This is Church

I almost thought of calling this post “What I’m Learning” but I decided it was far too broad, and doesn’t actually tell you anything about this post. But this will, in fact, be all about what I’m learning. This whole post is about a process God has been taking me through that started around New Years and is continuing to this very moment (and probably will continue the rest of my life). The two main instigators in this process have been Dr. Tammy Smith and Antioch Community Church in Wheaton. Because of the way these believers have taught and interacted with me, I’ve become acquainted with some major deficiencies in my understanding of God and my relationship with Him.

The beginnings of my revelation can be summed up something like this:

I read the Bible with a kind of “Amen!…yadda yadda…” rhythm.

What I mean is this: when I read a passage of Scripture, though I’m not quite consciously aware of it in the moment, my heart is saying: “Amen!!…yadda yadda…..Yes Lord!!….blah blah…” Although I agree with all of the Bible, though I can teach and communicate and assent to all of it, it does not all equally resonate in my heart. Some of it, I have experienced profoundly, and I can passionately preach its truth on the foundation of my personal interaction with that truth and the extraordinary life and freedom it’s given me. However, there’s a sizable chunk of Scripture that I will read, and it will fit my Christian worldview in an intellectual kind of way, but I will have no desire to announce its beauty and power to anyone else. And for a guy who God made to be a preacher, that’s the same as saying I don’t really get it at all.

At GCMC’s Ignite Conference over Christmas break, Tammy Smith gave a talk called “Honest Freedom: Living Christ’s Amazing Victory in the Face of our Issues, Patterns, and Past” and it was pretty revolutionary for me. (Seriously, click that link and download it right now or stream it at the bottom of this post. I guarantee it’ll be 80 of some of the best minutes you invested this week). Tammy must have quoted over 50 passages of Scripture in that talk, and as she did so, I could not help but be struck with the thought, “This woman is preaching God’s word like crazy, but I’m not having my usual ‘Amen Lord!’ experiences.”

Generally, when someone preaches on a topic that I really resonate with, I will play out in my mind how I would teach the topic in light of the beautiful and specific ways God has brought the Scripture to light in my life. But I was utterly dumbfounded when, as I listened to Tammy give all kinds of verses about our identity in Christ and the power of His Spirit, I had no such moments.

Zero.

And for me, that’s a HUGE red flag. I mean, I “believed” all of these verses; I might even refer a struggling brother to some of them on occasion, but I could definitely not preach them with great passion and conviction while keeping my integrity in tact. It seems I simply haven’t internalized most of the Scripture regarding my identity in Christ and the power His Spirit bestows upon me.

Similar things happened to me as I began to interact with the saints at Antioch Community Church. I was first drawn to them because of their great passion to sit down with me and hear my story as I raise financial support in the Chicago suburbs. But pretty soon, I realized that, even in my brief meetings with these men and women, they would pray for things I would never even think to pray for. I understood that scripturally, we as believers have every reason to believe God for a direct word from His Spirit, physical healing, personal revival, and citywide transformation, but that wasn’t exactly my everyday Christian experience. But these guys prayed like they actually believed God was going to these things in me and through me. And that (along with some of the astonishing prophetic words they’ve offered me) has been profoundly challenging to me.

What I began to realize is that the way that these people were living and demonstrating their faith really began to shed some light on a whole lot of my “yadda yadda” verses. Slowly but surely, because of the demonstration of the Holy Spirit in their lives, I was beginning to internalize some of these Scriptures regarding my identity and the power of God. And I even began experiencing them.

I wonder on some level if maturity in Christ means nothing more than knowing God at such a level where we’re able to receive all of God’s word in an emphatic “Amen!” kind of manner, meaning we’ve actually had deep personal encounters with all aspects of His character; we’ve personally lived out every truth of the Bible. Maybe by that definition, nobody is actually mature, but I’m OK with that. At least that’s something I can be excited to press on toward.

In light of that, I’m strongly considering embarking on a new venture of going through the entire New Testament and creating a running list of all the verses that I’m not all too crazy about or don’t totally resound in my heart, and then praying over them and asking that God would give me experiences that would beyond-validate these truths in my heart. Will you join me in this?

I’ve had different personal revolutions throughout my spiritual life where he’s taught me in striking ways about different aspects of the Christian life. I think January and February have been the kick-start to a profound Identity and Power Revolution in my life.

Let me highlight some aspects of this in terms of my “Amen!” versus “blah blah” verses so you can get a better idea of what I mean here. For quite some time, I’ve felt like I could passionately preach on passages like Romans 8:29, 2 Corinthians 3:18 and Philippians 1:6 that talk about how we’re a work in progress, and that God is always growing us. I’ve been undergoing this process for 9 years now, and God has totally been faithful to remove and replace some junk in my life that I thought was pretty impossible to get past. Thus, I could get pretty fired up about those verses.

But at the same time, I think I’ve considered myself a victim to my place in the sanctification/maturity process. What I mean is that, when faced with a circumstance that seems to demand more wisdom or godliness than I feel I possess, I tend to roll over in defeat, with my excuse being like, “I’m just not capable of something like that at this point in my life.” Maybe it’s forgiving someone who’s wounded me in some major ways, maybe it’s stepping outside my comfort zone and speaking God’s truth with someone who terrifies me, maybe it’s showing love to someone who hates me, maybe it’s giving someone wise advice or a poignant spiritual truth from God for a difficult situation in their life.

Whatever it is, I often think, “I realize that there is a really godly response to this (often I have a pretty good idea of what is), but I’m just not there yet spiritually. I’m going to go ahead and just accept God’s grace for my spiritual condition right now. Mmmm…look at me…walking in grace, baby!…so serene…so peaceful…so…(dare I say, fearfully complacent?)” And that way, I never have to do hard things God wants for me, but I can make it look really spiritual by calling it “walking in grace.”

Real clever, Mikey.

The tricky part is, that thought process has some appearance of truth. We’re not condemned for our spiritual weakness, God loves us just where we’re at, and he won’t give us more than what we can handle. While all those are true, I think Satan was trying to twist them in order to incapacitate me from doing the good God desired for me. Specifically, that process ignores some of my “blah blah” scriptures that speak directly to the issue: Ephesians 1:18-20, 2 Peter 1:3-4, John 14:12-14, Romans 15:18-19, 2 Timothy 1:7, James 5:14-18. I dare you to ingest those verses and ask God for faith to believe them. Nothing will more quickly get you out of your victim mentality.

I’m just beginning to understand the insane power I’ve been endowed with because the very Spirit of God lives inside of me. While my flesh may not be even close to the place where it has the strength for a specific good work or the wisdom for a particular insight, there is absolutely nothing that is currently beyond my capability as a believer. And that’s not because I’m more spiritual or mature than the next guy. That’s simply because the Holy Spirit lives inside of me, and that through faith, I can access his power at any moment of the day. That is soooo incredibly insane. And, if I can be so bold, I think only a handful of Christians live like this is true. I’m so thankful to have recently met some of them.

Here you can listen to the audio of that Tammy Smith talk that set this whole process in motion for me (with Word document outline below):

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Outline for “Honest Freedom”

I’ll admit that while I was writing Part II, there were a few uncomfortable moments where I thought, “Mike, this is a really audacious claim you’re making. You mean to tell me that you actually think you were worth the great God of this universe allowing his only son to die a gruesome death for you?! You better hope that’s supported biblically, or else you’ve found yourself square in the most arrogant heresy there ever was.” So if you’re like me, the assertion that you were worth the cross can feel every bit as presumptuous as it does healing.

You might be tempted to say, “Claiming that I was totally worth the cross is an absolute affront to God’s grace. I wasn’t worth it at all, and that’s what makes God so good.” If you believe this, I have news for you:

I think you’ve fallen victim to some clever wordplay.

What you are worth and what you deserve are two incredibly different things. God’s word could not be more clear that you are worth everything (Luke 12:7, Matthew 18:12-14, 1 Timothy 2:5-6) and deserve nothing (Romans 11:35). In fact, Romans 5:8 declares this all by itself (brackets added by me): “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners [deserving nothing], Christ died for us [declaring us worth the highest price to Him: his son's perfect life].”

But here’s the crazy part: I often believe the exact opposite. Instead of believing I deserve nothing but am worth everything, I think Satan does a really good job of convincing me that I’m worth nothing but deserve everything. As a result, we walked around like a bunch of self-deprecating entitled fools, rather than humble, confident, thankful witnesses.

Let’s look into definitions here.

Deserve: to merit, be qualified for, or have a claim to (reward, assistance, punishment, etc.) because of actions, qualities, or situation.

Claiming to God that I deserve something from him is pretty insane. I would have neither actions, qualities, nor situation if he hadn’t chosen to give me life. So if I claim that he owes me something on account of those things, it’s pretty silly. Not to mention, I came out of the womb knowing nothing about him or how to attribute to him everything that is actually his (my life, the beauty of this world, his son’s sacrifice, etc.) Even my ability to give back to him a tiny portion what is rightfully his would be impossible had he not sought me out to give it to me.

Worth is a different matter, though. I took my entire last post to define worth because the dictionaries do a horrible job of it. Most sources will define worth in terms of value, and then define value in terms of worth. The only way out of it is to say that something’s worth/value is what comes from a “fair or equivalent exchange”. And we all know what was exchanged for you by the God who defines “fair”.

Believing that you are worth something great brings life. Knowing that God Almighty calls you “very good” and paid the highest price imaginable for you actually gives you and me the ability to live life outside of the tragic fate of circumstance determining our sense of self, because God has already given it to us.

Believing that you deserve something great brings death, because every time you’re not given what you believe you’re owed, you either feel wronged and invalidate your lack of reward (inflating your pride, setting yourself up for even bigger falls down the road), or you feel worthless and validate your lack of reward (leading to depression). In both cases, your only choice is to insulate yourself from relationships with others because relationships inevitably bring this lack of reciprocity. Your spouse, family, and best friends can never give you all the things that you’re convinced make you worth something. And then your loneliness brings eventual inner death, because you were made in God’s image, intended for loving relationship, as He is in loving relationship with himself (Father, Son, Holy Spirit).

So let’s have a brainstorming session called: How to Destroy a Human Psyche

Let’s start with a couple basic facts:

1) People need relationships
2) People are imperfect (have shortcomings, make mistakes, etc.)
3) People need validation
4) This world and its events are largely unpredictable

So then, if I want to destroy a human using just these 4 basic facts, I want to leverage facts (2) and (4) against (1) and (3). I want to make the shortcomings of human beings and the world’s unpredictable events undermine everyone else’s need for personal validation and loving relationships. How do I do that?

One of the best strategies I can think up is to convince them that all their validation has to come from what they receive from others.

That way, whenever (2) or (4) inevitably happens, and the world is unable to provide for them (3) for some time (and remember, they have no other source for (3) because of what I convinced them of), they will want to distance themselves from others, leaving them to destroy their own (1). And there we have it, the two core desires of a human being have been removed. Death of psyche.

I know that’s super brief and way over-simplified, but I wanted to give you a quick demonstration as to why I believe that Satan does this exact thing, and it’s so effective. I think one of his grandest schemes is to convince you that you have no inherent worth, but your situation or actions merit people repaying you all the time.

Because if you believe you have no inherent worth, then you are going to depend upon your actions- and situation-based rewards to determine your worth (flowers when you’re sick, trophies when you win, praise when you accomplish something, money for your job talent, etc.). But these things obviously could never communicate what you’re worth. It’s why the people who receive some of the most material rewards in life still end up killing themselves.

So then, when other people inevitably fail to give you the recognition that you were convinced you deserved, parts of you that hoped for being worth something die. And as a result, you inwardly die. And the Evil One enjoys great victory because his plan all along has been to destroy you.

I hope you’re beginning to understand that the only remedy for such a tragic state of the world is to receive your validation from something that transcends circumstance. And as much as part of me wishes that you could just give that to yourself, I don’t think you were made to (Part I). I hope that this post has given you the desire to recognize the difference between security (knowing you’re worth something) and entitlement (thinking you deserve something). As similar as they seem on the surface, they are worlds apart; one bringing life, and the other bringing death. May you live your life as someone who is secure in knowing that you deserve nothing, but that the loving God who made you has declared that you are worth everything to Him.

I just wanted to give you all a quick update. My wedding website is now live! On it, you’ll (eventually) be able to read about how Jessie Aja and I came to want to marry one another, details about the ceremony and reception, bios of our wedding party, and information regarding where we’re registered, and how to RSVP. I know…that’s a lot of stuff.

My Twitter friends might be disappointed that we used TheKnot.com for our site instead of getting Holy Cow Creative or someone really cool and trendy to do our site. But TheKnot was free, easy-to-use, and helps us integrate lots of different aspects of our wedding.

The site is still in many ways in Beta phase, but I wanted to at least post the URL so that all of you could save it and re-visit it when it’s much more complete. You can learn everything about our wedding at http://www.theknot.com/ourwedding/JessieAja&MikeFilicicchia. Thanks for being a part of our lives.

In Part I, I briefly discussed how I believe that one of the most central questions to the human existence is “Am I worth something?” Almost every sin pattern I can think of has its origins in a  process of answering this question apart from God. If we were confident in our worth and identity as God declares it, we would no longer feel the need to serve false gods or take advantage of others to prove it to ourselves. This makes an affirmative answer to our soul’s nagging question an absolute necessity for obeying something as radical as “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

I hope you’re now asking, “Well, what does God declare my worth to be, and how do I go about internalizing this truth to the point where I will live it out on a consistent basis?” because those are questions that God absolutely longs to answer for you, and he is faithful to do just that if you keep asking. I’m only in the very beginning stages of hearing God’s answer to these myself, but I want to share with you the little I know in hopes that God might reveal something new to you through it.

To start I want to zoom out a bit. I’m going to talk in somewhat unemotional terms about the most emotional topic in the world. Because I want you to be grounded in the fundamental assertions of the Christian faith, before moving on to some of the more personal issues.

I was an economics major, so humor me here. I have a basic Econ 101 question for you:

What determines the worth of an object?

If an answer doesn’t leap to the front of your mind, I want you to think on this one until you arrive at an answer you’re at least somewhat confident about…

…Do you have it yet?…

…Everything from a Kit-Kat to a Ferrari…

…How do you know what it’s worth?…

OK, time’s up. Don’t move on from this point until you have an answer.

Chances are, if there were numbers that came to mind for the Kit-Kat and Ferrari, it’s because you’ve seen their price tags, and it seems safe to say that something is roughly worth what’s on the price tag. But what if nobody was willing to pay that price?

What if I put a $10,000 price tag on the Kit-Kat?

Would it still be worth that amount?

Most people would say “no”. And so a pretty good Economics 101 answer to the question (especially if you buy into the whole capitalism thing) would be: An item is worth what someone is willing to pay for it.

Now, that’s a good starting point, but that definition might feel incomplete to you because you were once a second grader. What I mean is this: most of us, when we were still quite young, watched some really slick trades go down. And in second grade, I was the primary instigator of this kind of thing. When Power Ranger cards were all the rage, I was the first one to seize an opportunity. I was that kid who preyed upon that girl who just learned that Power Ranger cards existed, bought a pack at the grocery store with her mom last night, and as luck would have it, happened upon an ultra-rare green ranger foil card.

Knowing full well this girl was vulnerable to all kinds of manipulation, I would offer her a “shiny new” commonplace pink ranger card; the girl’s hero. I would convince her the pink ranger is much prettier and that foil cards were actually worth less because the foil distorted the image. The girl would be completely swayed by my cunning words, and in no time my mom was getting a call from her mom demanding that I trade back the cards because her daughter had just realized (via a more informed trader or some pesky trading card magazine) that she was royally ripped off in the latest of my shenanigans.

The girl was willing to pay a foil green ranger card for a common pink ranger card. Does that mean my pink ranger card was worth it? Not really. If it were, I would have been spared countless incredibly awkward second grade reconciliation conversations for all the people I was “sorry” for having ripped off.

“So sorry for making your daughter happy by giving her a card of her personal hero, Mrs. Johnson. And thanks for stealing her joy from her. You’re a great parent.”

I was a real annoying second grader.

As much as I hate to admit it, our definition needs some amending in light of my childhood trauma. Perhaps an item’s worth is not determined by what someone will pay for it, but rather what a well-informed consumer will pay for it. This is a pretty good definition 2.0.

The people reading the magazines with the Power Ranger card price lists in the back are in a far better place to determine the worth of a card than the clueless girl who trades with her feelings. Sure, maybe the Pink Ranger was worth the trade to her in the moment, but had she simply known that countless other traders would be willing to offer her eight different pink ranger cards for the same price, she would have quickly changed her mind about how much her card was worth.

Although our new definition satisfies most critical lenses, I want to cover all my bases here. There’s still one problem with this definition:

Even the well-informed consumers disagree.

It’s the reason that stock exchanges exist. Even people who spend their entire lives analyzing industries disagree on what a share of a company is worth. Only a perfectly informed market observer with sound analytical skills and judgment could accurately determine worth. And no such human exists.

So maybe there’s no hope for ever getting a concrete answer to this kind of thing (this was essentially the case in barter economies). However, in the absence of strict laissez-faire economics, there is a way we can know absolutely what something is worth. If you want a quick illustration, reach into your pocket and pull out a $20 bill. What is it worth? It might seem like a silly question. In terms of the rarity and cost of materials used to make it, it’s actually worth less than your penny. But it is in fact worth exactly $20, because the government says so. And they’re the authority. They made the bill and they run the show, so they can determine its worth, even if you want to disagree.

So then, we have two options for who can rightfully determine worth:

1) The perfectly informed observer with perfect judgment, or
2) The authority who created the market and makes the rules.

As a human being, you only have two options for who actually has authority to set your worth. And your parents, your spouse, your boss, or the cool crowd don’t fit the bill, regardless of how well-informed or authoritative they may seem. The only person who could actually determine your worth would have to either be someone with perfect information about you and about the world and who is perfect in his/her judgments (fixing your worth at the price that said person would pay for you), or the entity who created you and authoritatively set your worth upon your creation. The incredible thing is that the Christian faith is the only worldview I know of that professes a God who perfectly fulfills both roles.

His name is Yahweh.

He crafted the universe and he paid a price for you. He paid his innocent, beloved son hanging on a cross, gasping for air, that you might be free. I dare you to think of a higher price he could have paid; something that would have cost him more. He declared in the most striking way possible that you’reworth more than anything to Him.

Imagine if your mind instantly went to the cross every time you find yourself wondering how much you’re worth. God, in his grace, gave you an intensely graphic scene so that you could remember. And we take communion to give thanks to Him for his grace in giving us the affirmation that our soul hungers for more than anything, at great cost to himself.

The problem is, I find myself questioning my worth far more often than I partake in the bread and the cup.

So I am forever in the process of training my mind to remember his great demonstration for me. The answer to every question about my worth can be found in the cross of Jesus Christ. May we all live as sons and daughters who profoundly understand the ransom that was paid for them.

The more ministry I do, the more I’m beginning to believe that most people’s deep hurts and struggles with faith center around a pretty simple question:

“Am I really worth something?”

And I don’t just think it’s just church people asking this. I’m a pretty strong believer in the idea that most human beings live their lives primarily out of a desire to know that they’re valuable; for someone to tell them they’re worth something.

People will go to some pretty extreme ends to achieve this. They’ll insult, humiliate, and oppress to prove themselves better than another. They’ll fish for compliments, get physically fit, buy fancy clothes, work long hours, and build empires. Whether it’s just for a fleeting second of affirmation or a fixed monument in praise of their excellence; the stay-at-home mom and the CEO both want the same thing, and they’re going to employ the best means they know of to feel it.

But I don’t intrinsically know what I’m worth. None of us do, actually. And I think it’s in our nature as humans. My reading of Genesis 1-3 indicates to me that Adam and Eve were in a state of internal paradise because God had declared them “very good” (Genesis 1:31), a description for creation he did not use until he made humans, but had reserved solely for his most prized creation made in his very own image. In fact, the Bible’s first poetic inset occurs when God creates man (Genesis 1:27). It’s as if the rest of creation is mere repetitive prose to the poetic beauty that God sees in each of us. That kind of affirmation leads a person to be unashamed, even when completely naked (Genesis 2:25). But I think one of the core reasons our ancestors ended up falling into sin was because they allowed the Serpent to determine their worth for a time instead.

I think the third chapter of Genesis would look quite different had Adam and Eve been fully capable of asserting their own value on intrinsic grounds, telling the serpent that they had no interest in the wisdom of the forbidden fruit because they were quite glorious just as they were. But we don’t see that kind of self-informed response to the serpent. In fact, Eve could only recite what God had already told her (Genesis 3:2-3). I think she was made that way. And I think you and I were too.

Until the Serpent entered the scene, God had been the only one speaking to her what her value actually was. And He was telling her that He loved her enough to give her every tree in the garden except the one with the power to destroy her. She needed this because she was incapable of telling herself that she was quite lovable, and even having heard this from God, she is still unable to resist the serpent’s temptation in the face of his accusation (God is holding out on you / you’re ignorant) because she hasn’t internalized God’s truth.

I believe we were hard-wired in our original form as human beings to actually need an outside source to determine our worth. This means that, try as we may to convince ourselves of our worth, we will ultimately fail; and our insecurities, defensiveness and manipulation of others for our own purposes will constantly bear witness to this failure. So then, if we absolutely need an outside source to determine our worth, it’s natural that we will seek the answer from whoever we believe holds the authority on the matter. There are ways of doing this that lead to death and others that lead to life. I’ve experienced both.

Since we all have this fundamental question of value at the source of our most damaging thoughts and actions, how do we go about answering it? Over this next week (in two more posts), I want to share with you some foundational teachings of the Christian faith in order to equip you to answer your question well. Because I think that just maybe everything you do is riding on this thing…

As most of you know, I’m getting married in May. I don’t really know what I’m doing except that I’ve read Ephesians 5, observed some incredibly godly marriages, and really love Jessie and want to put her needs before my own. Just like the theme of some of my more recent posts, my intentions are good, but I’m still really unwise and prone to messing stuff up. So I’ve sought out considerable counsel so I wouldn’t hurt her as much as I would if left to my own understanding.

Here are my notes from a marriage seminar put on by James MacDonald, pastor of Harvest Bible Chapel in Rolling Meadows, IL. Keep in mind that he’s talking to a room full of married Christians (mostly couples). I got some really good stuff from it, and James actually played a big role in my early spiritual development, so I wanted to share his thoughts with you.

Why I Have A Great Marriage by James MacDonald

1) We each have a Master, and it’s not us. (1 Corinthians 8:6)
- My spouse doesn’t always bring me back to my marriage, Jesus Christ as Lord always brings me back to my marriage.

2) Because we have our identity tied up in our marriage. (Hebrews 13:4)
- I do not have a successful life apart from her.
- Esteem a great marriage.
- I cannot be successful if my marriage is not successful (think Tiger Woods).
- Whatever your work, you lose credibility from a bad or failed marriage because you have failed at relationship.

3) Because we have a biblical view of love: you before me. (1 Corinthians 13:4-8)
- Biblical love is more than feelings, romance, or chemistry.
- The bedrock of my love in marriage is my will, not my feelings.
- Choose to do the things you don’t feel like doing, and the feelings you want will follow.

4) Because we have transparent communication. (Romans 12:9)
- Don’t expect your marriage to meet all of your relational needs.
- Have a place of safety, confidentiality, and reciprocation of openness both inside and outside of your marriage.
- Open up to your wife! (1 Peter 3:7).
- Tell her what you’re afraid of, what your hopes and dreams are, and what you struggle with.
- Speaking your thoughts exposes your wrong thinking to the light.
- Speaking your feelings expoeses slippage and distraction in the relationship.
- Watch out for the people in your life who are meeting an emotional or relational need that only your spouse can righteously fulfill.
- It is far better that your need goes completely unmet in your life than it is for you to get it met by someone other than your spouse.
- It is better to feel lonely, misunderstood and disappointed than to be divorced.

5) Because we have a commitment to healthy conflict. (Ephesians 4:26-27)
Five Rules of Engagement for Conflict:
       1) Work it out today, or commit to working it out the next day after hurt feelings have cooled down.
       2) Attack the problem, not the person.
      3) Men: No invasion of her personal space physically or vocally. Women: No emotional manipulation or blackmail.
       4) No universals. No  ”You always ______.”  or  ”You never ______.”  It’s rarely helpful or even true.
       5) Don’t bring up the past for the sake of leverage. Love does not call upon the past to predict the future. If I keep re-hashing the wound, I can keep it from healing.

6) Because we will not let the relationship lag or flounder. (Hebrews 12:12-13)
- Take a honeymoon after any season or crisis that temporarily shifts your priorities away from each other.

7) Because we pursue opportunities to evaluate and strengthen our marriage. (Proverbs 1:5)
- You should be so consumed with your spouse’s beauty and strengths that all other people are utterly dumbfounded by what you’re seeing in them.
- Take a date night.

8 ) Because we protect our marriage from intruders. (Proverbs 4:23)
- Don’t ask your marriage to absorb all your problems.
- Protect from intrusion by work, church, parents, friends, kids, and extended family.

9) Because we have a long-term view of the power of a strong marriage. (Galatians 6:7-9)
- “You reap what you sow” can be very good news.
- You will never regret or be put to shame for investing deeply in a godly marriage. It always has a big return.

10) Because we have a mutual commitment to a higher mission (1 Corinthians 10:31)
- There are  lot of things counting on my marriage.
- Be a team, be deeply invested in what the other is called to.

Additional nuggets from Q&A time:
- Be prepared to disclose areas of sin or unfaithfulness, but don’t rush to disclose. Don’t make your spouse bear the weight of you clearing your conscience. Seek counsel about which details to disclose and when.
- No matter where your spouse is personally, treat them like the person you want them to be. Treat them as if you had your dream marriage, and they will come into their fullness.

This is the last of my three-part (for now) series on the power of grace. I hope you’ve come even just a little bit closer to knowing deeply the richness of God’s grace. But before I write anything more, I want you to watch this video and do your best to emotionally engage. Feel it as deeply as you can, even if you’ve seen it before.

Are you a bit emotional right now? If so, I want you to take some time to figure out why.

I get emotional every time I watch this video. And apparently so do quite a few other people, because it’s been viewed over 55 million times as of the writing of this post. I think it’s possibly the best Gospel metaphor on all of YouTube (it includes Gospel elements such as: a free gift for all people, the outcasts of society coming to a healer, scoffers and doubters, the good leader empowering disciples to carry on the same message, restoration to the hurting and lonely, strong opposition from the powers that be, triumph and victory in the end, and heck…he even fits our Anglo image of Jesus).

But let me go ahead and list the reasons why I think I get especially emotional when I watch it:

1) People become real and come alive; they let their defenses down and make themselves vulnerable in the presence of a safe environment where they can simply receive. I long to exist in that place.

2) Something good is offered freely to everyone; regardless of who they are, what they look like, where they come from, what they’ve done, whether they’re a “good person” or not. For a brief second, everyone is equal in their eligibility to receive this gift.

And our world is longing for this.

Christians, non-Christians, everyone.

And I think it’s overly simplistic to say this video is so popular because ”we just want to be loved” and this video demonstrates acts of love. There are tens of thousands of YouTube videos with parents showing a rich, warm, unconditional kind of love to their children; a love that’s probably much stronger than what this guy has for the people he’s hugging. 

And though those videos may make us feel warm and fuzzy, we’re not crying, showing our friends, and spreading it to 55 million people, causing subsequent “Free Hugs” outbreaks among young people in public places across the nation. I think the thing that makes a person tear up and want to send this video to their friends is the grace of the act.

There’s something in us that expects the parent in the YouTube video to love their child immensely. The act may be beautiful, but it’s not startling, and the video almost certainly isn’t going to be watched by anyone beyond immediate family and random passers-by.

But something about free hugs is just different.

That someone would do something so wild and radical as offer love freely to complete strangers in full sight of the whole world makes us want to tell someone. And when we watch it, we want to take part. We desperately long to be able to give and receive this undiscriminating kind of love. I think it’s what makes grace the most powerful thing in the world to behold.

I ache for the Church to hone their ability to similarly tell stories of grace that makes the world want to tell their neighbor.

I want to make better videos. 

So I want you to ask yourself how you can personally proclaim and demonstrate this kind of grace in a way that touches something deep within the heart of every human being; something that might provoke someone to tell all their friends of the good news. How can you start a “free hugs”-type movement in the name of the greatest grace-giver the world has ever known? Because as God’s Church, we’re the ones who have actually experienced the divinely gripping realities of this video; the ones who have tasted the Kingdom. 55 million hits says the world longs for a taste. How will you offer it to them?

In my last post, I shared about how I’ve struggled to boldly speak truth to others because I fear messing it up, even if my intentions are good. This blog post is going to deal with how we can respond to difficult responses to our truth-telling when we acted in ignorance or foolishness, even if our intentions were not evil. In sharing this, I am making two assumptions about the circumstance:

1) Your actions were not perfect in every way.
2) You are receptive to God’s response.

My thoughts will not make sense of a situation that doesn’t satisfy those criteria.

That being said, I want to tell you a parable that has given me significant freedom from the prison of despair that once accompanied my well-intentioned but unwise truth-telling.

Suppose you are a parent who owns a house and you have a toddler who doesn’t really know much of anything yet. You desire to keep your house hospitable for guests and generally neat. One day, your toddler realizes how much he really loves you for being such a wonderful parent, so he paints you a lovely mural…all over your walls. It’s a picture of your beautiful, happy family, and he’s celebrating all of you through art. He delightfully screams, “Look, Daddy!!!”

You turn around…

…Only to see your previously spotless walls covered in all the colors of the rainbow.

You know that he doesn’t know any better; you’ve never actually explicitly told him not to fingerpaint on the walls before, and it’s clear that he did this as an act of love, thinking you would actually rather enjoy it. But, of course, his artwork runs quite contrary to your decorative scheme and broader goal of keeping tidy. How would you (a loving, understanding, gracious parent who wants to keep a tidy house) respond to your child’s newfound artistic expression?

I’m not sure about the answer to this because I’ve never had kids (and am only seldom “loving, understanding and gracious”), but I think a loving response might look something like:

“Oh my goodness, thank you so much for that beautiful picture! It’s clear you really love Daddy a lot, and I really appreciate you making a painting for me. I’m not mad at you, because I know that you didn’t know any better. But from now on, I’d like you to keep your painting to the canvas and paper because painting on the walls actually hurts the house, and I also really care about our guests having a pleasant experience here. Can you do that for me from now on?”

And then I would paint over it.

Leaving no trace of the original offense.

The God of the Universe is a far more loving, understanding and gracious father than any of us could ever hope to be (Luke 11:13). To think that our Heavenly Father holds our foolish acts against us when they were done out of a sincere love for him seems absolutely ridiculous to me. In fact, we see in the Scriptures that God quickly forgives even the most heinous of sins when they were committed in ignorance (Acts 3:13-19, Acts 17:29-30, 1 Timothy 1:13-14).

But notice that in every case, he quickly extends the opportunity for repentance, because it would be unloving of God to just forgive us and allow us to continue in our destructive folly without offering a richer way of life in exchange. God desires intimate relationship with us, so he tells us his desires, that we might experience the fullness of his life. Just like the loving father who tells his child that he would do well to stick with painting on paper from now on.

I want you to know that it’s ridiculous of you to think that your foolishness and brokenness (apparent in your inability to boldly speak truth without some stain of sin) could somehow ruin God’s sovereign plan for another person’s life. It’s every bit as ridiculous as it is to believe that a toddler could forever ruin a household via fingerpainting while his father is present. Our God is powerful enough to completely remove the stains of your foolishness forever, gracious enough to not hold it against you, and loving enough to discipline you and lead you into greater understanding of his heart and character (“How much more will your Father in Heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him!”).

So rather than going through my 4-part godless grieving process I introduced in the last post when I hurt someone via my good intentions gone awry, I have actually begun to learn to:

1) Confess my foolishness to the other person and to God in the moment, apologizing for the hurt I’ve caused (regardless of my intention).

2) Repent of the wrongdoing.

3) Immediately walk in the exhilarating freedom that God is painting over all of the stains of my mistakes in both of our lives, in many cases covering over it with something even more beautiful than was there before.

Instead of despair over my inadequacy, I now know the delight of being broken but forgiven. For a perfect example of this kind of repentance, mercy and restoration, check out Job 42.

So I want to take this opportunity to speak some truth into your life. For your sake and the sake of the world, please(!)…

Go out and be bold.

Speak the word of God in the best way you know how, and do not fear the consequences. You are not so mighty as to be able to thwart God’s redemptive plan for this world. He loves the things that you do out of your desire to live for Him, and He is faithful to reveal and cover over all your foolishness with his grace, and to instruct you in the way you should go. If you are continually humble and attentive to his voice, you have no reason to fear his discipline. He does every bit of it because he’s crazy about you and longs for you to know Him deeply. Leave your life of fear and hiding behind, and begin to dance in the freedom of his rich mercy.

This post marks the kickoff to a three-part blog series on the power of grace. But I intend on blogging about grace for a long time to come, so don’t think that I’m going to stay at three parts forever. I hope the series would rock your world and free your soul.

To start, I would like to share with you a struggle of mine that, because of God’s relentless grace, I’ve experienced significant victory in. And I share it in hopes that you might know Him more deeply and walk in unprecedented freedom.

I would like you to raise your hand at your computer if you relate to my problem:

When I find myself in spiritually influential situations (say, sharing or demonstrating my faith to another person), I tend to feel great pressure to speak and act perfectly, and then take great responsibility afterward for things that I perceive as having gone poorly.

This soul-destroying phenomenon has gotten to the point where I’d consistently shrink back from taking bold steps of faith for fear that I might defame Jesus or cause someone to hate God forever. I’d take careful measures to hide my shortcomings; then, faced with an opportunity to speak truth, choose my words so carefully that I’d end up not saying much of anything for fear that the truth of God will make him out to be ridiculous and unbelievable. Because when someone calls me a hypocrite or tells me that the God of the Bible sounds like a big jerk because of how I live or what I’ve communicated, I assume that I’ve ruined God’s plan for that person’s life, and vow never to do anything risky in my witness ever again.

And it happens when I’m with other Christians too. I’ve had difficult conversations with close brothers and sisters where, in love, I ask a question or make an observation regarding a pattern in their life that concerns me. I’ve been met with accusation, yelling, fuming silence and crying, sometimes even resulting in running away and the slamming of doors. Once again, I begin to wonder if this scene is what God had in mind when he adopted me to be his chosen representative to the world. I figure I’m better off just keeping my mouth shut.

For those of you who like bullet points, I’ll carefully walk you through a faithless kind of grieving process I go through when my bold steps of faith seem to blow up in my face:

1) Rationalize away the other person’s reaction as absurd, citing many of this person’s personal issues that would cause them not to recognize my profound insight communicated with the utmost gentleness and care. (Dismiss)

2) When that doesn’t make me feel better, look to friends or other outside sources to justify my actions as perfectly righteous and loving. (Defend)

3) When that also fails to soothe my soul, take full responsibility for this catastrophic event, analyzing every single thing  that went “poorly” and try to figure out how to do it instead in such a way that would make everyone perfectly happy…but never find the solution. (Despair)

4) Vow never to say anything difficult to anyone ever again, because I clearly suck at it.

In this process, whether it’s a conversation over a sin issue with a brother or sister, or a conversation about Christianity with someone outside the faith, I become absolutely obsessed with the “catastrophe”: why it went wrong, how I could have changed it, how messed up the other person is, how messed up I am, how broken the whole world is, etc. In these moments, I feel a desperate need to understand the answers to all of these questions; some airtight explanation or solution that lets me flee the confusing gravity of sitting inside the realities of our fallen world and escape to the friendly confines of simple platitudes and a clear course for improvement.

And, of course, confession, repentance and grace are nowhere to be found in my escapism. At no point would I admit my powerlessness and lack of understanding, ask God to restore me, conform me to his image, conform my friends to his image, and call them into intimate relationship with him. I’d rather have a formula.

What’s really sad is that even our nation’s broken, flawed justice system understands more about the necessity of grace in this scenario than I do. We have an entire body of legislation known as Good Samaritan laws that release me from any legal condemnation for making my best effort to assist an injured, sick or dying person.

Even if I end up killing them.

One day some psychologist or lawmaker realized that when you penalize people for trying to help someone but messing it up, they stop wanting to help hurting people. I think that’s because we all realize we are prone to ignorance and mistakes, and the fear of penalty is just stronger than our flesh’s compulsion to good. In fact, I think just the sheer guilt and shame of being told by the legal system that a helpless person’s fate was your fault for being too incompetent to actually help in any way would be enough to keep people from helping someone in need; fines and jail terms completely aside. But regardless of the exact reasons why potential legal penalty would keep someone from helping a person in dire need, the truth remains that it does. At some point, our nation’s legislative bodies concluded the following:

The only way to make people feel free to do good to their needy neighbor was to offer a release from all the potential consequences of their imperfection.

In other words, the only thing strong enough to ever compel me to love my neighbor as myself is to know that even if I don’t love my neighbor right, I myself am still free from guilt and condemnation. This is the revolutionary power of grace. I think it’s what Paul was getting at when he wrote Romans 8:1-4. And I think it’s why the Gospel of Jesus Christ is the only thing powerful enough to save the world.

The bolded statement above makes me wonder if this legislator/psychologist’s realization of the human condition resulted in their falling on their face in repentance, pleading for God to have grace on them, a sinner, knowing it’s the only hope they have to love others well. Probably not, but just think what would happen if all the people who support this kind of law would follow its basic insight to its natural conclusion for their own spiritual condition…

Regardless, it’s sad that our legal system grants me “Good Samaritan laws” to free me from this kind of fear for physical acts of good, but I’ve struggled immensely to believe that God does the same for me spiritually. In part 2, I’m going to let you in on something that really helps me believe that God is extending me far more grace than our legal system…

If you missed Part I, you should really read it first. Now onto the second installment of a thrilling inteview with New Life Church counselor-in-residence, Tim Courtois:

M: Why counseling, and why the college campus?

T: Why counseling?  I’ve already mentioned that life was lonely for me growing up, and that it was a total revelation when I realized it was possible to really open up about my internal world.  The thrill and the terror of being deeply known – it’s incredible.  I developed quite a hunger for it. 

Around that same time was when I first heard that Thoreau quote: “I wanted to live deep and suck the marrow out of life.”  It totally resonated with me.  I had spent years missing out on what seemed like the most important thing: real relationships.  So now I want to spend as much time as possible where “real life” is really happening.

People in counseling are in the thick of it: Fighting between the part of us that wants to be fully alive no matter what, and the part of us that wants to check out and be done with it.  It’s a terrifying and exhilarating place to be, and it’s an incredible honor to walk with people in those moments. 

In the Celtic Christian tradition, they say that there are certain places geographically where people seem to experience God more directly, where the veil between this world and heaven is “thin”.  So they will say, “such and such is a very thin place”.  In that sense, I would say that I love counseling because the counseling office is a very thin place.

Why the college campus?  The same reason.  In their mid to late 20’s, people seem to settle into their patterns of living and stop asking questions of life.  But college is a time when people are either sprinting away from God, or passionately crying out to him.  The college campus is a very thin place.

M: Finish the sentence: If ____________, then I would consider my ministry to be incredibly successful.”

T: I spent years of my life as a Christian wondering on some level if maybe I didn’t “fit” with the Church because I struggled emotionally.  I remember at church, during times of worship, everybody seemed to be able to just ‘turn on the joy’ so easily.  I thought, either there’s something wrong with me, or there’s something wrong with them.  But after many years of wrestling, I believe there is a place in the Church for the strugglers, those for whom life, contentment – and even Christianity – doesn’t come so easy.

I’ve noticed others who are like that, who sit in the back of the auditorium at church, wondering if maybe there’s just no place for them because they can’t seem to pull off the “Christian” thing as well as others seem to be able to. 

My dream is that those ones will find that they do belong, that there is a special place for “strugglers” in the Church of God.  I’ve found a lot of solace in the fact that “Israel” means, “he struggles with God”, and that’s what God named his people.

I would also love to see generational patterns changed.  My best friend got saved through New Life in college, and his wife learned to follow God through New Life as well.  Today I look at their kids and think, “You don’t know how lucky you are to be in this family, being raised in a godly home that almost never was.”  That blows me away. 

So I would say, my ministry will be incredibly successful when a generation of babies are raised in godly, loving homes, free of abuse, with moms and dads who stay married.  That will happen when people enter into relationship with God, and then walk closely with him through the complex process of redeeming their pain and breaking individual and generational sin patterns.

M: What is your hope for people’s involvement who are outside this ministry? (What does the ideal partnership look like?)

Two things. 

First is financial support.  I am focusing on a demographic that can’t afford to pay for counseling: college students.  These kids are more broken than ever: sexual addiction is rampant; most of them come from broken homes; many of them are struggling with the wounds of abuse.  Not to mention the crazy things they’ll encounter once they actually get on campus.  They need help to sort through these things, and they can’t pay for it.

I am passionate about meeting this need, and in order for me to be there to minister to them, I need people who will give financially to this ministry.  (You can find out how to do that by following the link on my website.)

Second (for those who want to go above and beyond the call of duty): Take some time to actually think about these things.  Read my blog.  Join in the ongoing conversation in the Church about matters of the heart: Have a conversation about these things with your friends, or with me.