Category Archives: Hope

Stop Struggling with Your Sin and Kill It!

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myswordOne April during my Air Force tour, our squadron commander handed us a goal: a 100% off-duty safety record for the summer.

I raised an eyebrow. Our squadron was based in college-town Phoenix and consisted of twentysomethings brandishing motorcycles, ATV’s, jet-skis, and a love of drink. No off-duty accidents for a whole summer seemed as likely as deciphering a Newsboys lyric.

Later, that commander visited the flightline and happened to strike up a conversation with my work group. Being a little (too?) bold, I asked if he realistically expected the 100% goal to be reached. His gracious reply:

“Well, what results would I get if I only asked for 80%?”

I am among many Christians struggling with certain sins. We sincerely want to please God, cut the garbage out of our lives. The first thing I often say to teens who admit they’re struggling is, “Good. Struggle is good. It’s better than surrender.”

But eventually we have to face the results. Longings to become gentler and kinder, with little to show for it. Years of bondage to sexual sin. Constant failed attempts to be more honest. Our flesh doesn’t just roll over; it weighs us down, and our hearts sink with it.

One day, I heard a talk that transformed my approach to sin.

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Stuck Between Hope and Surrender

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“God, I feel stuck!”

Those were my words to God that morning. I’d been wrestling with him in prayer for the millionth time. My pursuit of God seemed to be taking the form of a collision between two opposing dynamics. Like a surface gale fighting a strong ocean current headed the other way.

“God, I feel stuck!”

There are things we desire in this life. How we handle those things is one of the most profound tests of our faith. Like many, I remember when I first began feeling the weight of permanent disappointment in my mid-twenties. As I watched others’ suffering, the sense became suddenly clear: some stories just never have a happy ending. At least not in this life.

As I turned to Scripture and pushed into God’s opinion on such things, I discovered two opposing forces at work.

I’d see that Jesus spent a lot of time offering his help to our earthly troubles, from demon possession to a wedding party that ran out of wine. But I also learned that if even Jesus did not have his every prayer answered, we certainly won’t. “Many trials” are part of the deal (Acts 14:22).

“God, I feel stuck!”

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Why We Can’t Choose to Walk Away from Politics

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Prolife

I know. You don’t want to hear about it anymore.

It fills the airwaves. It dominates every newspaper and evening broadcast you watch. It’s creeping around every corner in the form of conversations amongst your co-workers. Your response is usually a weird, contradictory blend of “What could I do?” and “Don’t get me started”, and you keep quiet because you’re not sure which of those aftertastes you’ll walk away from an argument with.

Presidential politics.

Ugh.

Especially this election cycle. What a buzzkill.

It makes you wish desperately for the arrival of mid-November, so we can be done with it all for four years. Well, three. Like Christmas, the season seems to start earlier each time.

We each have a vote. But being one vote amongst three hundred million doesn’t exactly imbue us with a feeling of real power. Add the fact that our actual influence in Washington has been slowly sapped, and it’s understandable to feel not just helpless, but mad. An emotion that has either dominated the minds of some and frozen others out entirely.

Am I the only one who thinks we need a reorientation? Like, yesterday?

No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:37-38)

Ah. Of course. You couldn’t ask for a better reorientation than the fact that God is our anchor. Nothing can separate us from his love – or from his hand.

But…now what? What do we do with that holy strength that has been made ours?

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The Uncertainty of Life and the Certainty of Death: A Tribute to Joey Feek

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A few months ago, I started work as a legal assistant at a law firm, where we represent a lot of folks near death. Occasionally, I’ll be poring through a file and find a Last Will and Testament staring back at me, marked with that austere font associated with death. (I really don’t care what’s written on my tombstone – just write it in Comic Sans. Lighten the mood a little.) Many of the clients with whom I converse aren’t in the greatest of moods. They’re contemplating their mortality for the first time, and it’s scaring them, throwing them off their game, making them impatient and grasping.

They’re looking for something on which to seize.

I’m reminded of an article I read recently, lamenting that modern worship songs rarely speak of death, as the old hymns did. It made me think. Those were the days the world respected God. Now it thinks it’s evolved past the need for him, but I don’t buy it. Death will usually make anyone pause. A high-rise window, a worrisome lump, or a twist of the wheel is sometimes all that stands between us and the unknown. There are no atheists in a foxhole, and all that.

The world is looking for something on which to seize.

Enter Joey Feek.

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A New, Victorious Definition of Comfort

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When you’re walking, pizza bags in hand, through the hallways of a scuzzy motel echoing with muffled yells and odd wafts of broccoli, it’s plain to see that people don’t have a lot of optimism.

I found myself joining them that day. Weighing on my heart were several battles and dreams that seemed no closer to breakthrough than they were a decade ago. Heaven seemed a distant abstract, with the perpetual winter clouds and muddy roads my reality. (I’m sorry, but this city is ugly in winter like few others. It just is.)

The many blessings I’ve received in the last few months didn’t mute the knowledge that others I love are dying without the gospel. In fact, those blessings seemed like my backhanded enemy. They taunted, You’ve gotten a lot from God. You’re being ungrateful by wanting more. Jesus never said you’ll win every battle in this life. Truth on the face of it, but deadly despair in practice. Where to turn?

I could either let despair have me that day, or I could seek God’s take on the matter.

Spoiler alert: This is one of those many stories where God has the perfect Scripture waiting on your Bible app.

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A New Power Source for 2016

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My New Year’s resolutions are taking shape. Sharing my faith more, kicking Mountain Dew, memorizing a Bible book. A student I mentored in youth group recently announced that she’s committed all of Romans to memory. The student has surpassed the master small group leader dude who read off the questions for his small group while parents did the spiritual lifting at home.

Sadly, all my resolutions closely resemble last year’s.

You know how this goes. Tiny habits you’d like to kick swell suddenly into towering bulwarks. Seemingly insignificant goals turn into mind-bending labyrinths. Exhaustion doesn’t preempt Netflix, but it does preempt the resolutions.They just don’t seem to happen.

So every year, along with our resolutions comes a host of wry jokes and knowing winks about how badly they’ll flop. (If history is any indication, my Mountain Dew purge will last a month.) It’s become a pastime to treat resolutions like a foregone conclusion – of failure. As if we’re stuck with our foibles and flaws forever.

But my view began to change when I read the Bible and discovered that I might have access to a power source I never even tried.

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When God Arrives at the Last Minute

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Time winding down on God's answer?I honestly didn’t know where I’d be living in a week’s time.

My first teaching stint was coming to an end. The remote school lay surrounded by the trailer park they called teacher housing, on the very western edge of the Great Plains, right where they finally sweep upwards into the Montana Rockies – a glorious, meteorologically dramatic collision of alpine and prairie. As trying as the three years had been, I found (as we often do with such trials once they’ve finished) that I was going to miss the place.

Unfortunately, my job prospects were now as empty as those wind-swept prairies. Each interview that spring had led only to the familiar “You interviewed well, but we’re going in a different direction”.

Since I’d been busy organizing a senior trip (to Vegas, natch, after which I had to chaperone a student back to Montana by bus), the administration had given me two extra weeks in teacher housing. I had that long after returning (did I mention by bus?) to secure new living arrangements, which largely hinged upon figuring out my next teaching gig. Then I had to be out.

I could always return to my hometown. But it certainly wasn’t the way I’d hoped to end the year. And let’s just say that employment gaps on a resume are particularly deadly for teachers – especially when the choice schools get hundreds of applications and will invoke any and all reason to thin the pile.

With four days left in teacher housing, I was blind to the next step of my life.

Sometimes…well, a lot of the time…God’s plans for our lives look less like a blueprint and more like a Hollywood screenplay.

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You Can Control Whom You Fall in Love With

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Only Jesus can truly bring you life in this area.You’re standing in what feels like rough pasture. Across the fence lies one that looks greener and smooth. You’re contemplating a choice, dear Christian.

You’ve met someone who makes you feel like you haven’t felt since…you can’t remember when. He’s meeting your emotional needs, just being himself. She “gets you” in a way nobody else does. When you imagine companionship with this person, you catch a glimpse of the life of which you once dreamed.

One problem: that person is off limits.

One of you is already married (or in a relationship that has not explicitly ended). S/he might be outside your age range. Or s/he might be unsuitable – mired in sin, or perhaps not a Christian.

Perhaps you started out with quite a compatible spouse, but you’ve long since lost that “peas in a pod” verve. Now you think you see it in someone else. Someone who’s dropped looks or hints that s/he’s thinking the same.

Being known, being appreciated, being fought for (instead of fought with) or finally triumphing over years of loneliness…

It feels like life.

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Every Year You Grow, He Gets Bigger

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aslan1In Prince Caspian, the second of the Chronicles of Narnia series by C.S. Lewis, the four Pevensie children are unexpectedly whisked back to Narnia for new adventures. Lucy, the youngest, faces isolation and fear as the children gain their bearings. Her trial is more difficult than this time around. But all is forgotten when she is unexpectedly reunited with Aslan, the mighty lion and Narnia’s king.

“Aslan, Aslan. Dear Aslan,” sobbed Lucy. “At last.” 

The great beast rolled over on his side so that Lucy fell, half sitting and half lying between his front paws. He bent forward and just touched her nose with his tongue. His warm breath came all round her. She gazed up into the large wise face. 

“Aslan,” said Lucy, “you’re bigger”. 

“That is because you are older, little one,” answered he. 

“Not because you are?” 

“I am not. But every year you grow, you will find me bigger.”

Eventually the day is saved, the kingdom restored. But Lucy’s battles are not over. She will continue for a little while to be misunderstood by the others, to watch as Aslan tarries and gathers before finally completing his rescue. And she has yet another adventure ahead of her years later, the most difficult of them all, during which she sees Aslan only sparingly and has to navigate mostly by what she has learned of him, doing her best to remember what he would say or desire.

Sound familiar?

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For the Martyrs of Roseburg, Oregon

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(I couldn’t decide which was more pretentious: thinking that my words were apt for the suffering believers in Roseburg, Oregon this weekend; or pressing on with my next post without honoring them. I decided to risk my words.)

A question arose in our small group this week: “Why do you think people don’t read the Bible more?”The reward of Jesus

I think most people don’t see the Bible as good news.

We see it as a list of rules and expectations, a litany of warnings and harbingers, and endless reminders of our inadequacy and our need for God.

Honestly, those are part of the deal. There is a price tag when we launch out to follow Christ. “Don’t begin until you count the cost,” He warns in Luke 14:28 (NLT). He’s not a Savior to be tailored, streamlined, or optimized to meet our user preferences. We’re the ones who need to be tailored.

But look what we’re getting in return!

Be faithful, even to the point of death, and I will give you life as your victor’s crown. (Revelation 2:10b)

Today, as the nation mourns with Roseburg, God indeed offers good news.

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