Category Archives: Wholeness

Six Things I Told My Past Self

Posted on by

timeLast week, on a roadside after a delivery, I found a small, unmarked box containing a time machine.

Weirdly, it didn’t appear in any pictures or videos I tried to take with my phone. It wasn’t a huge device, either, closer to the size of a toaster. Unlike the ones in movies and TV shows, it seems you can actually only do so much with this kind of technology, no fitting in a whole person or any such. It would, however, accommodate a small letter. 

The instant I realized that, I knew what to write.

I had to drive down to Phoenix to take the exact GPS coordinates of my old Union Hills apartment, so the device would land when and where I wanted it. I set the sequencer to place it there in late 2004 (the dial wouldn’t go further into the past than 15 years), hoping that my younger self might find it and. at the very least. face the next few years better equipped. Then I pressed the big red button. Thank goodness for big red buttons.

The device vanished soundlessly. Nothing in my life appears to have changed. Either it didn’t work, or it did work and the result was a separate branching timeline with which we can’t interact. I guess I have no way of knowing.

But I can share what the letter contained. Maybe, if you’re further back on the trail God once assigned to me – well, I just thought it might be of help.

 

 

I know things are tough right now. Man, are they tough. Everything feels like a suffocating mattress of isolation and confusion. That “amazing plan for your life” you heard about isn’t materializing, and you’re struggling to readjust to adult life away from home. You feel hurt, helpless, and hopeless.

You are under attack.

That’s how you need to see your present circumstances. That’s the lens you need. Things are actually going okay for you, but the onslaught of lies and fired-up emotions is making it hard to see – and threatening to sabotage it all.

There are six things you really need to hear. I hope you will be willing. Part of you doesn’t want to hear anything except “things will change tomorrow”. But if you will listen, you could find a much better life for yourself in the next few years.

Continue reading →

Socks and Sovereignty

Posted on by

leafI’m thinking today of the young man who was verbally pummeled by his father his entire childhood and has emerged a porridge of an adult – or a rock-hard missile of abuse himself.

Or the young woman who experienced far more horrific abuse on the part of her father and now sees a dirty, irredeemable person in the mirror.

Or the Israelite infants who never even grew old enough for trials but were sacrificed alive in the superheated arms of bronze idols.

Or the elderly man I know who has received not only a terminal diagnosis, but a stack of medical bills that could drown his children in debt – followed by a flippant denial-of-benefits letter from an insurer who sees him as a claim number.

Would you look these people in the eye and say that their suffering is God’s will for them? That the soul-level damage, the sheer violation of God’s intention for this world, was initiated directly by God for his glory?

Thud.

Just your reaction to that question will reveal a…dilemma we face in learning God’s sovereignty. We have agendas. I do, and you do. It makes the debate prickly; we’ve staked out ground and feel compelled to defend it.

If life is a journey east on Interstate 90, I’ve only traveled as far as the state I actually live in – Montana. I’m a mere journeyman in Biblically understanding God’s sovereignty. This article isn’t a finished building but the raw materials; it’s less about finding an answer and more about honestly acknowledging our agendas.

For there are two different kinds of people approaching this problem. It affects how we debate the issue – and, crucially, how we speak of it to the sufferer.

Continue reading →

God is Furious About What’s Happened to You

Posted on by

sunriseA friend I hadn’t seen in years somehow found my lost wallet the other day. As we caught up, he revealed his story, of which I’d heard only snatches. Great pain, through a mixture of his own errors and others’ betrayal. The years since youth group had not turned out as he’d hoped (boy, can I relate). When he finished, I asked him how his faith was doing.

He said it was behind him. “I suppose if there is a God, he might have had a purpose in all this…” he mused uncertainly. I don’t remember what he said next. I was already agonizing over what he had evidently never heard.

God is furious about what’s happened to you.

There are some of you who need to hear that, too.

That parent who walked out on you, or made your life a living hell. All the shaming and stalking you experienced in high school. Losing a job through false accusations. The devastating accident from someone’s foolishness. The maelstrom of sin that has brought a shattering to every life.

God is furious about what’s happened to you.

Does this take you aback?

When I read those eight words one day, it changed my view of God forever. That day was a sunrise. It was a balm on years of encrusted pain from my family’s collapse, the trailhead of a long walk back to him.

Because despite years spent in church, I had never heard those words before.

Continue reading →

Jesus and First World Problems

Posted on by

I stumbled across a meme the other day that really struck me wrong.

Maybe it’s just me, but I cringed from the first moment I saw it:

1933519_10153886631158387_6341103886409967992_o

Funny, to be sure. Poignant. Worth a thought. It seems to be saying that because Christ suffered greatly, our sufferings aren’t worth comparing.

And I don’t like it. I don’t think Scripture likes it.

Perhaps the problem here is simply the nature of the internet, the inevitable misfire of a simple image broadcasted indiscriminately. We really need “HERE’S MY SPECIFIED AUDIENCE” tags on everything. Because for many of its readers, it’s probably the last thing they need.

Let me ask this: how would you feel if you paid a counselor to sit there and tell you that you’re not really hurting and that it could be worse? You’d probably feel…out of his office, quickly. And rightfully so. No counselor worth his salt would dismiss a human struggle.

I think God, being the Wonderful Counselor, is a step above that kind of incompetence.

Now…I get the spirit of the picture. Can we take our earthly complaints too far? Probably. The world is, admittedly, speckled with whiners. Broken nails and busted pipes are perhaps worth a sigh to God, but not a prayer of weeping. Self-pity is real. It’s not the same as reaching out to God. There is perspective. Part of a healthy outlook is keeping in view the provision, safety, and services we enjoy that most of the world can only imagine.

But consider this…

Suggesting that middle-class Americans have nothing to gripe about, is equivalent to suggesting that being a middle-class American is what should be bringing us joy.

Continue reading →

Removing the Mask and Finding Grace

Posted on by

Jesus isn't fooled by our masks...and doesn't need to be.Every Halloween, I would disguise myself as someone who’s got it together.

I would watch as everyone donned costumes of fairies or vampires or Jedi (it seems to have been mostly Jedi the last two years) and pounded the rainy ground on October 31. They’d walk along the dark, gridded streets, collecting energy pills like a breezy outdoor Pac-Man game, and I thought those were their masks.

Before that, I’d come to church and sit amongst everything I am trying to become. Wise, selfless, surrendered believers. Countryside middle-classers. Leaders who understand how to influence people, how to get stuff done in a community. Couples in the glow of early parenthood who somehow show up to service perfectly coiffed and groomed despite the tribe hanging off their arms. Older families who have already raised their tribes into true-blue adult disciples (a more mammoth task every decade). Decent, hardworking folks who seem to be doing just fine.

And I’d think they were the unmasked. Nothing to hide, no need to hide.

And, by extension, I’d assume that I wasn’t cutting it. How could I be, since they were accomplishing so much more than I?

Then a funny thing happened: I got older. Over the course of time, I got to know these people better. And they did this amazing thing, something far harder than anything I’ve mentioned.

They started removing their masks. Continue reading →

How to Stop Feeling Alone in a Room Full of People

Posted on by

We all can feel alone even when surrounded by our greatest fans.

You probably know how this goes. Moments come where we feel something unshareable, something that seems to set us apart from the gathering. It might be a pain, or it might be a joy. Whatever it is, we know the others aren’t feeling it. It’s stuck inside us.

It’s the worst feeling.

Finding someone like-minded to us is cause for celebration, along the lines of finding a vein of gold on your property. But they seem few and far between. Our struggles pull us toward isolation.

This is often our God-shaped hole. There are parts of us that are just too deep for any human to reach. Those needs belong on the broad shoulders of God.Lost in a crowd?

However…God Himself did not intend for humans to live alone. In a stunning act of humility, He designed us to need each other as well. (It’s also one of His tools of sanctification, for in order to handle people well, we have to grow up.) The person who lives without others is not living as God intended.

So when we find ourselves feeling alone and misunderstood even in the company of others, how do we deal?

Not the way you’d expect.

Continue reading →