This is Church

Most of the things I’m going to write about here I learned from my extraordinary fiancé, Jessie. These are things I’ve just begun to understand in the last two years, and most of that learning was the direct result of her boldly speaking into my life. So if you have questions about this, she’s probably a much wiser person to ask, but I can still try.

Well, I began Part I of “Security with God” with a question to ponder, and I want to do the same now. Here it is:

Do you regularly ask God for miracles?

If not, I’d like you to honestly ask yourself why right now.

Is it because you’re afraid he can’t do it? Or (more commonly) are you afraid that if he says no, that means you aren’t worthy, or that he doesn’t even exist?

I think I fear all of those.

And if you do too, then at least know that we’re in some good company, because Peter had some pretty serious doubts about God’s power (Matthew 14:30-31), and yet God chose him to be a pillar of the Church and a trusted preacher of his Gospel (Matthew 16:18-19). But just because it’s a common thing doesn’t mean that everything’s all fine and dandy about doubting God’s power or character. I have to be honest with you:

I think a fear of asking God for miracles indicates some deep spiritual illness.

By this I don’t mean that something’s inherently “wrong with you”, but rather something needs curing in how you relate with God. Let me explain why I say this. First, fear (not the biblical “fear of the Lord” kind…but the kind you actually didn’t need a pastor to explain to you in order to know what it meant) never comes from God. More specifically, I think if you investigate where your fears about “asking big” originated, you might realize that they weren’t the result of maturity.

And I don’t think you were born with them, either.

If you were like most little kids I know, you began asking your parents for some pretty outrageous things the second you learned how to communicate. Things you wanted badly, no matter how unrealistic they were. A pony for Christmas, every video game at Best Buy, your own personal amusement park…nothing was off-limits.

But you soon stopped, and I wish it were only because you learned about what was doable for them and what wasn’t. Because if feasibility were the only reason you stopped asking, then you’d stop asking for the amusement park, but you’d still ask for the biggest thing you thought your parents might be able to do. But if you’re like me and most people I know, you even stopped asking for things you knew were possible because the ways in which you were told “no” communicated something more than the word itself. What you actually heard was “Your desires are a burden to me”, “You’re not worth my effort”, and “I don’t care about you.”

And those words destroy a person’s confidence like few things on this earth.

And after you hear these enough times, and they’re confirmed by those people’s other actions and attitudes toward you, asking in general becomes incredibly vulnerable, even unsafe. Every ask on someone’s time, effort, or (God forbid) finances then produces every kind of anxiety because you’ve learned what “no” really means. And so you start hedging everything you ask for in a layer of “I don’t want to be a burden, but I was just wondering…” or maybe you just subtly or provocatively state your wants or needs to someone else (perhaps threatening a negative outcome if this need is not met), and just hope they’ll offer to help you with that. That’s called manipulation. And you do it because you’re terrified. Or, in the saddest case, maybe you’ve just stopped wanting others’ help all together.

And we carry this enormous baggage into our relationship with God, often steeping it in piety to justify or console ourselves. I think I can sincerely desire and pray for God’s will to be done, but just as often, I’ve prayed a tame prayer of “Lord, may your will be done in my relationship with _____” when my soul was actually crying out “God, I am absolutely head over heels for this girl, will you please give her feelings for me?!” Or maybe you pray “Lord, lead me toward which job opportunity you think best” when deep down you’re saying “God, I really want this job; it’s the total package for me, and would be like an absolute dream come true! Can I please have it?!” I think crying out to God in this humble, simple way is part of what Jesus had in mind when He told us to become like little children in order to enter the Kingdom of God (Matthew 18:1-4).

But I’ve hidden my heart’s true desires behind religious jargon, because on some level, I’m afraid His “no” will shame me in all the ways that everyone else’s has. I’m afraid his “no” means that my request was stupid and unspiritual, and that He’s going to rub it in my face. Maybe your specific fear is different, but most people I know feel shame for their heart’s desires. But now that I’ve actually begun asking, I’m learning that He never shames me. Because He will say “no”. He loves us way too much to be our genie and His sheer greatness excludes him from ever being our “yes-man”. And often, our requests are simply outside of His will, but guess what?

He’s not threatened by that.

He already knows the desires of your heart, and He wants an intimate relationship with you, so just unleash yourself (Lamentations 2:19). Don’t rob yourself of the opportunity of an intimate moment with God by replacing your heart’s cry with false piety. King David, a man after God’s own heart, certainly didn’t. Read one of his psalms:

Psalm 142

¹ I cry aloud to the LORD;
I lift up my voice to the LORD for mercy.

² I pour out before him my complaint;
before him I tell my trouble.

³ When my spirit grows faint within me,
it is you who watch over my way.
In the path where I walk
people have hidden a snare for me.

⁴ Look and see, there is no one at my right hand;
no one is concerned for me.
I have no refuge;
no one cares for my life.

⁵ I cry to you, LORD;
I say, “You are my refuge,
my portion in the land of the living.”

⁶ Listen to my cry,
for I am in desperate need;
rescue me from those who pursue me,
for they are too strong for me.

⁷ Set me free from my prison,
that I may praise your name.
Then the righteous will gather about me
because of your goodness to me.

Do your prayers of petition sound like this one? It’s pretty incredible that David feels the freedom to bring such unbridled honesty before God. And I think verse 3 gives a clue as to how he’s secure enough to do that. He knows that God cares for him. This affirmation gives me confidence to pour out my needs and requests before Him, because He knows my every need perfectly. And if what I’m asking for isn’t best for me, He’s not so cruel to say “Well, you asked for it! Enjoy your miserable life now!” nor is he so irritable to say “How dare you come before me with such a fleshly request?” Instead, I think He responds with something that sounds much more like, “I love it when you ask me for things you want. I really long to give you the best things, and this just isn’t one of them right now. This is going to hurt, but no, you can’t have that thing, but be patient; I’m doing this because I love you and want to bless you in ways beyond what you’re able to ask or conceive of” (Ephesians 3:20-21).

So now, knowing that God never is never irritated by me, that He always prioritizes me, and that I couldn’t burden Him even if I tried, I’m given great confidence to approach Him with every kind of insane request (Ephesians 3:12, Hebrews 4:16, 1 John 5:14). He’s even big enough to give me the amusement park. And, being grounded in his goodness, I can rejoice in his “no” response every bit as I rejoice in his “yes”, knowing that all of it is for my good and that every response is accompanied by “I love you”. He only asks that I never withhold the truest desires of my heart from Him.

So I say go for it:

Ask big.

Ask honest.

Ask specific.

What are you afraid of?

I want to ask you a question:

Do you have a personal relationship with Jesus?

Now, if that question gets you wondering if I spend my weekends as a middle-aged white man on a street corner handing out tracts from the 90′s, I’m sorry to disappoint you.

But I’m just a regular guy.

The reason I’m asking this question is because the middle-aged men who have handed out Bible tracts to me seemed to define “personal relationship with Jesus” a certain way, and since there were lots of them, I think their phraseology and definition just stuck among churchy people. What I think they actually meant by the question was, “Do you understand that Jesus is actually alive, that He still does stuff, that the Bible is relevant, and that you might feel differently about yourself if you prayed a prayer about letting Him change you?” I think those are valid questions, but a few years ago I realized that re-phrasing them simply as  “Do you have a personal relationship with Jesus?” led me toward me a pretty shallow understanding of the Christian faith.

Let me explain with a story.

My story starts in the summer after my freshman year of college at New Life’s Leadership Training program. That’s when I began re-evaluating the term “personal relationship with Jesus.” For many years, I had heard it used almost exclusively in the way that some evangelicals use it to try and determine if you’re “actually saved”, or if you just think it’s cool to call yourself a Christian since other people in your family told you that’s what your whole family is.

I went to an evangelical church in high school, and was pretty confident that Jesus was who he said he was in the Bible, so I considered myself to be one of the actually-saved people. I even did spiritual things like go to small group and read my Bible and sing the kinds of songs you see on PowerPoint slides instead of finding in hymnals. I was pretty sure that these things meant I authentically had the “personal relationship with Jesus” the middle-aged white guy handing out tracts was inquiring about, because it seemed that he likely went to a church like mine and knew Jesus in the same way I knew him.

At that point, I think my understanding of “personal relationship with Jesus” was purely black-and-white;  either you have it or you don’t. If you did, you got to go to heaven, and if you didn’t, you went to hell. And that served me for a time, because I could just compare myself to the people in my high school who drank on weekends and used profane language, and next to them, I was pretty sure I was “in” and they were “out”.

But then that summer came.

And pretty soon I wondered if my definition was really much good. You see, as long as I could end my evaluation of my standing with Jesus with a comparison against my high school friends, I could feel really safe and secure about how spiritual I was and how “close I was with Jesus.” But that summer was the first time in my life that I actually lived every day with people who professed to know Jesus deeply, and I soon found that “relationship with Jesus” might actually mean a whole lot more than I originally thought.

I specifically remember one time when a few of us went out to a park to spend some time with Jesus, and after we had done that, we just gathered to talk about what it was like. I’ll never forget what this one girl named Meghan Brown told us. She said that she spent her quiet time writing a poem to God and dancing with him. She said the poems were really personal, and that she was new at it so she didn’t think she was very good yet, but that they were something special just between her and God. And nobody else would ever get to read them.

“No; seriously, Meghan. What did you actually do?” I wondered.

But pretty soon I realized she wasn’t joking…

Some people actually do that kind of stuff.

It turns out that “devotional time” doesn’t just mean you have to read your Bible, pray in your head, and maybe listen to a couple worship songs on your iPod. You can even do crazy things like write poems to Him that nobody else will ever read, and dance with Him and yell at the top of your lungs how much you love Him the same way little kids do for their parents sometimes. Then I began to realize that people in the Bible did stuff like this too (Psalm 51:1-19, 2 Samuel 6:14, 2 Corinthians 5:13).

I quickly realized that the way that Meghan, David, and Paul seemed to be interacting with God felt a whole lot more “personal” than I was comfortable with. They treated Him like someone they could actually be themselves around, and love him in the way that felt fullest to them, like they would a friend, parent, or lover.

Later that summer, when someone on the beach asked me if I had a personal relationship with Jesus, I was surprised by my hesitancy to answer the question. I was pretty sure he was asking if I understood that the Bible says I can talk to Him and that He can free me from my bondage to sin, and I had a pretty quick answer to that. But his phrasing bothered me, because after observing Meghan’s life and the life of the men I was living with that summer, I was beginning to wonder how “personal” my relationship with Jesus really was. I began to wonder what it would look like if my relationship with Jesus was even more personal than my relationships with the other people I loved. If maybe I could express and receive love from Jesus even more freely than with my closest friends.

To be perfectly honest with you, all of this poetry and dancing talk still makes me really uncomfortable. But I’ve at least decided I want to give it a try. You see, at first I thought that maybe the reason the poetry and dancing thing is hard for me is because “that’s just not my style”, but then I couldn’t shake that nagging feeling that I was missing out on something. If it just wasn’t my style, then I probably wouldn’t have thought much of Meghan’s story, just like if she had shared that she enjoyed a new country music song she heard on the way to work that day. My friends’ new country music experiences just don’t have the ability to make me wonder if maybe there’s more to life out there for me.

I eventually had to admit that the reason that poetry and dancing made me uncomfortable was because every time I had tried risky things like poetry and dancing in my life, people told me that I looked stupid.

And I guess I was afraid of the same from God.

Like somehow I would hear all their accusations all over again about how silly I was if I did that in my quiet space with Jesus. But I don’t think He ever does that. In fact, I think He’s the safest person in the world to dance with and write poems to, because He has no ego. If I’m giving it all I have, He never thinks my worship isn’t good enough for Him. And like a father delights in his child’s fingerpainting as an expression of her love, so God delights in my singing and dancing before Him (Zephaniah 3:17, Psalm 149:4); if only I’ll trust Him enough to not call me stupid. And as I begin to sing and dance with Him, hearing his words of love and affirmation for me, I might even begin to believe that I’m not silly after all. And maybe after a while I’ll feel quite secure and content about who I am, even if other people say all the same hurtful stuff.

Since I’ve learned a couple other things about what it looks like to feel secure in relationship with God, this is just the first part of a series. There’s at least one more on the way.

Since Jessie and I are getting married soon, I decided I’d officially record some of my recollection of how we came to be together. Since I love inviting other people into grand redemption stories, I decided I’d share with you. This may be the longest blog post in the history of man, but some stories are just worth telling in full detail. Also, most of you will probably enjoy Jessie’s version of the story much more than mine, so you can find her version on our wedding website. Enjoy!

I first remember meeting Jessie in the summer of 2007 at New Life’s Leadership Training program in Virginia Beach. My first thought was something like, “Who’s this girl living with all my friends this summer, and why would she go to LT when she’s not even involved in the church?” But upon observing her in group situations and hearing rumors about her extraordinary wisdom and leadership from the women she was living with, I’ll admit I was a bit curious to learn more. But after learning that there was a throng of guys who were romantically interested in Jessie, that she had very strong opinions on dating resulting from a heap of disillusionment about the whole thing, and that surfing, soccer, and climbing trees topped her list of summer activities, I decided she was absolutely not my type. Adventurous girls generally scare me, so I decided to remain intimidated and mostly keep my distance. But I still took down her phone number from the LT directory, just in case…you know…I needed to talk with a fellow leader during the school year.

My repressed interest in Jessie reared its unwelcomed head later that fall when she gave her “Slice of Life” one Sunday morning at church. I couldn’t help but take notice that this girl who was reported to be full of wisdom and leadership ability was also apparently a brilliant writer and really deep thinker. I decided at this point that we would be friends, because there are few things more attractive to me than a woman who swims around in the deep end of life. And so, being the unapologetic schemer that I am, I hatched a master plan to uncover the mysteries of her heart.

In December of 2007, one of the New Life staff members sent an e-mail around to the church saying they were looking for people who were interested in the upcoming spring break trip to Haiti. I was interested in going, but the trip was pretty expensive, and I’m the kind of guy who likes to thoroughly research my investments ahead of time. I knew many people who had gone on the trip, but had specifically remembered Jessie saying that she had gone and loved the experience. Needless to say, I had already chosen who I’d like to do my research on (in more ways than one).

I made great use of that phone number I’d taken down months ago, and after telling Jessie who I was, asked her if she’d like to meet with me to discuss her experiences in Haiti. I sat down with her later that week at the Espresso Royale on State Street, wondering whether I would develop romantic feelings for her and hoping that I wouldn’t (because women complicate life). I was really nervous, but did a way better job of hiding it than she did, if I might say so myself. I asked her about Haiti, about her life story, and about her hopes and dreams for the future. She was the first woman I’d met who countered me with deeper questions than I had asked, and then challenged my responses to those deep questions. I found this incredibly sexy, and decided that she was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen.

I returned to my dorm room and promptly opened a Word document to start a timeline of my relationship with Jessie, certain that this thing was going somewhere. I immediately began journaling about how I was pretty sure I had just met the woman I wanted to spend the rest of my life with, and began plotting how I could convince her to have another conversation with me. Without any obvious reasons for meeting at-hand, I told her a week later that I still needed to hear more about Haiti. In that conversation “about Haiti”, she inadvertently mentioned that she had no interest in dating anyone at the time. Upon returning to my dorm afterward, I collapsed on my bed in a heap of emotional wreckage, determined I never wanted to eat anything ever again, and despaired that the most perfect woman in the world for me was just cruelly yanked from the realm of all future possibility. I think they call that “depression”.

In addition to my scheming, I am known for my annoying persistence and general dissatisfaction with taking “no” for an answer (which makes for really interesting fundraising conversations). Therefore, I left on Christmas break and spent the whole time praying about whether or not she was really the woman for me, and whether I should still ask her to date upon returning to school. When I did return, I figured that maybe she just needed to spend a little more time with me to realize she actually did think I was the most captivating man she’d ever met, so this time I told her that I’d like to get together to discuss something that I was writing. She told me that she’d like to meet at 9 a.m. on Friday at the Espresso Royale on State Street once more. Despite the fact that I hated coffee, and was generally unaware of the fact that 9 a.m. even existed on Fridays, I would have showed up at 6 a.m. in a dumpster. So I said yes. That Thursday, as fate would have it, I spent some time in conversation with my good friend, Kyle Chase. I told him about this girl who blew my mind and about how I thought I wanted to date her even though she thinks dating is stupid, and how I would be sitting down with her the next day to talk about some writing I had just done. He responded with:

“OK, let me get this straight. Tomorrow morning, you’re sitting down with a girl to talk about something you wrote, but really you’re getting together because you want to figure out if she’s the woman you want to spend the rest of your life with…(I agreed) …So what it sounds like to me is that you’re actually already dating her, she just doesn’t quite know about it…(I gulp hard)…I think if you want to walk out of that place with your integrity in check, you either need to tell her of your intentions for knowing her or call it off altogether.” At this point, I got adorably belligerent and called him all kinds of unfriendly names for surfacing all the pangs of conscience that I was planning on suppressing, and for disagreeing with what I was pretty sure was the best idea I’d ever had (which he still does with great regularity). I eventually came around to the realization that he was probably giving me wise counsel, so I did what I usually do and told him his idea would never work. He seemed pleasantly unconcerned about that, and kept saying all this stuff about integrity that I didn’t really listen to. We left the coffee shop and he kept hugging me and telling me how much he liked me. I didn’t like him back, but thought that I should probably give that integrity mumbo-jumbo a try. It sounded like maybe this “integrity” would earn me some big bonus points with Jessie.

So that night, I saw Jessie at one of our Southwest New Life Team times in the Wedge Room in West Quad. It was apparently “purity night”, which meant that the guys and girls were separate, and that Melissa Chase (Kyle’s wife) would be telling Jessie and a bunch of other girls how they should not date a guy unless he was super spiritual. I told Nik Spasovski (the New Life Team leader) that I disapproved of his choice of timing for “purity night”, and that his planning oversight would certainly ruin my “super spiritual guy who’s prayed for months about this” vibe when I ask Jessie to date the next morning by making it seem like I got the brilliant idea of dating from his little event the night before. He told me I’d be fine, but also that he was very nervous for me. I wasn’t quite sure how to take that.

At the end of the night, I awkwardly approached Jessie and told her that there was something I’d rather talk to her about than my writing the next morning. She became visibly nervous, and I didn’t know what to do, so I just told her the same stuff Nik told me about everything being OK. She called me ten minutes later asking all kinds of anxious questions, but I just repeated all that stuff about everything being fine as well as I could remember it. Apparently that’s all that girls need sometimes, even if you don’t know what you’re talking about, because it seemed to work. I woke up extra early that next morning, asked God to tell me for sure that what I was doing wasn’t totally idiotic, and then opened to a random spot in the Bible to see what He would say back. The stuff I read said something about needing to move from a mountain and take possession of the hill country that God had promised. That seemed like confirmation enough, so I put down my Bible and rehearsed the lines I had written the night before about how I was going to ask Jessie to date me.

When I got to the coffee shop, I looked around and didn’t see her, so I just picked a spot in the back that faced the door so that I could motion to her all smooth-like to sit by me when arrived. She eventually came in and sat down at the table with me, and I made awkward small talk for about three minutes. When I couldn’t bear it anymore, I just started saying all the things I had written in my Word document about how I wanted to have integrity and find out about her so I could decide if she was the woman I wanted to spend the rest of my life with, and maybe that was “dating” or not, depending on your definition. She responded with, “I’m going to go get some coffee right now.” Then she stood up, left the table, and ordered coffee. When she sat back down with a full mug, the first thing out of her mouth was, “Can you please repeat everything you just said?”

I think I was actually kind of relieved she said that, because I figured that I couldn’t mess up the lines if I got two tries. When she sat back down, I’m pretty sure I said the same exact thing, but Jessie just hears stuff better after she’s had her coffee. She told me that she was very surprised, and that she would ask God about it. And then we had a pretty normal conversation after that, all things considered.

Jessie called me a couple days later, telling me she was confused about what she was supposed to be talking to God about, and that she needed help. I vowed never to memorize lines from a Word document again, because apparently all that work doesn’t even pay off in the end. I told her that I wasn’t sure what else to say, but that maybe she should talk to Melissa about it, even though I had never talked with Melissa before, and Jessie actually just met her the other night. I guess I just figured that any woman who would commit her life to living with my friend Kyle would probably give a guy the benefit of the doubt when he wanted to date a girl. So I got her phone number somehow, and gave it to Jessie. They talked, and now they’re best friends, so in hindsight, I guess it was a pretty good idea.

I did end up going to Haiti that year, and as luck would have it, got to visit the country with a girl who I was crazy about, but who hadn’t quite made up her mind about dating me since I had asked her three weeks before. That put me in a pretty awkward spot. I approached her one night and asked if she was close to making up her mind, and she told me that she was intending on saying “yes”, but still wasn’t sure. That put me in an even more awkward spot. I probably should have been mad at her for that, but I think I was too blinded by how cute she looked. Later that week, she told me that she was going to say “yes” once she got back, but just needed to talk to some people first.

After we got back, a week went by and she hadn’t approached me about having “the conversation”, so I began to feel very nervous that maybe she was just kidding about the “saying yes” thing. When we finally got together and talked, she told me that she would allow me to pursue her, but that she wanted to let other boys do the same also. I asked her why she wanted that, and I forget all the reasons she said, but I thought they were stupid, so I told her they were bad reasons, and that she can do what she wants, but I think she should at least have good reasons. Then, for whatever reason, she actually agreed with me that they were bad reasons, and agreed to date just me after all. So that’s how we started dating.

When we started dating, I told her I would like to spend more time with her than with my other friends, and that I would like to call her my girlfriend. She didn’t like those ideas, and told me we weren’t even friends yet. It seemed like I should probably go slower. At the end of the school year, I kissed her good-bye and thought it was quite magical and that certainly God was going to make our relationship last forever. She told me later that at that same moment, she was thinking about how we had no chance of making it through the summer together.

We agreed that we would write each other letters over the summer, since she was going to be living in the woods with a bunch of hippies, and that was the only way we could communicate. I wrote her about ten pages every week, and talked all the feelings I felt toward her, and call kinds of deep stuff going on inside of me. She usually wrote back with a couple pages about things she did during the day. And I guess one time she told me she missed me. But let’s just say our letters were pretty different, and I began to wonder if I was doing something wrong.

But then this one time she wrote like five pages. She told me about all these things she was realizing about how she interacts with boys in romantic relationships, and I got really excited that now that she knew this, maybe she was going to let me in more and God was going to make our relationship really great where she started sharing lots of her feelings too. And then on the next page she said she didn’t want to date me anymore, because she couldn’t force herself to like me. I cried a lot and wrote very sad poems and journal entries. I also sat in my bed all day for a week watching bootleg movies on my laptop and not at all doing 40 hours of ministry like my job required. Sorry, Chris Mann.

A month later, when I was finally able to talk to her on the phone, I asked her if this was just a bad time for her to be dating (which I was pretty sure was the case), or if she thought I just wasn’t the guy for her. She told me I wasn’t the guy for her. Then I asked her about what she wanted for our relationship now that she didn’t want to date me anymore. She said she wanted to be friends. I asked her if she wanted to be “say hi at church” friends, or “get coffee every week” friends. She said she would like to be “get coffee every week” friends. Considering I had just had my heart broken in the worst way of my whole life, it was pretty hard to imagine feeling ok about being “get coffee every week” friends while knowing “I’m not the guy for her,” even though I was still in love with her. I felt like I was being invited to stare in the face of my worst rejection once a week, and then, afterward, lament over that fact that my dreams about being with her will never come true. That sounded like a horrible suggestion, but since I was on staff with the church at the time, it seemed like the spiritual thing to do would be to pray about her request.

After praying about it, something really funny happened. I began to think that maybe I should give this “coffee-once-a-week friends” thing a try. For reasons I can’t fully explain, it seemed like the right thing to do, especially since I was pretty convinced that she was just confused about that “not the guy for me” thing. I was still pretty sure that God made us just right for each other, and if this was going to be the road to get there, then so be it.

So during our senior year, we spent time together at least every-other-week, if not every week. At the beginning, she kept doing this strange thing where she would invite me to do things like take road trips, just the two of us. I was very confused by this, because I normally associate this kind of thing with boyfriend and girlfriend, and not just coffee-once-a-week friends. One day, I told her that I was confused by this, and that unless she was trying to ask me to be her boyfriend, I didn’t want to do those things with her. She laughed at the idea that she was asking me to be her boyfriend, and told me that she wouldn’t ask me to do those things again. Then I cried some more after that conversation because I still wanted to be her boyfriend and go on the road trips with her, but I interpreted the laughing to mean that there was no chance it could ever happen.

The school year went on, and I felt generally tormented by the times I spent with Jessie. Either we would have a great conversation together and I would want to be her boyfriend, or I would think she was disinterested in spending time with me, and I would just feel all the rejection all over again. This went on for a few months, until I finally decided that, in our next conversation, if I felt like I wanted to be her boyfriend, then I would tell her that, and let her respond, but if I didn’t, then I wouldn’t say anything. We sat down for breakfast, and I told her how I was feeling about something or other, and she told me that those feelings were wrong to have. I told her that maybe they weren’t the best, but they were just what I felt, and then she seemed to get very upset, and started philosophizing about feelings. I hated when she did that, because it made her seem emotionally detached from me, just like the letter where she broke up with me. It was very clear to me that I wasn’t going to be asking her to be my girlfriend that day, and that was actually kind of relieving to me.

About a month later, Kyle and Melissa had a baby, and they invited me over to their house to play with him. As a nice gesture, I invited Jessie to come along as well, since she liked the baby. To my surprise, she actually agreed to come. That morning, I waited for her outside of my dorm room to pick me up. After 10 minutes had passed with me waiting outside after she was supposed to come, I called her and asked where she was. She told me to stop badgering her and that she was making breakfast for them, and that she was on her way. I was upset by her tone, so I didn’t talk to her for the entire ride to their house. When we got there, we spent some time with Kyle and Melissa and their baby, and after watching Jessie play with the baby for a little while, I forgot all about the phone that morning, remembered how beautiful I thought she was, and decided that she would make the best mother in the world for my babies.

On the drive back to campus, Jessie told me about how she was thinking of moving to Ohio to work at a church that some of our friends were at. I was pretty sure I was going to stay in Michigan, so when she said this, I began imagining what it would be like if we just went our separate ways after graduation and lived in different states the rest of our lives, just two people who had dated once. The thought of it made me want to vomit, so I decided that I would ask her to date that night. I knew that I would much rather hear her tell me that she definitely doesn’t want to be with me than live the rest of my life wondering what would have happened if I just asked her to date me one more time.

And so that night, I asked Jessie to date me one more time. I’ll be honest and admit that going into that conversation, I thought I maybe had a 10% chance of her even considering the offer. The last things I heard from her about us dating were “you’re not the guy for me” and her laughter at the thought of wanting to go on road trips with me as her boyfriend. It felt really risky, but the alternative of not asking felt even riskier. As I began to tell her all about how I still had really strong feelings for her and wanted to date her, she just sat on the porch, smoking a cigar and staring at the ground. She didn’t look up at me once during the whole time I was telling her all of my feelings. In my mind she was thinking, “Oh great, how am I going to break this to him again that I’m just not interested? Will he ever get the point?” That made me want to run away halfway through my monologue, but I decided that I already got myself in this far, so I might as well finish. When I finished, she just sat there in silence for what seemed an eternity.

When she finally opened her mouth, she began with “Well, to be honest with you…” which I learned from my fundraising experience was never a good sign. Then she began to tell me that she had been praying about our relationship for a few months, and how God had showed her that she really had feelings for me, even though she kept trying to argue with him and convince herself that she didn’t. I wasn’t quite sure how to take that part, but I remember feeling more joy than I had ever felt before, even though she didn’t look at me once the whole time she said all that stuff. I wanted to jump and dance and shout, because this was the exact moment I had been waiting for since that day at Espresso Royale over 15 months before. It was the first time she ever told me that she actually had feelings for me. She said she still wanted to take a little while to think about it, but I felt pretty sure about this one.

A week later, she told me that she wanted to be my girlfriend and that she wanted me to “pursue her fiercely”. That made me very excited, and we took a walk around the campus where I got to hold her hand. I don’t think I had ever been so thankful in my whole life. And I’m still not completely over that rush of thanksgiving. Jessie Aja is, and will always be the greatest gift I have ever received.

When I started hanging out with Charismatics, something that struck me very quickly about them that looked quite different from many of the believers I grew up around was how much patience and effort they showed to listen to the Holy Spirit in everyday conversations, prayer, or counseling times. I think the foundational belief of Charismatics in the continuation of the gifts of the Spirit for the modern day generally compels them toward a greater desire to walk in and hear from the Spirit every second of the day. As a result, you’ll hear a lot more language in Charismatic churches of “what the Holy Spirit is saying,” both to the church and the individual.

Strengths: I love that Charismatics want to hear from God and have the faith to believe that He actually wants to guide them through everyday life. Some of my worst decisions in life and most regrettable ministry experiences involve me thinking that I’m quite capable in my own wisdom of of doing just about everything I’ll ever need for a great life. Had I simply taken the time to inquire of the Holy Spirit as to who he was making me to be, or what he was up to in my friends’ lives, I could have avoided some really dark and painful circumstances.

Since hanging out with more Charismatics, I’ve found that in my conversations with others, I’ve become significantly more sensitive to what God is doing in their hearts and lives, and have become increasingly bold in declaring God’s truth over them. A lot of my speech has taken on an authority that just wasn’t there before (call it “growing in the prophetic” if you will), because my words are grounded in a deep conviction of specific truth that God is highlighting for the person across the table from me rather than taking some stabs in the dark as to wisdom that might be helpful for them. I’ve come to a deeper understanding of my own need to hear from God in order to do anything of eternal value (John 15:4-8), and it’s been incredibly humbling for me.

Something that’s also been pretty challenging and eye-opening is a practice that the leadership at Antioch Community Church: Wheaton has of beginning a prayer time three hours before the Sunday morning service to ask God what He wants to do that morning. This time doesn’t determine the all the programming for the service, but it allows the pastor, prayer leader, and worship leader some time to adjust and examine what they’re going to be doing that morning in light of what God is doing in their Body. This attentiveness to the Spirit feels much more life-giving than the idea of deciding all the church programming for a service weeks in advance, and just sticking strictly to the plan Sunday morning because that’s what was decided to be best weeks ago. I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong about that method, because I think God can speak three weeks before a Sunday service in the same way He can speak that morning, I’m only saying that the idea of just “going with the program” all the time makes me a bit uneasy.

Generally, the thing that makes most evangelicals cringe about this sort of talk is the potential lack of responsibility for and testing of a so-called “word from God”. But I think a lot of churches with Charismatic influence do a pretty good job of teaching responsibility in hearing from God. I think the following clip from Bethel (among the most influential Charismatic churches in the United States) is a great conversation on some ways to practically discern the voice of the Holy Spirit.

Dangers: As with any practice in any church that invites God to move powerfully on behalf of his people, I think Satan really wants to hijack this intent desire to hear from the Holy Spirit, and turn it in some pretty dark directions. I think he wants to accuse Christians that silence from the Holy Spirit is actually spiritual deficiency in the heart of the believer.

Since many of the Charismatics I’ve been around are enthusiastic to tell others “what the Spirit is telling them”, I’ve noticed among some of the younger believers in these churches an incredible uncertainty in how and when God is speaking to them. This tends to have less to do with false teaching by church leaders, and more to do with lack of personal direction in what it means to walk with and hear from God from more seasoned believers with more developed faculties of spiritual discernment.

What I mean is, when a believer who is not well-versed in God’s word doesn’t seem to be getting nuggets of spiritual truth dropped from the heavens on a regular basis during their quiet times with God like it seems their leaders are, they can very subtly drift into a way of thinking that Christians have to attain a certain level of holiness just to hear from Him. I’ve heard subtle implications of this in the tones and laments of many younger Charismatics.

This, then, can evolve into a soul-destroying effort to attain this level of holiness by their own power, and if all their striving doesn’t produce the kind of faith that gets the Holy Spirit on speed dial, they may spiral into self-contempt. I found myself headed down this path a bit in my own mind as I spent time in some of the churches. I wanted to “increase in anointing” so as to hear God like the heavy hitters. But when I felt the spirit of Law inside of me, I began to repent. Just before the self-contempt came.

The comfortable alternative to self-contempt, of course, would be to convince yourself that your own voice is actually God’s, telling yourself things that sound spiritual or affirming, and calling it the Holy Spirit (which, as harmless as it may sound, is an idolatry of self and a horrible way of taking God’s name in vain). If you’re convinced that God is always talking to the really spiritual people among you, it’s far more emotionally bearable to hear your own voice in your prayer times and call it God than to believe that He isn’t talking.

Because that that would make you a nobody.

So then, when we’re pretty sure that in our prayer time before heading to the mall, God highlighted a lady in a lime green jacket for us to talk to and pray for (known to some as a pre-treasure hunt prayer time), and no such lady seems to exist after searching the whole place, we of little faith (i.e. me) begin to think that there’s either no God or He doesn’t talk to me like He does to other people, presumably because there’s something wrong with me.

Now, don’t hear me saying that every Charismatic responds this way or is susceptible to this thinking. The leaders I’ve met in these churches readily admit that often the lady in the green coat never shows up, and they’re secure enough to know that sometimes they don’t hear God quite right, or perhaps God has a purpose in giving them a vision that isn’t fulfilled right away. And I have no problem with that whatsoever. I just think there comes a great danger in telling younger believers of all the exciting stories of God speaking without being equally transparent about His silence and the disappointment we can feel, because it can lend itself to some pretty harmful false expectations. This is not necessarily a problem with Charismatic churches, but it is definitely a challenge for all of them.

I find it very comforting that passages like Acts 1:20-26 and Acts 15 show the Apostles asking God for help, and then doing something like casting lots or talking it out with each other, and just going with the decision, using language like “It seemed best to the Holy Spirit and to us to ______.” rather than “The Holy Spirit has clearly spoken to us saying _____.” The wording in these passages strongly suggests to me that the Holy Spirit didn’t clearly speak some clear direction in audible words to them, and if anyone should be hearing clear voices, it should be these guys. That makes me feel much better when I just have a sense of what God wants, and just go for it, rather than waiting on some magic moment in my prayer time to hear a clear direction from God.

The truth is, I think God is silent all the time. And I really like that. It woos me into deeper relationship with Him. If He responded to me with the answer I wanted every time, I’d never have to draw close to Him, never have to wait with Him or mourn with Him, and I’d probably expect Him to start waiting on me, answering my every beck and call. If you’re like me and the early Apostles of the church, and you don’t always hear a clear voice from God for all the direction in your life, you can rejoice in knowing that God is still good in keeping silent, and that He has a great love and purpose for us in doing so.

As many of you know, I’ve been spending a lot of my recent months with believers from many different churches who are significantly more “Charismatic” than those I grew up around. I strongly believe God brought me into this company to stretch my understanding and experience of his character in news ways that would take me into greater intimacy with Him. But now, having observed a fairly wide spectrum of those in the movement, I’ve come to experience both what I would consider to be the strengths and dangers of this form of Christian expression. This may be the first post in a multi-part series.

I want to start out discussing a practice common in the Charismatic Movement often referred to as “Name It and Claim It”, the extreme of which can be witnessed in things like the Word of Faith movement. It generally involves a believer naming some kind of promise of God for their life, proclaiming that it is accessible in its fullness to them in the present moment, and then deciding to live as if this promise is already true rather than something that has to be waited upon.

There have been a billion-and-one Masters’ theses on the different sides to this practice, and I’m not here to try and re-invent that wheel having done way less research. I just want to tell you my personal experiences and interactions with those who have been around this kind of thing.

Strengths of Name-it-and-Claim-It: Something I’ve really admired about the Charismatics I’ve met is their ability to recognize God’s desire for their quality of life, and then “pray heaven down” in asking for it to come to fulfillment. It takes a whole lot of faith to pray for big things that seem really far off in the moment, and that’s the kind of faith I want to have. I want the kind of faith that Abraham had as an old man who was promised innumerable offspring. I want to be the guy who believes similar impossible-seeming promises from God.

And God makes lots of pretty big promises for his people in Scripture (Luke 10:19, John 14:12-14, John 16:23-24, Philippians 1:6, Romans 8:29, 1 John 5:4, 1 John 5:14-15). I love that my Charismatic friends aren’t afraid of these verses, and they declare them as God’s truth and believe that it can be fulfilled in their lives. There isn’t that automatic “well that was then” write-off mentality (of the more extraordinary passages of Scripture) that I often fallen into as a result of my lack of faith.

I also love their deep conviction that God can still work miracles, and that if we just have a childlike faith, we can see them in our life, and expect God to show up in really big ways to demonstrate his love and greatness. I believe God still works miracles and still speaks directly to His Church. I have a really hard time agreeing with the interpretation of the biblical references given in defense of the stronger cessationist views on prophecy, healing, and miracles; especially when I have personally been greatly encouraged in the faith as a result of prophetic words spoken over me, and have close and trusted friends who have personally witnessed miraculous physical healing.

I also love that a name-and-claim practice places greater emphasis on what God wants to give us, rather than what is wrong with us in the moment. Not only does this shift my gaze from myself to God, but this tendency also lends itself to practices of accountability and reproof that, rather than disheartening the believer by beating to death everything that is wrong and sinful in their life and demanding behavioral change, instead asserts their true identity in Christ and calls forth the believer to live fully within that identity by putting on the new self in exchange for the old (Colossians 3:1-14, Galatians 5:16-26). I’ve personally found the process of growing in discipline this way far more encouraging and effective than other methods I’ve experienced in other Evangelical circles (I think I’ll write a separate post about this later).

Dangers of Name-It-And-Claim-It: What gets me really uncomfortable among Charismatics is when someone depends on a feeling or untested prophetic word to determine what God’s will is for a particular situation. In an extreme (and blatantly unbiblical) example, someone might prophesy over you, “God is calling you into full-time ministry” because they sense that’s what God is telling them. I’ve heard of words like this one or something like “God is calling _____ to take over as senior pastor by the end of the year” being given and counted as authoritative without being tested. Quite the spiritual cover-up for blatant manipulation tactics.

However, in a much milder case, I’ve seen people declare, “God wants to heal you of your headache right now, let’s claim that in Jesus’ name!” While I really love the Charismatic practice of naming and claiming things that are obviously God’s will for you as proclaimed in His Word (1 Thessalonians 4:3-4, 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18, and many more), I wince every time something is claimed in the name of Jesus when I can clearly see why it might not be God’s will to provide it in the moment.

I’ve specifically heard the following line of reasoning from some Charismatic friends of mine:

1) Since there is no sickness or poverty in heaven, and
2) God’s will is for the Kingdom of Heaven to invade earth (as evidenced in Jesus’s prayer for “Your Kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven”), then

3) It is not God’s will for sickness or poverty to befall the believer on earth, thus
4) Healing and blessing is always God’s will.

I think that’s a logical, but incomplete line of reasoning. What I mean is that, if the Kingdom were only about healing and blessing, I think it could be true.

But the problem is this: in heaven, not only will I have no sickness or poverty, but I will be in perfectly intimate relationship with God and other people. And I can certainly conceive of (and have, to be best of my understanding, personally experienced) situations in which financial blessing or physical healing come in conflict with greater intimacy with God (*cough* Matthew 19:21-24 and 2 Corinthians 2:7-10 *cough*) or the people around me.

In this conflict scenario, if God wants to bring His Kingdom to earth, He has to decide whether he wants to bring the “Healing and Prosperity” Kingdom or the “Intimacy with Jesus” Kingdom reality into my life. I find it pretty absurd to think He’s going to go with the “Healing and Prosperity” Kingdom each time. In fact, I have a pretty hard time thinking he’d ever choose it. The Bible says He wants to give me good gifts (Matthew 7:11 and Luke 11:13), and I think He loves me way too much to ever give me physical healing or finances at the expense of His Presence, which is greater by far.

Notice that in the Scripture references above, Luke’s gospel replaces the words “good gifts” that appear in Matthew’s Gospel with “Holy Spirit”. Hmmm…I wonder what the best gift might be…and I also wonder who it might be that gives the best gifts (1 Corinthians 12:7-11)…Hmmm…

It seems silly to me that God would ever will someone health and wealth at the expense of the much greater gift of His Spirit. But I can certainly see why He would grant physical healing to me when it fosters more relational intimacy and godliness in my life (which I’m much more comfortable saying is always his will, based on how I read the Bible).

But theological scenarios aside, I think the real danger comes in when someone doesn’t receive healing after it’s been “named-and-claimed”, especially when that someone (because of their theology) is forced to question why God’s obvious will hasn’t transpired. I’ve heard of some pretty horrendous abuses, like young saints being told they just don’t have enough faith yet to make the miracle happen. Not only does this create spiritual hierarchy, but it actually turns the extravagant freedom of our foundational belief in salvation-by-grace-and-not-works into a system where faith itself is something we have to work to achieve  (beyond our own capability) in order for God to simply act in love on our behalf.

I think this subtly paints a very cruel picture of a God who only acts on behalf of the spiritual elite and prophetic all-stars who have enough faith to make the miracles happen, while the “spiritual nobodies” are left without God’s presence, favor, and love. Doesn’t exactly sound to me like the same God who chose fisherman and ate with prostitutes.

Like I said, I think this is just Part I. I’d also like to thank Pastor Nar (a personal mentor and someone with tremendous perspective and significant experience in the Charismatic and non-Charismatic movements), Graham Cooke (a Charismatic preacher who does a great job of teaching things like prophetic responsibility), and Jonathan Gulley (the only guy on earth who quotes Bill Johnson and Bill Hybels with equal frequency) for helping me carefully consider certain Charismatic tendencies in light of Scripture. More to come on this stuff.

A couple of interesting next-generation Charismatic church movements have recently converged to compile the new documentary 1040. The movie, named for the “10/40 Window” that houses the vast majority of the world’s unevangelized population, features Jaeson Ma (Campus Church Networks / studentchurch.org) and Mike Bickle (International House of Prayer)  telling the story of the current evangelization movement in Asia . Check out the trailer:

This is a movement of people who truly believe we are in the last years of our world, that college-aged young people are at the forefront of the ultimate fulfillment of the Great Commission, and that the main frontlines for this movement right now is in South and East Asia. A large movement there, known as Back to Jerusalem, is seeking to plant house churches all along the Silk Road starting from China and ending in Jerusalem, through the heart of the most Muslim places in the world.

Although I can’t really characterize this movement entirely, there seems to be a great emphasis on young people being fully-capable ministers of the Gospel, and a general distaste for the idea of entrusting spiritual leadership and evangelization to “the professionals”. Check out this video of what some of Jaeson Ma’s people are doing on campuses around the country (it’s lengthy, so you can just watch the first 3 minutes, especially the mini-sermon near the 1:45 mark, and get the basic point):

This is a group of very passionate and faith-filled individuals who have relatively little training in missions and lack of experience in ministry. They likely fit one of the early descriptions of Peter and John (Acts 4:13), but not other descriptions laid out in Scripture for spiritual leadership (1 Timothy 3:1-10, Titus 1:6-9).

So what do you guys think? Are these young, zealous believers the next/final generation of great church-planters and evangelists, or are you concerned by some of the characteristic elements of this model of spreading the Gospel? How do faith, character, and skill intersect in effective ministry?

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.