Closer

Thank you for your patience as I have been out of the country and getting caught up as I came back. There has not been much time to write.

I wanted to share this video of what happened in Managua, Nicaragua this past week. My wife and I led 32 students and 6 leaders to the Villa Esperanza for 8 days and it was a life changing experience for all of us. I am so happy my wife came with me as I not only got closer to Jesus in this trip, but I've never felt closer to my wife. We were able to witness horrific injustice and unimaginable beauty in just 8 days together. Something a mentor of mine has been known to say is this: "Shared experiences build intimacy." It's true. Intimacy is complex, especially in marriage, and I feel like there was nothing better for my wife and I to do as we approach our first year than to go to a strange place and learn more about Jesus by serving and being served.

It was a transformational week and I am so extremely proud of my students. We had the whole week with no drama, medical emergencies, or major issues - God truly provided. And I know he provided because we had literally hundreds of people praying for the trip. Because it was so saturated in prayer, God ended up doing remarkable things and for that I'm thankful.

Please take some time to watch this video and thank you for all who were praying for us and supporting us. May God bless you. For the best viewing, make sure you're watching in HD and go full screen with it.

Off to Managua, Nicaragua...with 32 High School Students

On Thursday night, I will send our first team of 30 to Managua, Nicaragua to serve and be served by the Village of Hope, who takes care of widows and orphans living in the city. On Friday, my wife and I will take another 8 down to make a total of 38 people ready to follow God to Nicaragua.

This has been an incredible process of faith. I've been able to watch young high school students raise an incredible amount of money and pray incredible prayers for their friends and people they've never met. 

I'll be with my students and leaders until the end of the month, so needless to say this blog will be extremely quiet. However, I'm happy to point you to our minsitry's blog where (hopefully) we'll have daily updates of the goings on in Managua. The series will be called "Field Notes from Managua" and will include photos and blog entries from team members. I'd love for the followers of this blog to get a piece of what I get to do for a living. I can't even believe I'm paid to take kids to experience God with people who are materially poor, but relationally rich. I'm excited for all of what we have to learn.

Here's a link to the students blog.

We also made this video asking you all to join us in prayer:

The Command is for Doing

A man approaches Jesus and says, "What's the most important commandment in all of the Scriptures?" The answer Jesus gives sounds at first a little dodgy: "Hear, O, Israel the Lord your God is One...and you shall love Him with all of your heart, and with all of your soul, and with all of your mind, and with all of your strength."

Of all the commands given in the Bible, Jesus reveals that the greatest command is not about doing something, but primarily about knowing somebody.

We want a checklist, we want steps to get to heaven and ways to please God because we want to take care of our own salvation. We want it on our shoulders and in our hands. But, as Jonah reminds us, "Salvation belongs to the Lord" and it is not our condition to save ourselves with good works.

So since we cannot save ourselves, the number one command Jesus gives is to love God. To get to know Him. To begin an understanding of his Personhood and Life. But hold on...

This command dates back to the early days of the Jewish faith and in speaking about this command God says, "The command is very near to you. It is in your mouth and in your heart, so that you can do it."

The command to know God, to love Him with everything we have is very close to us and in our ability for what reason? So that we can do it.

Here lies the connection: While the greatest command is not to do but to love, nevertheless, our love drives us to do something. As Bob Goff would say, "When you love, you do." It's that simple. I love my wife, therefore I do things for her. I love my family, therefore I serve them and spend time with them and do things for them.

Why do we have this backwards? We're so busy trying to go on missions trips, camps, and service projects so that God might think we're awesome and love us. But the reality is we must know His love for us and, in return, be given a love that drives us to do something about it all.

If you love God, you pray to Him and read His word and serve those around you. The Bible also tells us that if we do not love people, we are a liar when we say, "I love God."

This simple command to love God is not about saying we love God, but rather the command is there for us so that we can do it. Saying you love God does not mean you're a Christian. Knowing God produces a life filled with the Holy Spirit and driven to action: We pray, we seek God, we read, we serve, we spend our lives giving to others. The command to love God is meant for doing something about it. Because when you love, you do.

Praying for Nothing

At some point early in our teenage years, every boy and girl has to face the reality that prayer is not a simple discipline. No where is it more honestly and simply recorded than in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain:

“Then Miss Watson she took me in the closet and prayed, but nothing come of it. She told me to pray every day, and whatever I asked for I would get it. But it warn’t so. I tried it. Once I got a fish-line, but no hooks. It warn’t any good to me without hooks. I tried for the hooks three or four times, but somehow I couldn’t make it work. By and by, one day, I asked Miss Watson to try for me, but she said I was a fool. She never told me why, and I couldn’t make it out no way."

I never blame Huck for his views on religion. Huck is a boy. Miss Watson is a woman who has somehow ignored the fact that she doesn't get what she asks for all of the time. That's a little screwy.

These two characters are in our church. I'm mostly trying to persuade the Huck's to consider different definitions of the fundamentals they grew up with, but I also get to meet Miss Watson, who tends to speak for Huck and even answer the questions I direct at him. Both, however, have the misunderstanding that prayer serves one purpose: to get what you can't get yourself.

This is certainly a purpose of prayer: petition. The Scriptures tell us that we don't have some things simply because we don't ask God for them. But it's not solely what prayer is for. Prayer is for meditation, for reflection, for connecting with God, and so many more things.

That's why when Jesus taught his disciples how to pray (after they asked him), he gives us an extremely comprehensive and somewhat broad prayer, which includes worshipful, relational, petitionary, and reflective/repentant language. It's complex.

Overall, when Jesus asked things of his Father, he always put the relationship with God above the request with the line, "your will be done" and a repeating use of the word, "Father." Jesus always kept prayer multifaceted. We don't always get what we want, but God always gives us what we need: access to Him and His throne.

If your prayer is not being "answered," consider perhaps that what you need above your request being fulfilled is a relationship and knowledge of the Almighty. That might not change your circumstance, but it will certainly change you.

Why the Bereans Were Noble in Character

There's this strange passage in Luke's account of the early church where he accounts one group of early believers as more noble than another. The passage is short and reads like this in one translation:

"Now the Berean Jews were of more noble character than those in Thessalonica, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true."
-Acts 17:11

I have read that passage before and thought, Ah yes, these Bereans were solid because they received the word with eagerness. That is true. But it is only half of the whole truth.

The Bereans not only received Paul's message with eagerness, but they examined the Scriptures every day to see if Paul was right about Jesus.

First century Jews were not ones to easily give up their faith. Berean Jews would not just shrug their shoulders and follow whatever was popular (which was not Christianity at that time, anyways). In fact, Bereans were some of the most educated of 1st century Jews and Luke says they were more noble because of their eagerness to examine the Scriptures.

One thing that drives me a little crazy is how many of us hear something a good speaker says and automatically believe it. We'll hear one side of something or hear something said strongly with enough authority and we're willing to take it as our own. It's not necessarily a great argument, but the person said it with enough gusto that we assume it to be right. That's what most of cable news is today and I'm afraid some of our churches are leaning this way.

My friend Branden often says in his sermons, "Don't take my word for it, look at the Scriptures and examine it for yourself." The Bereans were not noble in character for just accepting and agreeing with Paul, they did their homework.

Strange thing is, this is the next verse:

"As a result, many of them believed, as did also a number of prominent Greek women and many Greek men." 

The product of their eager examination was to believe. Not the other way around. Many people blame the movement of Christianity on ignorance. And perhaps, yes, it started with fishermen, but it didn't stop when it reached the scholars.

There is Nothing Safe About Childhood

 "It's a hard world for little things" 

- Rachel Cooper, The Night of the Hunter

Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm were brothers who spent their lives researching culture and studying linguistics. They also had a knack for folk tales and spent another portion of their life editing, writing and compiling tales for children in their native German language. The result would be Grimm's Fairy Tales, where we get classics like Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, and Snow White.

When the tales were first published in 1812, they were met with fierce criticism because they were too violent, sexual, and "adult themed" to be marketed to children. Many reviewers rejected the first printing and the brothers set out to make several updated editions over the next number of years that toned down some of the graphic content. They removed overtly sexual jokes and turned the "wicked mother" into a "wicked stepmother." But one thing they didn't erase but in fact escalated was the violence in the stories.

That's why we have these old stories about wolves chasing little girls, step-mothers planning the death of young innocent ones, and little boys being run down by malicious candy shop owners. They are "fairy tales" for children however they are extremely unsafe stories filled with terror.

I spend my life with families who have kids exiting childhood. And far too often I meet students who have been told a lie their whole life. They have had parents who were wealthy and supportive and loving, but not honest. These students have been protected from the one reality they need to know: life is dangerous.

In the attempt to keep their children "innocent" and "free," parents tell their children a different type of fairy tale, a modern American story: everyone loves you because you're special, you are good at everything you try, and if you work hard enough and be a good little boy or girl, you'll be successful. Also, you'll never die.

Of course the language is not as blunt, but this is what we tell kids with our actions. We tell them all of this under the banner of "protecting them." They can't see certain things because it will damage their innocence, ruin their good heart, and give them a bad name.

But doesn't Scripture tell us such a different story? It's a lot more similar to Grimm's Fairy Tales. The horrific truth of life is that nothing about childhood is safe and everything about everyone is dangerous. The Bible says that there is no one who lives correctly, that the world is filled with people who will try to tear you apart, and you and I are contributors to the madness. You don't teach your son to disobey. He's already pretty good at that.

One time I was speaking at a conference and I mentioned that I am slow to trust people. Afterward, a woman came up to me and said, "You're a pastor and you don't quickly trust people - that seems kind of backwards. Wouldn't the Christian thing to do be to assume the best about people?" But the problem is that the Bible actually assumes the worst about everybody. I am slow to trust people because most people are looking out for their own benefit and not the common good.  

What I've realized over time is that I am also slow to trust others because I have no trust in myself. If no one is "good," then neither am I. Hansel and Gretel, Little Red Riding Hood, and all of the characters in those old stories made mistakes of their own that nearly cost them their life.

This is why the Bible tells us to "Trust the Lord" with all of our hearts and "lean not on your own understanding." Because of our crooked hearts, we see the world around us as either "not so bad" or too terrible to ever expose to our children. The trick of parenting becomes shepherding kids through their own brokenness, letting them in on the tragedy of the world at the same time as you let them in on the goodness of God.

We are right in desiring for our children to never be corrupted, but we must remember that we cannot save them from this world. That's why God, the best Father, sent His perfect Son Jesus to be corrupted for us so that we might be delivered from evil. This phrase "delivered from evil," should emphasize the word "deliver," for it infers that we are to spend some time amongst wicked things, namely ourselves. It's useless pretending there's no big bad wolf. God rescues us from it all.

Until then, we train our children in the understanding that enemies abound, and our greatest adversary is closer than you think, closer than under your bed or in your closet: it's right under your rib cage.