Jesus in the Bleachers: What I Learned About Grace from a Girls’ Basketball Game

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Girls’ basketball games can be tough to watch.

A few years ago, the school at which I was serving experienced a tough playoff loss. Our girls had pretty much cleaned up in their first game, but sloppy play caught up to them in the second. The star player fouled out by the third quarter; two others would follow. You could tell the moment the downward spiral started: they started playing panicky, their shots becoming wild, turning the ball over, committing more fouls. By the fourth quarter, we were putting in eighth graders.

It was a 73-34 loss and the end of our tournament hopes. There were a lot of tears on our bench, and exhausted athletes are tough to console. I couldn’t do much but watch.

But that wasn’t what bugged me the most. What really got to me was the other teachers who left the stands and went home before the fourth quarter even started.

The reason wasn’t our girls’ performance; it was our crowd. Even by rural standards, some of our school’s traveling fans were absolutely horrid the entire game. They booed the refs, mocked them openly, questioned every single call, when clearly our girls weren’t doing themselves any favors.

Later, one of the teachers told me, “I left because I didn’t want to be seen as part of that crowd.”

I was reminded of the previous season when teachers made a point of skipping our boys’ games entirely over their poor play – ugly technical fouls, constant unsportsmanlike conduct. The teachers were trying to send the same message: “Right now I’m embarrassed to be associated with this school.”

But that night as our girls’ season faded, I stayed in the bleachers.

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Embracing a Season You Never Chose

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Valentine’s Day.

Like country music, Facebook, or prom night, it’s one of those institutions that celebrates romantic love for those who have it, and acts as kryptonite to the contentment of everyone else. It threatens to bring to the surface all the self-pity and frustration that besets the honest single who doesn’t enjoy being single.

But this Valentine’s Day…I’m cool.

That’s been a choice.

We are all in a season we didn’t choose. Some of us are in hard financial straits. Others have been hit by injustice. Perhaps you’re just dying to be finished with high school. Some of you don’t need to be in high school to be fighting tooth and nail for your self-worth.

For others, the frustration is their singleness. Especially around this time of year. I know – it sounds silly to compare that frustration to the true suffering others face. But the longing is real, and it’s too readily sniffed at by those who are a different kind of person and value different things in their lives. So you won’t hear me dismissing any longings, even if it does overflow its banks. Some people simply don’t enjoy being single, and weren’t designed to. (That’s why this isn’t another tired treatise on why Jesus is your valentine. “That’s just weird,” as a single female friend once said.)

Unchosen seasons can seem overwhelming. Our emotions are a bully, dictating that we must be laid low, that we have no way to find peace or joy in these moments (or that we’re not being “honest with ourselves” if we do).

But we have a choice.

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The Prodigal Son and That “I Had to Sin in Order to Grow” Thing

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prodigal.jpgI’ve heard it quite a few times from young believers.

“I had to go through that tough stage of my life in order to find God.”

They’re coming out of a sinful time in their lives and acknowledging its darkness for the first time. What kind of darkness? Who knows. Our minds jump to the usual suspects – sexual promiscuity, drugs, partying – and it might have been that. It might be petty crime, or embracing of the occult. Or it might just a “crowd” that endowed them with a crass, hurtful personality.

Eventually, all things are exposed to light, and the emerging young wanderer starts getting honest. I celebrate with them in their light bulb moment.

But then you’ll hear some of them tack this on, in some form or another:

“I needed to sin so I’d learn my lessons”.

“I went through the wilderness because it was God’s way to grow me.”

“I wouldn’t have understood sin unless I went through it.”

Record scratch.

Wait, what? Where did that come from?

I can take a stab. In our age, popular culture has glamorized the wilderness. The hardened “guy from the wrong side of the tracks” is the hero from our stories; dirt under the fingernails is more impressive than white cuffs. He seems more real, certainly more relatable. His mistakes drown him and inflict their toll, only for him to somehow rise from the ashes and find an inner heart of gold, while the goody two shoes and the irritable authority figures turn out to be the real villain (how many movies have boasted this plot?).

We let this sneak into the church, too. The more debauched the old man, the more impressive the new. So much that young disciples actually feel diminished for having lived well from the start, because their testimonies are boring.

It’s a crock.

No. 

You did not “have” to sin in order to arrive where you are today. That is a lie. It is the wrong response to your wilderness.

And I plead with you to shake it, for it will also prove fatal to your recovery.

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How You Can Have Jesus and Organized Religion

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organizedNice try.

I mean…I get it. You love Jesus, but you’ve had it up to here with organized religion. You’re tired of churches with lifeless doctrine, petty in-fighting, denominational quirks valued more than sinners, neglect for the poor, financial priorities so backwards that…I could go on. The reasons for rejecting organized religion are many.

So you walk away from the church. Jesus is still your Lord and master, and it’s not my place to say otherwise. But you’ve decided to be a “Christian at large”, to practice a “Christianity stripped down to its bare essence”, or however else you prefer to say it.

But what many people miss: Jesus didn’t want it that way.

I could talk about how Jesus (through Paul’s New Testament writings) sees organized religion…but I’m operating under the assumption that, for whatever reason, “God said to do it” just isn’t a good inroad with you right now. I wish it was.

Instead, I’ll talk about Jesus. We can all get on board with that.

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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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How We Are All in a Constant, Neverending State of Worship

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worshipWhat’s the first thing that pops into your mind when you hear the word “worship”?

Probably music.

If I were to invite you over to a “night of worship” at my house, you’d probably expect a couple guitars, some bongos (because I love bongos), and some bad singing. Some of us might be excited. Others, particularly the not-musically-inclined, quail. Singing doesn’t grab everybody.

Which is why it’s a vaguely guilty relief for some, then, to find out that worship and music aren’t the same at all. Worship is much bigger. I’ve consistently been reminded of this vital truth in the evangelical circles in which I’ve flown, and I’m grateful for it.

But what is worship, then?

The answer I most commonly hear is that it is a lifestyle, one that we struggle to maintain. Real worship involves our actions and our obedience; we truly worship not through a one-time experience, but through our daily lives. Hands raised in church are trumped by choices raised in surrender. This is closer to the right answer, I think, and a much more spiritually productive definition than “what we do on Sunday”.

Yet that doesn’t seem to quite nail it down. In Jeremiah 2:23-24, God laments over the Israelites’ idolatry with words that make us squirm: “You are a swift she-camel running here and there, a wild donkey accustomed to the desert, sniffing the wind in her craving — in her heat who can restrain her?” Or Jesus’ sobering words to his disciples: “No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money” (Matthew 6:24).

There seems a fierce momentum to worship here, something not to be flipped like a light switch, but resisted like a gale.

A new definition of worship hits like a nor’easter.

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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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Can You Handle the Answer to Your Prayer?

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handleI knew this would happen.

After a two-month period bringing vital answers to prayer, I’m basking in the relief and renewed hope. You’d think I would be spurred on to a season of thanksgiving and even greater prayer.

But no…the reverse happens. Instead, I’m tempted to “take five” from prayer. Well, that was great, Lord. I’ll stop for a while now. After all, he’s good. He knows I’m grateful. Surely my “stockpile” of previous prayers will bounce around heaven and do some good for a while. Or something like that.

It’s really nothing more than Thanks God See You Next Crisis Syndrome, and I’m a case study. God help me.

“Love of ease, spiritual indolence, religious slothfulness, all operate against this type of petitioning. Our praying, however, needs to be pressed and pursued with an energy that never tires, a persistence which will not be denied, and a courage which never fails.” – E.M. Bounds

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A Message to Unbelievers on “Keeping the Faith to Ourselves”

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messageI hear it all the time. “It’s fine to believe what you believe – just keep it to yourself,” you say. “Faith should be a personal thing.”

Or the more crass version: “Religion is like a [male body part]. Any guy can have one, but once you start waving it in people’s faces, it becomes a problem.”

Noted actor Denzel Washington is a Christian. He has been praised in certain circles for not “wearing his faith on his sleeve”. Apparently people see this as a sign of maturity and restraint on Mr. Washington’s part, a demonstration of how religion should be lived.

If you are one of those people, I come to you in friendship. But I honestly must question how much you really know about our faith.

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. (John 3:16)

Imagine for a moment that you had terminal cancer, but nobody told you. Your doctor withheld the diagnosis. Your family didn’t call attention to the warning signs. Your friends said they “didn’t want to upset you”. Would you be grateful and appreciative?

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4 Ways to Snag a Christian Mate with your Facebook Feed

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How your Facebook feed can "sell" you like anything else.If you rely on Facebook to find your prospects, you might want to reevaluate things.

But sometimes Facebook just ends up being part of our first impression. It’s the world we live in. You meet someone, you sneak in a brief chat, and then go home and…friend each other. Hopefully in that order.

And in that moment, our Facebook feed can say a lot about us. Just like clothing or mannerisms can. File this entire post under the category “Like it or not”. As in, like it or not, Facebook has become a separate domain of our existence, right alongside “work” or “home”. It reveals our witness, and it sells our character in more ways than you might think.

Assuming you’re looking to do your part in finding a Christian spouse while God does his part, and assuming you’re out for his very best, here are a few ideas to flag down the kind of person you’re looking for.

(If you’re the kind who doesn’t post much on Facebook anyway and just uses it to keep track of friends, consider yourself excused from this.)

 

1. Show evidence you’re a Christian

You might have heard the question, “If you were arrested and put on trial for being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you?” The point being, Christianity is not something to be kept on the down-low.

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