain’t no fixer-upper. He don’t need any work. Abiding in him is a place of resting, not a place of labor.
If we perceive our walk with God to be one that involves strain, friction, tension, labor, etc… we begin to develop calluses on our heart that prevent us from experiencing the fruits of the Spirit. We think that praying must be done a certain way, at a certain time of day, in a certain place. So getting to that place is sometimes difficult, but we strain to make it there faithfully because that’s what a good Christian does.
We work so hard making sure that no one else experiences any kind of inconvenience or hardship, maybe partly because we think God expects that of us. So our relationship with him becomes callused.
There are certainly things in this life that will require us to work hard. We will develop calluses to many things. We’ll grow callused to the shock of waking up early in the morning. We’ll grow callused to the cold wind on our face. We may even grow callused to the back breaking labor required to do some of our jobs.
But God is not our work. Our work is not a prerequisite for being in relationship with him. It’s important not to confuse the two. God is IN our work, but he is not our work. Our work may give us calluses, but God will not.
Some people have been building callused hands and hearts by working for a God they barely know for so long that they wouldn’t hear God’s voice if he spoke to them verbally. The good news is that there’s a place of rest for even those tired laborers. No heart is too callused that he can’t soften it. No spirit is so callused that he can’t break through.
Give your religious job your two weeks notice. You just got a new place to live and it’s already paid for.
As Lori and I have been working towards completing our remodeling job here at the house, I’ve often felt anxious over scheduling of the different people we have doing different parts of the job. I’ve had a hard time nailing down concrete dates for much of this project, and this has caused some stress. I suppose that this is normal, but lately I’m realizing that I must really guard my spirit against feelings of despair.
Despair as I understand it is the feeling of impending doom. A fear of the unknown, of the worst possible scenario. It is a sinking feeling that will keep you from sleeping, and occasionally from eating. I’ve struggled with this my whole life. At times I think it might have been depression, but regardless of the cause, I’m convinced now more than ever that I must confront feelings of despair with nothing less than righteous anger.
Despair will mess up your whole life, rendering you helpless to function in even the most basic ways. I believe that despair is rooted in fear. And if there’s one thing I know, it’s that God has not given us a spirit of fear. It says so in the bible. I also struggle with fear a lot too. Lori travels around the world as part of her job, and I often struggle with not thinking about the worst things that could happen as she travels.
The thing about it is, being anxious, being worried, and being full of despair does absolutely nothing to change anything. It drags you down to the point where you’re scared to leave the house, to feel like you must always be in constant contact with those you love to make sure nothing bad happens to them.
Laying our cares upon the Lord is a wholly unnatural thing for us to do. But it’s the only thing that will bring us peace. Despair has robbed me of too many hours of sleep. And I love sleep.