How Big is Your Jesus?

Luke 7:36 - 50 recounts the story of the sinful woman who comes in and washes Jesus' feet with tears, dries them with her hair, and then puts expensive perfume on them. When questioned by Simon over this behavior, He goes on to tell a brief story of two men.

41 “A certain moneylender had two debtors. One owed five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. 42 When they could not pay, he cancelled the debt of both. Now which of them will love him more?”

Of course the one that was forgiven more loved more than the one forgiven less. The point that Jesus was making was that people who feel like they have very little to be forgiven tend to love Jesus very little, yet those that realize how much they have been forgiven love Him much more. 

The attitude that we carry today is very similar, but we are far more widespread as the one who has been forgiven little thanks to the message that "You are perfect just like you are" and "It's all about you." Let me put this idea from Jesus in a slightly different way. For most of us, Jesus tends to be only as big as the worst things you've been forgiven for. This is because we tend to believe only what our tangible experiences have taught us. Head knowledge tends to be meaningless unless we have had some kind of event to tie it to our hearts and make it real. 

Christians that have the strongest faith often have terrible things in their past. For some it was circumstances that they had no control over while others chose the path they went down. A fortunate number did not have to experience personal tragedy, but have been involved in significant events that there was no other explanation than that Christ Himself intervened to do something that should have been impossible. 

The reality is that Jesus had to dive just as deep into hell to pursue me as He did every other person out there, including you. One of the biggest issues that I had in my Pharisaical life was that I didn't really have a need for Jesus. Forgiving me for a cuss word wasn't that big of a deal. Checking out the women at the gym; it was only looking, I didn't touch. Training for triathlon instead of being home with my family; I was staying healthy so I would be around longer. 

Never did I think of myself as evil. I was a good person that sinned occasionally. Unfortunately, that is a lie that too many of us that call ourselves Christian fall prey to. You and I are born into evil and are evil by nature. Not just kind of bad, but truly evil. 

What is tragic about not coming to that realization is that it limits how big Jesus is to us. When He's forgiven the really, really big stuff, He's a really big Jesus. When you only feel like He needs to forgive the little sins, He's pretty small to you. The reality is that He's infinitely big, but you'll only begin to understand how impossibly powerful He is when you are able to see how impossibly lost you are without Him.

Why Christianity Can Be So Disenchanting

Romans 7: 21 - 24

"So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me. What a wretched man I am!"
You might be interested to know that the above quote is written by Paul about himself. Yes, that would be St. Paul. The greatest champion of the early Christian church. Author of half the New Testament of the Bible.

I was listening to my favorite Christian radio station yesterday and starting thinking about the lyrics of many of the songs. My mind also wandered to many sermons I've listened to. Well, the majority of songs and sermons actually. There's something very important missing from them. Something critical to the new believer and the would-be believer. Christianity doesn't make you perfect and it doesn't take away your desire to sin.
We hear all of these things about how we should live and think, how good God is, and about the amazing things He has done. It just doesn't seem to happen for us. That must mean we either aren't really a Christian, or maybe our sin is too great to overcome, right? Wrong, but it's very easy for me to see why it comes across that way. When people talk and sing, they pick topics that sound really good, but they leave out what Paul is discussing here.

In the above verse, Paul has just finished telling us that he does the things he hates rather than the good things his mind desires to do. This is the post-conversion Paul by the way. He's telling us that being Christian doesn't make you perfect or life easy. It makes life harder. You now have the Spirit in a constant battle against the sin you were born with. It's a fight that lasts your entire lifetime. It's only over at death.

Let me share this with you: as a Christian, you will still sin. You will lose battles. You will make a choice that is clearly the wrong one and feel guilty about it afterward. You will win over your favorite sin one day and lose the next. Christianity simply offers that when you mess up, Christ covers it. It also offers that the Spirit living in you will do battle against your sinful nature.

There will be improvement. You will feel moments that match what the songs and sermons say. They'll slowly grow more frequent and longer in duration. But you won't escape every form of sin. Every obstacle you overcome presents a new one. The Christian life isn't easy, my friends. Anyone who preaches health and wealth while ignoring the reality is a liar. No one should be telling you that it's easy, only that the it's worth it.

Why Married Men Should Still Be On Dating Sites

There are dating sites, and then there are dating sites. When a person mentions that they are on a dating site, visions tend to pop up of Match, E-Harmony, or any of the other multitude of "dating" sites. There's an inherent problem that my Lady and I were discussing just last night concerning these sites, but I'll leave the issue of "shopping for a mate" for another time.

No, I'm talking about real dating sites. You know, how to date women kind of sites. My Princess and I are confident about where the Lord is leading us, but you'll still find me on dating sites. I think that married men should be on them as well. I believe that and do that because it's important to remember what dating really is... the pursuit of a woman. Trust me on this, or just ask one, but women (and men, for that matter) want to be pursued. It's an integral part of romance.

One of my favorite things to do is peruse Facebook to see what Good Guy Swag and All Pro Dads have posted. If I find something really good, I get to share it with my Lady. After she gets a chance to read it, we have something solid and meaningful to discuss. Through the course of discussion, I get to learn more about her, what she likes, and how she would like to be treated.

If you're single, use some discretion when looking at information from dating sites and be sure to choose who you listen to wisely. For those of us that are dating and married, the topics here are wonderful discussion generators that help us connect to the Daughter that God Himself has blessed us with. For you married men out there, "never stop dating your wife" is a really important part of your marriage and keeping romance alive. Staying connected to real dating sites will give you ways to keep getting to know who she is and rekindle the feelings that were there when you first started dating.

Not sure how this could actually work? Here's an article from Good Guy Swag about being a gentleman and the lost art of chivalry. Read it with your Lady and use it as a discussion starter. Find out what she thinks about those ideas, then start perusing those dating sites a little more and learn how to date your mate again!

http://goodguyswag.com/21-lost-gentleman-traditions-that-still-apply-today/

The Sunset and Storm - Looking Down

I was (an still am) awestruck by what I wrote about in The Sunset and Storm. In those minutes, I was inspired to look beyond what was happening in the sky and consider what it told me about God. I was me looking up at Him through those elements. But what would you see looking down from His perspective through the lens of the sunset and the storm?

There is the storm - a blend of moisture, warm and cold air, positive and negative charges, and decreasing pressure. The more of these elements that are mixed together, the more violent their collision becomes. Much like our lives, "minor" sins create minor rain showers. But those minor sins are the same elements found in major storms; add more of them and give them more time to develop and the collision becomes more violent when it all comes out.

Oh yes, my storm was the creation made from relatively minor things that were left alone to develop in my heart and soul. As I allowed those elements to mix and added to them, they grew stronger until even my pride and arrogance could no longer contain it. And what a storm it created. Strong enough to rip apart my life and leave me with almost nothing... but there was a glimpse of the Son in my storm.

Taking my eyes off of the storm and fixing them on the Son of God Himself left me with hope and the promise of peace. I look to the future at the sunset and see the way He is taking the darkness and using it to paint a picture that is so beautiful you don't want to take your eyes off of it for fear that you may miss out on even a moment. That sunset is not complete. He is still taking the elements of the storm and creating something that evolves as each minute passes. He has not yet revealed what that picture will look like at the height of His glory.

There are those that understand grace, and they delight in watching the Lord at work in someone's storm. There are those that don't understand grace, and they are scared by the storm. When we've brewed a massive storm, when it's out there for everyone to see, it changes a person - sometimes for the better, often for the worse. When we choose to allow Christ to take on our storm, He is faithful to not only rescue us from its danger, but to also create the sunset. Yet that sunset was not meant only for us to see, He created it so that the world might know of His grace and mercy.

Only Christ can take our storms and turn them into sunsets. The more elements we brew into our storms, the more elements He has to work with. The greater the storm, the more incredible the sunset.

So you have a choice. You can stare at my storm and see my sin. You can stare at my sunset and see the change. Or you can see both, and as your eyes slowly turn from my storm to my sunset with no clear line between them, be in awe of the way our Savior takes the darkest storms to create the most incredible sunset.

The Sunset and The Storm

As I sit on the wall of a church staring at the second crazy beautiful sunset I've experienced in a week, my mind begins to wander towards my Lord and Savior who created it all. My contemplation of the beauty of the sunset is interrupted behind me by the sound of thunder and I watch cloud to cloud lightning spider web across the darkening sky.

My mind is drawn towards the contrast. On one side, the beauty of God displayed in a fiery sunset. On the other, His power displayed in a storm. As I allow my eyes to flip back and forth between beauty and power, I begin to slow down and consider the barrier between the two. There is none. The power of the storm fades into the beauty of the sunset with no clear delineation between the end of one and the beginning of the other.

That's when I begin to realize that it takes the elements of the storm to create the beauty of the sunset. Without the storm, there is still a sunset. However, the clouds and moisture take what is normally a bright orange end to the day and tosses in reds, purples, blues, and hints of green in no way that an artist would consider on his own. An artist can't begin to recreate the dynamics of a scene like this and no camera can capture it in its entirety.

The colors aren't stable. They change as the sun continues to sink below the horizon until the sky itself appears to be on fire. There is still a sunset without the storm and there is still a storm without the sunset. It takes both to create the awe inspiring picture that makes me forget everything else and stare. There is the smell of rain and the sound of thunder. Look at the sunset and the occasional flash of lightning highlights the darker blues and purples. Look at the storm and the darkness is made brighter around the edges by the sunset.

There's more to it than just the realization of the blend of power and beauty. I begin to realize that the scene is really a picture of grace. You can stare at the beauty of a sunset and see that God is beautiful. You can be in awe of the power in a storm and know that God is strong. But when you see God's beauty with an understanding of His power, that's when you get the real beauty of grace. It's the blend of knowing how powerful He is and that you can't measure up to His standard that grace becomes beautiful to the point of awe struck silence.

It inspires the tear that is simultaneously born from the shame of guilt and joy of redemption. It's the way God overwhelms you with how awesome He truly is. That's when everything else begins to lose significance, gratitude begins to take over, and real change starts to happen in your heart. That's what grace that is greater than all my sin does when you finally see that is more than just words in a book. 

That Guy Who Sleeps in Church

There was a guy in the church that I grew up in that always fell asleep. I mean always, as in every Sunday without fail... as soon as the preacher started preaching. What made it worse was that he sat up front and everyone could see him. Oh yeah, and he would snore. For those of us good pharisees, we talked about it. And as all good pharisees do, it was behind his back. There was even a meeting among the church leaders to decide what should be done about it.

That experience was one of many in my upbringing as a pharisee. That would be my youth and young adult upbringing in the church, not what my parents taught me to be. I have no doubt that there have been good, God honoring, and honest people in every church that I have been a part of, but I learned from an early age how to judge people like the Sleeper.

Recently, I noticed a man sleeping in church again. It was tempting to fall into the same mindset, roll my eyes, and go back to taking sermon notes like a good Christian. Instead, I watched him from the corner of my eye for a while and witnessed something I never expected.

Psalm 7: 1 - 2 NIV "Lord my God, I take refuge in You; save and deliver me from all who pursue me, or they will tear me apart like a lion and rip me to pieces with no one to rescue me."

What most people wouldn't know about this man is that he shows up much earlier than most everyone else, gets on his knees at the front of the church, and prays. As I watched him on this Sunday, I saw peace in his face as he slept. There is no telling what he faces day in and day out. One thing was obvious though - no matter what the troubles in his life are, he believes that God is physically present in that church.

Since he knows that God is there, he feels protected and is very literally taking refuge in His presence. It doesn't matter if he heard a word of the sermon. He is experiencing God's love and grace in that time that he finds tangible rest and peace in Him. That, my friends, is something that we could all take a lesson from.

That Sinking Feeling

In Matthew 14:22 - 33, we read the story of Jesus walking on the water and Peter going out to meet Him. If you're familiar with the story, then you know that Peter makes it out part way, loses focus, and starts to sink. Only by crying out for Jesus to save him does he come out of the story safely.

For a long time, this story had been, well, just a story to me. A cute reminder that we should always look to Jesus. After all, I'm not trying to walk on water, I'm just trying to navigate life. Like most things in the Bible that have become more and more real to me, it took experiencing the tangible reality of this historical event to really understand what we can learn from it. 

I've referenced the shame of what is in my past on several occasions. I hate the man that I allowed sin to turn me into. The more I've returned to "normal" life, the more distant I am from those events and more distinctly different I am to the point that it literally feels like that was a different person. Still, the realities that it was my life hit me hard from time to time. 

The times that I have shared my testimony and story with others, I have been confident in the work that Christ has done in my life and that the change was obvious to the person I was speaking to. This time though, the risk was different than what I had been placed in before. Instead of looking to Christ and being confident in the work He has done, I looked back at my past in fear of being defined by it. I was scared. I started sinking as the fear began to instill a sense of panic. 

Fortunately, I had the opportunity to be reassured by who I was with and to stop and pray for Jesus to save me from sinking again. Sure enough, my confidence began to return as I changed my gaze from looking back to looking forward. It's never easy to confront those things in our past that we're ashamed of. Sometimes we do lose sight of the cross and begin to sink. It's incredibly comforting to know that He will still save us when we call on His name, even when we think we're supposed to have it all figured out.