This is Church

Like a lot of churches, we enjoy making funny videos that may or may not illustrate some deep spiritual truth to our congregation. The latest installment from the creative masterminds at New Life Church is probably the best Hillsong United-themed broadway musical there ever was. Ok, maybe not the best ever, but if you know of a better one, I’d seriously love to see it. If there’s a part you don’t think is that funny, just trust that it’s an NLC inside joke, because they’re all over the place. Without further ado:

For those of you who find yourself quite drawn to the practicals of life, I apologize for the rather abstract nature of the last three posts (kind of). I wanted to set a biblical foundation for a system of accountability among friends that is based on encouraging daily walking by the Spirit over trying really hard (in the flesh) not to sin. But I kind of left you hanging regarding what that could look like in everyday life. I hope there’s a healthy sense of “So how the heck does someone even do that?!?!” growing in you as a result. Because let’s be honest, it’s way easier to just yell “Stop It!” than it is to cooperate with the Holy Spirit in encouraging righteous living in others that actually perseveres.

Well, today’s your lucky day, because I’m going to share practicals! They are by no means the best practicals, or even necessarily excellent ones. They’re just what I’ve tried and seen God use for His glory. But they’ll have to wait for the end, because there are still a couple things I want to say first.

A grave reality of the spiritual war we find ourselves in is that no attempt to communicate God’s truth to someone about their behavior is exempt from Satan’s attack. He has been leveraging God’s word for evil by twisting truths into lies since the dawn of man (Genesis 3:1, Matthew 4:5-7), and he seems to be pretty relentless in his methods (1 Peter 5:8, Revelation 12:10). Thus, in your accountability meetings, a well-intentioned reminder of “God calls us to live in purity, but you’re being lustful” unknowingly turns into “You’re a pervert, you’ll never change, and I see you as dirty and godless” somewhere between your mouth and their brain. And if we’re to be the Body of Christ, then we’re called to be the ones interceding on behalf of the saints against Satan’s lies and accusations (Romans 8:33-34), not aiding their propagation.

So ultimately, the problem with “You’re doing this all wrong!” approaches to personal accountability is not that “You’re doing this all wrong!” is untrue. The problem is that, when you tell someone that, they very rarely just hear something about their behavior. When someone says that to my friends and me, we actually tend to hear something about our identity. So, while you might have the purest intentions to motivate righteous living by screaming “Stop it!” at your friends in accountability group, you may actually find yourself playing the role of Accuser rather than Advocate. And if you recall from Part I, accusation is a weapon found in Satan’s arsenal, not God’s.

But I’m not going to be naive here. If you’re like me, you have moments of weakness where you actually want to accuse someone under the guise of reproof or accountability. Regarding that situation, you get a freebie from me:

Don’t reprove a brother or sister when you’re feeling hurt by them or angry toward them.

If you’re not in a place where you’re demonstrating fruits of the Spirit and have genuine love for your brother or sister, do both of you a favor and keep your mouth shut until you can speak God’s words to them about their sin rather than some horrid sequence of blame and accusation. Because when you’re under the influence of lies in a certain situation, those lies will come out. And like I said, you’ll find yourself in the Accuser role rather than the Advocate role.

The ultimate goal here is to spur one another on toward love and good deeds (Hebrews 10:24), so that we might be a beautiful picture of Christ in the world, bringing God great glory. The Greek paroxysmos (“to spur”) in this verse in Hebrews actually implies that the process of doing this hurts or irritates to some extent (as a spur does). So it’s clearly biblical that we should avoid accountability methods that are overly soft and insincere (Romans 12:9, Ephesians 4:25), which gives Satan the opportunity to convince our brothers and sisters that their sin is without consequences or unimportant to God. But we must be just as vigilant about avoiding overly harsh methods (Galatians 6:1) that give Satan the equally devious opportunity of further accusing our brothers and sisters that they are irredeemable, unlovable, and hopelessly lost.

So how can we actually do this?

How can we hold others accountable in a way that, to the best of our ability, communicates the gravity of sin and the need for repentance, but also makes a serious attempt to filter out the lies and accusations that can accompany these truths? How can we simultaneously communicate the truth about their unrighteous behavior and call them to a more righteous standard of living while affirming their righteous identity in Christ?

I think the Bible might have some examples:

1 Peter 1:14-16 — Peter reminds us that we are God’s children before he calls us to be holy as God is holy.

Revelation 2-3 — On numerous occasions, the Spirit assures the churches that he sees and knows them intimately at the beginning of the letter, and often offers praise before reproof.

Romans 6 — Paul bases his entire plea to abstain from sin upon the freedman status of all believers.

1 Corinthians 1 — Paul begins perhaps the harshest letter in Scripture with an encouragement and reminder that they have every spiritual gift that they need, and that God will make them strong.

I could go on. Now, nowhere in Scripture is it commanded that you offer someone affirmation, praise, or encouragement before reproof. It is, however, commanded that you love one another, and be sensitive to weaknesses in the consciences of your brothers and sisters (John 13:34, 1 Corinthians 8:9-13, Mark 9:42). Scripture also teaches that a wise person makes knowledge appealing to others (Proverbs 15:2), and that the ideal outcome for reproof is not guilt, but repentance (2 Corinthians 7:8-11). So none of the following practicals are in any way commands from Scripture, but I do believe they can be wise and help you obey the commands in Scripture. And they’ve undoubtedly produced fruit in my own life and ministry. So, without further ado…

Mikey’s Ideas for Successful Accountability Times

1) Affirm their identity in Christ and their identity to you.
Quick disclaimer: if you’re struggling to see them as God does, then scratch that second part and just tell them what the Bible says about their identity. But my hope is that when your friend sins, you don’t see them as a hopeless, irredeemable wretch forever bound to a lifestyle of sin that is the overflow of their eternally soiled identity. That’s what Satan wants you to believe. Instead, give them Scripture that reminds them that they are not condemned (Romans 8:1), but are new creations (Ephesians 2:10, 2 Corinthians 5:17), freedmen (Romans 6:6-7), victors (Romans 8:37-39), beloved children (John 1:12, Ephesians 1:5), co-heirs with Christ (Romans 8:17),  the light of the world (Matthew 5:14), and perfectly righteous in God’s sight (Ephesians 1:4, Colossians 1:22). Then remind them that this is not just something intangible written about them thousands of years ago, but that this is how you see them also (as the Holy Spirit has allowed you). I think that helps to make it a little more believable. This is not a surefire way to guard against identity accusations of the enemy, but it can sure help (see Ephesians 6:11-17 for the role of God’s word in spiritual warfare).

2) Honestly evaluate their current behavior
Now that we’ve done what we can to destroy the lies and accusations in which Satan trusts (Proverbs 21:22, Luke 11:22), we hopefully have a good opportunity to speak earnestly with our brother or sister about their lifestyle, and pray that the Holy Spirit uses the truth to convict their hearts. I usually use this opportunity to call out the false identity that Satan would have them believe. You might affirm them this way: “Look friend, I see and know that you’re a victor in Christ, but your lifestyle has been more of that of a victim. You’ve been allowing circumstances and the opinion of man to determine how you see yourself and how you respond to others. As a result, you’ve been irritable, angry, and insecure when I know that’s not who you are.” Give them time and space to honestly evaluate their current lifestyle in light of Scripture.

3) Encourage living out of their true identity
The Bible is littered with examples of encouragement (Colossians 4:8) and commands to do likewise (1 Thessalonians 5:11). You have the priceless opportunity here to actually add strength, courage and comfort to your brothers and sisters by telling them you believe in them. You believe that they have power to put off the old self which is being corrupted, and to live out of their new self, which is godly (Ephesians 4:22-24). You believe that victory is already theirs, and that they only need to lay hold of it. I can’t tell you how powerful it’s been for my life to know that my brothers believe in me; it truly helps me believe that God could see me likewise.

Well, I hope those help to give you a vision of what accountability time could look like. For years I played the game of dreading accountability time, because I knew I would feel like crap as all my sin would come out into the light and I would be told how wrong it is. But I think we should actually all rejoice at the thought of accountability time, because it gives us the opportunity to grow in godliness and receive encouragement. May we always be growing into a Church that loves discipline (Proverbs 12:1) and encourages one another daily (Hebrews 3:13).

As you know (from Part I), I can struggle to feel responsible for “fixing myself” as it relates to my sin. I spent most of Part II trying to convince you and me that God has a much better path to righteousness that involves a lot less exasperation and a lot more dependence. Jesus rebuked the Pharisees for the wicked thinking that they could somehow cleanse themselves of sin apart from God’s constant intervention and regenerating work. And I think that any model of accountability founded on the power of white-knuckle abstinence from sin makes the Pharisees’ same fundamental error.

I’d be willing to bet that even the worst of pornography addicts could choose to keep away from their obsession for a month if motivated by a billion dollar prize. But is he/she any less addicted after the month is over?

Of course not.

Something more intoxicating has temporarily taken the place of the addiction, but when the month ends and the prize is won, the addict binges on what was fasted from. Thus, we lead our brothers and sisters down a dangerous path by only giving them lifeless rules and rituals to abstain from sin without working with them to consistently renew their minds with truth (Romans 12:2) and walk in the power of the Holy Spirit, which is the only way to conquer the power of the sinful nature (Galatians 5:16).

It’s the worst of sins to lead our brothers and sisters into the idolatry of the will that says all we need to do to get past our addictions is “Stop It!” Jesus seemed to respond pretty strongly to the Pharisees when he saw this attitude of theirs, anyway. We need a strong man to guard the house of our hearts, or else we’re defenseless. White-knuckle abstinence is a cheap illusion of safety from spiritual illness; we can look clean, but if we have not replaced our desires for idols with an equally fervent desire for God, the roar within our souls that longs for satiation remains (Colossians 2:20-23). Experts on the psychology of addiction agree that a person can stay away from something for years and still be addicted to it.

That’s what happened to me. In high school, I became excellent at staying away from internet pornography and masturbation (over a year at a time, people!), but my freshman year of college, whenever I found myself in the dorm room of a girl who wanted physical intimacy with me, I was utterly hopeless. I couldn’t control myself, and I had no idea why. All along I thought I had conquered this sin called Lust by keeping my thoughts and computer screen clean by my consistent self-sufficient effort, but in the right situation, my “clean house” was shown for what it was: an empty building with no one to guard it from spiritual attack. I kept the Spirit from dwelling in that part of my heart by my Pharisaical dependence on fleshly obedience, and so it was only a matter of time before I was overcome.

This led to a massive internal confusion in my life. On the one hand, I was so good at “staying pure” throughout the day; I was the master of my thought life, or so it felt. But I couldn’t tell you why a real flesh-and-blood person in front of me, offering me physical affirmation, made me feel much more like a victim of flesh and circumstances than master of my domain. Was I addicted, or wasn’t I? Did I need this or not? I determined that there was just no way to have victory over these fleshly impulses; no matter how hard I tried, I was never “better”, even after years of effort. And here’s the kicker:

I was half right.

Years of effort weren’t going to fix me, but ultimate victory was mine.

I just needed to understand how.

What the summer of 2006 actually did for me was to help me identify lies in my life that Satan was using (“the armor in which the strong man trusted”) to tell me that I needed a female’s physical attention to prove myself attractive, desirable, and masculine. I needed to know that God calls me his masterpiece (Ephesians 2:10), and that no worldly attention can convince me of what is only true in Christ (which I had been learning the hard way for a year, but was slow to acknowledge it). I needed to see that events in my past that Satan leveraged to plant and reinforce his constant lie of “You aren’t desirable” were not determinants of my identity. The Word of God determines my identity. And then I needed to genuinely trust what He says, and walk according to it. And what do you know, He actually proved it to me.

So how, then, can we hold our brothers and sisters accountable in a way that doesn’t encourage dependence on the flesh, but on the Spirit of God? How do we help others identify crippling lies of Satan that were planted long ago and reinforced over years, to the point where they were wooed so subtly into slavery that they can no longer recognize their chains? That, my friends, will just have to wait until the next post…

But for now, you can listen to Dallas Willard talk about these same ideas much more intelligently:

Jesus and the Moneychangers

In Part I of this series, I wanted to lay a groundwork for why I feel the need to even talk on the topic of “accountability time”. I have a history of accountability-time-gone-bad in my own life, and it set me on a course to figure out why Christians do this sort of thing, and if it can be done in a way that brings more glory to God than to human willpower. Before moving on, though, I want to apologize for something I didn’t make clear in the last post.

When I’m using the word “accountability” in these posts, I’m using the word in a very specific sense in which it’s come to be used in Christian verbiage. I am not talking about accountability as a structure in leadership or a posture of life (which are unquestionably biblical in my mind), but rather as a specific meeting between believers where lifestyle patterns (particularly the sinful kind) are being discussed.

That being said, I don’t think you’ll find an explicit passage of Scripture that outlines how the Church ought to “do accountability” in this kind of meeting sense. It’s thus worth asking if and why it’s a good thing, and even more, how we can make it the best thing. Despite my troubled history with “accountability time”, I’ve come to believe it can be a really great thing. And though the Bible doesn’t explicitly use the word or prescribe a specific practice for it, I think it it’s loud and clear on how it can be done well.

Lately, I’ve been reflecting on Matthew 12:29-35 and Luke 11:21-26 through the lens of what it means for how I ought to deal with my sin (and others’ as well…hence the connection to accountability). I recommend reading them right now if you want the rest of this post to make any sense. In these passages, Jesus gets done telling the Pharisees that it’s silly that they would think he uses the power of Satan to drive out demons, and then he starts talking about a strong man and a house.

Disclaimer: I’m about to interpret Scripture. I’m no Bible scholar, but I do have the Spirit of God living in me, and sometimes He reveals true things to me. So there’s a chance that the following has a grain of truth.

Jesus says that if someone is going to take over a strong man’s house, he needs to be stronger than him and tie him up first (verse 29 in Matthew, 21-22 in Luke). Then you can rob his house and take away all of things he trusted in to keep his house safely under his control. It seems to me that the strong man in the parable is Satan (or one of his demons) and that the stronger man is Jesus. Jesus has power to bind the work of Satan and then dispose of all the things he used to keep your heart, thoughts, and will captive (those tend to be things like lies, accusations, and temptations… see John 8:44, Revelation 12:10, and Matthew 4:3). That’s really good news, but then the teaching gets even more interesting.

Basic Outline: In Luke’s gospel, the next teaching (verses 24-26) is about how an evil spirit, once it leaves a person, will come back to find this person (in this metaphor, the house that was previously occupied by the strong man) nicely swept clean. The strong man and all his armor are gone, but nobody has taken his place. It’s nice and clean, but most of all, empty. Simply awaiting a visit by the evil spirit who will take more evil spirits (“strong men”) with it, and then the person’s condition will be even worse before because he/she is ruled by even more evil spirits. This is a bit scary.
In Matthew’s gospel, the next teaching verses 31-32)  is about how God will forgive all blasphemy against Jesus, but not this kind of blasphemy the Pharisees are leveling, which attributes the work of the Holy Spirit to demons. Then he quickly shifts (verses 33-35) to teaching about how if you make a tree good, then all of its fruit will be good, but if the tree is bad, then all of its fruit will necessarily be bad also.

It’s a good question to ask, “What does the blasphemy against the Spirit have to do with trees and fruit? And are these in any way related to the teaching about the clean house that occurs in the same place in Luke’s gospel?” I’m not going to pose a “right” answer to these questions, but I hope to shed some light on what the thread of these passages might be.

I think the first thing to keep in mind is that Jesus is telling a parable to Pharisees. Generally, he did this kind of thing to creatively illustrate to them that they had entirely abandoned the God of the Scripture to serve an abominable idol named Religion. And even worse, they were in total denial about it. They appeared righteous and clean on the outside, but inwardly, they were God’s fiercest opponents (Matthew 23:23-28). I don’t think these stories are any different.

I think Jesus is calling out their inward wickedness here.

He tells them that many (in their ignorance) will speak blasphemy against Jesus, but they will be forgiven. Remember, God is merciful toward ignorance, even the hateful kind (1 Timothy 1:13-14). But the Pharisees commit a far greater sin, one that has its origins in a hopelessly stubborn refusal to acknowledge the work of God. By this they conclusively show that they do not know God, nor do they want to. There is no forgiveness for the person who, despite a world of evidence before them, never yields their heart to the Holy Spirit.

And Jesus goes further. He says that an evil spirit (call it Lust, Malice, Greed, etc.) can leave someone and come back. How does this happen, according to the story? Every strong man (evil power) can be conquered by an even stronger man (Jesus).  When an evil spirit is driven away from someone, it wanders for a while, and then returns. It re-invades with many more demons along with it because it “finds the house swept clean and put in order”.

The nagging question in your mind ought to be where is the stronger man?! I mean, if the powers of evil are weaker than those of good (1 John 4:4, Revelation 20:7-10), then the demon can bring with it however many more demons it wants; if the house is occupied by the Holy Spirit, they don’t have a chance. But they go in because the house is empty. Perhaps Lust left, but it was not replaced by the Holy Spirit. If the Spirit does not enter and take up residence, the person-house remains empty and waiting to be conquered by a crowd worse than the one that left.

This was the fundamental error of the Pharisees. Though they seemed to expel all kinds of evil from themselves (by living in strict adherence to the Law of Moses), they did not fill themselves with God, and thus were prone to the greatest of evils (what Jesus calls “neglecting the more important matters” in Matthew 23:23). They gave a tenth of their income (expelling a single demon of greed), yet remained without the Holy Spirit, and so succumbed to the far greater evil of systemically robbing the poor by allowing moneychangers to charge unfairly for temple sacrifices in the Gentile courts (influenced by seven demons of greed).

Jesus’ response is violent (Matthew 21:12-13).

And I think Jesus is equally zealous for our personal holiness. He longs for us not to simply expel isolated sinful actions, but be regenerated. Enter the teaching on the tree and the fruit (verse 33 in Matthew). We cannot make the tree good by making the fruit good. Rather, we make the fruit good by making the tree good. In simple terms, cleaning up our actions will not increase our right standing with God. He’s calling for us to allow the Stronger Man to take up residence in our hearts; a far higher calling than merely cleaning up the outside. In my next post, I’ll share what I think this means for our church accountability practices.

I confess that “accountability” has been a bit of a taboo word for me until recently. Months ago,  if you caught me on the right day, you could tell me that you were were going to have an accountability time with your small group, and I would have had an internal response that sounded something like:

“Oh please. The word ‘accountability’ isn’t even in the Bible! Repent of your dead religious practices right now and live by the Spirit, lest you fall under the same judgment as the Pharisees.”

Ungracious and quick to pass judgment.

That’s how I get when I’m not walking in the Spirit and people touch on my unhealed wounds.

Clearly that wasn’t the Holy Spirit talking, but there’s always a kernel of truth beneath our wounded responses. We respond to something evil that has hurt us. Generally we give it the wrong name, blame someone who isn’t responsible for the evil, and respond in a way that doesn’t actually help anything, but we respond to evil nonetheless. As you can probably see, I’ve encountered an evil and have mistakenly called it “accountability”. First, let me start by telling you about the soapbox I stand on when the wound gets touched.

Like I said, I tend to lash out at people by telling them that “accountability” isn’t even biblical. Although I’m sure plenty of Christians can give you Bible verses for why they “do accountability” (which will mean something different for each person using the term), I still haven’t found a clear biblical precedent for using that particular language. I also have yet to find in the New Testament any kind of system where certain saints distribute consequences (beyond the natural ones) to others for sins that do not divide the church.

If you know of a passage in Scripture that suggests or commands this, I’d really love to learn more about it. I just haven’t found it yet. I legitimately think this deserves discussion in the Church, but like I said earlier, since there is pain behind this issue for me, I can leverage these points as weapons rather than something that brings greater understanding and healing to the Body of Christ. I hope to do the latter in this series of posts.

Now to let you in on the stories behind the wounds. You see, I was involved in a ministry for some time where “accountability time” meant a few things. First, we confessed to our brothers (or sisters if you were a girl) whether we had sinned that week in particular areas we wanted to be honest about with each other. That’s the part that you can find in the Bible (James 5:16). But then we did some things you won’t find in the Bible, like either adding to our tally of weeks of victory (if we didn’t sin), or taking our tally count back down to zero and receiving optional “floggings” from the other men (a practice meant to symbolize consequences of our actions and motivate our righteous behavior for the next week). And that was pretty much it. Every week.

I’m not here to condemn that way of doing things. Just because something isn’t in the Bible doesn’t make it wrong, and I’m not trying to suggest that what we did was inherently “bad”. I’m eternally grateful for that ministry and thankful for all the truth I first learned through those groups. I learned that many men struggle with the same things I do. I learned that self-control is a really important thing in our Christian walk, and that with victory over sin patterns comes freedom. I learned that it’s a very good thing to have other men in your life who are committed to your daily walk with God.

But somewhere along the line, I also began to believe that the goal of the Christian life was to love God, love others, and then try really really hard not to sin. The evil part wasn’t necessarily in what we were doing, but the lies that Satan subtly communicated to me through those times. I began to think that the only way I could have victory over certain sins was to psych myself up enough every day to stay away from them, and remind myself that if I messed up, I was going to experience physical pain on Wednesday night. I could espouse doctrine about how we are saved by grace through faith and not by works, but deep down I believed that right standing with God entirely hinged on how hard I tried at this Christianity thing.

I didn’t understand that the Holy Spirit had a great healing work to do in my heart that would begin to free me of my sin patterns by giving me a new set of desires rather than just a new set of actions.

I didn’t understand that self-control was a fruit of the Spirit and not something you do with will power alone.

I didn’t understand the immense grace God gave me every time I sinned, and how much love He felt for me in those moments.

I didn’t understand that God was way more interested in replacing the sin patterns than He was in just removing them.

I didn’t understand that the reason I had so many of these struggles was because of some key lies I had been believing about God, myself, and the world for years.

Those things had to wait until the summer of 2006. I learned some pretty important things then about what the Bible teaches about sin, grace, obedience, and righteousness, and it turned out that they were quite different than some of the things I had been believing. In this series of blog posts, I’ll try to walk through some things God has taught me about how to discern lies from truth as it relates to my own sinfulness and how to grow in righteousness and godly character.

First, I should start by acknowledging that I did, in fact, notice that it’s been two months since I last blogged. Hopefully that shouldn’t happen again for a little while, but no guarantees. In case you didn’t know, I was busy getting a job, an apartment, and a wife. I’m not going to write much about that here because I share those sorts of things in my monthly ministry updates. If you’d like to get those, please email me about it, but I’m going to try and keep this space reserved for deeper inner thoughts rather than a summary of my life’s plot line.

I’m writing this because I’ve come to some humbling realizations in the last couple of months that sound something like this:

Marriage and church leadership call for substantially more maturity than I currently have.

For now, I’m going to just focus on sharing some thoughts on the church leadership aspect, because I’m still essentially clueless when it comes to marriage. When I was a college student, New Life Church gave me incredible training in character, doctrine, and ministry skills. I went to four summer Leadership Training programs, spent countless hours with pastors and senior staff members learning how they do ministry, and spent considerable time  myself in the trenches with students in all different kinds of situations, needing to know God more.

As a result, I could tell you all sorts of things that “worked” and “didn’t work” in ministry. I’m the kind of guy who flourishes with structures and systems, and likes making them more efficient. I could tell you all the ways in which the systems of various churches were flawed and could use improvement. I could tell you how to improve your discipleship methods, your counseling, your teaching, your music, your greeting, the list goes on. But when I was told I would be leading a house church at New Life, a lot of that changed.

I mean, I knew it was coming for some time, but it’s a bit different when the moment actually hits you. All along, I was telling people in my mind how to “do church better”, but now that I was given a flock and told, “Go, lead these people” I suddenly wasn’t so full of answers. I mean, where do you even start? I could tell you where everyone else’s ideas were lacking, but now that I was given space to move forward with my own brilliant plan, I was suddenly the one who was lacking in the ministry intelligence department. I finally began coming to terms with the following reality:

Ministry is not a science, it’s an art.

I’ve even heard our lead pastor use that exact phrase before, but I really didn’t know the first thing about what he meant until now. There just isn’t a “best” way to do it; I think all the “best practices” manuals had me fooled. Someone forgot to tell me that even if I’m careful to put into practice all seven of Andy Stanley’s Practices of Effective Ministry (which is a fine book), I could still have a horrible ministry.

Perhaps there are ways to do do ministry better, but there are no magic formulas. Like art, the main ingredient in effective ministry is much more inspiration than it is ingenuity. As obvious or trite as it might sound, leading people into greater intimacy with Christ actually requires the Holy Spirit’s leading and blessing at every step of the way. If at any point you begin leading out of your own understanding, you’re actually taking people backwards (Proverbs 3:5-8, 1 Corinthians 3:18-23). And since most things our culture calls “successful” are the products of human understanding, it’s really easy to think the same can apply to church. As a result, many ministries that look effective actually aren’t, and vice versa. It’s all a part of the methods of a God who turns the patterns of this world upside-down, I guess. The last finish first, the humble are exalted, and the high-and-mighty crumble.

As I sifted endlessly through vision statements, teachings, and models for ministry, I realized that none of them could change the world. All the “best” ideas sound surprisingly empty without the Spirit’s inspiration and confirmation. We’re not here to transform people’s minds; we’re here to listen to where Christ is leading His Church and to shepherd his people in that direction. I found this realization equally freeing as it was disturbing. While it forced me to temporarily scratch my endless strategizing, I found great comfort in the fact that I don’t have to be a genius to do ministry well.  I found great comfort in Matthew 6:7-8.

Let me explain why. The pagans Jesus is referring to would enlist the help of many different gods in their prayers by listing them all out, and constantly repeating them in the hopes that they would call on the name of the god that could help them with their particular request. I found Jesus’ response to them very comforting:

“Stop trying so hard to make sure that God’s blessing is in what you’re doing. I already know what you need. Just be like a child before me, depending on me for every step you take, and I’ll make sure everything works out just right.” (my paraphrase)

That was a pretty crazy realization for me, but it brings more peace than you can imagine. How cool is it that my day-to-day success has nothing to do with how smart or capable I am, but only how much I depend on the One who is infinitely capable? I think it may just be the stress remedy the world’s been looking for.

I want to finish with a scene from Prince Caspian that’s been especially poignant for my wife and me as we take on this new position of leadership together:

[Caspian, Peter, Edmund, and Susan all kneel in front of Aslan]
Aslan: Rise, kings and queens of Narnia.
[Peter, Edmund, and Susan stand up, but Caspian stays on one knee]
Aslan: All of you.
Prince Caspian: I do not think I am ready.
Aslan: It is for that very reason, that I know you are.

Last night, New Life Church held its annual end-of-the-school-year celebration service, Overflow. We probably had about 300 in attendance (during finals!), soaking in all that God has done this school year. We danced, sang at the top of our lungs, heard story upon story of lives that have been radically transformed by the love and grace of Jesus Christ, and bid farewell to the senior class, wishing them all the greatest in their kingdom-building endeavors around the world. It’s so incredible to think of what God has done in each of those students’ lives in their 4 short years at New Life.

As I wrote about months ago, our pastors declared this school year to be “A Year of Freedom”. And that’s exactly what we’ve seen. We had an entire spring break trip to South Carolina dedicated to finding freedom through Christ from past wounds (it was one of our fastest-filling trips). In addition, our campus director, Nik Spasovski, shared last night that 875 different people had attended a New Life small group this year, and that 520 of them were regular attenders. That makes this (from a purely numbers standpoint) the most influential year on campus in New Life’s history! What an incredible thing God has done.

And he’s not just doing it at New Life, either! At this year’s Great Commission Ministries Churches conference just a week ago, New Life joined with 12 other campus churches to celebrate what God has done in college churches around the country. The statistics were so encouraging. New Life’s lead pastor, Steve Hayes, reported 15+% growth in worship service attendance, small groups, student leadership, full-time staff, and pastors. Most incredible was the 42% growth in small group attendance and 46% growth in total full-time staff nationwide.

It couldn’t be more clear to me that God is undeniably on the move on America’s college campuses. I overflow with joy at the thought of what this kind of growth in ministry involvement for college students will mean for the next 30 years of our country. I long to see transformation in the so-called “7 Mountains of Culture” (Arts & Entertainment, Business, Education, Family, Government, Media, and Religion), and tomorrow’s leaders on all 7 mountains can be found right now, concentrated in patches of just a couple square miles all over the country.

We call them college campuses.

What an opportunity! To know that Kingdom influence is growing where the campus churches are right now energizes me like few other things. I only hope that those campuses with little church influence are being prepared for workers who will go and plant churches there. Beginning in just a few weeks, I will join the workers’ ranks doing ministry full-time on campus at U of M, and I couldn’t be more excited and ready. Friends, keep praying for workers to be sent out into the fields (Luke 10:2). We have every indication that they’re just as ripe as Jesus said they were.

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.