The Prodigal Jon

Crazy Love - Chapters 9-10

2009-02-25T03:00:00.000-08:00

Crazy Love – Chapters 9-10
This marks the end of the book, Crazy Love by Francis Chan. I hope you enjoyed the book and the chance to talk through it with everyone. I had a blast and really appreciate the insight you have all shared. I can honestly say that I read it with different eyes because of the comments that everyone contributed. Here are my thoughts on the last two chapters:

1. Page 150. The guy getting his teeth all taken out so that he would never be distracted from the mission field was pretty intense.

2. Page 154 -155. I had no idea Rich Mullins was like this. I was a huge Christian music snob growing up and missed a lot of the great stories behind the music. I love that Mullins constantly fought against people trying to put him on a pedestal.

3. Page 159. How do you feel when you bump into stories about miracles like the one with Brother Yun’s broken legs?

4. Page 166. I like that Chan lays out that the solution or opportunity is not the same for everyone. For some people, they’ll quit their job and head to the mission field and for some others, they’ll work harder at the job they already have. It’s frustrating to me when people propose a one size fits all solution.

5. Page 166. If there were two camps in the Stuff Christians Like Book Club, I was clearly on the “pro-Crazy Love” side, but I can understand the push back people are having with statements like page 166, “The stories in chapter 9 are brief snapshots of how a few people have lived out true Christianity in America …” The challenge is who decides what “true Christianity” is?

6. Page 167. “Have you ever said: “I was made for this moment?” I have and it’s usually not the moment I would have expected it to be. How about you?

7. Page 168. “We try to set our lives up so everything will be fine even if God doesn’t come through.” Ouch, that one hit home.

8. Page 169. “I’ve made a commitment to consistently put myself in situations that scare me and require God to come through.” I love that and that’s something my wife and I are actively praying about right now with a few things that are coming up.

9. Page 172. “The world needs Christians who don’t tolerate the complacency of their own lives.” I agree with this 100%.

10. Overall, what did you think of the book? Did you love it? Did you hate it? Would you tell friends to read it?

Those are my thoughts, what are yours?

Crazy Love - Chapters 6 - 8

2009-02-11T03:00:00.000-08:00

Crazy Love - Chapters 6-8

This marks the second to last section of Crazy Love we'll be talking about for the Stuff Christians Like Book Club. We'll discuss chapters 9 and 10 on Wednesday, February 25. Here are some things that struck me about chapters 6-8.

1. Page 100. "When you are truly in love, you go to great lengths to be with the one you love." I think that’s true. Would anyone that watched my life see me going to great lengths to be with God?

2. Page 102. "We don't have to worry about a burdensome load of commands, because when we are loving, we can't sin. Do you feel free in your Christian life?" I've seen this in my own life with how I approach lust. When I tried to focus on cutting lust from my life it felt impossible. When I focused instead on God's love, my desire to lust diminished.

3. Page 104. "The fact is, I need God to help me love God." I really liked this idea. Sometimes I feel so bent out of shape trying to "get love right." I essentially say, "God I am so sorry I keep failing at loving you. No, no, I don't want your help with loving you, let me figure this out on my own and then come to you." The idea of being able to pray, "God, help me love you" is really freeing to me.

4. Page 108. "We are always the recipients of His great and manifold gifts. Not the givers. Never the givers." Again, this statement removes the pressure for me to feel like God is waiting on my gift and I keep blowing it. He is already complete.

5. Page 110. The section on Malachi 3:10 about giving God your whole tithe and not robbing Him was one I wrote "wow" beside in the margin. Time is the tithe I don't give very well and the idea of writing Him a blank check with my time was really challenging. And I liked the idea of "Give God more than you can manage"

6. Page 115. "Something is wrong when our lives make sense to unbelievers." How sensible is your life right now?

7. Page 119. "How would my life change if I actually thought of each person I came into contact with as Christ…" This is stupid, but I actually tried this while driving to church the other day. I usually get really mad at people that cut me off on the way into the church parking lot. And I honestly tried to see them as Christ instead of an enemy preventing me from getting a good parking spot.

8. Page 123. "Do we really believe that "it ought to be the business of every day to prepare for our final day?" I rarely think about the final day and all too often live life firmly planted in the right now.

9. Page 127. "What matters is that we spend ourselves." I like that phrase, "spend ourselves." For me, part of that means writing as much as I can and trying to pour out for others what I feel like God is pouring into me. What does spending yourself look like to you?

10. Page 130. “True faith is loving a person after he has hurt you.” What was your reaction to the last person that hurt you?

11. Page 133. “We’ve elevated safety to the neglect of whatever God’s best is …” This was challenging to me because right now I am wrestling with whether I should be doing “this blog writing” more. And I want God to say, “Sure and here’s why it is perfectly safe to do that.” But He won’t. How are you living safe?

12. Page 136. The description of wasting the day by “spending hours connecting with God” was a good push point for me. I once heard another minister say that in the age of busyness we are called to do something that seems wasteful, pray. I also liked the question why “do we assume we could never do anything so radical or intense?”

13. The humble section on page 137 was well timed as I get the opportunity to speak more. God has been planting that idea on my heart a lot lately, that He wants me to get smaller and quieter in His hand while the things around me get louder and pick up the pace.

14. Page 145 kind of asks the question, “What is your thing?” If you did an audit of the way you spent your time last week, what would your thing be?

15. Page 146. “Joy is something that we have to choose and then work for.” I completely agree with that.

Those are my thoughts, what did you make of chapters 6-8?

Next chunk of Crazy Love

2009-02-03T02:51:00.000-08:00

Next chunk of Crazy Love

On Wednesday, February 11 we will be discussing chapters 6 - 8 of the book Crazy Love right here.

Jon

Guilt Trips

2009-01-30T05:22:00.000-08:00

Guilt Trips

I took the post "Guilt Trips" that I wrote on Stuff Christians Like and plugged it into a word mapping tool called www.wordle.net. (All credit goes to them for the coolness)

Here is what it looked like:

Book Club: Week 2 - Chapters 3-5

2009-01-28T02:45:00.000-08:00

Book Club: Week 2 - Chapters 3 - 5, Crazy Love

Wow, I feel like we had some great back and forth discussion about some of the points Chan raised in the first two chapters of Crazy Love. We explored issues like God's punishment of sin, the definition of discipline and how our own experiences can often impact how we view faith.

For this second session of Crazy Love, we're going to go through chapters 3-5. I found them as challenging as the first round of chapters and look forward to hearing what you thought. Here are my ideas from chapters 3-5.

1. "Over time I realized that when we love God, we naturally run to Him—frequently and zealously… Our motivation changes from guilt to love." Pg. 57. I really want that and sometimes, more now then ever before, I experience it. But sometimes, I don't go to the Lord out of an overflow of love and joy, I go to Him because I think that's the right thing to do. The challenge for me is that I often will say, "Well, I need to wait until I feel an overwhelming sense of joy and love before I do my quiet time." I think that's dangerous, because in some ways, love is a choice and our feelings lie. There are a lot of things in life that I don’t “feel” like doing but I still do them out of discipline. Do you ever struggle with that thought process?

2. On page 58, Chan talks about taking a four day spiritual retreat by himself. Have you ever done something like that? What did you do? What do you feel like happened during that time? If you were going to recommend that to another Stuff Christians Like Book Club member, what would you suggest?

3. I love Ephesians 2:10 about us doing works that God prepared in advance for us. That's such a great reminder that it's not about me and my mission, it's about me being obedient to God's mission.

4. "His being is utterly complete and perfect, apart from humanity. He doesn't need me or you." Pg. 61. I love this and actually spoke on this idea at the Dave Ramsey organization back in October. I need to write about this at some point on SCL, but God doesn't need us, He loves us. There's a huge difference between those two mindsets.

5. Chapter 3 concludes with some questions I've been writing about a lot lately: "Are we in love with God or just His stuff?" "Do you love this God who is everything, or do you just love everything He gives you?" Those are great questions to ask yourself. How would you answer? For me, writing this book has forced me to answer those types of questions constantly. From the beginning, God has been asking me, "If the only life that changed from this book you're writing is your own, would that be enough? If all you get out of this experience is a closer relationship with me, is that enough?" Honestly, for a long time, the answer was no. I wanted money or admiration or approval or popularity or a bunch of other stuff. But in the last few months, I've started to realize how temporary and shallow all that stuff is when held up against the all consuming love God offers us.

6. "According to the account in Luke chapter 8, when a crowd started following Him, Jesus began speaking in parables –'so that' those who weren't genuinely listening wouldn't get it. When crowds gather today, speakers are extra conscious of communicating in a way that is accessible to everyone. Speakers don't use Jesus' tactic to eliminate people who are not sincere speakers." Page 66. How do we reconcile this paragraph with the seeker friendly approach to church? Is that even a helpful exercise?

7. Most of chapter 4 focuses on the list of what lukewarm people do. There are 18 different descriptions. Which descriptions could be applied to how you live? For me, I would say that I struggle most with the following:
"Lukewarm people tend to choose what is popular over what is right when they are in conflict." Pg. 69
"Lukewarm people are moved by stories about people who do radical things for Christ, yet they do not act." Pg. 70
"Lukewarm people think about life on earth much more often than eternity in heaven." Pg. 75
"Lukewarm people are continually concerned with playing it safe; they are slaves to the god of control." Pg. 77
"Lukewarm people do not live by faith; their lives are structured so they never have to." Pg. 78

8. "In the same way, any of you who does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple." Luke 14:33. What does giving up everything look like on a daily basis? Because I don't think it's a single act so much as it is a lifestyle.

9. "Is this idea of the non-fruit-bearing Christian something that we have concocted in order to make Christianity 'easier'?” Pg. 85. Good question. I wonder if we did invent the concept of a "casual Christian?"

10. "The reality is that, whether we acknowledge our wealth or not, being rich is a serious disadvantage spiritually." Pg. 90. I don’t know if I ever thought about it this way. I think it's really interesting that he follows this line up with the two stories of the rich man and the camel/needle and then Zacchaeus. I always knew he was a wee little man, but I never really thought about the situation the way he described it "The impossible happened that day –a rich man received his salvation!"

11. I'm not sure who Tim Kizziar is but he dropped a bomb when he said, "Our greatest fear as individuals and as a church should not be of failure but of succeeding at things in life that don't really matter." Pg. 93

12. Did you do the challenge Chan presented on page 94 where you take 1:Corinthians 13:4-8 and substitute your name where love was? "Jon is patient, Jon does not envy or boast." It would be hard for me to say that last one given how prone I am to arrogance.

13. "We disgust God when we weigh and compare Him against the things of this world." Pg. 97. Do we disgust God? If you're saved and covered in the blood of Christ, does God ever look upon you, and see your actions and say, "You disgust me?" I don't think Chan was saying that exactly, but that's how I read it and I think in my brokenness I could easily interpret that as a call to perform for God and earn His love by doing things that do not disgust Him. Again, not saying that Chan said that, just how the condemnation inside me wanted to take it.

Those are my thoughts. What did you think? What did you like? What did you dislike?

Let's talk.

Book Club Reminder - Wednesday Chapters 3-5

2009-01-26T16:12:00.000-08:00

Book Club Reminder - Wednesday, Chapters 3-5

Don't forget, on Wednesday, January 28 we're discussing chapters 3-5 of Francis Chan's book "Crazy Love." I can't wait to hear your thoughts on the "Lukewarm Christian" section.

See you on Wednesday.

Jon

Apathy is easy, but expensive.

2009-01-22T02:00:00.000-08:00

Apathy is easy, but expensive.

When I'm afraid of certain situations, I often try to pretend that I don’t care about the outcome. I insulate myself in a quilt of apathy, and tell everyone that will listen that I'm not really concerned about the future. Worse than that, I try to disguise my apathy with an air of holiness. Take the Stuff Christians Like book that I'm writing for instance. The other night I told my wife something like, "I don’t really care if it sells a ton of copies as long as God's will is done." She immediately called me on that lie, because she's great like that, but that thought is so deceptive. It's true, God's will is infinitely more important than the sales figures. I believe that, but because I'm afraid the book won't sell well I'm trying to avoid the hurt of that possibility by pretending I don't care now. And I've used the truth of God's will as a way to mask that fear in fake holiness. But in praying about that, in wrestling with the idea that I use apathy as an escape method, I realized something:

Apathy is easy, but expensive.

It costs you vulnerability.

It costs you honesty.

Above all it costs you hope.

And regardless of my fear, that's a price I am not willing to pay.

Next chunk of Crazy Love

2009-01-20T02:39:00.000-08:00

Next chunk of Crazy Love

Great discussion so far. It's been fun to see people with different ideas about the book "Crazy Love" checking in.

On Wednesday, January 28th, we'll be discussing chapters 3-5.

In the meantime, Katdish sent me an article that Catalyst did with Chan called "A Gathering Force."

Here is the intro paragraph. Check out the rest if you get a chance:

Is there any logic in believing that God started His Church as a Spirit-filled, loving body with the intention that it would evolve into entertaining, hour-long services? Was he hoping that one day people would be attracted to the Church not because they care for one another, not because they are devoted to Him, not because the supernatural occurs in their midst, but because of good music and entertainment?

The Stuff Christians Like Book Club - Francis Chan - Crazy Love

2009-01-14T02:59:00.000-08:00

The Stuff Christians Like Book Club - Francis Chan - Crazy Love

Today, we're going to talk about the first two chapters of Francis Chan's book, "Crazy Love: Overwhelmed by a Relentless God." If you read it, great. If you didn't, there's still time to join the SCLBC because we won't discuss the next section (chapters 3-5) until Wednesday, January 28th. You can buy the book here at Amazon.com or get it at your local library.

My hope is that this won't be me writing a book review and folks then responding to that book review. I'd rather treat this like a discussion, as if we all got together in someone's living room and just started talking about the book. So let's throw out some questions for each other, be honest about the things we liked, the things we were challenged by, the sections we would challenge etc.

The first chunk of Crazy Love - Pages 1 -52

I'll go first in simple numerical fashion:

1. Did you read the preface and the foreword?

2. I loved that Chan says upfront on page 18, "Don't worry-this isn't another book written to bash churches." I'm pretty tired of the whole "church as a pinata" approach to things.

3. I liked that on page 20, he described his initial church teachings as "incomplete" and not "incorrect." I think about that a lot because I'm afraid that as I mature I'll look back on something I wrote on a blog or a book and say, "Wow, I was really wrong about that." But I think to some degree, the more time we spend with God, the more time we spend in the Bible, the more we mature and hopefully grow passed our initial thoughts.

4. Did you go watch the online videos when the book told you to? I did eventually, but not right away. Sometimes I wasn't near a computer when I was reading it.

5. "God will not be tolerated," a statement on page 28, was really challenging to me.

6. "We don't get to decide who God is," on page 31 rocked me a little. All too often I wake up in the morning and try to dress up God like Mister Potatohead, "OK God, today, you're going to be a super helpful generous God. Here's a wheelbarrow to carry all the gifts you're going to give me." But I don't get to decide who He is.

7. I wanted to side hug the sentence, "Isn’t it a comfort to worship a God we cannot exaggerate?" (Page 31.)

8. I didn't love the soda can/ocean analogy on page 32. I felt like some of the other analogies in the book were a lot stronger.

9. "As much as we want God to explain himself to us, His creation, we are in no place to demand that He give an account to us." (Page 33) Do you ever do that? I do it all the time. "God, why hasn't this job come through yet, why is so and so being such a punk to me, why haven't you rescued me from this situation?" I think it's good to honestly and openly ask God questions, but demanding answers is a whole other thing. What answers do you demand from God?

10. I struggle with worry. I'm getting better at handling stress and worry, but anxiety is still a drug I sometimes try to get high on. Chan's section about worry starting on page 40 was great. From his excuse of "I couldn't really help it that I was the worrying kind" to his thought, "When I am consumed by my problems – stressed out about my life, my family, and my job – I actually convey the belief that I think the circumstances are more important than God's command to always rejoice," I was blown away. Am I the only one that missed that "rejoice" is a command?

11. I liked the movie extra analogy on page 42. I remember sitting on a train going through Italy once and looking out the window at all the villages and people speeding by and thinking, "None of these people know I exist or how important my silly problems and challenges are. Maybe I'm one small person in a much bigger story." Going to the beach always makes me feel like an extra because the grandness of God feels overwhelming there in a good way.

12. I wanted to clap when I read this section on page 45, "If life were stable, I'd never need God's help. Since it's not, I reach out for Him regularly. I am thankful for the unknowns and that I don’t have control, because it makes me run to God." I want to live that way and sometimes I do. But sometimes, I hate the unknowns, and think that if I was a "real Christian," I'd have a better plan for life and would have it all "figured out." Do you ever feel that way or do you embrace the unknowns like Chan?

13. The story of Stan Gerlach on page 46 made me cry, especially the line, "One second he was confessing Jesus; a second later, Jesus was confessing him!"

14. 1 Corinthians 3:15 is a tough verse to swallow: "If it is burned up, he will suffer loss; he himself will be saved, but only as one escaping through the flames." I've never thought about the idea that I could lead a quiet Christian life and end up "as one escaping through the flames." Have you?

Those are the things I would say if I were sitting on a flowered hand me down couch in my living room.

Did you like the first two chapters? Was there anything you loved or hated?

Introduce yourself if you don’t mind with your first comment. First name and city, state, country. (If you’re comfortable with that)

I’m Jon and I live in Alpharetta, Georgia which is in the United States.

Let's talk about the book.

The car crash, the note, the beauty of things that don't make sense.

2009-01-01T08:27:00.000-08:00

The car crash, the note, the beauty of things that don't make sense.

There are a few reasons I love what pastor Shaun King wrote about a car crash he was in:

1. The title of his post was "I experienced a miracle and I'm not a loon."

2. It contains these words:
"Knowing that I would not be able to talk once they started operating on my face (while I was awake), I began to beg nurses to write a note on my chest that said,

"I still believe in the Goodness of the Lord"

After begging two nurses to write the note and trying to tell them that I wasn't crazy, the third nurse wrote the note and placed it on my chest. I asked her to not let anyone remove the note and pointed to it every chance I got. It is on my chest with my blood on it in this photo.

3. It reminds me that God is big and wild and unexplainable.

Click here to read the story

Everybody is somebody.

2008-12-27T07:28:00.000-08:00

Everybody is somebody.

"Imagine if you didn't have a home life. Imagine if everybody had pretty much given up on you. Now imagine what it would mean for hundreds of people to suddenly believe in you."

That's a quote from an article a friend sent me the other day. A high school football coach decided to cheer for the other team, a group of players currently serving jail time. In essence, when the world told them they were nobody, this coach showed them that everybody is somebody in God's eyes.

It's a beautiful example of what it means to love your neighbor.

Check it out if you get a chance.

How much?

2008-12-23T03:00:00.000-08:00

A friend in Australia sent me this clip. In it, Penn, of the comic duo "Penn & Teller" asks a really bold question after a stranger gives him a Bible. His explanation of why we desperately need to witness to people completely caught me off guard.

two words, one lie

2008-12-20T13:00:00.000-08:00

two words, one lie

The devil is more than willing, and very able, to tell you what a Christian should be.

A Christian should feel happy all the time.
A Christian should be rich.
A Christian should never doubt.
A Christian should know more Bible by now.
A real Christian should never have a marriage that is broken, a child that is run away or a hope that feels small and extinguished.
A real Christian should never be hurt or lonely or sad or angry or stressed or depressed or confused.

Painting a picture of what a Christian should be is perhaps the devil's favorite activity.

But, he will never be able to tell you what a Christian can be.

He cannot plumb the depths of God's love within us.
He cannot fathom the might of God's power within us.
He cannot comprehend the relentless pursuit of God's grace within us.

He cannot tell you what a Christian can be, but he will whisper aggressively what a Christian should be.

The challenge is not to confuse those two words, can and should. Because one produces shame and condemnation, attempting to put limits on a God that is limitless. The other, shines a light on a God in which all things are possible.

Can and should.

Which one do you hear most?

Which one are you listening to?

Awake and asleep.

2008-12-16T19:34:00.001-08:00

Awake and asleep.

I read an article in last month’s Men’s Journal about some coal miners that died in a tragic accident. While trapped miles under the earth, with their oxygen running out and death coming quickly, the men decided to write some notes to the people they loved.

One note said:

“It wasn’t bad. I just went to sleep.”

That is a gift,

if you are dying.

That is the only thing you can give your family and the people that love you. That was a kindness, a man letting his family know that he did not suffer. I was overwhelmed by the selflessness of that action. With only a few short breaths left, that man did not focus on the pain he was in, but instead used his last energy to do everything he could to ease the pain of the people he loved.

But if you are alive,

if you still have years ahead of you, if you are still above ground, breathing and living, that note is note a gift.

It is a curse.

It is a note that I wrote to describe my own life for many, many years.

“It wasn’t bad. I just went to sleep.”

Things weren’t horrible, I just went to sleep. I stopped caring about anyone but me. I stopped giving and focused on taking. I let go of risk and settled into a nice, safe, comfortable life.

“It wasn’t bad. I just went to sleep.”

I am tired of living that way. Tired of writing that note. Tired of being those words.

I don’t know if you’re like me and it’s easy for you to fall asleep. Easy to focus on the wrong things. Easy to miss the love and the life and the joy God keeps whispering in the corners of your day.

Wake up.

Wake up.

Wake up.

That is my prayer for 2009. That I would not sleep. That I would not live a life that is really not all that alive. That I would remember Revelation 16:15, “blessed is he who stays awake.”

What kind of note will you write this year?

How to love a prodigal - part 1

2008-07-22T09:03:00.001-07:00

How to love a prodigal - part 1

One of the first things that happens in a prodigal situation, a moment in which a child emotionally, spiritually, mentally or physically runs away from home is that a moral chasm is opened. I'm not talking about the obvious gulf that exists between parent and child in this situation. The separation of geographical distance, age or ideas. I'm taking about the distance between wrong and right, good and evil, clean and dirty.

What happens is that even though you might not try to do this, it's often tempting to live your life better when your son or daughter leaves the farm so to speak. To be a brighter light of God and Christian values and truth and peace. To show them more clearly the things they are missing by their voluntary decision to leave the safety of your home. You can see this in communication styles. I am sarcastic and if someone does not respond to that, I just get more and more sarcastic. What was a tiny distance becomes huge as they back away further and I keep going and going, thinking that more of the thing that has separated us will fix the separation.

I think that is noble in a way, but it does the opposite of what we intend. We think it will make the mistakes they are making easier to see. That it will shine a light on their situation. But it doesn't always do that. Like the silence of a church sanctuary amplifies the loudness of a cell phone ring, the righteousness of your behavior sometimes makes the wrongness of your child bigger.

Instead of closing the gap between us, it actually makes it greater. It stretches the distance further and further as the parent comes to represent the good and the child comes to represent the bad. Sides are drawn with more distinction instead of less and the gap grows exponentially.

How do you sidestep this? You might not be able to instantly close the distance between you in this moment, but how do you at the bare minimum keep it from earthquaking open even more?

You share your junk.

You tell your story. The good parts, the bad parts, the beautiful parts, the ugly parts. You fight the urge to simply multiply your good qualities as a parent and instead do the opposite. You confess your faults. You confess your own trash and share the grossness of your own life with your child.

That might feel like the opposite of what you should do. That might be exactly what a million books on parenting tell you. The only research I am pulling from is my own life and the lives of dozens of prodigals I know. But here is what happens when you share your junk in the middle of a prodigal story:

1. You earn life currency.
Even if you've been a horrible parent and are in no position to be labeled as the good one in this story, there is still going to be an amazing amount of guilt your child is dealing with right now. They will think you could never understand what they are going through or why they are making the decisions they are making. By sharing your story, you show them that you speak their language too. And that you are not perfect.

2. You close the gap a little.
You can't instantly eliminate the gap and maintain some healthy boundaries that actually teach your child the impact of consequences. But you can take small steps toward them by admitting your own weaknesses. You take subtle steps from the "good side" of the situation and take powerful steps toward the "honest side" of the situation when you talk openly. It's like deliberately tearing down the white wall of righteousness that grew tall the minute they left. And if they have legitimate reasons for leaving because of your hurtful actions, it gives you the space to confess what you've done wrong.

3. You remove the "inventor's curse."
I think I made this term up so it requires some explanation. When we mess up, we are immediately inflicted by the "inventor's curse." This is that little voice inside us that says, "No one has ever failed like this. No one has ever done something so wrong. You are the only one in the world that struggles with this." And so your child sits alone, on an island, weighed down heavy by the inventor's curse. Sharing your junk with them puts you on that island with them and destroys the inventor's curse.

This idea is difficult to execute because you don't want to be the parent that says, "I smoked pot too when I was in college. No big deal. Party on!" You have to be hyper careful that what you share is not romanticized by your words or made light of. And you have to be very smart about what you choose to share. This is not a full disclosure moment, a husband being honest with a wife. You have to make sure that in your confession you do not simply hand them something heavy to hold. The last thing a prodigal child needs is to now wrestle with the weight of some deep dark secret you carried for decades. You are not confessing to be free of something, you are confessing to share something.

Counselors and people that are trained are so much smarter than I am when it comes to this stuff. And I can't speak highly enough of the four I have seen in the last 10 years. But if you're not ready to see a counselor yet, hopefully you are ready to read a blog and maybe wrestle with the problem of the prodigal in a slightly different way.

How to love a prodigal - part 1

2008-07-22T09:03:00.000-07:00

One of the first things that happens in a prodigal situation, a moment in which a child emotionally, spiritually, mentally or physically runs away from home is that a moral chasm is opened. I'm not talking about the obvious gulf that exists between parent and child in this situation. The separation of geographical distance, age or ideas. I'm taking about the distance between wrong and right, good and evil, clean and dirty.

What happens is that even though you might not try to do this, it's often tempting to live your life better when your son or daughter leaves the farm so to speak. To be a brighter light of God and Christian values and truth and peace. To show them more clearly the things they are missing by their voluntary decision to leave the safety of your home. You can see this in communication styles. I am sarcastic and if someone does not respond to that, I just get more and more sarcastic. What was a tiny distance becomes huge as they back away further and I keep going and going, thinking that more of the thing that has separated us will fix the separation.

I think that is noble in a way, but it does the opposite of what we intend. We think it will make the mistakes they are making easier to see. That it will shine a light on their situation. But it doesn't always do that. Like the silence of a church sanctuary amplifies the loudness of a cell phone ring, the righteousness of your behavior sometimes makes the wrongness of your child bigger.

Instead of closing the gap between us, it actually makes it greater. It stretches the distance further and further as the parent comes to represent the good and the child comes to represent the bad. Sides are drawn with more distinction instead of less and the gap grows exponentially.

How do you sidestep this? You might not be able to instantly close the distance between you in this moment, but how do you at the bare minimum keep it from earthquaking open even more?

You share your junk.

You tell your story. The good parts, the bad parts, the beautiful parts, the ugly parts. You fight the urge to simply multiply your good qualities as a parent and instead do the opposite. You confess your faults. You confess your own trash and share the grossness of your own life with your child.

That might feel like the opposite of what you should do. That might be exactly what a million books on parenting tell you. The only research I am pulling from is my own life and the lives of dozens of prodigals I know. But here is what happens when you share your junk in the middle of a prodigal story:

1. You earn life currency.
Even if you've been a horrible parent and are in no position to be labeled as the good one in this story, there is still going to be an amazing amount of guilt your child is dealing with right now. They will think you could never understand what they are going through or why they are making the decisions they are making. By sharing your story, you show them that you speak their language too. And that you are not perfect.

2. You close the gap a little.
You can't instantly eliminate the gap and maintain some healthy boundaries that actually teach your child the impact of consequences. But you can take small steps toward them by admitting your own weaknesses. You take subtle steps from the "good side" of the situation and take powerful steps toward the "honest side" of the situation when you talk openly. It's like deliberately tearing down the white wall of righteousness that grew tall the minute they left. And if they have legitimate reasons for leaving because of your hurtful actions, it gives you the space to confess what you've done wrong.

3. You remove the "inventor's curse."
I think I made this term up so it requires some explanation. When we mess up, we are immediately inflicted by the "inventor's curse." This is that little voice inside us that says, "No one has ever failed like this. No one has ever done something so wrong. You are the only one in the world that struggles with this." And so your child sits alone, on an island, weighed down heavy by the inventor's curse. Sharing your junk with them puts you on that island with them and destroys the inventor's curse.

This idea is difficult to execute because you don't want to be the parent that says, "I smoked pot too when I was in college. No big deal. Party on!" You have to be hyper careful that what you share is not romanticized by your words or made light of. And you have to be very smart about what you choose to share. This is not a full disclosure moment, a husband being honest with a wife. You have to make sure that in your confession you do not simply hand them something heavy to hold. The last thing a prodigal child needs is to now wrestle with the weight of some deep dark secret you carried for decades. You are not confessing to be free of something, you are confessing to share something.

Counselors and people that are trained are so much smarter than I am when it comes to this stuff. And I can't speak highly enough of the four I have seen in the last 10 years. But if you're not ready to see a counselor yet, hopefully you are ready to read a blog and maybe wrestle with the problem of the prodigal in a slightly different way.

The lady in the corner.

2008-07-20T02:30:00.000-07:00

The lady in the corner.

One of the greatest benefits of writing a blog is that you get to hear some really beautiful stories. The other day, I wrote a post about how there are essentially three types of pastors' wives. It will a silly little post, with very little grit to it, but one comment really surprised me. I wanted to share it with you.

I had an English pastor's wife growing up. I think she went to some dark and gloomy boarding school that taught courses like Missionary Tea Parties and Slamming Certain People Without Ever Cussing. She was 4 feet nothing and whenever we'd have a sleep over with her daughters, she wore heeled slippers late at night, in case someone came over and saw how short she was. All I wanted to say was "Lady, you're a hobbit, get over it." She was as tough as nails and as kind as a Queen.

The event that sealed her "scary wonderfulness" in my mind was her daughter's birthday party. It was the very early 1970's. We were a noisy crowd of happy little girls who were giddy and squealing. But in the corner sat an older woman none of us knew. She just sat and smiled at us, and then she'd look out the window to somewhere far away. I asked my friend's mom/The aforementioned Pastor's Wife who this woman was and why she just watched us. My friend's mom replied, "well, she just wanted to be around us at the party, to enjoy all the fun we're having." I smiled and said "Oh".

Then years later I realized WHY this woman was allowed to sit quietly and just observe some happy children. I noticed at the party that she had big numbers written all down her arm, but I didn't realized until I was older that they weren't written in pen, they were tattoos.

And my very first Pastor's Wife had allowed this lonely, childless mother to spend time in the company of happy, healthy children.

I have yet to see that level of suffering in the 38 years since. Or that level of kindness.

It's funny when it happens, but sometimes people show you the most perfectly simple, perfectly stunning ways to live out your faith. Thank you JennyM.

One more reason I should be a cheesy minister.

2008-07-17T11:47:00.000-07:00

One more reason I should be a cheesy minister.

The other day someone asked me about making fun of the church. I told them I didn't think I was making fun of the church. I feel like my mission is to clear away the debris that sometimes presents us from seeing the beauty of faith. Whether that means silly products, old thought patterns or a million other things, I think there is great power when we can collectively identify and discuss the things that sometimes stand between us and the core of our relationships with Christ. We might not agree, but we can at least open up some discussion.

Another reason I don't feel like I am punching the church is that the target of most of my finger pointing is me. Things I have struggled with, things that tangle me and trip me, stupid things I do. That is hopefully what is on parade more than anything else. And I want to do that today.

What I am going to tell you is the kind of thing I would usually tease. It's just kind of cheesy but for so long I've been a Christian snob, throwing little rocks at ideas that don't fit my definition of "cool," whatever that is.

So here's my idea. Last night while mowing the lawn, I was mentally writing a post in my head. I kept asking God, "why." Why am I writing this post? Why am I sharing personal stuff? Why am I doing it? As a former Journalism major, it's part of the 5 Ws (Who, What, When, Where and Why.) I think those are good questions to ask, but sometimes I obsess on them, demanding a clear answer from God like I'm a petulant child.

I felt like in between lines in the lawn He responded with, "Let me worry about the 5 Ws. You focus on the one M." I said, "What M? What one M are you talking about?" And He replied, "Me."

There are times when I get details and times when I don't. I didn't get an answer to my "why" last night, but I did get a reminder, although perhaps cheesy, about what matters more.

God is where my focus needs to be. The one M.

That's pretend, right?

2008-07-14T02:00:00.000-07:00

That's pretend, right?

It rained today for a few hours and it felt weird because we haven't had a ton of that in the last year in Georgia. We've had some off and on showers, but we've been struggling with a drought that has robbed our lakes and placed several water bans on our neighborhoods.

The weird thing is that until you don't get any rain, you take it for granted. You just expect that it will happen. That is what naturally happens. Water falls from the sky, clouds open up, flowers and trees and birds get a drink. But when you don't have rain, when it just stops for a week or a month or a year, you suddenly realize how much you've been taking it for granted.

The other day, my daughter dropped a child-sized nuclear bomb on me that reminded me of something else I have taken for granted.

We were looking at a book on storms, something she loves right now, and came to a page about drought and famine. In the corner of the page was a little boy from Ethiopia. He was starving, with ribs sticking out and flies covering his small face. I kept flipping the pages but L.E. made me stop and return to that one. She asked, "What's that?" I told her, "That's a little boy that doesn't have enough food to eat. He is poor." She thought for a few seconds and then responded, "That's not real though. That's pretend right?"

This simple question floored me. In her mind, deep within the truth that is the heart of a four year old, she could literally not fathom a child ever being hungry. The idea that someone would starve did not make any sense. Death by poverty did not register with her. She thought it was unreal.

I confess that I take poverty for granted. I flipped right by that photo without registering even the faintest emotion I throw at ABC's Extreme Home Makeover. I act like poverty is natural. That starving is just something that happens. That kids without food is the way the world is.

But maybe it's not. Maybe when Christ said he wants us to have the faith of a child, this is exactly what He was talking about. That it is unacceptable for a child to starve to death. That it is not right or natural for another human being to die of a preventable disease or a mosquito bite or water that is polluted.

I support a few charities and tonight I registered a new website, unrealpoverty.com. There is nothing up right now and I don't know if I will ever be able to do anything with it. But if things continue to go the way they are going and people to continue to build a community around the conversations we are having online, maybe someday I'll get to start a charity. Maybe someday I won't take poverty for granted. Maybe someday I'll help make it unreal.

The bottles that come back.

2008-07-12T05:21:00.000-07:00

The bottles that come back.

I think I've mentioned before that my fear about the great opportunities that the site Stuff Christians Like is opening up is that I'll waste everything. That I won't manage it the right way or maintain it the right way and the whole thing will just fall apart.

When I told my counselor Chuck that a few weeks ago, he said that I should stop worrying. He said that "God doesn't waste anything. He doesn't work that way. He uses everything to His purposes and if you feel like you could waste it that means you feel like you created it and you're not God."

That was a very freeing thing to hear. That in essence gave me permission to enjoy it rather than try to maintain it. To take part in the accidental community that is developing right now instead of trying to hold on to it.

I think that one of the reasons I was worried about wasting things is that it seems like we rarely get to see the way God uses what He calls us to do. Certainly a mission trip has very visible results. You can see that a child was fed, a mother was comforted, a baby was clothed. But often, it feels like God calls us to do something for Him and we do, and it's like a note we put into a bottle and then promptly throw into the ocean of life.

That guy at work He calls us to reach out to switches jobs and we never hear from him again. The neighbor we walk through a divorce moves to another town and disappears. Our prayers for people line the shore like a thousand bottles floating away from us without resolution or closure.
But sometimes they come back to us. Sometimes, God blesses us with the gift of knowing exactly how He used what we do for Him. And that can be a very beautiful thing.

The other night, I shared a story my counselor had told me on my site, 97secondswithgod.com. It was a short story about how God loves when we wrestle with Him because it's impossible to wrestle with someone far away. We feel guilty about it, because we think we should trust instead of wrestle but He sees it as a sign of intimacy.

Here is what a reader said on my site in response:

Jon, my wife has stage 4 metastatic breast cancer, and it looks like she's entering the beginning of the end. As you might imagine, I've been wrestling with God quite a bit lately.

When I read your words just now I broke down and cried because the guilt, frustration, fear and anger were instantly replaced by the image of a loving God. Thank you so much.

God is weird. A man I've never met, in Oregon, a state I've never been to, dealing with a disease I've never dealt with, got the bottle he needed. I threw it out into the ocean and God sent it across the country.

That's how He works. It's not my talent or anything I'm doing that matters. What matters is that I throw out the bottles. He wants them. He wants us to throw them out even if we can't begin to imagine how He will use them.

So today, let's throw some bottles.

Spray on faith.

2008-06-08T06:50:00.000-07:00

Spray on faith.

There is a new housing development near our neighborhood. They have about one hundred houses and people are starting to move in on a fairly regular basis. The other day while we were driving by it, my wife pointed out something interesting.

Instead of buying new pine straw for the landscaping that rings the property, the development decided to paint it. Instead of doing something new and true, they simply gave the old, sun worn pine straw a darker shade of paint.

I've never seen that before and maybe it's better for the environment. Maybe, instead of using real pine straw, painting it is a clever way to recycle it without wasting anything. I'm not a yard guy so I am admittedly not a pine straw expert. But something about doing that reminded me of faith.

I think that at times in my life, I have been guilty of spraying my heart with "holy spray." Instead of doing something new and true, like laying fresh pine straw down, I instead just do things that look holy on the outside. I spray myself with big, long prayers or visible acts of kindness that are done in front of other people so that they will think I am a good Christian. I put on a great show, but underneath my actions is old pine straw that is getting worn out despite the new layer of paint.

Worse yet, I think people that aren't Christians can tell when we do this. Much like my wife pointing out the colored pine straw, they can see that all we have done is change our surface. They see that we are faking it and much like DC Talk once said, the hypocrisy of it all chases people away from the Lord.

I don't have a solution for this, as I've just noticed it, but I do have a prayer. I pray that this week, at work, at home, in what I write, in what I do, I will lay down the new and true, instead of just putting a coat of paint on my life.

The good luck algorithm.

2008-05-23T16:29:00.001-07:00

The good luck algorithm.

I recently had the opportunity to hear an MIT professor speak at a conference. The topic of her discourse was casinos and it was terribly fascinating. Honestly, some of the things she told us were pretty startling. There was one idea in particular that I have been unable to shake and that is, the "good luck algorithm."

You see, casinos gather reams and reams of information about the people that play in them. They study the ergonomics of the slot machines, the impact of different lighting systems, the number of times a certain type of person will play a certain type of game, etc. But the scariest thing they measure is something called your "pain point."

That's a phrase they use to describe your threshold for abuse. A pain point represents how much money you can lose before you'll get up and leave. A pain point represents how taken advantage of you will be before you exit the casino. A pain point represents your breaking point.

Why do they measure it? So they know when to start the "good luck algorithm."

Here is how it works: When you hit your pain point, casinos see that happening and will set in motion a process to win you back. Suddenly, as you walk down the long carpeted hall to the exit, someone taps you on the shoulder "randomly." They say, "excuse me, we just wanted to thank you for being such a loyal supporter of the casino. Would you like a free steak dinner and a coupon for five turns on a slot machine?" You smile a little. The pain starts to melt away. "Hey," you think, "maybe this place isn't so bad after all." You walk back in and start to play again.

The reason I mention this story is that I think the devil works the same way. Not that casinos are demonic, but that the devil has his own algorithm, the "bad luck algorithm." When things are going well in your life, when things are moving along smoothly, suddenly someone taps you on the shoulder, "Hey, Mark, is that you? It's me Pamela, we dated in college? Wow, it's been so long, you still look great. Haven't lost those college muscles." Or maybe it's just the opposite, in the midst of a really challenging time, you see the chance for some momentary escape. A sign for a strip club suddenly feels larger and more inviting than it used to. The chance to buy those shoes and never tell your husband about the money suddenly materializes. Some temptation dances it's way magically across your field of vision. In an obvious way. In a subtle way, it doesn't matter.

Wherever you are, remember, the tap on your shoulder is never accidental. It's never coincidence. It's never "just one of those things."

It's the bad luck algorithm. And if you're not careful to tell God you need help with the math of your life, the odds are going to be stacked against you.

What the barber taught me accidentally.

2008-05-17T12:28:00.000-07:00

What the barber taught me accidentally.

I am not fancy. You might think I am, but I am not. I shop the clearance section of Marshall's, eat 97 cent Totino's pizzas and get my haircut at "Fan Favorites." That's not really the name of the store but in order to share what I am about to share, I needed to switch it up a little.

Things are kind of crazy right now. Some cool stuff is happening on the book end. Some really awesome, smart people are asking me for advice. Some opportunities I have always dreamed about are opening up. But, amidst all of that, is the temptation to get drunk on the idea of doing something "big."

I will undoubtedly share this on stuff christians like someday (and feel like I have written about this idea before), but for you faithful few, here is the idea I am talking about. I often think that in order for my faith to "count," I have to do something "big" for God. I have to change the world. I have to win a whole country to Him. I have to shake the very foundation of the earth with what I am able to accomplish.

The problem is, when you think that way, you start to define your faith and your life and your worth that way. If no one ever reads my blogs again, then I am not a good Christian. If the book does not get published, I have failed God. If I don't ever speak at the Catalyst Conference, then this was all a waste.

But recently, a barber at Fan Favorites changed that for me.

Fan Favorites is one of those sports-themed places where 98 televisions are blaring ESPN and there are sports posters all over the place. The other day I went in and the woman cutting my hair started to tell me about her life. In a matter of minutes, she told me that her husband of 30 years had left her 6 weeks ago. The pain and hurt in her was palpable and although I certainly didn't push, she continued to share. From a voice that sounded gray, if that's possible, she told me about how things fell apart. She told me the sadness. She told me the regret.

When she was done, I told her the best marriage truth I had ever heard:
The one thing men want above all is to know that they are enough. That their masculinity, their power, their value, their strength is enough for their wife.

The one thing women want above all is to know that they are not too much. That they can be as big and as beautiful and as powerful as God made them without overshadowing a man who is too fragile or insecure.

I didn't tell her to fix her marriage or what the Bible says about divorce. I just shared an idea with her, but when I did, it was like a fuse was lit.

"Yes!" she said, "He didn't want me to go back to school. He didn't want me to have my own friends or outside interests." She paused, "Since we've been apart I have started taking care of myself and have lost weight and started to make new friends." She started to get happy and by the time I left, this once shy, pain stricken barber was shouting to me when I was at the door, "You look great. It is a great haircut because I am a great stylist!"

I didn't change her life. She and I didn't figure out divorce or come up with a plan that other people should follow. This post isn't really even about divorce. This is about realizing that for God and for us, it's about people. Not selling books, not selling out speaking gigs, not getting big or successful. It's about loving on people.

That's what I felt like God said in that moment, "See Jon, I'm glad that more people are reading your sites, but that's not what the goal should be. The goal should be loving on people. That conversation with that barber is every bit as world changing as writing a book. Don't ever underestimate the power of a personal conversation."

And that's what the barber helped me learn.

Michael Jordan and the Prodigal Son and Me.

2008-05-05T18:18:00.000-07:00

Michael Jordan and the Prodigal Son and Me.

I met Michael Jordan one summer while he was golfing at a country club in Pinehurst, North Carolina. My uncle and his family lived on the golf course and I was spending a few weeks there before I started the seventh grade.

When word spread that Jordan and a gang of other important people in the clubhouse that morning we all went down to get a closer look. This was before Jordan became human. Before the gambling and his father’s murder and the failed baseball experiment and the infidelity. Jordan was a God at the time and I had a Nike swoosh mark shaved into the back of my head to prove it. I told everyone in Pinehurst that summer that I had my haircut that way as a tribute to a friend in Boston that had been shot and killed for a pair of Air Jordans.

I’m not sure why I lied like that. In the ninth grade after I shaved stripes in my left eyebrow (insert your own Vanilla Ice joke here) I told everyone I knew that my neighbor Kerri Kapapolous had done it while I was asleep. She yelled at me in front of my whole world in the cafeteria during lunch. For at least a week I spent my lunchbreak in the school library pretending to read the paper because when it was unfolded and held upright in your hands it offered a pretty good hiding place.

Maybe I’m like Samson, razors bring out the worst in me, but Michael Jordan didn’t know any of that. Neither did Dean Smith or Dr. J, who were with him.

They all signed the back of the shirt as well as a couple of random rich looking white guys. If I ever become a random rich guy and I’m having dinner with Lebron James and some awkward eighth grader comes to the table and asks me for my autograph cause he assumes I’m famous too I hope I’d say “You don’t want my autograph kid, I’m just a random rich guy.”

Later that day with the autographed shirt safely tucked in a drawer I went back down to the clubhouse. It had been 3 or 4 hours and I wanted to see if I could get Jordan’s autograph on a piece of paper to frame.

The party had already finished golfing and all the fans had gone home. I saw Jordan walking to his car in the parking lot. I ran out after him and said “excuse me Mr. Jordan, can I please have your autograph?”

He stopped in his tracks and turned, a golf bag resting high on shoulders that towered over me. With a look that froze opponents across the planet he said “didn’t I already sign you kid?”

Life is Limited
In the real world, in parking lots in Pinehurst, North Carolina, life is limited. Your hero turns to you and tells you that he’s not going to give you another autograph. Your hero tells you he remembers you and that you’re not getting a second signature, the only thing you want that day. That stupid summer, with a lopsided swoosh mark growing back in the back of your head and a mouth full of lies.

Sometimes I think God is like that. Bothered by me, tired of my requests for his time, even if it’s just 3 seconds for him to sign off on some prayer I’m saying or need I’m sure I can’t live without.

He’s on his way somewhere important after a round of golf with Moses and Elijah or Elisha whichever one plays. I’m chasing him down in the parking lot. He turns with his big God golf clubs and he looks down at me. And he says in that massive voice of his “Didn’t I already forgive you kid?”

Forgiveness is the thing I ask for the most. In my head maybe I know that God’s forgiveness is eternal and inexhaustible but in my heart I feel like he’s going to run out of them. That he’s got a limited supply. And I’m burning them up, one by one, sin by sin.

The Day After the Party
I’ve read the story about the prodigal son more than anything else in the Bible. If you’ve messed up life like I have it’s a pretty good read. I think when you get arrested they should read you that to you right after your Miranda rights. Imagine you’re in the car handcuffed and the cop in the passenger seat is just up there with the NIV version. I think that’d be a nice way to take a little sting out of going to jail.

Part of the reason I’ve read that story so many times though is that I think there’s something missing from it. I feel like there’s some verse or passage that I might have skipped that makes the whole thing make sense. It seems too good to be true. The prodigal son takes his inheritance, blows it on fast living, ends up in a pig pen and then gets a party thrown for him when he returns home. I’ve always wondered what the day after the party was like:

The first rays of sunshine crept across the floor and landed on a pile of party favors being swept up by a servant. A welcome home banner was being taken down and across the house the sounds of morning reverberated.

In his old bedroom, the prodigal son rolls over and slowly opens his eyes. He’d dreamt it so often, dreamed of this place so often he didn’t believe it was real. Those nights in the dark, curled under a bush or beside the barn when his money was gone and his hope with it, he’d wondered if he’d ever know safety again. He sat up, surprised to find himself there, laughing at the memories of the night before. The feast, the party, the ridiculousness of it all. His family that celebrated his return as if his absence had only increased their love for him, amplified it. There was a knock on the door. He had a door again, that was something he had missed.

The head of a servant peered in:

“Sir, your father is waiting for you in the kitchen.” This servant didn’t go to seminary either and didn’t seem that concerned that in Biblical times “kitchen” was definitely the wrong word to use.

With a yawn and a scratch of his head the prodigal son got up. He put on his clothes and made his way to the kitchen. There at a small table sat his father.

“Sit down son.” He said, motioning to a chair across from him.

“Thank you for the party father. I never expected that and …”

“Son, we need to go over the list.” His father said, interrupting him.

“The list?”

“Yes” he replied, touching a large pile of blank paper with his hand. “We need to make a list of all the money you spent, all the mistakes you made and all the people you hurt. Then we need to figure out how you start repaying your debt.”

“I had a plan father. I had plan when I was walking home but when I saw you running I didn’t think I’d need it. At the party I forget what my plan was.” The son said, with a voice of shame and sorrow that had taken but a brief hiatus during the previous night’s celebration.

“Well, you’ve got the rest of your life for it to come back to you.” The father said taking out a pen and writing “family inheritance” at the top of the list.

I would say that most of my life this is how I would have written the second part of that story, the directors cut if you will, an alternative ending that was too harsh for the version they released in the Bible.

The father’s anxious sprint toward the lost son doesn’t make any sense. That’s not how life works. People pay for their mistakes. They don’t get a party for them. When you return home from wasting your inheritance on the world your father says “didn’t I already bless you kid?” End of story.

Forgiveness
I don’t understand forgiveness and it’s always depressing to me when I read a book that tells me that’s the first step of the Christian walk, believing that God forgives you. If I can’t get past that first step than the rest of it, all the rest of it remains completely closed to me.

It’s not that I think I don’t need forgiveness. I just don’t understand how it’s possible. If I can’t earn it, than it’s out of my control and I’m powerless.

I remember the first time I ever knew how outrageous and insane real forgiveness was. I had gotten myself into some serious trouble at work. The kind of trouble that’s so big and ugly it makes you ashamed that there are people in your life close enough to you to get some of the trouble spilled on them. I wanted to push everyone away, to expel people from the planetary system that was me and just go float somewhere and die.

I called my wife on the phone and told her as much.

“I’m sorry you met me.” I said through angry, frightened tears. I was desperate for her to go, to pull away from me so I could inflict pain on only one person. The person I felt deserved it the most. Me.

“I love you.” She yelled through the phone.

“How can you say that? That doesn’t make any sense.” I responded.

“You don’t get to decide who I love. I love you. That’s my decision. You can’t take that away from me. I love you. I choose to love you.” She repeated words like these over and over again. She attacked me with love that day. And forgiveness I didn’t deserve. Forgiveness I couldn’t earn or make sense of.

I was overwhelmed that day. And I think that was such a thin sliver of what God’s forgiveness is like, how big and nonsensical is love is. I heard a minister once say that his forgiveness, God’s grace is given wastefully. He pours it out on us in such abundance that it’s almost wasteful.

The tenth party
I have to confess that most days I still think there’s a list God will ask me to work through the day after he throws me that welcome home party. I have a hard time understanding how something can be true and illogical at the same time. And so much of God is that way.

But some days, when I least expect it, in ways I can’t control, I believe a different day after for the prodigal son.

The first rays of sunshine creep across a dusty road and grate against the eyelids of the prodigal son trying to sleep uncomfortably on a bed of gravel. His teeth felt dirty, his mouth and hands stained with the red of cheap wine. A long scratch ran across his cheek, a shoe was angled beneath his head for a pillow. How many times did this make he thought from the part inside him that still remembered returning home. He was doing so well, things were so happy but his never agains always seemed to fail him in the end. How long would he be gone this time?

Miles away, an anxious father stands by the front window of his house.

“Sir, I checked his bedroom and the barn. His things are missing. He’s left.”

“I know.” The father says with sad eyes.

And then with slow steps he walks to a large closet and motions to the servant.

“Help me with this Welcome Home Banner.” He said pulling one from a pile of a thousand.

“Today could be the day he returns.”

(I wrote this about a year ago and took it down off my blog but a few folks asked for it to return. So despite it being really long, I put it back up.)

Why I am back in counseling.

2008-04-21T04:10:00.001-07:00

Why I am back in counseling.

Last week I started seeing counselor #3 for the first time in about a year. The reason I am going to see him again is that for reasons beyond my understanding and ability, the site stuff christians like has exploded. And to tell you the truth, I fear that without surrounding myself with wise counsel, I will become an arrogant jerk. Or more of one, since some days I am already there.

Arrogance is one of those traits that we sometimes give a free pass. We say someone is "driven" or "focused" instead of calling them prideful. But I read something in 2 Timothy that challenged me this morning. Here is what 2 Timothy 3:1 says:

But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days.

That's a little scary sounding and for good reason. In the Old Testament, when things were terrible, people did horrible things. They murdered pregnant women, ate their children to prevent starving and killed each other for false Gods. So when the verse warns of terrible times it's difficult not to think of a particularly dark and bloody future. But here's what the next verse says:

People will be lovers of themselves,

Wow. I thought that threat of "terrible times" would be punctuated with an example of something horrible. Murder. Genocide. Cannibalism. Certainly those things are available in other parts of the Bible, but Paul didn't pick them. He picked arrogance. Out of the pantheon of sin, the one he referenced first as a sign of the last days was that "people will be lovers of themselves." In the next few verses he further drives home the point by calling out the words, "boastful, proud and abusive."

That's why I am in counseling again. It has been a joy and an honor to be part of stuff christians like. And soon I am going to announce some really cool things that are coming down the road. But I hear the siren's call of arrogance. I hear the temptation to think this is about me and not about God. I see love letters written from me to me. And I realize that alone, I am not strong enough to ignore them. Alone, I will help usher in terrible times with my arrogance. Alone, I will fall again and again.

That's why I am back in counseling.

What this weekend holds.

2008-04-17T16:46:00.000-07:00

If past behavior is a predictor of future behavior, I am not good at making decisions. I will make many, many bad decisions in the future. I will fail. I will choose the wrong door. I will go for option 3 when clearly option 2 was where God was waiting.

But recently I read something in 2 Timothy 2:4 that shook my snowglobe so to speak. It was not some massive revelation. I did not hear the pitter patter of angel wings in my ears. I was not instantly enrobed in a beam of heavenly light. I just realized something that I think you might realize too. Here is what the verse says:

"No one serving as a soldier gets involved in civilian affairs."

Feel free to insert your own "I'm in the Lord's army joke," but I think there's something else to this idea. I think that when you look at this a little closer, a simple truth jumps out:

In the wrong activity, all the options are bad.

Sometimes I get so focused on making a good decision that I don't take the time to even look at the affair. I worried about which job God wanted me to take in Atlanta for the longest time without even asking him if it was the right time to move. The reality is that every job was the wrong choice because at the time, the move was not the right affair. The move was a civilian affair. The move was something I shouldn't have even been involved in.

It's easy for us to casually drift into circumstances where we have to "make the most of a bad situation." Where we choose the lesser of two evils. The dating relationship that is better than the horrible one, but not really that great. The lie that is the whiter of the two, but still a lie.

I think instead of analyzing our options we need to pull things back and ask, "Is this the right affair?" I think we need to pause and say, "Regardless of my decision, should I even be involved in this activity?" Because the best of the worst is still less than the best can be.

It's time for beauty.

2008-04-09T04:50:00.000-07:00

It's time for beauty.

I recently wrote about feeling convicted to throw away my copy of the movie, "Fight Club." I wrote that for years I threw it away only to buy it again. And the post got a lot of responses. People had lots of different opinions about throwing things away in general and Fight Club in specific.

I didn't do a very good job explaining why I might not need to watch Fight Club, but Paul does. Here is what he writes in Philippians 4:8:

Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.

Forget Fight Club, I think this verse is bigger than that. I think this changes the filter with which I look at the world. You see, I judge things by their potentional to hurt me. I look at movies and books and friendships and magazines and conversations and think to myself, "Is this poison?" Will this thing or person damage my walk? It's a "how can I not fail" way of looking at things.

But Paul flips that idea on its head. He says I am wrong. He says, the question is not, "Is this poison?" The question I should be asking is, "Is this art?" That is, is this something so lovely, so excellent, so pure that it will elevate my walk with God?

It's not about sorting through the snakes until you find one that isn't poisonous. It's about seeing the sunset and the things that are beautiful and true and powerful and bigger than me.

I like the book Fight Club. I think it says something powerful about men and our needs and where our culture is headed. I recommend that book all the time to Christians. But if I ran the movie, with the nudity and the sex and the violence and the destruction through the Paul beauty filter, what would I find?

I'm not sure.

Why I am writing about stuff.

2008-04-01T16:53:00.001-07:00

Why I am writing about stuff.

So about a week ago I started a new site called "Stuff Christians Like." I thought it might be a fun way to poke some fun at my faith and the things I do. I could not have anticipated the two things that happened as a result.

The first was the growth. In a single day, that site had more traffic than four months of Prodigal Jon combined. Readers from more than 80 countries have read more than 50,000 stories. I am truly blown away and humbled.

But those are just numbers. What has been amazing is the reaction from non-Christians. The comments they have been writing have really encouraged me and I wanted to share one with you today.

On one of my posts, I jokingly said that I think Christians are slightly less nice than Mormons. The point I was trying to make was that I know a lot of mean Christians but have never met an unkind Mormon. I argued that when we don't allow Christ to change our hearts, we can sometimes justify rude behavior with false holiness. That is, some people use Christianity like a bully uses karate. It's just one more weapon to judge or attack you with. It was a simple post, but one gentleman named Eric responded by writing:

Absolutely brilliant. These posts are so honest it's stunning. I wish every religious person I knew approached life with this attitude. It's unflinchingly Christian but not arrogant, and #62 gives incredible insight as to why. It takes a humanist approach to God, which is what Christ is anyway. No offense to anyone reading this, but if I weren't an atheist, I'd strive to be this kind of Christian.

It's always nice to hear things like, "you are brilliant," but it is the last line of his post that spoke loudest. "If I weren't an atheist, I'd strive to be this kind of Christian." That is why I am writing that site, that is why I am penning silly things to a wide audience. I want people that would never read Prodigal Jon or 97 seconds with God because it's too "churchy" to know that "this kind of Christian" exists. I want people that maybe don't know how much God misses them to know that he is watching the road for their return. I want atheists to see that we can be funny and real and maybe even honest.

I will continue to write on all three sites but since many of you have been with me when no one was with me, I wanted you to know why I have been writing so much on www.stuffchristianslike.net

I hope this post makes sense and that you'll tell all your friends that aren't Christian that there's a different "kind of Christian" with a different kind of site that just might challenge their understanding of our very different God.

We are the wild places.

2008-03-29T11:32:00.000-07:00

We are the wild places.

I don't read very cool books. I'm not exactly sure what cool books are, but I'm positive the ones I read in my free time aren't. For one, they usually have horses with flowing manes on the cover. If I'm in public I usually open it from the back to the front so that people near me can't see what I'm reading. And they're all about knights and princes and quests and journeys. And I'm a dork.

But recently, I read a line in one that kind of shaped how I think of one of the most important ideas in the Bible. I'm talking about the concept that we are called to be the temple. It's not the easiest idea to understand. That the God who used to kill people if they touched the ark is now eager to set up his residence inside me, is kind of mind blowing. But for most of my life, I've looked at that idea as just a poetic description and not really seen the power in it. Until I read a line in a new book.

In the book, a group of rangers is preparing to strike out past their realm to explore the mountains in search of a missing group of friends. Before they leave, all of the men except one are visiting their temple before they venture out into the wild places. A character named Jon watches them leave and then decides not to go to their temple because, "his own gods kept their temples in the wild places."

What struck me about that silly line is that I am the wild places. I am the wilderness. The place where the dark and stormy past collides with the brilliance of God's grace. I am broken and beaten, but slowly coming back to life. My walls are torn down, my attic infested with the rats of regrets. And yet I am the temple God chooses to keep. The place he desires to be more than any other place in the universe.

My rooms inside are dim, there are spider webs and years of dust covering this temple of mine and yet, God calls this home. My sanctuary is cluttered with overturned pews, the wall hangings torn and dirty. Snakes and wild animals still roaming the hall. But there is a new master home. Perhaps the temple is not what it should be, but there is someone new on the throne. The wind that rips through the holes in my ceiling is different. There is a freshness starting to sweep away the stagnant air that has long held reign.

Until I was able to imagine myself as God's temple, the idea didn't make sense to me. But now that I see my life as his home, my heart as his residence, well that changes everything.

I am the wild places. You are the wild places. We are the wild places.

My snooze button life.

2008-03-29T04:40:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I hit the snooze button five times, which allowed me to postpone the day for another 45 minutes. I wasn't late to work, but it did cut into my quiet time. It also made me think about the other ways that we hit the snooze button in our lives.

Waiting on God is one of the biggest challenges we face I think. When there is something we believe we're supposed to do, but are not certain, we often push pause. We slow down and stop. We pray and seek counsel and allow the days on the calendar to stack up on top of each other.

I think this can be good. I am too impulsive. I jump into things too quickly sometimes and try to force God's hand. But at the same time, sometimes I miss God's call out of fear. I resist his adventure for concern I will mess it up. I don't get to take part in the story because I refuse to jump onto the page.

Paul's approach to this in Galatians is pretty interesting. Here is how he describes his ministry in Chapter 1: 15-17

But when God, who set me apart from birth and called me by his grace, was pleased to reveal his Son in me so that I might preach him among the Gentiles, I did not consult any man, nor did I go up to Jerusalem to see those who were apostles before I was, but I went immediately into Arabia and later returned to Damascus.

I really like that Paul says specifically, "I did not consult any man." He didn't seek counsel or seek out answers slowly. With the word of God at his back, he pressed on quickly and "went immediately."

Granted, Paul's experience on the road to Damascus was extraordinary and maybe your word from God feels small and quiet. And maybe you need counsel right now more than you need anything else. But it could be that instead of waiting or consulting or being still, God has put something burning on your heart. And like Paul and thousands before him, you're not supposed to push the snooze button, you're just supposed to go.

The rumors about me.

2008-03-25T04:10:00.000-07:00

The rumors about me.

A few years ago someone approached me with an opportunity to make thousands of dollars. It was easy. It was simple. It was highly illegal.

The reason they approached me was that they, like anyone else in my world, knew that I didn't have high morals. They would not have labeled me Christian or even "honest" at the time. So they knew that they were not running a risk by trying to engage me in a scheme. They were simply sharing a shady idea between two shady people.

Fast forward to present day. A new woman at work recently scheduled a meeting with me. I sat down inside the conference room and asked her what was going on. Her response?

"Rumors say that you're a christian. I'm a christian too and since I'm new I wanted to meet you."

That might happen to you all the time. Your good name might be a neon beacon to all those around you, but sadly enough, that was the first time I have ever experienced something like that. Sure, I've had people say, "rumors say you're a cocky jerk" or "rumors say you're difficult to work with." But not until I was 32 did the rumors take on a positive feel.

I thought about this reality while reading Galations last night. In Chapter 1 Paul gives us his tagline, his version of Nike's "Just Do It" or GE's "We bring good things to life." This is the summation of his ministry. This in some ways is the very core of his life concentrated in a single sentence. This is who the rumors said Paul was:

"The man who formerly persecuted us is now preaching the faith he once tried to destroy."

I love the simplicity and power and beauty of that. I love that the sin of his former life amplifies the truth of his new life. Do you see that? That sentence is like a sin sandwich. It starts with him persecuting and ends with him trying to destroy. What he used to do is critical in creating a powerful context for what he is currently doing. Can you begin to feel what that means for the sin in your past? I love the hope that offers you and me.

You see, we all have sentences like that. Regardless of whether we are deliberate and do our best to write what people will say about us through our actions or simply float through life without giving it a second thought, we are all tagged with sentences like that.

My question to you is, what does your sentence say right now? If I asked you to write your "Just do it," the idea that summarized your entire life, what would you write? What are the people that know you saying about you?

I thought for a minute and I know what I would like people to say about me:

"Having returned from the dead, Jon cannot help but shout the joy of life."

I don't live everyday that way. It's a work in progress, but that's where I am headed. That is how I balance my time and make my decisions. I intentionally choose things that will bring me closer to that reality and deny things that will take me further from it. I succeed at this sometimes, I fail as this sometimes. But I am working on it.

What are you working on?

What do the rumors about you say?

The new site

2008-03-22T13:02:00.001-07:00

The new site.

A few years ago I was asked to create a press release for a CEO of a company. My client wanted me to write something extolling how dedicated to being honest about sales results this particular CEO was. The only problem was that she wasn't.

She was known for being a bit blurry when it came to the reality of the sales the company was generating. The press, the stockholders, the employees, everyone that knew this lady was going to see right through my press release and instantly think, "No way am I listening to this lady. I know her past."

What I wanted to do, which was eventually rejected, was come out with the truth. I wanted to disarm the readers by opening up with a statement that said, "In the past, numbers have not been my greatest strength." If I said that, all the readers would have to pause before throwing a rock at us. In essence I would have removed the biggest objective they had to reading the rest of the press release.

The same thing happens with Christianity.

We do some things really well and we do some things less than really well. But when we pretend we're perfect, people see right through it and won't believe anything else we say. And that's the point of this project. I want to be honest and upfront and hopefully a little funny about the issues the church and Christians struggle with sometimes. I want to say, "Whoa, whoa, please don't judge me or God by Christian radio." I want to admit the times we've dropped the ball on issues or ideas that people called to love their neighbor should have knocked out of the park. I want to engage all my friends that aren't Christians that don't go to church in an honest, open conversation. I want to blow up misconceptions and preconceptions about what it means to be a Christian.

That's why I created, www.stuffchristianslike.net

The good thing is that doing something simple and small like this won't take away from my other two sites. The entries on the new one are about 100 words each and more importantly I hopefully won't be writing them all. For the first time in my blogging experiment, I want to open up the posts to other people. Got an idea about "Stuff Christians Like?" Email me or post a comment. If it fits the theme of the site I'll put it up and give you all the credit. And make no mistake, I took this concept directly from a wildly popular secular site that uses the same approach. Read "#1. Putting a God Spin on Popular Secular Ideas" to see what I'm talking about.

Or, read one of these things that I think are Stuff Christians Like:
#8. Singing "Friends are Friends" forever at the end of church events.
#5. Bootleg cookies.
#3. Reading "love is patient" at your wedding.

p.s. lots of folks are doing similar sites right now in response to the site that spawned this idea. Some might be worth checking out too.

pomegranates, country television and 9 more random things

2008-03-21T16:18:00.000-07:00

pomegranates, country television and 9 more random things

1. I hate when commercials for television shows tell me, "this is the episode you can't afford to miss ." Is that ever true? I've never been at work and heard someone talking about a show and thought to myself, "Dang, that was the episode I couldn't afford to miss." Unless they make a show called "How and when Jon Acuff will die," I can afford to miss any program.

2. The squirrels in the attic, who I just chased 5 minutes ago, are not getting fooled by the trap I put up there. So I'd like to put it in our yard every night and just see what kind of "varmints" we can catch. I told my wife that's what they call "country television." If you live so far out in the country you can't get cable then trapping animals is your entertainment. She, much like the squirrels, did not fall for it.

3. Speaking of television, have you ever seen the show, "International House Hunters?" It's one of those "hate your life" programs. While you sit at home with animals scurrying over your bedroom, a couple of rich people decide which vacation villa on the coast of Portugal to buy. If life feels too good right now, turn on that show and you'll be bummed out anew.

4. Is it me, or did pomegranates kind of come out nowhere? I feel like everywhere I look there's some product being infused with pomegranate. In addition to juice, there are lip balms, jelly beans, frozen yogurt and countless other products. Is it possible there is a secret fruit council thrusting odd fruits on us in some weird plot? Is it possible I should have better things to think about? (Want to know what the next "pomegranate" is going to be? Dragonfruit. Trust me on this one.)

5. Tonight while driving home listening to the radio show "Delilah" I heard some woman saying she had the best man in the world. (The only reason I had that horribly cheesy show on while driving alone is that I'm not cool.) Part of the caller's proof that her man is really great is that he cuts up old scarves and gives them to squirrels so that they can use the pieces for their nests to stay warm in the winter. Ladies, if doing that is one of the criteria for being "the best man in the world," then please know I will never own that title.

6. I think one of the reasons we get love so wrong is that we overuse the word. The other day I saw a billboard that said, "Finally, natural gas prices you can love!" Have you ever thought to yourself, "I like my water prices, but I LOVE my natural gas prices?" No, and you never will. So let's stop saying "love" so much and instead say "like." Let's bring like back.

7. When you're really bored, very little will change that. Case in point, the other day we took our 4 year old and 2 year old to the circus. They have about a 45 minute attention span. By minute 50, my oldest daughter was like, "11 rare white tigers dancing and jumping through hoops? Ugh, daddy can we go home?"

8. I really don't want to raise spoiled kids, but the very first thing my two year old said to me when the Veggies Tale movie started in the theater was, "Not this veggies dad." She was pretty sure she had the right to dictate what the other 100 people in the theater saw and that her dad had the power to make it happen.

9. The other night on American Idol, which I was watching because Delilah wasn't on, Ryan Seacrest announced all the special guests they'll have this season. In addition to Dolly Parton and Neil Diamond they're inviting Mariah Carey on the show. He read their names out loud and then said, all of these people are not just great performers, they are great songwriters. I googled some of her lyrics tonight and I promise you this is a direct cut and paste. I can't wait to hear her explain the emotion that helped create this musical tapestry:

ooh, ooh
Come on, come on
MC, MC
ooh, ooh

Nah nah nah nah nah nah
Nah nah
Nah nah nah nah nah nah
Nah nah nah nah nah [Repeat twice]

10. How come Scientology gets Will Smith and we get Stephen Baldwin? No offense to Stephen Baldwin and although Will Smith's people are trying to keep it quiet about Smith's alleged love of Tom Cruise's religion, I just don't think it's fair. (Note, no official word on Smith, that's just what people in the streets are saying. Not my street cause it's a cul-de-sac but other streets) What famous person do you wish was a Christian? I'd like to see Kid Rock. Not that I love him, but I'd like to see him bring some of the grit and grime the disciples had back to our faith. But seriously, post what celebrity you think we should recruit.

11.When a girl tells me, "we're pregnant," in my head I think, "that's great, kids are awesome." When a guy tells me "we're pregnant," in my head I think, "You're wife's pregnant, not you. I'm sorry but we can no longer be friends."

when robots attack

2008-03-21T12:42:00.000-07:00

when robots attack

So my new site was flagged by the robots that patrol google as being a fake site. I assured them that it was real, actually that it was the real deal, but it might take a full week to get back up.

In the meantime, tonight I'm writing something on prodigal jon called "I am the wild places."

Let's retire the phrase "unspoken prayer request."

2008-03-20T20:35:00.000-07:00

Let's retire the phrase "unspoken prayer request."

New stuff on 97secondswithgod.com.

Check it out if you get a chance.

new site - commence with the hate mail

2008-03-20T16:35:00.001-07:00

new site - commence with the hate mail

So, I've got a new site I'm going to launch that's different from either of my other sites and bound to increase the number of people that hate me, which at current count is two.

Before I tell the 66 countries reading this site what the name of the new one is I want to share it with a few people. (by the way, cool to see Ireland checking in and Argentina)

If you're interested, shoot me an email at theacuffs@yahoo.com and I will give you the link for a sneak preview.

Thanks for reading.

the new definition

2008-03-20T04:01:00.000-07:00

the new definition

Couples that are dating often have what they call a "define the relationship" conversation. If you've never experienced this, a DTR as it were, is when you discuss where the relationship is going. Are we casually dating? Is this a serious relationship? Are we boyfriend and girlfriend? Would you use the word "exclusive" to describe us? It's a fairly exhausting exercise that hopefully results in you having a clear definition of your relationship.

A friend of mine had one of those a few years ago and I can still remember his response to his girlfriend when she pressed him for a more detailed definition of where they were headed:

"Boyfriend, girlfriend, exclusive, those are just words, what do they even really mean?"

That's an admittedly discouraging response, but it does reveal a truth. On some level, we all live our lives safe in the comfort of flexible definitions. We spurn the concept of having a concrete definition for something and instead twist and pull the definitions that guide us until they are malleable and easily manipulated.

Case in point, a friend recently asked me if what he had looked at would be considered pornography. What he was asking was, "did I do something wrong?" And he wanted the definition of the word pornography to determine that for him.

That was an honest question, but I don't think you can define a word without really knowing it's context. That's why in spelling competitions the contestants always ask for origin and to hear the word they are trying to spell in a sentence. They need context.

For this friend, the context of pornography drastically altered the definition he needed to use in his own life. See for him, that word had dominated most of his life. It had consumed decades in its wide, broken-toothed mouth. So while the world might think that word only means materials that are rated XXX, for him, that word is a lot bigger. It means not watching some reality television shows. It means not looking at gossip magazines or doing a whole host of things that on the surface have very little to do with pornography. And he's not alone. I have friends that can't get money out of an ATM because any time they have cash that their support network of friends doesn't know about, they buy alcohol.

For them, just the act of getting money secretly out of an ATM is part of "acting out." They've studied themselves to know that part of their ritual when it comes to getting black out drunk is getting cash. So their definition of being safe had to stretch and grow to include things that most people would think are pretty normal and ordinary.

My question to you today is simply this: What definitions are you actively shaping and what definitions are letting shape your life?

Have you stretched the definition of love so that you can say, "I know the bible is against that, but we're in love so it's OK."

Is your definition of sin the only thing that helps you sleep at night because, "It's not so bad what I did, I mean I didn't _____, that's really what it means to sin."

Are you waiting to do something important, because you've said, "I'll follow my dreams in the future" and you've defined the future as a long way away?

I ask this, not because I know the answer to the problem of definitions. I ask because ultimately, on some level, I think the things you define end up defining you.

Audio Part 2 - Word up Wednesday

2008-03-19T04:10:00.000-07:00

Audio Part 2 - Word up Wednesday

When I publish a book and become a Christian Thousandaire I will have a tech guy named Smithfield who will handle all my computer silliness. Until then, it's on me. So if you have any issues getting today's audio over there on the right, which is the conclusion of last week's clip, I have a link for you. Click here if the link on the right doesn't work.

Quick Disclaimer: In the beginning of the clip, an older man in the audience says something really loudly to a friend, which forces me to make fun of the elderly.

And don't miss the conclusion of SWORD, let's dance, which is right below this.

Let's dance! SWORD - PART 6

2008-03-18T16:52:00.000-07:00

Let's dance! SWORD - PART 6

A few weeks ago I ran a half marathon. Well, I ran 10.5 miles and then walked 1 and then ran the last 1.6. All in all it was 13.1 miles of borderline torture.

As I was crossing the finish line, the second place marathon runner was finishing. He looked like he had just woken up from a nap. He was relaxed, calm and really not that sweaty. And he had just run 26.2 miles in the time it took me to run 13.1.

I didn't train before the race. I realized after it was over that I had only run about 6 times in 2008 by the time the race came around. I was supposed to train for maybe 8 weeks but felt like I could probably gut it out.

I mention this story because when I write about how the D in my SWORD* concept is Dance, I realize that it's going to be easy to say, "Ugh, exercise, I hate running." Or maybe, "The gym is just full of people that are trying to hook up." Or "I don't have the money or time to workout."

And those are all pretty good excuses. It used to kill me when I'd see girls putting on makeup for the gym or guys texting on the treadmill. And gyms can be expensive and running, sucks. Hard.

But the biggest excuse to justify not working out, the one that most of us secretly believe, is that God doesn't have much to do with our bodies.

Sure, he doesn't want us doing drugs or cutting ourselves or things like that, but he can't be interested in my diet or how often I push myself physically. He's not like that, right?

I don't know. I'm not so sure anymore. What if we took the bible the wrong way? What if, all along we believed it was meant for our soul, but it's really meant for our life? That is, the soul was part of it, but it's bigger and broader than that. Maybe it's full of wisdom for our mental life, our emotional life and even, our physical life? What if the bible was about every inch of your life?

It's an interesting thing to think about and as I did, it was easy to find examples of God's physical focus within the pages of the bible:

1. David trains for Goliath.
When Saul doubts that David can defeat Goliath, here's how David responds:

I have been taking care of my father’s sheep and goats,” he said. “When a lion or a bear comes to steal a lamb from the flock, I go after it with a club and rescue the lamb from its mouth. If the animal turns on me, I catch it by the jaw and club it to death. I have done this to both lions and bears, and I’ll do it to this pagan Philistine, too because he has defied the armies of the living God. The LORD who delivered me from the paw of the lion and the paw of the bear will deliver me from the hand of this Philistine."

It was like he told Saul, "Come on, I can run this half marathon. I used to run 20 miles all the time when I was a kid."

And note, even though ultimately this scene is about trusting in the God almighty, the example David gives is definitely more in the physical realm than the spiritual realm. He doesn't say, "It's cool, when I was younger I prayed a ton and should be able to do this." No, instead he says, "I beat up bears, I can take this dude."

2. Daniel will kick Jared's butt.
I'm kind of done with that Jared guy from Subway. I've just had enough Jared for the rest of my life. But long before he was the face of healthy living, Daniel was the man on the billboards. Here's what he says to one of his master's servants when he's living in captivity and doesn't want to eat the food served him:

"Please test your servants for ten days: Give us nothing but vegetables to eat and water to drink. Then compare our appearance with that of the young men who eat the royal food, and treat your servants in accordance with what you see." So he agreed to this and tested them for ten days.

At the end of the ten days they looked healthier and better nourished than any of the young men who ate the royal food. So the guard took away their choice food and the wine they were to drink and gave them vegetables instead.

On the surface that's a cool story and if I was a vegetarian I would probably use those verses to be kind of a jerk about why God loves people that eat vegetables. But it only gets cooler, because here is the next verse, God's response:

To these four young men God gave knowledge and understanding of all kinds of literature and learning. And Daniel could understand visions and dreams of all kinds.

Was God OK with Daniel putting some focus on what he put into his body? Did he tell Daniel, "Whoa there broccoli guy, I care only about the soul." No, he gifts them knowledge and understanding.

3. Harder, better, faster, stronger.
Look through some of the key sections of the bible and show me someone that does something amazing for God that didn't involve them using their bodies in some fashion. Jonathan had to do some mountain climbing against the Philistines before God rocked his world. David used a sling to strike his enemy down. Joshua and his crew walked for days before God knocked the walls down. Several of the disciples were fisherman with callused hands and the kind of forearms people that don't work in cubicles have. Paul compared faith to a race. The Exodus, you can go on and on.

I guess my point, is that there was never a "bed disciple." Someone that stayed home and didn't do anything physical. You never hear about "Bill, the lazy disciple." And one of the gifts Christ kept giving people was the use of their bodies. When he healed people he might have been aiming for their heart, but they also got the gift of their legs back and their arms back and their bodies back.

Maybe he wants to give you yours back today. Maybe in addition to your soul, he cares about your body. Maybe a few minutes a day is going to change the way you live and unlock some things that are hidden. Maybe it's easier than you think and even more important, holier than you think.

Let's dance.

This post goes well with:
1. The day I took back the day.
2. The day of the sword. Part 1
3. A tale of convicts and candy. SWORD - Part 2
4. Ugh. Christian Radio. SWORD - Part 3
5. I got fired from the carnival. SWORD - Part 4
6. Karoshi will not have me. SWORD - Part 5

*SWORD is my way to focus on a few things that I want to do every day: Serve, Worship, Order, Rest and Dance. I try to do each one at least 12 minutes a day, for a solid hour of focused living.

Accountability is a trap

2008-03-18T04:19:00.000-07:00

Accountability is a trap.

New post now on 97secondswithGod.com. Check it out.

let's make the worst of it.

2008-03-17T19:27:00.001-07:00

let's make the worst of it.

A few months ago I went online to find a coupon for my oil change. While on the Texaco site I saw that they offered a delightful coloring book for children. The title was "Lubie and the Lovable Looney Lubettes." I am not making this up.
In the online coloring book, a friendly gang of oil goes camping with a family. The whole thing was ridiculous, but my favorite scene was when the oil went for a canoe ride. I love the oil that is snorkeling. He looks so smug and cocky. And the family can't get in the water because, well there's oil in the lake. But perhaps the funniest part is how mad the eagle looks in the upper left corner. It's hard to see in this image, but I promise you he's really angry at that oil.

This, is such a perfect example of trying to make the best out of a bad situation. It's been a rough year for oil. Gas prices are through the roof, the war has raised lots of tough questions and going green is super popular. So some wily copywriter or graphic designer convinced Texaco that it would be good to tell kids how cuddly and fun oil is. They are sugarcoating a bad situation with the hope that if they pretend everything is alright, then it will magically become alright.

Sometimes I think it's easy to fall into a similar trap with our faith. When faced with difficult situations we feel like admitting distress is going to be seen as failure by other people. So instead of being honest and admitting something hurts, we pretend everything is OK. We become plastic fantastics.

We smile and shine and use the Christian F word when people ask us questions:
"How's my marriage? Fine."
"How's my job? Fine."
"How's my family? Fine."

I'm not sure why this happens. It might be that secretly, on some levels, even really tiny ones we feel that God loves good people. Or maybe he just loves them more. So when good things happen we think that tells people that we're being good and God is just responding to that goodness. And when bad things happen it must mean we're doing something bad and God is just paying that back.

So we hide behind words like "fine" and "OK," but that's not what the Bible says. There are a million verses about this, but my favorite is probably Matthew 5:4

Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.

That's enough for me. If you want comfort, you have to admit you've been hurt. If you want comfort, you have to mourn. If you want comfort you have to retire the word fine and fake.

So let's not make oil go camping or sugarcoat our problems.

Let's make the worst of it.

This post goes well with:
1. Be sick.

This week, on Prodigal Jon

2008-03-17T03:56:00.000-07:00

This week, on Prodigal Jon

Monday Night - Let's make the worst of it.
Tuesday - The rumors about me.
Wednesday - Audio message, part 2.
Thursday - Dance, last part of SWORD
Friday - 11 Random Things
Saturday - We are blind & a Record Review
Sunday - Giving props to memories.

Thanks for reading.

squirrels in my attic, a hole in my bedroom and God.

2008-03-15T05:28:00.000-07:00

squirrels in my attic, a hole in my bedroom and God.

I must warn you, this story contains just about all the key components of a good story:

love lost
a weapon from Kenya
desperate animals
a tornado
and a discount haircut

But that might not be enough for you, so here is where I am headed:

"You can't fix you with you."

That is the going to be the conclusion of this piece, the moral of the story so to speak. So if you've got a busy Saturday planned and can't read the whole thing, there it is.

But if you want to hear what happened last night at about midnight at my house, sit back, relax and be glad you're not married to me.

the story
We have squirrels in our attic. This is worse than having birds in your attic but better than having say cobras in your attic. I saw one the other night when I went up there and of all his character traits, it was his arrogance that bothered me most. When I shined the flashlight on him he just kind of looked at me like, "what are you doing in my attic?" There was no fear, no trembling little tail or cute animal anxiety. It was like I was interrupting a teenager trying to text message his friends. After a few seconds he crawled into the insulation and disappeared.

Our friend Todd came and nailed the hole in our roof shut at a point in the day we believed the squirrels were out running some errands. Here, by the way, are two sentences you never want to hear from a handyman that is standing on your roof:

1. "Jon, I don't know why I'm able to stick my foot all the way through this hole."
2. "Your roof is just like wet cardboard up here."

We're getting that fixed soon. That's what happens when you become an adult, you have to spend your money on adult things. For instance, last Christmas our in-laws gave us a dryer. It's a nice dryer I'm sure, but those are the kind of no fun, all seriousness kind of things you spend your money on as an adult. I digress.

Apparently we have lazy squirrels because instead of being outside gathering nuts when we nailed the hole shut, they were inside our attic. Which means that for the last five days, they've been locked up in there without any water. I'm sure they stored some food but I have to believe that at this point they're getting a little desperate. Which is why last night we could hear them frantically trying to chew and claw their way through the wood in our roof.

That's why, on what would otherwise have been a sleepy Friday night, I decided to invite my two friends, Roscoe and Hucklebuck over to help me catch the squirrels. Those are not their real names but given the events to follow I felt it was wise to subtly disguise their true identities.

Things started out well. Roscoe is a missionary kid and was thrilled that I had a Masai warrior club from Kenya. He believed it would help us knock out the squirrels so that we could give them to a nice family out in the country with a farm so that they had plenty of land to run around on. You know the place, it's where your parents sent your dog to live after it bit the paperboy.

At around 11 at night we went into the thickly-insulated attic searching for the squirrels. They must have gone ninja quiet because for 20 minutes we didn't see or hear them. Suddenly though I saw a furry tail and an arrogant tail poking up over a clump of yellow insulation.

Roscoe dove in between the boards supporting the roof and began to swing the club. The squirrel got away prompting Roscoe to declare, "We have to sweep this entire area, cell by cell." I asked, "what's a cell?" He responded, "These little blocks of insulation between the boards. Lets call them 'cells,' it sounds better."

Meanwhile, Hucklebuck was anxiously texting a girl he wishes was in love with him. She's a cool girl with cool tattoos and one of those haircuts that looks bad on 99.99% of people but looks cool on her. She loves God, but not Hucklebuck. Suddenly I heard a loud ripping sound and Hucklebuck exclaimed, "Oh no." I looked down and could see into my bedroom.

As I did not previously remember being able to see directly into the attic from my bedroom I realized something was amiss. Hucklebuck's leg had slipped through. In a moment of distraction, brought on in part by an unrequited love, he had stepped right through my bedroom ceiling.

My wife did not see the humor in the moment.

We left the attic quickly, quietly announcing the squirrel as the champion of the evening. Well played squirrel, well played indeed. And downstairs in the kitchen, my frustrated wife stood against the sink with her arms crossed. I apologized and told her I would get my haircut.

What?

At last once a year I think I should grow my hair long. I guess I believe it will make me look cool or smart or interesting or something. So for the last few months I have not gotten a haircut and my wife has started to barter with me. "Hey, don't you want some new Puma shoes? Why don't you get a haircut and buy those?" But I've held strong. Only last night, I knew I had to concede something. It's not like I could say, "Fine, I'll pay for it." Her money is my money is our money. So I did what I could and agreed to get a haircut. At Sports Clips, which costs about a nickel and feels good enough for my simple head. Meanwhile, my mom was in a tornado.

What?

She was at a dental convention in downtown Atlanta, insert your own dentist joke here, and got caught up in a tornado. She was in the Omni Hotel and had to wait for hours inside while 130mph winds tore up the streets. I mention this because having her involved in the tornado helped take some of the heat off the "foot ceiling" incident which gave me enough time to realize where the whole night had gone wrong. Where, I had bought into one of the biggest lives of all time.

The lie is that, "I can fix me with me."

This is essentially the lie that tells you, you got into this mess, you get yourself out of it. You made your bed now sleep in it. It's the idea that when we cause a problem we are in charge of coming up with a solution.

And I don't think it's by nature a bad idea. I mean it's easy to see how the idea of being accountable and responsible for your actions and facing the consequences could get twisted into this idea. I believe all those things are good, but I believe we corrupt those ideas with our desire to be in control. To steer our own cars so to be. We really like that. That's part of the reason if you search "self help" on Amazon you'll get 151, 679 books. We dig the idea of fixing ourselves, of having a Rocky training in the snow with logs on our backs as we run alone and get in shape. We like to reinvent ourselves.

The challenge though, is that when we go it alone, when we try to fix ourselves with ourselves, we fail. Always. The problem is that we're standing too close to the painting of our lives to really see what it is. We need someone objective and honest that can really help us identify the things that need our attention and our effort. That's why when you get out of a bad relationship you'll say, "I didn't realize how bad things were" and your friends might say, "we did." They could see what was wrong. They weren't wrapped up tight in the middle of the drama and the emotion, they were off to the side, able to realistically look at what was going on.

And, we never do this in other areas of our life. You never get in a serious car accident and tell the ambulance driver, "Just take me home, not to the hospital. I got myself into this mess, I need to get myself out." No, you go to the doctor, you go to the emergency room. You ask for help from people that can help you.

That's what I did wrong with the squirrels. Our friend Todd is coming to do some work on our house and has animal traps. In about a week he could have caught the squirrels. But I couldn't wait. They had gotten in the attic because I let a small hole turn into a large hole. So I wanted to fix it. I wanted to be in control. I wanted to fix me with me.

But the biggest issue of all, is that ultimately, without God, I don't think long term change is possible. I don't mean you can't lose weight for the rest of your life or quit smoking or anything like that. Those are "this life" changes. I'm talking about eternal changes. Changes that extend further than just the 70 plus years the average American gets on the planet. I'm not talking about bandaging wounds, I'm talking about healing. I'm not talking about reinventing yourself, I'm talking about dying to self and living again as someone new and fresh and so clean.

I have a duct tape covered hole in the corner of my bedroom to remind me that I can't fix me with me. I hope it won't take a friend's foot and a gang of cocky squirrels to help you remember this simple truth.

Abs, Ashton and 9 other things

2008-03-14T13:00:00.000-07:00

Abs, Ashton and 9 other things

Every idea I have doesn't need to be stretched and pulled into a blog entry. Sometimes it can just be a handful of sentences, like these:

1. The other day my four-year old L.E. picked up a Donald Duck picture her two-year old sister McRae had colored. She said, “Dad, I’m not impressed with McRae’s work.” I asked her why and she replied, “It’s just scribbles.” I don’t think we have to learn to judge each other, I think it comes pretty naturally.

2. When someone tells you “FYI” it’s never a good thing. Honestly, have you ever heard someone say, “FYI, I’ve always loved you.” Or “FYI, you’re a great person.” No, it’s usually, “FYI, I’m not coming to your birthday party.”

3. If you don’t get sad when you’re at a burrito restaurant and you see the person making your burrito put a big tear in the shell ensuring that it will fall apart in your lap upon first bite, I’m not sure you’re an honest person.

4. The worst thing is when a celebrity gets Punk’d by Ashton Kutcher and they’re not important enough for him to show up to reveal the joke. He only goes to the big stars, but every celebrity looks around for him and when they figure out he’s just not coming, they realize they are C-list.

5. Why aren’t we still making fun of when Garth Brooks briefly tried to be a pop singer named “Chris Gaines?” Remember, he grew a little soul patch and combed his hair forward and we were supposed to forget he was Garth. That might be my favorite example that no matter how much money you make, if you’re not happy, you’ll still try to be someone else.

6. If you can watch this John Piper video and not want to immediately punch your copy of “Your Best Life Now” in the face, you must not like punching books.

7. When you forward someone a cool link or a youtube clip and they say, “I love that, I saw it about a week ago” what they are really saying is, “I don’t send you cool things even though you send them to me.”

8. Unless Jesus performs some kind of live show with white tigers in Las Vegas, I am fairly certain my wife will never set foot in that city.

9. When someone says, “Let me tell you about the dream I had last night,” what I hear is “this would be a good time to stop listening to me.”

10. “Fine is the Christian F word” is a sentence I wish I came up with.

11. At what point during the year that you have a Men’s Health magazine subscription are your abs good enough? Honestly, how many issues can I learn to blast, chisel, mold, shape, cut etc. my abs?

Audio is up.

2008-03-13T06:12:00.000-07:00

Audio is up.

I spoke recently at a church in Atlanta about what is perhaps the most important verse to me. You can listen to it by clicking over on the upper right. Follow that helpful arrow.

Please know that I say the following sentences:
1. You know, the Hebrew version of a pickup truck.
2. Alright dad, you slut!
3. I really feel like if I could just tap into Hezekiah I would have what I need to talk with that guy whose wife just left him.

Some of the ideas will sound familiar to a few posts I have written.

Karoshi will not have me. SWORD - PART 5

2008-03-13T04:35:00.000-07:00

Karoshi will not have me. SWORD - PART 5

The Japanese have a term, Karoshi, to describe what happens when you work yourself to death. Translated literally, Karoshi means "death from overwork." The common causes are actually heart attack and stroke but the Japanese know that it's bigger than just a physical issue.

That's why in 1987 the Japanese Ministry of Labor started to publish statistics on the syndrome. Ten thousand deaths are attributed to Karoshi every year which is scary. The only thing scarier is that according to the book, The Power of Full Engagement, "America is the only country in the world in which employees work more hours per week than the Japanese."

We are killing ourselves with work. We don't use Blackberrys like PDAs, we use them like GUNs. We have broken the walls of the office down and the flood of work and emails and projects and jobs and meetings has drowned our families and friends and homes.

We are afraid to rest because we are terrified to be silent. For in the quiet moments, anything we are running from, anything that we have not dealt with has a chance to catch up. I used to call the shower my "compression chamber" because inside there was nothing to distract me. I had already read all the shampoo bottles. I knew which soap companies did animal testing. Who promised 20% more aloe. So it was quiet in the shower and unresolved things see quiet as a chance to yell.

But maybe more than that, being busy is now the ultimate status symbol. As Wayne Muller wrote in his book Sabbath,

"The busier we are, the more important we seem to ourselves and, we imagine, to others. To be unavailable to our friends and family, to be unable to find time for the sunset (or even to know the sun has set at all), to whiz through our obligations without time for a mindful breath, this has become the model of a successful life."

I think he's right. If being important at work is how you gain your value, then not working is conversely how you lose your value. If being in motion is how you define yourself then when you are still, your life unravels.

So what do we do? Embrace Karoshi and the inevitability of a thin, busy, surface life?

No.

We rest. We recover. We renew. We recharge. We rejuvenate. We retreat.

The reasons are simple. When you rest, your life has a chance to breathe. To grow and to gain. As The Power of Full Engagement details,

"Periods of recovery are likewise intrinsic to creativity and to intimate connection. Sounds become music in the spaces between notes, just as words are created by the spaces between letters. It is in the spaces between work that love, friendship, depth and dimension are nurtured. Without time for recovery, our lives become a blur of doing unbalanced by much opportunity for being."

But this is not a new idea. The authors of that book did not invent the need for rest, God did. Here is my favorite verse about the idea, one that I have written about often:

"In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength,"

That is a beautiful passage from Isaiah 30 and I believe God paired rest with repentance for a reason. He knew how difficult repentance is. He knew how it would drain us and stretch us and test us. So he paired it with the gentlest word of all, rest.

But God saw Karoshi coming. He knew what would happen, so Isaiah 30:15 does not have a happy ending. Here is the complete verse:

This is what the Sovereign LORD, the Holy One of Israel, says:
"In repentance and rest is your salvation,
in quietness and trust is your strength,
but you would have none of it."

He knew. He knew. He knew.

And I am guilty of ignoring rest just like you, but I refuse to dance with Karoshi.

I am building small pockets of rest into my day. I am creating silent moments in the middle of a loud life. I am shutting off my computer and my phone and my iPod and my head for just a few minutes.

I am learning to rest.

p.s. I dare you to do two things today: Sit still and quiet for ten minutes and email this article to the busiest person you know.

I got fired from the carnival. SWORD - PART 4

2008-03-11T18:09:00.000-07:00

I got fired from the carnival. SWORD - PART 4

An angry, sweaty man with a surprisingly full mouth of teeth fired me from the carnival. My time as a "Carny" was admittedly short. It was a matter of hours. I never got the travel to another small town, never got to befriend the people that had trailers with showers which I was told was really the key to carny life. I never got to take tickets from happy kids about to throw up on the Spintacular Whiplash ride. I never got to eat cotton candy for three meals a day. The reason I got fired?

I incorrectly put together a ride.

As far as I can tell with the way I was yelled at, there is a certain pattern to proper ride construction. There is a rhythm to sliding the bolts together and the bars together and all the other parts that keep riders in the rides and carnival owners out of court.

The thing I learned that day as I walked away from the other people correctly putting the ride together is that there is a pattern to most things in life. It's the reason that they can "casually" throw rides up in a matter of minutes. The speed is not accidental. The moves are not wasted. The workers know what they are doing.

They know that somethings in life are about order.

That's the O in my SWORD concept. S was Serve and W was worship. Tonight though, let's look at Order.

The business world has long known about the power and importance of putting things in order. There are books and books and books written on the idea but one idea sticks out to me. Here it is:

What gets measured gets done.

Put another way, the things you keep track of are the things you will focus on and accomplish. The things you ignore will be well, ignored. And when you don't keep track of things, when you don't monitor them or measure them in some way, you're ignoring them.

One of the greatest lies in Christianity is the idea you should wait to do something until you "feel called by God." Wait. Wait. Wait. I'm not telling you to put your hands back on the steering wheel and take control of your life. What I am telling you is that all too often we wait until we are "inspired" to connect with God.

We say things like, "I just don't feel like having a quiet time." Or, "I just wish I wanted to spend time with God." Or "I'm not on fire anymore and I don't want to fake it. I don't want to just do it to do it you know? I want it to be real."

I want your relationship with God to be real too, but why would you give that much power to feelings? Feelings lie. The heart is deceitful above all things. Your emotions cannot be your compass.

I choose to love my wife each day. I don't wait until I feel moved to write, if I did I would never have anything other than a blank page. I rarely feel like skipping to work in the parking lot. But I make decisions that drive my actions, instead of hoping that my feelings will act the way I want them to.

But enough about carnivals and business ideas, what does the Bible have to say about ordering your life?

But everything should be done in a fitting and orderly way. 1 Corinthians 14:40

Be very careful, then, how you live—not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil. Ephesians 5:15-16

I love that one in Ephesians because it tells you how, what and why.

How: live carefully, not as unwise but as wise
What: make the most of every opportunity
Why: because the days are evil.

Tomorrow, the first thing I am going to do is focus on what my day is going to be like. Then I'm going to think my way through any possible challenges. Then I'm going to decide how I'll react to those situations so I won't be emotionally hijacked when they actually occur. (Someone else's phrase to describe what happens when the chemicals associated with emotion flood your brain and take over.)

I'm going to order my day. And then I'm going to do it all over again the next day and the day after that.

audio is a go

2008-03-11T09:31:00.000-07:00

audio is a go

Last night I got a copy of the two speeches (talks? readings? word jamborees?) I recently gave.

I am hoping that my ninja fast, tall friend Ben will help me post them on my blog. But if you want a copy on a CD shoot me an email. A bunch of folks did last time I asked this but no one sent me their address.

Email me at theacuffs@yahoo.com.

And this photo is one of the top results I get when I do a google image search for "Jon Acuff." Narcissistic thing to do sure, but it's like looking into my future.

The lie that got the Governor of New York

2008-03-10T12:33:00.000-07:00

The lie that got the Governor of New York

The Governor of New York apologized today to his family and the public for actions he refused to discuss. Apparently, he's been accused of being involved in a high end prostitution ring.

At first glance, a politician doing something shady barely warrants a second glance. But Governor Spitzer was supposed to be different. He made his name fighting crime and corruption. He was usually the one accusing people of things like this. In fact, Time Magazine once named him "Crusader of the Year."

What happened to him? How did he fall?

He believed the boxing ring lie.

You see, sin is like a foe waiting for you in a boxing ring. Standing in the corner, it is large and intimidating, dark and disturbed, quietly pacing back and forth waiting for you to climb between the ropes. And when you do, it crushes you in about 3.7 seconds. But we're smart, we don't like getting crushed, so we don't go in the ring much anymore.

That's why when I usually hear the testimony of a man that has crashed and burned it contains the following sentence:

"I thought everything would change when I got married."

For some reason, we men believe that our lust problems will be defeated by marriage. We believe that our struggles will be knocked out by our wives. So what do we do? We ask them to crawl inside the ring and fight our sin for us. Instead of dealing with issues, we ask our marriage or our wife to fight our battles. Even worse, sometimes we ask our kids.

It kills me when I hear someone tell me they're going to change, "now that they're a dad." That is the equivalent of asking a newborn to crawl inside a boxing ring and fight a tiger. It never goes well.

And Spitzer? What happened to him? Who knows for certain, but it's easy to imagine that he thought the power and the prestige of his office would help him with his sin. That if he could just be governor or just get to a certain office he wouldn't be tempted any longer. And so instead of dealing with his own junk he climbed the ladder as fast as he could. He theoretically asked his job to get in the ring and fight his sin.

The only thing that will ever win that match is God. Not your wife. Not your job. Not your kid. Not your best intentions. Whether you're the Governor of New York of an average guy like me in an average cubicle. If you get in the ring alone, you're going to lose.

P.S. Read "Why I write and why you should sing." It's fresh and new today.

Ugh, Christian radio. SWORD - Part 3

2008-03-10T05:15:00.000-07:00

Ugh, Christian radio. SWORD - PART 3

I am not sure where in the bible it says that Christian radio must be cheesy, perhaps it is a verse snuggled deep in the shadows of the Old Testament. I’m pretty sure Jesus never mentioned morning radio programs in any of his parables, but somewhere in the bible it must directly address Christian radio. This is the only excuse that justifies its awfulness.

It’s not the music I think is bad. In fact, this morning I wrote down two new songs I want to buy on iTunes. I think the music is great and I know that there are some really good Christian DJs around the country, but in Atlanta the banter between the hosts drives me a little crazy. They’re just so syrupy sweet and fake and surface. Their jokes are horrible, their guests are boring and as they recant tales of their weekend (“don’t kittens do the silliest things”) I find myself happy I don’t have to pull over in the breakdown lane and pry off my little Christian fish with my bare fingers in fear I will be associated with them because my car is currently fish free.

Both those paragraphs kind of sound negative, but I think they are honest. I think the tsunami of mediocrity that is Christian radio has given worship a bad name. I think for the average person, Christian radio or perhaps just all Christian media symbolizes what it means to worship. And I think that gives worship a bad name.

In thinking about what it means to worship, I realized there are three things I believe:

1. Worship can be a funeral
Maybe when you think about worship you think of that lady with the kind of big hair at your church that raises her hands really high and sings songs with her eyes closed. I sit near her sometimes. And I think she’s definitely enjoying worship. But I think sometimes worship can be sad. I think sometimes worship can be mournful. I think you can worship at a funeral of a friend that has gone home but is still deeply missed. I think worship is about being honest with your emotions and sharing them with God, not just singing happy songs. So if you ever feel like you’re “not happy enough” to worship, read Psalms. There are several verses in their where David is crying out in agony but is worshiping nonetheless.

2. Worship can be a party
At the same time, worship can be a party. I love that in the prodigal son story, the only moment of worship we get to witness is a party. A loud, wake up the neighbors, shake the foundation celebration of a son returned home. They didn’t sing hymns or play hand bells or march solemnly about the yard in stone faced devotion. They threw a bash. They celebrated and had fun. I would challenge you to find the fun in worship.

3. You know how to worship
I watched the Duke and North Carolina basketball game this weekend. It reminded me of how we are all intrinsically wired to worship. It’s not something that some people are “blessed” with as a spiritual gift. We all know how to worship and we all have things or people we are currently worshipping. Maybe you’re not painting yourself blue for a college basketball game, but you feel your heart rush after you get praise from a superior at work. You get a little kick of happiness and devotion when your finely manicured lawn is well, finely manicured. And other people know that about you. That’s why Nike recently did a Lebron James campaign simply titled, “We are all witnesses.” They know people are wired for worship, they understand that we all want to be part of something big and all consuming. I just think it should be God we get on board with, not Lebron James who promptly lost every game of the NBA finals after that ad came out.

Worship might not feel easy sometimes, but I think it’s like making a direct call to God. Some things we do can feel like we’re emailing him or posting a message on his facebook wall, but I believe worship opens us up to some personal interaction with him.

So for the next month, I am going to make worship a daily part of my life. I hope you’ll try to as well.

This post goes well with:
1. Lebron reminds us we were created for worship.

p.s. Check out my other new post, "It's the little things that kill."

A tale of convicts and candy. SWORD - Part 2

2008-03-07T16:50:00.000-08:00

A tale of convicts and candy. SWORD - PART 2

Yesterday, I wrote about the concept of SWORD. It’s a simple idea that stands for Serve, Worship, Order, Rest and Dance. In the next few days I will detail what they mean and how I intend to add them to my day in the hope that I can slowly reclaim both my time and energy.

My goal is to rescue two weeks of my life from the world. By taking small steps that add up (1 hour a day x 365 = 15 days) when completed over a year, I plan to become who I was always meant to be. But along the way, I have to learn to Serve.

To be honest, Serve is my least favorite of the five actions I intend to complete each day. It’s not a sexy word and on the surface not an idea that feels that exciting. But, I’ve recently learned three things that have dramatically changed the way I look at what it means to Serve:

1. Small is big
I think that we’ve complicated the concept of service. I think that when we imagine service we believe it means taking a mission trip to Africa or feeding the homeless or doing something else that is big and bold. Those things are good, they have their place in the idea of what it means to Serve, but I think we’ve lost sight of the small things. I was given a reminder when I watched a program about jail. In the show, a gang deep, tattooed, dangerous looking convict stood hard against the wall. When they put the camera on him, he began to unravel a tale about why he liked this particular jail. Here is a paraphrase of what he said:

“This place is special. I mean, the first week I was here someone gave me a piece of candy. People don’t do that. People don’t just give you candy and that meant a lot to me.”

A piece of candy from a stranger in jail was all it took for that convict to be impacted. That’s service. Big things, small things and all the things in between. Don’t confine your acts of service to the two weeks you go to Bolivia for a mission trip. Do small things in your own world in your own way. Find ways to share candy.

2. Stay close to the father
My favorite story of what it means to Serve is found in the prodigal son story. In the passages in Luke 15 we see such a beautiful reflection of service from the servants. Although they are not main characters, they do teach us something. One thing they reveal is that to serve, you must be close to God. You see this when the father runs to the son. It says that “while he was still a long way off” he ran to him. After a quick conversation with his son, he told the servants to prepare the feast. Did you ever stop to think about where the servants were when the father saw the son on the road? I think they were right next to him, watching the road too, engaged in what was important to the father. How else would they have been by his side to receive his instructions? I think that’s a big part of serving. You have to know what the father is doing, be where he is.

3. Throw a party
The other thing that the servants reveal about what it means to serve is how they do it. They don’t canvas the neighborhood raising money for a cause or write letters to change legislation. They throw a party. A big, wild party for the son. That was their act of service. That moment of laughter and love and happiness was how they served. 100% of the service moments in that story involve the party. So maybe service doesn’t have to be boring. Maybe it can be fun and exciting and big and happy.

There are a million great examples of what it means to serve in the Bible. I’ve barely scrapped the surface and I hope that this post felt really thin, because it was. I hope you come up with your own list of ways you can serve. Things you can do to show the people in your orbit that they’re important. That’s really what service boils down to I think. Showing people that what they think is important, is important to you. You see this when Christ would help the disciples fish. Sure, he was performing a miracle most of the time but he was also letting them know that if fishing was a big part of their lives, he would make it a big part of his too.

So tomorrow when you come in contact with someone, ask them what matters most to them and then help them take one step closer to it. Chances are you’ll find that the single step you help them with tends to help you along your way too.

The day of the sword - part 1.

2008-03-05T15:56:00.000-08:00

The day of the sword - part 1.

Good is not easy.
Good is not natural.
Good is not obvious.

If you would argue any of those statements you have never had a child. The moment you do, you realize that you have to teach good and unteach bad.

Case in point, my 2-year old McRae found her older sister's bag of halloween candy. Unaware that my wife could see her from the other room, she began quickly and deliberately stuffing the 40 pieces of candy under a piece of furniture.

No one told her that hoarding was a good thing to do. No one taught her that taking something that is not yours can be a particularly delicious endeavor. She did not need to learn how to hide. She knew that going in. What she doesn't know is how to share.

This is what we have to teach her. This is what I as a parent must instruct her on. Sharing, caring, loving, honoring, respecting, these things are no more natural to her than they are to you. She must learn to be good and unlearn how to be bad. But here's the thing:

I don't want to be good.

I don't want to do the right thing or make good decisions or follow all the rules. I don't want to fit in or be known as being a "good person."

I want to be holy.

I want to glow. I want to mourn louder and celebrate louder than people expect. I want to be extraordinary and deliberate and stripped raw of surface distractions that hold me back or down. I want to put to death boring and average and ordinary every morning when I roll out of bed.

And I think it's all possible.

But it is not easy. I think there is a reason all sins are equal. I think that God has designed each of us for a very unique purpose. I believe that you alone are created to do something that none of the other 6 billion people on the planet could ever hope to accomplish. And I think God looks at how we accomplish that with a simple eye.

God sees two states. As shown in the prodigal son story he doesn't look at the type of the sin or the specifics of your actions. When the older brother tries to qualify the younger brother's sin the father tells him he doesn't see things that way. He sees dead and alive, lost and found, on target and off target. So when we give into distraction, when we make mistakes and fail, God doesn't see the specifics of the failure. He sees that we have taken a step either away from our final purpose or a step toward our final purpose.

What I am going to do this year, what I am going to offer you the chance to do, is to walk toward that purpose. To get closer to who you are. To strip away those things you've gathered over the months or years or decades that are covering up how much you can really shine.

I would love if you did it like me. I would love if my plan or system worked for you, and we could walk this together. But ultimately, it doesn't matter. What matters is that you figure out a plan that works for you, that you customize the rough ideas in this post according to your own unique needs and desires. So what, am I really asking you to do today?

I want you to take back your year.

Right now you are donating the most precious gifts you have, time and energy, to things that are woefully undeserving. Your hours and focus are burning up like fog in the sun and the world doesn't really have a problem with that. But I think God does. Here is what Ephesians 5:15-16 says:

Be very careful, then, how you live—not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil.

That's what I want to get you to do. And the way I am going to suggest you do that is very simple. All I need is an hour.

And you have an hour. I promise, inside your day is an hour waiting to change your life. You will say there is not. You are too busy. You are stressed. You have a blackberry that is already angry and bursting at the digital seams. I believe that, but I believe you can find 12 minutes 5 times a day to do something a little different. To try something new that might just be worth more than 12 minutes.

You see, when you dedicate yourself to saving one hour a day for an entire year, do you know what you get back? You reclaim 15 days a year. That small daily commitment gives you two weeks that you can hold on to and point to and know deep down that you took back for yourself, for your future and for your Lord. And the crazy thing is that if you spent two hours a day being deliberate, you would rescue 30 days of your life every year.

How cool would it be to know that for an entire month, you were actively pursuing your purpose. Instead of wishing and hoping, you were literally growing the future in small little increments?

Here is what I am going to do:

Every day, for 12 minutes I am going to do five different things. Now because I work in corporate America and can only keep goals if they are expressed simply (I need the BRD EOD if not ASAP, OK?) I have made this really straight forward.

I am going to focus on living the day of the SWORD with God.

S - I will serve someone in my circle of influence for 12 minutes.
W - I will worship in some way for 12 minutes.
O - I will order my day and plan my actions for 12 minutes.
R - I will rest my heart and mind and soul for 12 minutes.
D - I will dance and exercise and learn to honor God with my body for 12 minutes.

That is all I am going to do. Nothing fancy. Nothing crazy. I am going to focus on the things that don't come naturally but I believe I am called to do.

In the next few posts I will detail each of the letters and what it means to live by the day of the SWORD.

That was longer than I intended and it might not make sense. This is not some silver bullet that will cure me of sin or failure. Not at all, this is just me actively and willingly letting God know that I am all in. This is me inviting him into all four quadrants of my life: the physical, the emotional, the mental and the spiritual.

This is me starting a new journey for the next month. And it's one I hope you'll go on with me.

This post goes well with:
1. My no plan always fails.

The day I took back the day.

2008-03-05T05:45:00.000-08:00

The day I took back the day.

Some ideas are like housecats. They walk slowly into your head and feel comfortable and soft and familiar. They don’t cause trouble, but instead just seem to fade into the background, curling up in the corner of your mind for a long winter’s nap.

Other ideas are like porcupines. They tend to change an environment. They are not easy to ignore and refuse to fade into the background. When you bump against them they are sharp. When they brush against other ideas they tend to change them, poking holes in things you use to think were true or drawing blood from concepts you’ve secretly always known were false.

A few nights ago I had a porcupine idea.

I was preparing for a speaking engagement at a church in Atlanta. While going over my notes, something popped up that I just couldn’t shake:

Hurt is naturally pervasive, but healing rarely is.

That is, sin has the ability to easily and quickly poison the four quadrants of our lives – emotional, spiritual, physical and mental. When I’m in a bad place spiritually, I gain weight. I medicate with food and make bad physical decisions. I read less and my mental capacity is impacted. And I’m an emotional mess, constantly succumbing to worry. Sin, is like a snowball rolling down a hill that gathers everything it comes in contact with, getting bigger and bigger.

But healing or holiness rarely works that same way. When I come to God with an issue, I tend to make it primarily a spiritual issue. I think it’s only one quadrant of my life, the spiritual one, so that’s usually the only one I focus on. And I don’t think I’m the only one that does this. How often do you hear someone say, “Well I gave my life to Christ so I had to lose some weight because my body’s a temple.” Or, “I started going to church more so I subscribed to National Geographic because I know God wants me to really grow and challenge the mental part of my life with new information.” It doesn’t happen because we compartmentalize holiness. We assume God issues are spiritual issues and rarely invite him to come shake up our emotional, physical and mental ideas.

But I don’t want to live that way. I fear that if I do, I will end up like the man Gordon MacDonald describes in the following passage from "Ordering Your Private World":

For the past two to three years I had been aware of my fast start, in the ministry. I had also been aware that most—not all—all of the men (in those days it was all men) who had graduated with me had gone on to assignments that were not as attractive as mine. In some sense many of them had not enjoyed the advantages that had come to me: a teaching father, natural giftedness, good connections. The result: They had to work harder, discipline themselves more carefully, and develop an inner depth that I had not found necessary to worry about.

But—and here was the kicker—it became alarmingly clear to me that day that it might not always be this way. Rather, I began to intuit that there would be a change in the years to come.

Those who brought their lives into discipline or (and this is a favorite word of mine) intentionality would, more than likely, go on to long-term lives of fruitfulness, and their best years would be in the last half of their lives when discipline paid off. And those like me, who relied heavily upon our natural giftedness, would reach some high point early in our lives and, more than likely, trail off into averageness for the last half of our days on earth. Of the former it would be said, “He is a person of rich spiritual quality.” Of me, given where I was, it would be more than likely be said, “Well he certainly was a flash in the pan.”

What an innocuous way to live out one’s days—a displeasure to God and certainly a regrettable muddle for oneself. The thought that this might become my life scenario was intolerable.

So what can I do? If sin is like a snowball rolling down hill naturally picking up the other parts of my life and holiness is like deliberately pushing a snowball uphill, what are my next steps? How, like Paul in 1 Corinthians, can I beat my body and make it my slave?

That was the question I addressed the other night when I spoke at that church. And it’s the question I am going to unfold in the days ahead on my blog.

I have an idea, a 10-story tall porcupine that just won’t let me loose. And expressing it, acting on it, will not be easy, sometimes it will not be fun, but I believe what scientist, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi says about situations like this:

“The best moments usually occur when a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effect to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile.”

The key word in that sentence is “voluntary.” That’s what I am asking you to do with me, to go on a voluntary journey. To stretch what you know about yourself and your life.

Are you ready?

Next post: The day of the sword.

bumper sticker beliefs

2008-03-03T09:31:00.001-08:00

bumper sticker beliefs

This weekend, I saw a bumper sticker on a car that said, "My child eats bugs." There was a picture of a kitten on the sticker.

I think that sticker was supposed to tell me, the reader, "I love my cat so much she's like one of my children." Or maybe, "cats do the darnedest things, like eat bugs." But when I read it, I felt like it just told me, "Hey there, I'm a crazy cat lady."

Then I saw another one on a different car that said, "Garbage kills bears." I had no idea this was a problem in bear communities. I mean if I had seen the sticker, "Bears kill campers," I would not have been surprised. But I learned something new and for that I was grateful.

It got me thinking though, why do we put on bumper stickers? What makes us stick them to the back of our cars? I think we do that because we want to share some message with the people behind us. To say, "Hey stranger, I have placed the single most interesting thing I have to say about myself and my beliefs on the back of my vehicle for your reading pleasure. Enjoy." Or maybe we think they're funny or silly or vital. As we enter the election we'll certainly see a lot of stickers that are strongly in support of a certain political party. But even so, political stickers are still just another way to share a belief.

The question becomes then, as a Christian, what kind of sticker would I put on my car or more importantly my life? If I had one sentence to communicate with someone about the Lord, what would it be?

I'm not sure what I would put on my car, but one thing I wouldn't is any form of the "Got _____" sticker. It comes in a lot of varieties. Here are a few I've seen:

Got Jesus?
Got God?
Got Forgiveness?
Got Grace?
Got Prayer?

If you have one of those stickers on your car or a t-shirt that says the same thing, please don't take offense at the following sentences. My biggest challenge with this message is that I think it grossly fails to accurately and creatively represent the creator of the universe.

Imagine if the person that created this campaign tried to present it to God. Here's what I believe would follow:

Guy selling idea: "I've got that new idea that you wanted God. I think you'll love it."

God: "Great, lay it on me."

Guy selling idea: "We're going to make bumper stickers that millions of people that don't know who you are will see. They'll say 'Got God?' Brilliant right?"

God: "Wait a second, isn't that really similar to the 'Got Milk?' campaign?"

Guy selling idea: "It is, actually we just rewrote that campaign and made it about you."

God: "Really?"

Guy selling idea: "Really! What do you think?"

God: I gotta tell ya, that is weak. I mean honestly, I created the heavens and the earth. I breathed light into existence and made the Cayman Islands and the platypus. I invented creativity. Is rehashing a campaign about cow milk the best way to capture and reflect the glory of my name?"

Maybe that's not how it would happen. Maybe God is cool with having reheated second servings when it comes to our creativity. But I wouldn't do that for one of my earthly clients. For instance, I write for Home Depot. I wouldn't just steal a Lowe's campaign and tell them to run that. But we do it all the time with God.

None of this might matter. It's only a bumper sticker at the end of the day, but I think it's important. I think that God deserves our best. I think that if there is ever a time to be truly creative it's when we are creating art for God.

My confession is that sometimes I've fallen short in the posts I write. I've rewarmed old messages or rushed through ideas focusing on getting people to comment or just getting something online instead of trying to simply shine the brightest light possible on God.

For that I apologize. There's a lot of 2008 left and I hope that in the weeks and months and years ahead, I will never write the equivalent of "Got Jesus?" because you and God both deserve more.

This post goes well with:
1. When nougat is more meaningful than God.
2. The dating site and God.

What I said to Jack Johnson.

2008-03-01T11:38:00.000-08:00

What I said to Jack Johnson.

This is a picture of me and Jack Johnson.

For all my international readers he's a massive musician on the cover of Rolling Stones magazine right now. (Very cool that someone in Brunei is reading the site by the way.)

I interviewed him once for a magazine and in case you are wondering, his head is massive. It's like a boogie board. Anyway, after the show I asked him a few questions. I then asked him if he would sign something for my friend Nicole. He said, "Sure what do you want me to write?" I said, "Say, Nicole, please marry me." Without a pause, he responded, "Dude I can't do that, I'm married."

The entire backstage crowd went quiet and everyone kind of looked at me like I was an idiot. And they were right, I was. I should have looked that up. I should have known that going in, but I got rambling with him and just couldn't stop myself so I stuck my foot in my mouth.

I do that a lot. It's kind of come to my attention that I talk too much. I ramble and tend to turn on a firehose of words when someone just asks for a cup of water. It's a problem.

There are really three ways I am trying to work on this issue, this non-stop running of my massive mouth:

1. Ask more and expect more questions.
I think a good measure of whether you talk to much is if people ever ask you questions. They never ask me questions because I don't give them the chance. I tell them the answer before they even get a chance to ask. "I like Frisbie. My favorite state is North Carolina. My watch is big." I also realize that I don't tend to ask people many questions because I want to just talk about me. So my new plan is to see how many questions I can ask someone, in a real honest curious way, and how many they'll ask me. They might ask me zero, but at least by being quieter, they'll have the space to ask one if they want to.

2. Few and true.
The bible is full of verses about how it's better to have control over your tongue. So it's not just me being rude when I ramble, it's actually me sometimes going against scripture. My new prayer is that God would help make my words, "few and true." It doesn't always work, but at least I've engaged the creator of the universe in this mission.

3. Picture it the right way.
A married friend of mine once said that he felt bad for ignoring a woman he was attracted to at work because she thought he was rude for not talking a lot to her. She had never said this, this was just what he assumed. What he was really thinking was, "This poor lady is being deprived of my wisdom when I don't talk to her." Sometimes, like in my case, talking a lot is just a verbal form of narcissism. The world doesn't always need to know your opinion. It will spin just fine without it. Now, when I start to feel bad about being quiet, because people need my awesome words, I think of it like God placing his big, strong hand over my mouth. I'm a hostage and I'm about to scream out and alert my kidnappers, or at the bare minimum ask Jack Johnson to damage his marriage, and his hand is not preventing me from talking, it's rescuing me from danger.

Maybe you don't talk a lot. Maybe you're issue is that you need to talk more. But for me, there's a sweetness to the silence, there's a small delight to the discipline of listening and at the end of the day ... well, I think I've said enough already.

This blog goes well with:
1. I need to shut up more often.

The super awesome lying test.

2008-02-28T18:10:00.001-08:00

The super awesome lying test.

I don't know if baseball player Roger Clemens is lying about whether he took steroids. Maybe he didn't. Maybe working out really hard, having the "eye of the tiger" if you will was enough to give him all those victories so late in his career. It's hard to say.

But what's easy to say is that Roger flunked the "Am I lying test?" Which I just invented and will one day patent and probably put on mugs and t-shirts.

Until then, here in an exclusive sneak preview are three questions you can ask yourself to determine if you are in fact lying:

1. Does the entire planet need to be wrong for me to be right?
A good way to recognize a lie is to see if anyone else feels the same way you do. In Roger's case, he's kind of on an island. While insisting he is correct, he's also insisting his agent, his trainer, Andy Petite and countless others are wrong. If the rest of the planet has to be wrong for you to be right, you might be lying.

2. Am I throwing people under the bus?
Do I have to hurt the reputations of other people to save myself? Roger told Congress his wife used Human Growth Hormone, not him. Ouch. Then he said his teammate and close friend Andy Pettitte, "misremembers" the details of a conversation they had. And he's painted his trainer as a lying alcoholic. If you ever have to save yourself by destroying others, you might be lying.

3. Am I outwardly, vocally opposed to this issue?
Sometimes the best way to cover up a lie is to rage against the issue you're hiding. A recent minister that was caught with a hooker was known for his loud, angry diatribes against adultery. Where's the disconnect? I think that in general, it's really easy to hate in other people the things we hate in ourselves. Even in the midst of his own drug problem, one television anchor railed against drug users. And Roger? In 2003, he told a crowd of advertisers in a speech, "There is no place in the game for steroids," Clemens said, "and we need to make sure the game is clean."

4. Does my idea defy logic?
Liars say the craziest things. When you lie, you essentially create an alternate universe where the laws of nature don't really apply. Up is down. Black is white. Good is bad. I once wrote about a minister that tried to say it was normal for him to rent a hotel room and write his books alone in the city he lived in. My dad, also a minister, was flabbergasted by this logic. Roger tried to say that an abscess he got in his butt was due to a B-12 shot. The doctor that gave him that shot said he had administered nearly "one thousand B-12 shots" and never had any such problem.

Maybe you're not going to be investigated by the FBI concerning your alleged drug usage but you might be hiding a lie right now. Run through this list and for more on lying, check out the following posts:

The can't choose who you love lie

I'm lying because I love you

The hermit lie

Owning a guitar will make me a guitar player

p.s. the photo in this post is the cover of the magazine my high school sent me yesterday. It has nothing to do with this post but I thought it was funny and it further proves that I am a huge dork. Although this is not a photo of me, this is my heritage. These are my origins. And if the question is, "Jon did you take tap dancing lessons in high school?" The answer is yes.

p.p.s. New post about a snake and a horrible day for a small dog at 97secondswithGod.com

swimming in blood.

2008-02-26T17:42:00.000-08:00

swimming in blood - new 97secondswithGod.com

Check out the uber short new post about the danger of swimming with sharks and temptation.

Visit 97secondswithGod.com

When God stops speaking to you.

2008-02-26T04:51:00.001-08:00

When God stops speaking to you.

A few months ago, I read something that really grabbed hold of my heart. It was a simple idea, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized it captured what I was feeling at the time. Here is what I read:

I got a hole in me now
I got a scar I can talk about

What felt powerful and true about this was the honesty. For close to two decades I had done everything I could to numb and ignore the hole in me. I had thrown so many different forms of medicine at it. I tried to stay in motion and be busy because if I ever paused, the hole had a chance to catch up with me.

And these two sentences express what it feels like to come to the end of running away. In the first, the author admits there is a hole inside. It is identified, there is a sense of dragging it into the light. And that’s what I feel like right now. I know it’s there. I’ve called it out and named it and it’s losing its power every day.

In the second sentence, the author confesses a scar he can talk about. That kind of reflects what I want this site to be about. Sharing scars and the lessons that blossom in our life when we roll up our sleeves with each other. Taken together, those sentences felt like a private message for me from God. They were a whisper of his plan for my life.

And, they were a Matchbox 20 lyric.

That’s probably a bit of a balloon prick revelation. I suppose if those two lines were taken from a dark poem by a German writer that would make me sound cool and hip. But instead, they’re a lyric from a Matchbox 20 song.

I think though, they reveal something deep and true about God. They remind us that God speaks in more ways than we can imagine.

I believe that in many ways, I have made God small and simple. He’s not as vanilla as I used to imagine him, but he’s still a fairly limited guy. He can speak to me through the Bible, ministers and really amazing sunsets, but a song? I don’t know.

The reality is though that God is the creator of creativity. He spoke to Moses through a burning bush, the Israelites through a talking donkey, Joseph through dreams. I don’t think he’s stopped talking necessarily, I just think we’ve stopped listening. We’ve stopped looking. We’ve stopped expecting to find God in the unexpected places.

The result is he’s gone mute. He’s gone quiet and we are alone again, trying to stay a few steps ahead of that hole inside, trying to wear sleeves big enough to hide our scars.

But God is talking. Today he is whispering and shouting and sending you lyrics and sunsets and little kids and birds and dreams and encouragement in a million different ways.

Don’t make him small.
Look for him on days other than Sunday.
Just listen.

p.s. what’s the weirdest way God has spoken to you?

Speaking gigs.

2008-02-25T05:22:00.000-08:00

Speaking gigs.

I'm speaking tonight and next Monday at a church outside of Atlanta. I will try to post the audio on my site, but if you want a CD to listen to in your car or something let me know and we'll work it out. Just email me at theacuffs@yahoo.com with "Free CD" in the subject line and my wildly attractive colleague, AKA wife, will work with me to get you one in a few weeks.

we are the beatles

2008-02-22T17:29:00.001-08:00

We are the Beatles.

That does not make any sense, but then neither do the Beatles if you really think about them.

Why did they get to be the Beatles and I get to be me?

Why did they sell over 1 billion albums and I file time sheets on Friday afternoons?

Why did they shape the entire world with what they did and most days I can't shape a paragraph?

Why did they get to be the Beatles and you get to be you?

Have you ever wondered what you were going to do in life? What you were going to be? What you would do when you "grew up?" I think about that, too often probably, but I think about it. And tonight while thinking about the Beatles I thought to myself, "why can't I do something as big as the Beatles?"

Really, what's stopping me? What would it take for me to do something big and meaningful? To create my version of "Let it Be?"

It all sounds so ridiculous, until you start to think about what the Beatles were. I don't think they were magic or lightning in a bottle. I think they were just four guys that for a period of time were doing exactly what they were put on this planet to do. Have you ever met anyone like this? They glow.

It's like some how, some way, they've figured out how to escape from the ordinary that consumes most of us. They're musicians and artists and accountants and project managers.

I don't think it's a job thing. This is not a post about turning in your khakis or starting a revolution against the confines of working in a cubicle. It's bigger than that, purpose is always bigger than that.

Because purpose is something that captured the Beatles. It wasn't luck or talent. There were better musicians than the Beatles. People that possessed more talent and skill. But the Beatles were doing exactly what they were supposed to do and that, that was unstoppable.

And I think, that purpose is one of God's greatest gifts to us. I think that's what the Bible means when it talks about fulfilling the desires of our heart. It's not stuff. It's not houses or cars or really nice pants. It's purpose and direction and mission. That's what we get when we stand close to the father. We get to see our dreams fulfilled. We get to be the Beatles of whatever it is we were meant to do.

I don't know what you're supposed to do. I'm not exactly sure what I'm supposed to do. But I know this, when I do it, when you do it, not matter what it is, or where it is, or when it is, it's going to be bigger than the Beatles.

the scarecrow and the swimsuit model

2008-02-22T05:24:00.000-08:00

the scarecrow and the swimsuit model

My father, the honorable Reverend Acuff, only got the mail once a year. For 300 days he ignored it, but one particular day he was the first one to the mailbox. That day? The day that the swimsuit issue of Sports Illustrated arrived. Now don't get me wrong, he got it so he could throw it away before his three teenage boys got it. I swear, he had some sort of ninja radar sense of when that issue would arrive. His ability to hone in on the exact day it would get to our house was frightening.

It's that time of year again, and even though the Maxims of the world have put a hurting on the issue, it's still getting lots of fanfare. This morning when I saw a banner ad for it when I was reading a sports article it made me think, "Why do we men want to look at it?"

The obvious answer is that we like looking at attractive women because they are well, attractive. Women are beautiful and I'd be lying if I pretended that the particular issue of Sports Illustrated was not full of beautiful examples of this simple theory. But behind that, behind the obvious visual attraction, what is about things like swimsuit issues that drive men to act like we do?

For me, and maybe you, it's about more than just the woman in the picture. Ultimately, what it's about is who I could become in the presence of that particular woman. Who she would inspire me to be. What life would be like lived in the orbit of her beauty. The woman fades quickly, but the idea of becoming someone different as a result of who she is, that is what lasts.

You probably don't feel that way, but I promise you have at some point made a decision in your life based on the idea of "if only." I believe those are two really ordinary words that when combined become incredibly dangerous. What does that phrase mean?

If only is what you say when you find a shortcoming in your life and want some reason to explain it away.

If only is what you say when don't have something that you want.

If only is what you say when things are just not good enough.

And so, what I've done in the past and will be tempted to do in the future is to "if only" swimsuit models and cars and houses and job promotions. In my head I'll think, "If only I had a bigger house, things would be so much more peaceful at home." Or "If only I had the right job, people would give me the respect I deserve." Or "If only I had enough money in the bank I would never worry." There are a thousand if onlys is this world and the one guys silently and maybe even secretly tell themselves when they see a swimsuit model is, "If only I had a girl like that, everything else in life would be alright."

But if only is just a subtle way to covet. If only is just a slick way to want something you might never have and lose sight of the amazing things you do have. And that just makes you like the scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz. His big line was, "If I only had a brain." All of his wants and dreams and desires hinged on the possession of a brain.

I think about the scarecrow and swimsuit models when I think of my friend Ben. His wife got a nose job and some lip work done and a tummy tuck. Even though he didn't say it, you could tell he was thinking, "If only my wife looked a certain way I would never be tempted to lust again." But within a month of the surgeries he confessed he still struggled with porn. He was still tempted. The lips and hips and nose did not magically take away his problems.

I suggest we retire the phrase, "If only." I challenge you this weekend to see what you have and be honest about what things or people you're trying to "if only" right now.

I dare us to all stop being the scarecrow.

This post goes well with:

1. Words you need to retire.

The Komodo dragons bit each of us.

2008-02-20T04:49:00.000-08:00

The Komodo dragons bit each of us.

My favorite definition of creativity, the one I tell all my advertising clients, is pretty simple:

Creativity is a wild mind and a disciplined eye.

That is, creativity is the ability to fill your mind with thousands of seemingly unrelated ideas and then with the discipline of your eye, see the relationships that exist between them in a way no one ever has.

That’s a fun challenge, and one I am going to attempt to accomplish right now as I tell you about komodo dragons and temptation.

The only reason I have komodo dragons on the brain is that I recently saw a National Geographic clip about them on youtube. The clip focused on the way that the slow moving Komodo dragon is able to take down large prey.

In the short segment, a seemingly unaware water buffalo ate some grass while a komodo dragon approached. If you’ve ever seen the video where the water buffalo attack the lions, then you know that the approach of an overgrown iguana did not scare the buffalo in question. He just kept eating away, allowing the dragon to get closer and closer. Finally, with one short, not that spectacular burst of speed, the dragon leaped up and bit the buffalo in the leg.

The wound wasn’t that serious and the buffalo kind of sauntered away after shaking it off with a look on his face that said, “Really, that’s it? That’s all you got? They should call you komodo lizard, not komodo dragon.”

But then the narrator spoke up. You see, the Komodo dragon doesn’t have a lot of weapons at its disposal. It’s not fast, all that strong and it doesn’t have impressive teeth or claws. But, it is highly toxic in a way. It’s not poisonous, but a komodo dragon’s mouth is like the Ibiza of bacteria. I mean bacteria get in there and really party it up. Scientists have found up to 50 different strains of bacteria in their teeth. Ask Sharon Stone’s ex husband. She gave him a special tour of a komodo exhibit at the zoo for his birthday. One bit him on the foot and he had to have surgery. Happy Birthday!

So what happened to the water buffalo? A few days later, after laughing off that bite, he felt a little tired and laid down. Then he couldn’t get back up. And the wound got infested and suddenly there were four or five komodo dragons appearing from the shadows and cue Boys II Men, “It’s so hard to say goodbye to yesterday.”

I think temptation works the same way. I think that when something impacts us, when we get bitten, whether it is a big bite that shakes our world or something small that barely nips our ankle, the foundation for bacteria is established. And when we don’t deal with it, we allow it to secretly control us, eventually convincing us to lie down and give up on what we should really be doing.

I saw that the other day on a show about body image. A woman in her forties cried when she told the host that when she was 6 she had fallen on her neighbor’s sidewalk. The neighbor, seeing that she was a chubby little girl, said to her, “Go get your mom, you just broke my sidewalk.”

One sentence, one thing spoken from one stupid neighbor 30 years ago, but that bite still lingered. That woman still clung to that sentence and believed it to be true more than anything her loving husband told her or friends told her or family told her. The bacteria still told this woman that she was fat, that she was ugly, that she was damaged.

There was no hope for the water buffalo. His fate was sealed the second he felt that small bite on his leg. And maybe you feel the same way sometimes, that the things your father told you, the words your mom used, the hate a relationship painted you with, are all fatal wounds. But the truth is, that unlike that buffalo, we have a great healer. Someone that comes not in spite of our wounds, but because of our wounds.

And it’s not complicated. I’m sorry we’ve made it appear that way sometimes. At the churches you’ve been too maybe God was explained as this complex puzzle that we had to pray about and figure out and wash ourselves clean before we approached. But it’s not like that, I promise. That’s not who God is. He’s the great doctor, the author of hope, the healer of Komodo dragon wounds.

All we have to do, the only thing I think we are all asked to do, is to admit that we’ve been bitten.

This post goes well with:
1. The Italian knife on the couch.
2. Words from a crack addict.

The last resort.

2008-02-18T17:48:00.000-08:00

The last resort.

I was recently not invited to a special event. This is different from being uninvited which is what happens when you mess up between receiving the invite and when the event actually takes place. But it still didn’t feel all that good.

I mean honestly, I didn’t really have any business attending this event. I was not expecting to be invited and didn’t know it was even happening. But when I heard that I was not on the invite list I was a little disappointed. I want to be included. I want to feel like I’m on the inside of the circle. More than that, I want to feel like I’m one of the first people invited.

I want to feel important and necessary for good times. And when people don’t invite me or invite me as a final option, a last resort so to speak, I feel like a loser. Fortunately, I am not God.

You see, the truth of it is, I came back to God as a last resort. I wish that one day while things were going along well I thought to myself, “Things are good, but I dare say they could be better.” That maybe I hadn’t thrown hand grenades into my life until there were but a handful of breaths left. But I did.

I messed it up. I tried everything under the sun to create some semblance of happiness but nothing worked. Corporate success did not make me happy. Money did not work. Sex failed. Admiration and approval from peers was paper thin at best. Drugs were useless. And at the end of all that, at the end of chasing everything, that’s when I knocked on God’s door.

And he was cool with that.

Have you ever worried that God gets insulted when he’s your last resort? That he’s mad you tried so many different things first? That if you just sort of chilled for a while, enough time would pass since your last attempt at self happiness and God would overlook that you had well, overlooked him for a while? Do you ever think God gets upset for being uninvited for so long?

I used to think that, until I read John 6. In that chapter, Jesus drops some science on people, really getting into the whole idea about needing to eat his flesh and drink his blood. As you can imagine, people freaked out when he said those things. Let’s pick up the story in 66:

From this time many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him.

"You do not want to leave too, do you?" Jesus asked the Twelve.

Simon Peter answered him, "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We believe and know that you are the Holy One of God."

I like that section because Simon Peter’s answer has two parts. In the second part he tells Christ that they believe he’s the Holy One of God. And that’s nice, we expect disciples to say things like that. But in the first part he essentially says, “Where else could we go?”

There’s an unspoken sense of trying expressed in that. It’s easy to imagine that Simon Peter was speaking from experience. Like maybe he’d already tried to make himself complete and realized he couldn’t. Why else say that sentence?

If you said to someone, “Are you sure you want me to be your best man?” And they replied, “Who else could I ask?” You’d be mad. You’d be frustrated because they were telling you that you were the number one option because there were no other options. You won the gold medal because you were the only one that was in the race at this point. You’d be hurt.

But God’s not. Do you know what God does when you’ve tried everything else and finally come to him? He celebrates. In Luke 15 we’re told they throw a big party in heaven when someone comes to the father. He doesn’t care that it took you some form of yoga, or a failed business that wouldn’t validate your worth or a marriage that didn’t complete you or millions of dollars of success that was still a little bit empty for you to get to him.

He’s just happy you’re there. First or last, his reaction is the same.

p.s. Check out "the backwards belief" on 97secondswithGod.com.

Let's get lost tonight.

2008-02-18T06:26:00.000-08:00

Let's get lost tonight.

If you know the next line to that song then you know this is about Kanye West. He recently did really well at the Grammys, but a few months ago I predicted he could do even better. Why? Cause he's a self proclaimed addict and he's using.

Here's the post I wrote:

Imagine a Kanye without porn.

The scariest thing I've ever written.

2008-02-16T06:33:00.000-08:00

The scariest thing I've ever written.

When I was in the fourth grade I watched the movie “Jaws.” It’s a nautical thriller about a giant shark that haunts the deep, dark waters of Martha’s Vineyard. In my head I pretended that the floor in our family room was the ocean. I believed that if I could keep my feet off the carpet, I would be safe and the shark would not bite me.

Now, even though I am 32 years old, I automatically pull my feet off the floor if I see something scary on television or in a movie theater. It’s a silly thing to do, but I promise that for hours at a time I have balanced my legs upright during movies in the hope that not making contact with the floor would protect me.

But there is very little that can save me from what I am about to tell you.

Maybe it won’t scare you, maybe you already knew, but when I read this I was surprised. I reread the sentences over and over again until I could make sense of them. And then I walked out into the rain and screamed at the cosmos from a long row of grey steps. (OK, I didn’t do that last part, but I’m thinking about being more sensational having recently read a fairly sensational Christian book that is selling well. It’s a problem I have.)

Here is the paragraph that caught me off guard:

Harvard economist Juliet B. Schor, in her book The Overworked American, writes that "The average employed person is now on the job an additional 163 hours, or the equivalent of one month a year, compared to figures for 1969.”

What does that mean?

We found an extra month of work in our lives.

We invented a 13th month in our year and it’s designed for work.

We carved out 20 more days from our already swollen calendar.

We work too much.

That information above might not be new to you, but have you ever gone through the exercise of understanding where we got the extra time from? What or maybe even who have we robbed in order to shoe horn in an extra month of work? Because it’s not that someone found a new month called “Flubumary” and we just decided to use that.

Instead we decided to get up earlier and go to sleep later. Instead we decided to stretch work into our cars and our dinner tables and our even our bedrooms. Instead, Saturday became the new Friday and Sunday became a new day to prepare for Monday.

I don’t really have a solution to this new month we’ve created. The scary thing is that we’ll probably try to find another. Things just tend to trend that way. But if we took little steps to get there, maybe we need to take little steps away.

My little step, the only one I really commit to faithfully is working from 7-4 every weekday. Keeping this schedule helps me avoid traffic and gain more time with my young family who goes to bed early.

What do you think your own little steps look like?

This post goes well with:
1. This is what $3 gets you.
2. Would you trade your dad for a Mini Cooper?

I'm chewing tobacco, let's make out.

2008-02-13T19:12:00.000-08:00

I'm chewing tobacco, let's make out.

I think that there are really only two things this blog is supposed to do:

1. Galvanize people.
2. Share dangerous ideas.

Now by galvanize, I am of course referring to the definition “To arouse to awareness or action.” That is what I ultimately hope that the words on this blog are able to do. Don’t get me wrong, galvanize can mean “to coat with rust-resistant zinc” and occasionally I hope I’m able to also accomplish that. But what about dangerous ideas? What is that about?

For me, it’s about saying the kind of things you might not hear in most churches. It’s about rolling up your sleeves and being honest about the scrapbook of scars you’ve collected on your arms from foolish decisions in the past. And sometimes it’s about making fun of advertising.

A few weeks ago I wrote about the whisky ad that said, “Your mom wasn’t your dad’s first.” Tonight in the March edition of Men’s Journal, I saw a chewing tobacco ad focused on sex. I know, I know lady readers, nothing is quite so hot as a guy with a muddy clump of snuff in his lower lip constantly spitting a bubbly residue into a bottle. It’s hot and I can see the attraction. I’ve included the actual ad but in case you can’t read the text, I’ll write that too. Here’s what the ad, written like an interview with a guy playing pool with a hot girl, says:

Dipping vs. Smoking?
Dipping

Why?
Better for my sex life.

What do you mean?
While some are outside smoking, I’m inside working.

There are at least 3 things this makes me think.

I was an idiot when I was single but I really hope I never said to my friends, “Watch out, it’s time for me to start working.”

The phrase “sex life” is really interesting. It’s like we’ve interwoven those two words so tightly together that it’s easy to think that sex = life. And it doesn’t.

Is there any product on the planet that won’t sidle up to sex to sell itself? I mean really, if we can do snuff, could we do oatmeal? Or pencil erasers or maybe cat litter in a sexy manner?

All that to say, don’t let the world be your final voice when it comes to sex or love or really anything for that matter. They want you to think that chewing tobacco will get you a girl, clogging a toilet could lead to an affair and your dad’s sex life is reason to get drunk.

p.s. New stuff is up on 97secondswithGod

Let's rescue sex.

2008-02-12T19:24:00.000-08:00

Let’s rescue sex.

I don’t remember how old I was when I decided to choose the world’s opinion of sex instead of the church’s opinion of sex. But it happened. The decisions I’ve made as an adult indicate that I did indeed cast my vote. A thousand times over and over, I have sided with the world’s interpretation of sex.

And I think it makes sense in a lot of ways.

The reason is that in so many different ways, the world does a better job explaining, advertising, and detailing the wonders of sex. (Just typing that sentence made me a little uncomfortable, in part because discomfort is one of the things we flavor the concept of sex with at church.)

The result is that to most of us, the world owns sex. You might not say that, you might think you don’t believe it, but most of the things we see everyday tell us differently. The world is who celebrates it, incorrectly sure, but it’s still a celebration. The world is who is open about it. The world is the one that makes a big deal about it.

But we don’t and that’s why it was easy as a kid to choose the world’s opinion of sex. As a teen, I was presented with a decision:

Choose the world’s definition which is wild, intoxicating, colorful, alive. Or choose your youth group’s definition of sex which is guilty and stifling and no PDA and quiet and vanilla and flat and waiting, waiting, so much waiting.

The decision was easy. I chose the world.

The real danger though is that I got it all wrong. I acted like God was the creator of the mountains and the oceans but not sex. I acted like he wired the human body but was surprised about the nuances of sex. I acted like the God that can infuse life and emotion and power into a worship experience couldn’t do the very same thing in dare I say sex.

I started to think today though, what if I’ve allowed the world to take sex ransom? What if sex is a hostage? A beautiful, perfect concept that was kidnapped long ago? What if sex is just waiting for people like you and me to go get it? To bring it back to the church. To bring it back to the bible. To bring it back to our marriages.

Can you imagine if sex within marriage became so big and so real and so important that the world’s view of sex felt empty and hollow?
Can you imagine if instead of reading a newspaper article about a minister caught with a prostitute you read an article about a minister leading some sort of holy sexual revolution?
Can you imagine if one of the reasons people liked being Christians was because the sex was so good?

I don’t know about you, but I’m going on a rescue mission and it starts tonight. It starts with being honest about sex. It starts with being real about sex with my accountability partners. It starts with inviting God into my sex life, which kind of scares me. And eventually it’s going to continue with me telling my kids about sex in a way that is true.

What do you think? Are you up for rescuing sex?

This post goes well with:
God was surprised sex was fun.
Your dad is having sex, let's get drunk.

New Magazine Article

2008-02-12T04:45:00.000-08:00

New Magazine Article

Every now and then, my friends at Enoch Magazine ask me to write something. The other day I expounded a little on my theory that the Prodigal Son story has an interesting idea about how to share your faith. your For many of you, it will seem like part two of other posts I've written.

Please go check it out and post a comment so that I look cool and at the bare minimum, mildly interesting.

It's called "The Pensacola Bullhorn." Click here to read it.

Oh Daniel Baldwin.

2008-02-10T18:06:00.000-08:00

Oh Daniel Baldwin.

I watch dumb TV. If despite posts like “Yanni and five other things I wish you didn’t know about me,” you still think I’m cool you might want to stop reading. This post is going to make you realize that in my free time I’m not just reading leather bound books and thinking deep thoughts. But I digress.

I recently watched a reality show about celebrities that are in rehab. One of the celebrities is Daniel Baldwin, the fourth most well known of the four Baldwin brothers. He struggles with alcohol and cocaine. While in the rehab facility he hung out with another resident, a former adult actress. On the episode I saw, he abruptly decides that rehab is not for him and leaves. That night, the actress confesses to another resident that Baldwin had been texting her dirty messages and asking for photos, something his pregnant wife would most definitely not appreciate.

When the other residents found out, they were all shocked and deeply disturbed. “He seemed so nice and he was just lying,” they yelled in the group session. “How could he do something like this?”

It’s a fair question and the answer is simple:

Temptation never travels alone.

I wish it did. More than almost anything in my life I wish that when I met counselor 3 he didn’t say to me, “I would say you have four main temptations you struggle with.” Please know that I am not being sensational or cool or hip or extreme when I say that no one ever has just one thing they struggle with.

Temptation is less like a single point on the map of your life and more like the infinity loop or figure eight if you prefer. (I posted one above.) When you face a temptation and move past the challenge, you don’t necessarily leave all temptation behind, you sometimes just move to another one, traveling slowly up or down the figure eight.

So when Daniel Baldwin entered rehab, even though he had 9 months of sobriety under his belt, he wasn’t done with temptation. He simply moved along the never ending loop and in his path he found a vulnerable former adult actress. And all that temptation he faced in the form of drugs just met him there, in the form of sex and it was bigger and stronger than he could handle.

That has happened to me a million times. One of the things I struggle with is workaholism. I tend to obsess over projects, getting an endorphin high from the success, getting crushed at the failure. When I stand up to that temptation, I feel good for a short period but then quickly go into my struggle with worry. Like a damn that has had one hole patched, all my energy, all my temptation, every thought I have quickly rushes to the weakest point. And there, at another stop along the way on my figure eight, I feel like drowning.

I still find myself on that loop sometimes, walking through challenges, ducking temptations only to find another waiting for me on another day. But I’ve learned something along the way. When you know where you’ve been, you can get ready for where you’re going.

That is, when I identified the four things I struggle with the most, I was able to see what they looked like. The monsters had been pulled from under the bed and in the light I could begin to make preparations.

Someone smarter than me once said, “Predictable mistakes are preventable mistakes.” And by looking at my loop I can figure out where I’m headed next. I can say, “Wow, that was a struggle with the work obsessing, what over the last ten years has followed that? Oh, that’s right, worry.” And I can pray and plan for what I know is waiting for me.

Is planning the thing that keeps me from jumping from temptation to temptation to temptation? Not really. I tried to plan my way around that loop for twenty years and wrecked my life in the process. The truth is that I had to let go of the infinity loop and give it to God. I had to turn it over to him.

He didn’t take it away. I don’t think he always takes our temptations away, but now when I travel that loop, I know I’m not alone. I know where I’m going. And more than that, I know what’s next.

This post goes well with:
Be sick

Shoplifting, turning 32 and the hardest thing I’ve ever done.

The cure for cancer and the alpaca addiction.

Link love and Facebook

2008-02-10T11:08:00.000-08:00

Link love and Facebook

I'm updating my list of other blogs I link to. If you have one and are cool with me checking it out and possibly linking to it, please let me know. If you want to link to mine then by all means, please do.

I'm also on facebook. If you search for my email address, jon@prodigaljon.com it's easy to find me. I also have a reader group called, prodigal jon.

I'm working on a post for tonight called "Oh Daniel Baldwin." Should be up later today.

The stories that went unread.

2008-02-09T17:55:00.000-08:00

The stories that went unread.

I started this blog last June but until late October, few people were visiting the site. That means that about 65 posts weren’t seen by most of the people now reading it

I went through the old posts and pulled out what I think are the strongest of the bunch. Don’t get me wrong. June and July were kind of “B-“, but I think I was just starting to get my feet under me and find my voice.

So without further ado, here are 8 posts few people read but a few folks might like:

1. Christopher Walken and God June 26
Sometimes you find God’s love in weird places. Like the movie “Man on Fire,” a brutal revenge film based in Mexico City.

2. The Cocaine Question July 3
My wife’s friend has one of the most beautiful testimonies and in it she says she is “thankful for cocaine.” I promise this post makes sense of that.

3. The Cure for Cancer and the Alpaca Addiction July 21
“As a teenager, the acquisition of alpacas* dominated most of my waking hours.” That’s how the post starts and it only gets weirder from there.

4. Please stop knitting or why I’m insecure. September 17
My wife pulls out some knitting while we await service to start at the super cool North Point Community Church. I cringe. Hilarity ensues.

5. Booty, God Booty September 26
That title kind of explains it all.

6. The colors rich people don’t want you to know exist. October 7
“The other day in Williams Sonoma I smelled poor. It wasn’t that I smelled bad, I just didn’t smell like that store and that store smelled rich.”

7. Let’s be irrelevant. October 8
Maybe in trying to be relevant we’ve lost sight of what matters the most. A look at Apple, Starbucks and a bunch of monks.

8. Girls in underwear, killing deer and somehow God. October 18
People actually read this one and this is kind of where things started to pick up but it's still a good way to look at how temptation looks at you.

p.s. If you read all these when they originally came out then you've been reading for a while and I really appreciate that.

The food drop, an Africa update.

2008-02-08T18:57:00.000-08:00

The food drop, an Africa update.

I got an email from my uncle tonight. Since so many of you were so incredibly kind when I told you the story about the orphanage in Kenya that was under attack, I thought I would share this quick update on the situation:

Since the update sent on February 1, 2008, we are thanking our Lord that classes resumed at GGCC this past Monday, February 4 without further incident! Construction work continues on the 4-story building, and as soon as the building is completed, our 50 new students will be admitted.

You may remember that about three weeks ago Samaritans Purse flew almost 9 tons of food from Nairobi in their DC-3 to a small airstrip on the mainland, then a smaller Samaritans Purse airplane that could land on the small dirt airstrip at GGCC made six flights to ferry the food out to Mfangano Island. Roads in Kenya are still unsafe and food remains very scarce in the Lake Victoria area. In the February 1 update we asked for prayer that food supplies would last until more arrived.

We have just learned that our Lord is using our brothers at Samaritans Purse again next Tuesday, February 12 to send more food out in the DC-3. This time trucks escorted by guards will transport the food to the shore where GGCC boats will take the food to Mfangano Island. Thank you for praying for this need and celebrate with us the Goodness of our Lord! Please pray for the safety of the pilots next Tuesday and the safe transport of this food so desperately needed.

It is such a blessing when God's people serve together for the glory of His Son Jesus Christ. God's people have prayed. God's people have enabled missionary airplanes to transport food. God's people have given to Samaritans Purse sometimes not knowing how God would use their gift.

The dog, the geese and why friends matter.

2008-02-08T09:38:00.000-08:00

The dog, the geese and why friends matter.

I once worked for a company in Massachusetts that had a problem with Canada Geese. Now before you cry “typo” on me, please know that the correct way to pluralize our feathered friends from the North is to refer to them as “Canada Geese” not “Canadian Geese.” Odd, and if you ask me a little pretentious of the geese, but true.

Anyway, our campus at work was crawling with the birds and they were making a mess. I admit I like the honkity honk of a v-shaped formation flying over my head as a way to signal the beginning or end of winter. But constantly walking through their droppings and having them eat all the grass in your yard is just not cool.

But my company couldn’t kill them. They were protected by some sort of migratory bird law. You know the one. And whenever the janitor chased them away, they just came back a few hours later. It was quite a quagmire.

So, the company bought a trained goose chasing dog and gave it to the janitor. The single, all consuming purpose of this canine was to scare away geese and he had an interesting method.

While eating in the cafeteria you could watch him approach the business at hand. First he kind of just crawled forward a little and took in the size of the flock. After a little recon, he began to slowly round up the geese into a tight, loud bunch. Once they were crammed together in a knot of feathers and anxiety, he would walk away, turn and then with his full momentum, run as fast as he could right into the ball of geese.

They were terrified of what was essentially a dog catapult and would take off. They might come back later but eventually after realizing this dog was never, ever going to tire of chasing them away, they would migrate somewhere else.

That whole scene kind of reminds me of the importance and necessity of friends. See, the dog couldn’t win if the geese were spread out. But if he clumped them tightly together so that they were acting as one goose instead of a hundred individual geese, he could chase them away easily.

And so it is with friends. When we find ourselves in a difficult situation or with a problem on our hands, it’s often tempting to isolate. A friend of mine recently lost a bout with temptation and told me, “I thought about calling you Friday night but didn’t want to bother you.” So he didn’t call. Perhaps worse than not calling is the idea of getting advice from the people that you know will give you the advice you want to hear. If you can manipulate an accountability partner to side with you every time, then that’s not an accountability partner. That’s just one more goose standing closely to you.

The friends that help me the most are the ones that are on the outside of my orbit, the friends that don’t automatically see my point of view. My friend Dwayne is that way. I’m a writer, he’s an accountant. I’m roller coaster emotional, he’s stable and steady. I’m impulsive, he’s analytical. So when I come to him for advice, I can trust he won’t be shouldered up next to me, like two geese waiting for the dog. He’ll be on the other side of the issue, a few feet away, helping me objectively.

That’s not really a new concept. Malcolm Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point, says that the best job opportunities and new experiences come from people you are not that closely associated with. The reason is that your close friends travel in the same circle as you. They work similar jobs, go to the same church, shop at the same store. The friend of a friend however travels in a different circle and by nature knows about things you don’t regularly come in contact with.

The very idea of needing friends isn’t that unique. But hopefully the idea of having friends that are close enough to know your heart but far away enough to help you avoid the “ball o’ geese” approach to temptation will help you the next time you face something that seems bound and determined to chase you away.

New 97 and a question for you.

2008-02-07T18:40:00.000-08:00

I just posted a new 97secondsfromGod. Check it out if you get a chance.

And I'm working on a post to answer a few of the most popular questions I've been getting from readers. So if you have a question about the site, what's going on with my book or how you ended up in the friend zone so quickly with that girl you really want to date, post a question and I'll add it to the post I write.

Don't eat fish at work.

2008-02-07T04:57:00.000-08:00

Don't eat fish at work.

There are a few simple rules we all need to agree to when working in a cubicle or small office type environment. For my money, the most important is “Never bring seafood for lunch.” At no point should you think to yourself, “You know what would be good tomorrow at the office? Grouper.”

Now clearly, I’m not talking about tuna sandwiches. I’m focusing on the guy that has some sort of oyster and clam leftovers that he brings in. He throws it in the break room microwave and then sets the timer like a bomb. It heats up in that small metal box, just getting hotter and hotter, smellier and smellier. Until finally, he opens it up and a blanket of funk just unfolds on the entire office.

That’s not an official rule at the company I work at and occasionally I will see someone with a Tupperware container full of cod. But I once worked at a company that made a rather silly pronouncement about food. Here is what corporate headquarters told my building:

“Employees may no longer have coffee at their desks. Only water and hard candy are permitted in the work environment.”

The management team came up with this rule because the previous summer there had been a fruit fly infestation. The small black bugs had covered everything and before the weather got warm, the guys with pleated pants and ties decided to eliminate the problem. At the time I wasn’t a coffee drinker and I appreciated hard candy, so I didn’t take great offense to the rule.

But a lot of people in the office were bothered. They grumbled about coffee and caffeine and production for a while. And then someone asked the question none of us had considered, “What is hard candy?”

It was a fair query. How would you define hard candy? Is it candy that is hard through and through? What about those little strawberry treats that have a hard shell and a soft middle? What about lollipops that start out hard but have a chocolate center? And above all, what do you even begin to do with nougat?

It was quite a dilemma and eventually they discussed drawing up a memo of inquiry to corporate headquarters. We were a billion dollar company with some ridiculously amazing products and a brand that punched other brands in its category in the face with its awesomeness but we thought maybe corporate should focus on candy definitions.

I sometimes wonder if we do the same thing with God. I wonder if we’re like corporate headquarters, making up rules and regulations to fix the fruit flies of our life, losing sight of what matters. Taking coffee away from 1,000 people on a Monday morning was not a smart thing to do, especially considering that fruit flies prefer tea anyway. But that was part of the fix to the problem.

So management added rules that didn’t really fit real life and didn’t really focus on the problem. It reminds me of something I read in the book of Acts recently. Some of the Jewish Christians wanted the Gentile Christians to get circumcised. Peter steps up and gives this really impassioned speech that convinces the crowd not to force this on their Gentile brothers. (If you’re a Gentile man, this speech is commonly referred to as the “greatest speech ever.”)

Instead of forcing circumcision, they send the Gentiles a pretty simple letter that says at the very end:

“It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us not to burden you with anything beyond the following requirements: You are to abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from the meat of strangled animals and from sexual immorality. You will do well to avoid these things. Farewell.”

So simple, so true, so not focused on rules and regulations. They told them to watch out for idols, blood, strangled animals and sexual immorality. Why? Because they would do well to avoid these things.

I have friends that won’t have a pack of playing cards in their house because it represents gambling, they don’t think girls should wear pants and they consider girls and guys swimming in the same pool at the same time to be “mixed bathing” and immoral.

Maybe they’re right. Maybe God is deeply concerned with ladies in jeans, but sometimes I have to wonder if he’s given us some straightforward rules and we’re trying to figure out what the definition of hard candy is.

We all got lost, waiting to be found.

2008-02-05T17:57:00.000-08:00

We all got lost, waiting to be found.

A few weeks ago I planned to have a party at my house. I was going to read a few things, my friend Scott was going to play some music and my friend Ben was going to do some delightful things with food.

Then it snowed in Georgia and got canceled.

I wrote a post on my blog announcing the party was off. I thought I would be clever so I mentioned that Barry Manilow had canceled too. If I am being honest, I thought at least a few people would post messages saying how disappointed they were the party was canceled.

I know that’s probably shallow but I can’t just write about the good bits on my blog and make myself seem more put together than I am. So the truth is that I thought my post about the party being canceled would generate a bunch of emails/comments in the first 24 hours. And I would feel important or missed or something.

I got 1 email in the first 24 hours.

Here is what it said:

Actually Barry didn't cancel the show last night; the management at Phillips arena did, and it hasn't been canceled just postponed. Barry's management is already working on another date for the show to go on.

Instead of readers telling me how good I am, one “Fanilow” (what Barry Manilow fans call themselves) told me how bad I am.

I was frustrated at first, but the reality is that the Fanilow helped me see a universal truth that I had forgotten about since I was in college:

We all want to be found.

I don’t care if you're Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Mormon, Atheist or Agnostic. I think deep down inside, we all want to be found. We all want someone to come looking for us. We want people to be glad when they are with us, as if they have arrived. As Radiohead once said, “I want you to notice when I’m not around.”

That’s how I was in college. I was dating a girl that didn’t seem that concerned if I was around. So when we went to parties, I would get a little drunk and then hide. By “hide” I really wish I meant “go outside and sit on a curb forlornly like a singer/songwriter waiting for inspiration.” Alas, that is not what I meant. I used to go hide in closets. (If you listen closely you can actually hear readers leaving the site as I write.) I would stand there in the dark of the closet, awkwardly shoved amidst coasts and shoes waiting for her to look for me. Wanting, more than anything those stupid nights, for her to notice I was missing. For her to come find me. I wanted to be found.

I wonder if that is how the Prodigal Son felt when he ran away from the father. I wonder if when he was in the pigpen, when he had come to the end of himself if that is what he wanted more than anything. To be found by the father. To be missed. To be looked for.

That story is woefully incomplete in some ways. We don’t get a picture of what happened the day after the welcome home party, which is the subject of the book I am writing. We don’t know anything about a mother or additional family members or specifics like how long the son was gone.

But what Luke 15 does reveal is pretty powerful. We are given two images, two distinct pictures of two people at odds with the idea of being lost and found.

In one image, we see the father. Here is what we are told: “But while he (the son) was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him.”

The father was watching the road. He wasn’t going about his day casually glancing at the road thinking he might see the son but he had some business to attend to. You get the sense that life had ceased on the farm as far as the father was concerned. And he wasn’t alone. He was with servants that eventually ran with him. I like to imagine that the moment the father was told the son was missing he called together his most trusted servants and together they started watching the road. All day, all night, all week, all month, all year.

And then we have the son, stuck in a pigpen, desperately planning his return. And when he was ready, all it says of his journey was “So he got up and went to his father.”

The journey is not what matters in this story. We are not told how long he walks or how far he went or any other detail of the trip. And it’s not that the Bible is not detailed. Read the description of the temple in the Old Testament. It’s exquisite and microscopically detailed.

But here we only get nine words and I think there are only three that really matter. I think we’re supposed to look at “got up” and “went.” That was all he had to do. He stood to his feet and he went. It wasn’t complicated. It wasn’t long. It wasn’t full of do’s and don’ts.

I don’t know where you are right now. Maybe you’re found, maybe you’re lost, but regardless, please know that there is a father watching your road. It is all he does. His beard is growing long, his stomach is going empty as he waits by the road for you. He won’t leave. He can’t leave as long as you’re still out there. You need only get up and go and wait for the sound of desperate feet in the distance.

p.s. If you've already read the 130+ posts on this site, check out my other site, 97secondswithGod.com

When a mile turns into a million.

2008-02-02T05:09:00.001-08:00

When a mile turns into a million.

(I've written two updates to the Kenyan crisis. The first is a letter from my uncle and the second is a thought that hopefully dispels some of the dangers of reading a story like that. )

My wife won't eat a cupcake unless it is fresh. She is not a diva or fancy. But she has a simple theory when it comes to deserts and such. Here is what she believes:

"If I'm going to eat something that is 500 calories, I want it to be something I really like."

A stale cupcake isn't really worth the amount of calories. If she is going to indulge, she wants to make sure she gets the most out of the indulgence. To make sure that a temporary slip in healthy eating is in fact worth it. So instead, she always eats ice cream instead of cupcakes.

That concept is one that I've unknowingly applied to temptation in my life a thousand times. When I make a mistake, when I give into some small temptation and suddenly find myself in the wrong, I want to make it worth it. The idea is that if I've already blown it, I might as well really blow it and enjoy myself. Instead of just one stale cupcake, I should eat like an entire truckload of fresh ones.

Have you ever done that? Have you ever binged on temptation? I have. When I slip on a Friday it's like all the sudden I have this free pass to just complete stay in that place for the next three days. So a little stumble quickly becomes a major fall.

As I write my book about the Prodigal Son, I can't help but think this is like running 100 miles just because you've taken one step away from God. Like adding a thousand steps to your journey away from the Lord just because you've taken three.

I don't really know how to stop that. I think part of the way is changing how I see the goal of staying next to the father. The reality is that before I die, I am going to sin again. I wish this was not the case, but my need for constant forgiveness and repentance is based on the promise of my constant missteps. With that in mind, maybe the goal of staying on the farm, in the context of the Prodigal Son story, is not to white knuckle my way into being perfect and never leaving. Maybe the goal is to make my escapes much shorter.

Maybe the goal is to not let one mile away from the Lord turn into one million. To not let an hour of temptation turn into a three day binge. Please don't misunderstand me, holiness is what I seek and righteousness is what I desire, but an inappropriate pursuit of perfection can give an unholy weight to failure. It becomes this monster of momentum that helps carry us away from God. It transforms all of our failures into this massive wall between us and God, that when we gaze back upon urges us further and further away because once we're on the other side, we might as well enjoy ourselves.

But what if we saw each failure as God sees them? As proof that a savior was necessary. As a sign that he was right to send his son for us. As an indicator that we need his love now more than ever.

I don't know where you are in your journey, but I pray that next time you step away, you won't let a mile turn into a million.

P.S. - Check out the new post on 97secondswithGod.com called "Why I started emailing God."

Hands without weapons find strength without fail.

2008-02-01T18:04:00.001-08:00

Hands without weapons find strength without fail.

Yesterday I introduced you to Naphtaly, the headmaster of the Gethsemane Garden Centre, an orphanage and school in Kenya. The orphanage is on high alert right now because radicals have threatened to burn it down if they don’t close it.

In the midst of that, Naphtaly sent an email explaining how he was feeling about the whole situation. There are probably a dozen ideas in the email I want to explore, but the only one I’m going to touch on right now is 10 words long.

The reason I am going to unpack those particular words is that I think there’s a great danger when you read an extreme story like the one I posted. The problem is that sometimes stories like that seem far away. They feel further away than just the other side of the planet, they feel like they’re happening in a whole other solar system. And when we read them, we think to ourselves, “That’s horrible, I can’t imagine going through that.”

Only, here’s the thing, you can.

Maybe there aren’t men with guns outside your door in the shadows of an African moon.

Maybe you’re not on an island with a food supply that will run out around February 10.

Maybe you don’t have to explain to eight year olds how God can still love them even though they’re growing up with HIV in their veins.

But in more ways than you can imagine or maybe admit, you’re a lot like that orphanage in Kenya. And 10 words in Naphtaly’s email are the 10 words we all must deal with.

Here is what he said:

“We have no weapons but wholly rely on the Lord”

He wrote these because they were true of his situation. He did not have any weapons. His hands held no bullets, but they were not empty, for he relied wholly on the Lord.

But that can’t be like you, can it?

I’m not so sure. Maybe we’re just not looking at that sentence the right way. Instead of looking at the words, we need to look at the idea, because it’s one that applies to all of us. Maybe instead of weapons the sentence could read like:

“My wife has left me but I wholly rely on the Lord”
“I lost my job but I wholly rely on the Lord”
“My mom doesn’t believe in God but I wholly rely on the Lord”
“I’ve lost half my life to alcohol but I wholly rely on the Lord”
“I’m not doing what I was made to do but I wholly rely on the Lord”

I could write a thousand examples there and hopefully you’ll share your own with me in a comment, but the simple truth is that each of us will face the darkness of the night. Armed rebels in Africa or apartment rent that’s late in Atlanta, each of us will stare out into the unknown and long for a weapon that just isn’t there.

My prayer is that instead of seeing your hand as empty, you’ll see your heart as full and in the darkest of times will do what a Kenyan headmaster did, rely wholly on the Lord.

p.s. There's a new post on 97secondswithGod.com. Check it out.

Update on the orphanage.

2008-02-01T10:59:00.000-08:00

Update on the orphanage.

I got an email from my uncle a few minutes ago and told him last night that I would send the prayers friends and strangers have showered on the orphanage. Thanks for sharing them. Here is the update.

In a telephone conversation this morning Naphtaly (the headmaster) shared that a peaceful "demonstration" was held this week on the dirt airstrip in front of the school on Mfangano Island, and over a thousand people from several villages attended to sing, mourn, weep, pray, and call upon our Lord together for the nation of Kenya.

Although GGCC classes were suspended several days ago, the school, which is home to GGCC students, 85-90 percent of whom are partial or total orphans, has remained open and the students have spent time in prayer, working on the compound, and games. Naphtaly added that by the grace of our Lord classes will resume Monday, February 4, 2008! We praise Him for the calm now being experienced on Mfangano Island.

However, over the last few days an extra security guard was utilized and six of the staff have served throughout the night as additional guards. This brings to mind the account in Nehemiah 4:16-17 of how God's people served while protecting themselves from attack. The turmoil in Kenya has united and bonded the GGCC staff as never before in their calling to serve our Lord in ministry to innocent children He loves so much.

Please pray for food supplies to hold up until more arrives, and for Jesus Christ, the Bread of Life, to draw many to Himself during this difficult time.

The orphanage under attack.

2008-01-30T19:27:00.000-08:00

The orphanage under attack.

My uncle helped found an orphanage in Kenya on an island in Lake Victoria. There are more than 300 kids, many of which were orphaned by the HIV epidemic. Some of the kids are HIV positive. It is without a doubt the most visceral representation I know of what it means to share God’s love.

And tonight it might be burned down.

With the violent unrest destroying a country that many would say AIDS has already destroyed, the orphanage is in danger. There have been threats. Guards have been posted. The food supply delivered to the island is dwindling.

I have never shared a prayer request on this blog and chances are I might never again, but tonight I am going to. Tonight, instead of writing about some sort of silly connection between pop culture and the Bible, I am going to post the email the director of the orphanage filed from Kenya today:

Thanks to you and to all our fellow-servants who are in USA for lifting us and our bleeding country to the Lord. After receiving perhaps the most direct and serious threats from the mainlands, to the effect that we the only operating school in our region, I decided to call off my trip to Nairobi by the MAF plane which was coming to pick me. I called all staff and told them about the threats of those who were demanding that we close down or be burnt. I then gave each one room to say what in their view we needed to do and only two people were in favor of closure, with everyone else feeling strongly that we cannot release the children to all the dangers awaiting them outside of the orphanage. We will stay with the children.

Deep inside I am reminded once more that this place is the true home many of these precious jewels of the Lord have. I asked myself, 'Should I send them out there in the wild, or should I continue God's work even when it is risky?' I chose the latter and all I ask for is not sympathy but prayer that God would put his arms around these tender lives. This evening our plea to be allowed to continue serving the orphans for the sake of Christ was aired on the radio. Mention was made of us by name that we should be spared the ordeals going on throughout our country by now.

Tonight the men will be working as guards of children, women and property as a response to the night attacks. We have no weapons but wholly rely on the Lord and the guarding angels of light. May the Lord bless and keep you.

Tonight if you pray for strangers,

pray for Kenya.

Pray for the kids at Gethsemane Garden Centre.

Pray for people who are so hurt that they’d want to burn down an orphanage.

Please post a comment. I will email any comments posted to the staff and kids at the orphanage so they know they are not alone in this nightmare.

Update:
1. The orphanage, which is also a school, has a website with more info. Visit www.ggcckenya.com
2. Thanks to the folks that have said they will share this story on their own blogs.

Playing in the dirt.

2008-01-29T09:41:00.000-08:00

Playing in the dirt.

I got fired once because I really wasn’t trying that hard.

I was caught shoplifting as a teenager.

I’ve lied to almost everyone I’ve ever met.

I used to write prayer devotionals for churches during the day and take drugs at night.

And yet, there is nothing I can do that will surprise God.

I used to think there was. I used to think that my junk, much of which is too horrible for that list above, would surprise God. That he would look at it and just recoil at how filthy the whole mess of my life was. That in his white robes and be-sandaled feet he would think I was too dirty for forgiveness. He would look at me and say, “Wow, I didn’t even know that was possible. I mean I thought maybe it was but you found new ways to mess up a life. It’s too much.”

I think that’s one of the hardest parts about failing people we care about. It hurts to shatter someone’s expectation of who we are, to surprised them. Has that ever happened to you? Have you ever done something or said something and watched someone’s view of you completely and possibly irrevocably change? They look at you and say, “I didn’t think you were capable of that. I’m just so surprised you would do that. That’s not the Susan I know. I don’t really know who you are anymore.”

I used to think God was like that, but last night I read something that makes me think I might be wrong. In John 8, we see the scene where the Pharisees bring a woman who was caught having adultery to Christ and say that according to Moses, they should stone her.

It’s a climatic scene. You get the sense that the teachers of the law are just foaming at the mouth in judgmental excitement. Finally, they have backed Jesus into a corner. This was it, the trap was about to be sprung.

And the woman, the poor woman was just there exposed. The bible says she was “caught” and you can’t help but think she was dragged from a bed in a clutter of screams and yells with little clothing on. She’s standing there vulnerable, waiting to learn if she will be stoned to death in a few minutes.

And how does Christ react? Is he horrified at her sin? Does he recoil thinking about how she failed, expressing his shock that despite the threat of stoning people still commit adultery? Does he express his disappointment in the woman or feed off the energy of the crowd?

No.

The bible says:
Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger. When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, "If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her." Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground.

I heart that. It’s not the point of the story. It’s a minor detail maybe in a piece that is ultimately about forgiveness and hypocrisy, but I can’t ignore Jesus’ reaction to the sickness of our sin.

He plays in the dirt. He draws in the dirt on the ground. And he does it for a while until they kept questioning him and he had to stand up. When he did, he said one sentence and then returned to a seemingly unimportant drawing in the sand.

But I think it was important. I don’t think it’s a quiet detail we’re supposed to skip over quickly. I think it yells love. I think it amplifies the forgiveness he eventually offers the woman. He knew she had sinned. More than that, he later tells her to leave her life of sin because that is how deeply scarred her entire world was. But none of that shocks Jesus. None of that phases him.

I don’t know what you’ve done. I don’t know how bad it was or how recent it was or how hurtful it was. But regardless of what it was, Christ’s reaction is going to be pretty simple.

He’s going to forgive you.

Don't sleep on 97.

2008-01-25T05:22:00.000-08:00

Don't sleep on 97.

I updated 97secondswithgod.com with a lot of new content this month. Check out:

I am Judas.
The party fails, the rain falls.
Maybe God doesn't hear you.

Each one is uber short and mildly amusing in a "did you ever notice" kind of way.

This damn life.

2008-01-22T18:32:00.000-08:00

This damn life.

On the evening of January 31, 1953, a father and his 9-year-old son were walking along a large dyke in the Netherlands. The father noticed that the water was higher than it should have been. With a watch and a worrisome look he took a rough measure of how high the water would be soon.

In a controlled panic, he and his son woke up the mayor of the small town. They woke up the town council and for a few hours they discussed what they should do. Ultimately the town council decided that they should not ring the church bell and wake up the town because nothing serious would happen. The reason they believed everything would be OK was that the dyke had always stood. Their town had always been safe and so they trusted that what had never happened could not ever happen.

The next morning, the father and son started searching for survivors among the more than 1,800 dead.

Chances are, you and I will never feel the rush of water as a damn breaks and a town disappears. But in many ways, we all know what it’s like to stand on top of a wall as the water slowly rises. To see the warning signs in our life and know that perhaps someone should be warned.

My friend shared one such moment the other day. He’s got a number of challenges ahead of him and in some ways he’s trying to face them alone. When I asked him what would happen if he found himself face to face with one particular thing he struggled with, his response was simple, “I’ve never done that particular thing, so it shouldn’t be a problem.”

And in some sense, he had never done the thing in question. But the truth is that everything you’ve ever done is something you once had never done. Everything in this life has a starting point. A moment where it leaps from not at all to at least once.

Maybe it’s slow, the daily build up of rain washing against your walls. Maybe it’s unexpected, a storm colliding against you with waves and water you never dreamed could be so deep. But in that moment when you stand on the top of your damn and can see the water rising, don’t try to go it alone. Reach out to a friend. Wake up your neighbors. Ring the church bell.

Because in this damn life, it’s just so easy for never to turn into first time ever.

Tutwiler Hall - Part 2, the Chainsaw

2008-01-22T16:57:00.000-08:00

Tutwiler Hall - Part 2, the Chainsaw

My father and I have never taken a class in chainsaw operation. We never spent any time online learning how to hold them or start them or fix them. We don’t have any friends that showed us how to make good diagonal cuts in trees. We never read a book or a pamphlet on treating chainsaw inflicted wounds. But apparently that doesn’t really matter, because with a credit card you can buy a chainsaw from The Home Depot.

And that’s exactly what we did one bright morning in May. There were three tall, gangly trees on the side of our house that my dad had his eye on. Our neighbor had a professional tree company coming in a few days to remove a few from her yard and had volunteered to have ours removed for free. “No, no” said my dad, “I can handle those. I’ll cut those down.”

I think that he wanted to see real progress from something he had worked on. As a minister, most of his work was emotional and not as tangibly visible as say a 100-foot tree falling through the air after being cut down. So we bought the chainsaw and got to work.

The first tree wasn’t a problem, although the first tree is never really a problem. That’s the one that lulls you into thinking you know your way around a chainsaw. “Hey,” you think in your head, “that wasn’t so hard. What was my wife worried about” you say as you search your yard for bigger trees that will surely tremble beneath the might of your new chainsaw.

We were less successful with the second tree. My father wouldn’t let me use the chainsaw, so my job was to pull a rope tied to the top of the tree and try to direct it where we wanted it to land. Using the word “rope” is a tremendous compliment to the piece of finger thin twine we had tied to this tree. As my dad angled his cut into the bottom of the stump, the tree began to lean a little.

“Pull Jon,” my dad yelled. I looked up and saw the tree hungrily eying our next door neighbor’s roof. So I started pulling as hard as I could. But the tree just laughed at that twine, hundreds of pounds of wood and gravity giggling at my ridiculous efforts. With a thunderous crash, the tree shattered itself on the house next door to us, breaking through the attic dormer, dislodging a piece of their chimney and sending limbs everywhere.

My dad sprung into action. “We’ve got to get up on that roof and clean it off before they get home.” We were going to tell them what happened. That would be impossible not to do, but my father figured it would be an easier story to tell if the scene of the crime had been polished a little first.

Unfortunately this was a rather ambitious tree and had not only punched our neighbor’s house but had also fallen on our aluminum ladder completely warping every rung. All in all, it was a highly unsuccessful day with the chainsaw.

Sequence
My father and I didn’t follow a sequence that would really lead to any degree of success. We didn’t prepare for the day with the chainsaw. We didn’t put in any research or hard work before we pulled the ignition cord. We didn’t get expert opinions or plan what we were going to do. We just did it and our complete lack of upfront discipline meant the neighbors got a new attic dormer, we got a new ladder and my dad got a new sermon illustration.

I used to view my sins like those trees. I saw them as something I needed to cut down myself before I could be close to God. As I mentioned in another post, “until” those trees were gone, I didn’t want to be near God. I thought more hard work would mean more love. I thought sin removal would show God I was serious. That I was committed and all in.

I assumed that my willpower would be the chainsaw with which I cut a swath through my sin on the way toward the Lord. But that’s the exact opposite of what God shouts in his word over and over again. From the simple example of the celebrate first attitude in the Prodigal Son story to the taskless forgiveness offered the thief dying on the cross next to Christ, we see that work is not a condition of salvation. If anything, it is a by product of it.

My favorite example of this is in Isaiah 30:18–22. In this passage, God lays out with poetic clarity the sequence he expects us to follow:

1. I fill you with love.
2. We remove the things in your life that have hurt you.

The verses elaborate of course. Verses 18 says, “the LORD longs to be gracious to you; he rises to show you compassion.” And when we take a step toward him, verse 19 promises, “you will weep no more. How gracious he will be when you cry for help! As soon as he hears, he will answer you.” And out of this experience, after we drink deep from his love, we are then able to remove the tall trees in our life. Verse 22 says, “Then you will defile your idols overlaid with silver and your images covered with gold; you will throw them away like a menstrual cloth and say to them, "Away with you!"

I love the word “then” in that passage because it marries points 1 and 2 together. They can’t be flipped. They can’t be switched. There is an order, a simple sequence we are to follow.

So today, put down the chainsaw. Quit worrying about the trees. Trust in the then.

The computer monks.

2008-01-21T17:40:00.000-08:00

The computer monks.

Usually, this is the time of year when keeping resolutions gets difficult. The reality of a few weeks has stacked up like old newspapers and the previously white canvas of a wide open year feels a little bit colored on. And so you, like me, find yourself going back to work on a Tuesday perhaps wondering where the motivation for the day will come from.

I don’t have steps you can follow but I do have a short story that sometimes reminds me why even the unimportant parts of my day are important.

There was once a group of monks that were hired to program software. The guy that hired them thought that at the bare minimum they would be faithful workers. They probably wouldn’t steal or lie or skip work. At the worst, they would be hard workers that didn’t cause much of a fuss.

Instead, the monks gave him the most beautiful code the programming work had ever seen. It was less like lines of code and more like art. There was an intentionality and rhythm to it that spoke to deeper truths, even in the midst of something traditionally cold and flat. When asked about it, the owner of the copy had a fairly simple response:

The monks believe that everything their hands touch is sacred.

Wow. “Everything” is the gorilla word in that sentence. It’s not some things or most things or church things, it’s everything. Yard work? That’s sacred. Filing your expense reports on time? That’s sacred. Keeping accurate timesheets at work? That’s sacred.

It’s all sacred.

Do you ever wonder when you’ll start to do “real work” for God? I do. I love my job but there are weeks where work feels really commercial and secular and not five days of “worship.” And in those moments I think to myself, “wouldn’t God want me to do his work 40 hours a week?” Shouldn’t I be writing devotionals or out in Africa as a missionary? Shouldn’t I work at a church or something? Shouldn’t I be doing God’s work?

Here’s the thing though, I am. If I, like those monks, look at my work the right way, then everything I do is worship. Every breath I take, every moment I have is worship.

And whether I’m programming or writing advertising or posting blogs, it’s all sacred.

Tutwiler Hall - Part 1

2008-01-21T11:17:00.000-08:00

Tutwiler Hall

One fall night, in Tuscaloosa, Alabama I decided to take acid. The Crimson Tide had lost to Houston that day but I didn’t care. I was in a bad relationship. We had reached that point where you secretly hope unpleasant things happen to each other. And since she attended the University of Alabama and wanted them to win, I was perfectly fine with the football team losing.

I don’t know who gave me the acid, and the idea that a sentence like that belongs in my mouth is ridiculous. I never drank in high school. I looked at pot as a hardcore drug, but that year all my definitions of right and wrong changed. So I found myself in someone’s kitchen letting a stranger squirt drops of liquid acid under my tongue.

All I remember is that he said, “uh uh, that was too much” and then most of the night disappeared. People lost their shapes. I started to see everyone not as friends, but rather strands of pixilated colors. Have you ever put your face really close to a television and seen the way the green and red dots make up the picture? That is how everyone looked, stripped of everything that defined them as an individual. I heard someone describe the human body as a container once and I thought that was really interesting. In this moment though, the containers were gone and that is exactly how I wanted it.

I was lonely and sad and in a relationship that was broken beyond repair. I felt stuck, trapped, forced into a corner and a life I didn’t want. I wanted a new container. I was tired of mine and nothing seemed to change it. Creatine and exercise and resolutions and studying harder didn’t work. Church didn’t work. Small groups weren’t working. So I threw drugs at my container and for 12 hours it was gone.

But then the morning came. It always comes. As a child I used to comfort myself in our coastal New England town by listening for birds. If they were singing, it didn’t matter if it was still dark outside, morning was coming to rescue me. But this felt more like an assault, the beams of sunshine streaming through the windows like swat members on bright ropes.

And so I did what I did most mornings, I walked to the full length mirror in Tutweiler Hall and looked in. I wiped my eyes with dirty hands and stared at myself, but I wasn’t there. I know now that it was the drugs still lazily stumbling in my veins, but what I saw terrified me.

My face was different. My skin was pulling tight, like too small sheets being tucked into the corner of a big bed. My muscles were straining, any fat in my face fading as the bones beneath began to swell. My face changed in that moment, as my skull seemed to surface like a submarine from the depths of myself. Hollow eyes stared at me.

In that moment, I knew that I would never escape the things inside me. I would never be free of them. I could use drugs or sex or will power or hope or anything in the world and it wouldn’t matter. It all might change the surface of who I was but deep down, in the dark corners that people would flee if they knew existed, was stuff I just couldn’t shake.

That all feels very emo. Like maybe I should have darker hair and paler skin and more black on when I read those words. And instead of Jon, my name should be October Black, and I should have a band with one guy whose hair kind of looks like Flock of Seagulls but it’s cool cause it’s done ironically. But Jenny won’t let me wear eyeliner or black nail polish so you’ll just have to use your imagination.

The funny thing though is that this concept, the idea of trying to get away from what’s inside, is laid out in the Bible better than any emo lyric:

Check out Isaiah 30:
15 This is what the Sovereign LORD, the Holy One of Israel, says:
"In repentance and rest is your salvation,
in quietness and trust is your strength,
but you would have none of it.

16 You said, 'No, we will flee on horses.'
Therefore you will flee!
You said, 'We will ride off on swift horses.'
Therefore your pursuers will be swift!

17 A thousand will flee
at the threat of one;
at the threat of five
you will all flee away,
till you are left
like a flagstaff on a mountaintop,
like a banner on a hill."

I love that imagery. The idea that the things we turn to in times of need are horses. That when pushed, we saddle up and try to ride off into the sunset. I don’t know about you but my stable is bursting.

Drugs was one of my horses. But it’s not the one I’ve ridden the most over the years. I have too many to count, but I can think of a few without really trying:

Imagination.
I can mentally create the most elaborate hiding places when I’m bored or frustrated with any aspect of my “real life.” Usually I play college basketball. Always I am taller. That’s something I think about a lot. I wish I was a little bit taller.
I wish I was a baller
I wish I had a girl who looked good
I would call her
I wish I had a rabbit in a hat with a bat
and a 'six four Impala

Drama.
I love worrying about silly stuff when there’s real stuff staring at me in the face. I lost 30 pounds, woke up in cold sweats daily and ended up going on Paxil temporarily in the months leading up to my marriage. But I told everyone, including myself, that I wasn’t nervous about the marriage, I was nervous about the Guided Tour project at work. A job that went out of business about an hour after we got home from the honeymoon by the way, which in-laws love.

Approval.
Have you ever asked someone else to define or validate you? Maybe not with those words but your actions scream “tell me I’m good enough.” I remember once having a Celtics game ruined because on the way there with my dad someone in another car had flipped us off. I spent the entire game wrestling with the thought, “why didn’t that guy like me? How can I get him to like me?”

Busyness.
I used to call the shower “my compression chamber” because inside there was nothing to distract me. I had already read all the shampoo bottles. It was just me and the water. That’s when thoughts I was trying to flee chased me down. That’s when my horse of being too busy caught up with me. And I hated it.

It all made me so anxious. I think I’m probably a tightly wound person. I seem to spin like a top and have on many, many times been told “it must be exhausting to be you.” And it is sometimes, because I think God’s right. When you’re on the run, the sight of one can make a thousand flee. Something small can feel big.

I swear, most Fridays, even though things are going so much better, I leave work thinking, “I’ll probably be fired on Monday.” If my boss closes a door during a meeting she is having without me I immediately assume it is to discuss with security which is the best way to escort me from the building. That’s silly, but from the back of a horse things are out of proportion.

So where does that leave me? Where does that leave you? Tomorrow, when something comes up, how do you not put on those weird horse riding pants and just go?

Here is how the verse continues:
18 Yet the LORD longs to be gracious to you;
he rises to show you compassion.
For the LORD is a God of justice.
Blessed are all who wait for him!

There’s a handful of really beautiful words in there, but since I’ve written about those lines before I’ll only mention one. “He rises to show you compassion.” There are a lot of things in my life that I’m motivated by, but I don’t know any that I rise for. I love to write, but most days I don’t rise for it. I want to beat my friend in a half marathon this year, but I don’t rise to train. Of all the things I do, I can’t name one that I rise for, and yet, that is what he does. It is why he gets up. But the verses don’t stop there:

19 O people of Zion, who live in Jerusalem, you will weep no more. How gracious he will be when you cry for help! As soon as he hears, he will answer you. 20 Although the Lord gives you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction, your teachers will be hidden no more; with your own eyes you will see them. 21 Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you, saying, "This is the way; walk in it." 22 Then you will defile your idols overlaid with silver and your images covered with gold; you will throw them away.

Ohh, I could talk about that for hours, but there’s only really one thing in there we have time or space for. And that’s the idea of sequence. Something my father and I learned about one day with a chainsaw.

To be continued tomorrow.

On love and business.

2008-01-21T08:05:00.001-08:00

On love and business.

PBS has a bit of a dilemma. Years ago they started giving donors awards when they would give money during their annual charity drive. It worked well at first and seemed to be a good short term solution to dwindling donations. But within a few years they realized that they couldn’t stop giving out tote bags whenever someone donated a certain amount.

They discovered that in a way, they had trained people to only respond to incentives. Unless they gave someone something, the people that first responded to the gift offer would not donate any money in the future.

The thing that PBS did not take into account and what is visible in a lot of dating relationships is a concept the book “Steal These Ideas” detailed:

“People renew the way they were acquired.”

That is, someone will repeat an action the same way they first committed it. Donors that gave because they got a gift will expect a gift the second and third and fourth time they give. Customers that bought sneakers because there was a Spring Sale tend to wait until the next Spring Sale to buy again. So what does that have to do with relationships?

Everything.

What this ultimately does is give a framework to the Oprah-tastic concept, “if he cheated to get you, he’ll cheat on you someday.” Everyone is familiar with the idea that if you’re relationship started with a guy leaving his wife for you, chances are you should be worried about future infidelity. If he was willing to do it once, he might be willing to do it again. But I think that’s only the extreme example.

What about relationships that start with one person bending their beliefs just a little? What if for instance, before you’re married you pretend that you like going out all the time? That for you, new restaurants, tango dancing and wild adventures are what you prefer. But when you get married and a little more comfortable in the relationship, you revert to who you really are, which is a homebody. What happens then?

What happens is that the person who fell in love with the wild adventurer wakes up to find a peaceful homebody instead. For lack of a better word, they were acquired by something that no longer exists. The very things that attracted him or her no longer exist and conflict has fertile ground to grow.

I know that in some sense we’re all on our best behavior when we start a relationship. That’s cool and is natural, but be careful. I think it’s dangerous to blur who you are too much when you begin a relationship. I’ve seen too many marriages when one person says, “She became someone else. I don’t know who I married.” The truth is though that she just became who she had always been. And if that’s not who you fell in love with, love can suddenly feel very fake.

One more thing guys do.

2008-01-20T19:08:00.000-08:00

One more thing guys do.

The other day I wrote a post about some of the things I’m going to teach my daughters that aren’t really covered in books. The kind of things that manipulative guys tend to say to girls. I regret having ever done any of these, but at the bare minimum I’m going to make sure my daughters can see the nonsense coming from a mile away.

And I got a few responses from other dads that have daughters. So I thought I would add one more thing, and maybe ask you to tell me yours. That is, if you’ve got something that would fit in this post, drop me an email.

What’s the new one? I call it the “isn’t that crazy?”

I was reminded of it when a friend told me about a bunch of married friends from church playing strip poker. That’s right, married couples that met at church were regularly playing strip poker together out in California.

Now the obvious question, the one we all asked, was “How does that happen?” How do 8 different couples all agree that maybe playing strip poker with people from church is a good thing to do? It took me about 4 seconds to come up with a guess and it’s pretty simple, someone dropped an “isn’t that crazy?”

Here’s how it works, a guy (girls are also capable but it’s usually a dude) says something outrageous that he heard someone else did. It’s rarely about him and is usually something like “I heard about these people at church playing strip poker.” Then he just waits to see how the room responds. If someone goes, “Ugh, that’s gross,” he’ll immediately respond with, “Isn’t that crazy?” If, however, someone says, “Wow, I haven’t done that since I was in high school,” then he knows the room is at least open to the possibility so he starts working it.

It’s not always in a group situation either or even a verbal statement. Sometimes a guy will wait to see your reaction to some scene in a movie or will leave a magazine open to a page with an article he wants you to read. There are a million ways he can pull this move.

Hopefully, this will never happen to you, but it might. And if it does, please laugh a little and then email me because I like to laugh too.

Notes from the plane crash.

2008-01-20T18:46:00.000-08:00

Notes from the plane crash.

I asked my friend one night if he had ever read a certain book. I was struck by his reply:

“I read it, but I was in survival mode, so I don’t remember it.”

We’ve all been through a crisis, but I had never heard such a tangible description of how it feels to be in the middle of one. To be in survival mode.

It’s all encompassing sometimes isn’t it? When you’re just trying to survive something, divorce, a death, a job loss, everything changes. Food doesn’t taste the same. Sleep, once a welcoming friend, becomes like some sort of impenetrable fortress. It’s slippery all the sudden and you can’t get a grasp of it. Things that used to make you laugh, lose their humor. It all kind of gets tangled up in one big ball. And that’s exactly where a girl I know is right now.

She’s going through one of those things I mentioned above and when you see her, you get the sense that she’s been in a plane crash. She might tell you differently, but she’s floating in the ocean right now, trying to shake off the wreckage of some bad decisions.

A counselor is helping her. They meet weekly, but the other day she said something that made me a little concerned about the advice she was getting. It wasn’t anything crazy, she simply remarked, “We’re spending a lot of time getting at my core issues.”

There’s nothing wrong with going at your core issues. I think that’s important. But doing that exclusively is kind of like sitting in your little lifeboat in the ocean and worrying about what type of pilot you are. Thinking about how maybe having your dad as flight instructor gave you a bad sense of self esteem while flying.

Those are important issues, I agree, but right now, you have bigger issues. Like how to get drinking water or how to avoid sharks or sunstroke or maybe just how to get through the day. And my friend’s counselor wasn’t doing that. He was strictly focusing on her point of origin issues, even though her lifeboat had a leak and she was sinking.

I hope you’re not in a crisis right now. I hope you’re not in survival mode, but if you are, please get both types of counsel. Understand the big, lifetime issues that got you there, but also, ask for help today, this hour, maybe this minute. Because as small as a lifeboat is, it’s too big to be in alone.

Kohler is cool with your affair.

2008-01-20T17:41:00.000-08:00

Kohler is cool with your affair.

Kohler is the Nike of bathroom faucets and toilets. They have a ton of products, but chances are, those are the two you might have seen. Normally, I have a strict policy about writing posts concerning faucets but tonight I saw a commercial that was a little surprising.

In the spot, a guy is walking down the front steps of his brownstone in the city. He sees a sexy woman plumber walking into his neighbor’s house. He immediately runs back in and starts to flush things down his toilet in the hope that it will clog and said sexy lady plumber will come over.

It’s mildly humorous, as he throws in a towel, candles and eventually a bag of dog food. Kohler is big on bragging about how they’re toilets don’t clog so the point they’re trying to make is clear. But the commercial ends with the guy’s wife walking in on him pouring the dog food down the toilet. Interesting that she’s average looking and not at all sexy like the gal plumber.

What’s the underlying message in that ad? That marriage is so dull you’ll fill your toilet with Alpo for a chance to see an attractive female plumber? Really? Is that what I’m supposed to believe? Marriage is so boring that life has boiled down to tricking hot service people over to your house?

Maybe I’m looking at it the wrong way. Maybe this is aimed at wives and the message is, “Unless you have a Kohler toilet, your husband will flush a hand towel and run off with the plumber. Buy Kohler!”

That’s stupid, and maybe this makes as much sense as the post, “Your dad is having sex. Let’s get drunk!” And I’m not going to protest Kohler or write a letter or never use my kitchen sink again.

But I do at least want you to be sensitive what people are spending millions and millions of dollars to tell you and me. Marriage doesn’t matter. Flirting is OK. Adultery is kind of funny if it involves dog food and a toilet.

You have mad aloe.

2008-01-20T10:58:00.000-08:00

You have mad aloe.

A few years ago I used to do a bit of freelance “coolhunting” for a company on the West Coast. Coolhunting is just a fancy way to say “trend reporting,” an activity that basically involved me writing emails about what was popular and cool in Boston. I would send them to my contact at this company, they would package them and select a few trends and then sell the information to people like MTV, Calvin Klein, Dreamworks etc.

The idea is that a few influential people are able to direct and determine what’s cool. Malcolm Gladwell talked about this concept at length in his book, “The Tipping Point.” I’d argue that I wasn’t exactly one of the coolest people in Boston at the time and instead got the gig as a result of my ability to string together a mildly interesting sentence, but that’s not why I’m telling you about my coolhunting days.

I learned approximately one thing during that year or so reporting on what was hot, and that is this: cool is fictional. It’s definitely contextual and subjective. I mean the German exchange student that wears motorcycle racing Puma sneakers kind of looks like he’s from the moon when he goes to high school in Georgia, but in Berlin he wouldn’t stand out. But I never really understood that cool was pretend until I made some up.

I was finishing a project on slang. The assignment was simple, report on the words that were going to be hot in the coming year. I had written a bunch down but felt like maybe I needed on more, one final word. But I couldn’t think of any, so I just made it up. I lied, something that before God, came very quickly too me. In some ways it still does, as I thought about naming this post, “Something I wrote for MTV.” I didn’t write it for MTV. I don’t even know if they bought my information about the word I made up but stretching the truth and lying about it was something that was a little tempting just now.

Anyway, here is what I did. I looked around my desk for inspiration and saw our aloe plant. I thought for a moment and then wrote about how in Boston, the new, cool word was “aloe.”

I wrote that “aloe was a way to describe a girl who was really fresh, and attractive.” I had to give an example sentence as well to go along with the definition. I had to use it in a sentence and show how other people were saying it. This is how I told them people most commonly used the word:

“That girl has mad aloe.”

I hit “send” on my email and forgot all about it. When you lie a lot you kind of lose the ability to remember which lies you’ve told.

A few days later, I got the weekly newsletter from the company. It’s a simple email that is sent to more than 10,000 of what the top trend reporting agency in the country, if not the world, believes are the coolest people around. The new slang they were most excited about in the coming year? Aloe.

The word they trumpeted as the coolest of all was the one I had made up. Aloe. Teens in Ohio and hipsters in Oregon and punk rockers in NYC were all told the same thing that day, aloe was it.

I regret that I lied. It was a foolish, immature thing to do. But, in that moment I learned that I didn’t need to chase cool, because it wasn’t real. Whether my t-shirt was ironic or my hair had the right product in it or I had the correct pair of headphones that indicated somewhere on my body was the right MP3 player, didn’t matter.

Cool is fictional. People like me make it up. And it’s not something worth worrying about.

This year, when you face the challenge of being cool, I hope you’ll remember how silly it all is and maybe even, that at the end of the day, you’ve got mad aloe.

Copa Canceled - Barry and Jon call off gigs.

2008-01-19T11:42:00.000-08:00

Copa-Canceled: Barry and Jon call off gigs
There are a few rules I live by, call them codes if you will. Guiding principles that help shape my decisions. One, that I swear by when in a jam, is to ask myself, "What would Barry Manilow do?"

It just so happens that Barry canceled his Atlanta show tonight. North Point canceled church too. And since these things always seem to happen in threes, I am canceling the party .

At the end of the day, if the snow is too much for Barry's sweet, sweet dulcitones, who am I to argue? In all seriousness, I would hate for anyone to be in an accident because of me.

Here is how you can anticipate me reacting over the next few days:
1. I will probably write a post comparing the snow to when God limited the number of men Gideon could bring into battle because he wanted to show His might.
2. I will remove the post when my wife tells me it's a bit much to compare myself to Biblical heroes.
3. I will film several, mildly amusing videos with the cameraman, who came down from Charlotte to film the party.
4. I will use this as PR fodder for when I am a Christian Thousandaire. (Probably say something like, "Things weren't always so great for Jon, his first reading was met with a horrific snowstorm, in Georgia!)

I'm rambling at this point. I regret I won't get to see you tonight. The piece I wrote was called "Michael Jordan Alabama Chainsaw" and was about, well the title kind of gives it all away.

I may plan another party in the future if there's not some sort of Lake La

Ladies, here are three things guys don't want you to know.

2008-01-18T09:46:00.001-08:00

Ladies, here are three things guys don't want you to know.

If all goes according to plan, my daughters nicknames at school will be “girls that wear so much clothes.” I know snowsuits will be hot in Georgia, but as I mentioned before, hopefully they won’t mind.

But unless modesty becomes a trend or a really famous Amish girl becomes someone that teenagers learn to emulate, I’m stuck. It’s not going to be easy to raise girls. I get that. I probably deserve that for how stupid I was to the opposite sex when I was young.

Here’s the thing though, maybe I can take lessons from my days of foolishness. Maybe I can equip my daughters with the kind of wisdom that can only come from a lifetime of bumps and bruises.

It’s doubtful I’ll ever write a book called “The girl’s guide to jerks” but I could definitely at least share three lessons I plan to pass on.

Maybe you’re still in college or on the dating scene and can use this. Chances are these will seem really obvious, but if you already know them, I promise you’re miles ahead of some of the girls that I ran into while in college.

So here they are:

1. Depth Perception
A counselor told this idea to a friend of mine and I think it’s solid. Everyone has a handful of things they don’t want to share with strangers. Joys or pains that feel too big to introduce in a casual conversation. Maybe you didn’t get into the college you wanted or you once got fired from a job. Could be that you still suck your thumb, it can be anything. What happens though is that some guys have a handful of things they’ve grown comfortable with over the years. You might have a hard time talking about a family member that died but they don’t. In fact, they’re perfectly fine with it. So what they do is tell you all about it. And you think, “wow, this guy just shared something really personal. I should too.” You open up and make yourself really vulnerable because you think he just did. But he didn’t. He’s creating a depth perception issue. He’s appearing deeper and more honest than he really is.

2. Reverse Psychology
Again, super obvious, but you’d still be surprised how often people get trapped by this. In this scenario the guy simply uses reverse psychology to push the girl into doing something she wouldn’t normally do. A guy will say, “You’re such a goody too shoes. It’s so different to be around someone Puritanical.” Rarely does someone want to claim that title. And the guy continues, “You’re not wild. You don’t do crazy things.” Again, the girl hears a challenge and before long, she finds herself saying “I am too, you just don’t know me. I do crazy things!” And then they make out.

3. I’m the opposite.
This is for the girls that have a boyfriend/husband. Anytime you express even the smallest bit of dissatisfaction about your boyfriend to another guy, please expect them to reverse the statement. If you say that your boyfriend doesn’t love the color blue and you wish he did, that guy is going to say, “I love blue. I live for blue. I spoke with a doctor about getting my skin turned blue surgically.” If you’re boyfriend hates the movie “Pride and Prejudice,” get ready to meet the world’s biggest Pride and Prejudice fan at work. Not cool, but true.

I need to throw out a few disclaimers for this piece:
1. This isn’t just something guys do. Girls do it too.
2. Girls are smart, this is not about that, it’s about guys being manipulative.
3. There are lots of honest guys out there. This is about jerks.
4. These are really simple. If you already know them, that’s great.
5. I’m sorry that I did anything like this to girls. I was a jerk.

I hope that if a guy ever tells one of my daughters that she’s a prude she ends up laughing her way out of the car. Just looking back as she leaves and muttering between big guffaws, “He actually tried to reverse me.”

That’s all for now. The party is tomorrow night. If you’re into praying, pray that we’ll all collectively get out of the way and let God do some cool things.

The secret key to life I found in a Mexican restaurant.

2008-01-15T06:20:00.001-08:00

The secret key to life I found in a Mexican restaurant.

Have you ever heard of Sir Ernest Shackleton? He’s the British explorer that led a team of men to Antarctica in 1914. The story of his expedition is inspiring, but one of the things I find really interesting is the advertisement he wrote to recruit people for this adventure. Here is all he said:

"MEN WANTED: FOR HAZARDOUS JOURNEY. SMALL WAGES, BITTER COLD, LONG MONTHS OF COMPLETE DARKNESS, CONSTANT DANGER, SAFE RETURN DOUBTFUL. HONOUR AND RECOGNITION IN CASE OF SUCCESS. SIR ERNEST SHACKLETON"

That short, little burst of copy is heralded as the greatest advertisement ever written. Praised for brevity and forcefulness, this simple note was incredibly successful. Although history books differ in the total amount of people that responded, some say a “score of men” while others say 5,000, it was able to garner Shackleton all the men he needed to make the voyage.

But as amazing as it may be, I found something last night at dinner that put Shackleton’s 26 words of dynamite to shame.

I can almost promise that you’ve read these words before. They’re not some obscure verse I found in an obscure book that no one ever cracks in the bible. They’re in Luke, but they get a little lost because they’re so close to when Christ gets crucified. They kind of hide at the edges of the story, overwhelmed by the largeness of Christ’s death, but I think they’re important.

I’m talking about verses from Luke 22. In them, we see Christ tell Simon Peter that he is going to deny him three times. Here is what we find in 31-32:

"Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift you as wheat. But I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers."

Maybe that doesn’t feel that big, but for me, that last sentence defines Christianity and hopefully how I am going to spend the rest of my days on this planet. Why? For a few reasons:

1. Big Moments Require Big Words
I once heard a preacher say that the first three rules of bible reading are “context, context, context.” If that’s true, then we have to spend at least a few seconds on the context of this verse. Christ was about to be executed. He knew he was going to die, these words were one of the last things he would be able to say to Peter. This was not a throwaway sentence on a Tuesday. This was a practically death bed, if you only remember one thing, remember this, kind of sentence. This was the punctuation on Christ’s pre-death relationship with Peter. So we can’t just brush them away.

2. This is the perfect picture of forgiveness.
I know it’s not a mushy sentence, but there is something so beautiful and loving about these nine words. Christ knew Peter was going to fail. That was obvious, but he saw past that. He essentially says, “After you’ve messed up and blown it, you’ll come back and I’ve got something special for you to do.” He wasn’t disqualified by the failure. He wasn’t broken beyond belief. He was coming back. He was turning back from utter failure, but Christ loved him just the same. He focuses on compassion, not consequences. This verse reeks of grace and forgiveness and love.

3. We are called to do one thing.
Christ could have ended this verse a million different ways. He could have said, “And when you have turned back, repent and earn your way back into my kingdom. Or “be holier and stop messing up.” Or “pray more and learn more and give more.” He had one sentence to drive home to Peter what he wanted him to do. What, above all else, he expected Peter to do when he turned back. And what did he ask of him? That he strengthen his brothers. Not something complicated or overly spiritual or soaked in religious fervor. He asked him to strengthen his brothers.

4. Strength is a by product of turning back.
I love how closely related those two ideas are, the returning and the ability to strengthen others. You get the sense that having failed, and returned, Peter is uniquely qualified to help people. Have you ever felt that way? That the person that’s walked the same paths, got the same scars as you, might have a unique way to shed light on a particular situation? I’m paraphrasing, but Mark Batterson once wrote “You can only heal people in the places you yourself have been wounded.” For me, I also realized a long time ago that inevitably my heroes are people that blew it and rose again. People that failed and still got up. Reading a book on how to make money by Trump is a little silly, his father is rich. He was born into money. But not so with Peter. He was on the eve of one of his greatest failures and when he came back, Christ knew he’d be ready for a new challenge.

I don’t know what that verse says to you. For me, it’s a mission statement. For me it’s a measuring stick against which I should test everything.

At the end of January a friend in PR is submitting my information to a publisher, but unless I am strengthening my brothers, it doesn’t matter.

Thousands of people, from more than 35 countries have read this site, but unless I am strengthening my brothers, it doesn’t matter.

On Saturday night, dozens of people are coming to my house for a night of worship, but unless I strengthen my brothers, it doesn’t matter.

I have turned back. I have returned from failure. I have come back from the dark nights of selfishness. I have denied Christ a hundred times for each time Peter denied him. But, Christ has given me a new mission.

And that is all I can really do now.

Your dad is having sex. Let's get drunk.

2008-01-11T05:51:00.000-08:00

Your dad is having sex. Let's get drunk.

That is a ridiculous title for a blog. I agree, but I didn’t really make it up. I didn’t steal it exactly, I’m just paraphrasing the advertisement for Canadian Club whiskey.

Here is what the body copy for the ad says:

“He (your dad) went out. He got two numbers in the same night. He drank cocktails. But they were whisky cocktails. Made with Canadian Club. Served in a rocks glass. They tasted good. They were effortless. Damn right your dad drank it.”

I saw that ad in Rolling Stone and when you look at the ad itself maybe it isn’t that silly. Maybe it’s kind of hip and cool and you would find yourself wanting a glass of whiskey. But when you strip away all the marketing, when you remove the hype, when you cut away the words and the images and just focus on the core message, you see how stupid it is.

Honestly, is the idea of my dad sleeping around supposed to make me want whiskey? More than anything the idea of my dad having sex makes me want to slam my head in a car door. There are four kids in our family, which means four times, end of story.

So why do advertisers think they can do this to you? Why do they think you won’t see the message behind the message? Because it’s next to impossible right now.

The average person sees 3,000 – 5,000 marketing messages a day. That’s more then 1.8 million a year. Wow, that is insane, but when you realize that, you can start to see how easy it is to let stupid messages get right on by you.

That’s why I think it’s important to stop and think about the things you’re experiencing, to see the idea behind all the words, underneath all the noise.

Axe deodorant will not increase your chance of having a threesome.
Nike shoes will not make you a faster runner.
A diamond won’t make her love you.
No chewing gum will ever really feel like sledding down an icy glacier.

You know all that. Deep down you know the truth from the lie, but if someone told you something 1.8 million times a year, wouldn’t some part of you start to believe it? I think the answer is yes.

For me, I believe on some level that if I had a cool apple computer I would be a better writer. That’s dumb, but that’s my little confession. I want an apple computer because I think it would make me cooler, or more interesting or more likely to meet artistic people with goatees and lower back tattoos at Starbucks.

Today, all I’m asking is that you pause for 14 seconds and think about the messages you digest every day. There’s at least 3,000 vying for your attention, what are they saying and what are you believing?

p.s. I think that seeing the words behind the words is a great way to live in the world but not of the world, which is something Christians are called to do.

It's go time.

2008-01-10T05:07:00.001-08:00

It's go time.

There was a time when I wanted to get my master’s in creative writing. I met with a few advisors at my college and told them that I wasn’t happy with my job in advertising. I looked at paperwork from Emerson in Boston and seriously considered going back to school.

Instead, I got a job at a small ad agency in Needham, Massachusetts that eventually fired me.

I’m not sure why I didn’t go back to school. I think on some level I was afraid to find out I’m not a writer. That maybe I would sit in a class and someone would say, “wait a second, you can’t write. You’re supposed to be a social worker. Please get out.” So I moved home with my parents and kept my life relatively small and wrote advertising copy about office supplies.

I revisit this emo little period of my life because I recently read something about how fear impacts our willingness to take risks. Here is what struck me:

“Negative emotions are linked to survival –and are much stronger. It’s not surprising then that people feel more pain from loss than pleasure from profit. The result is loss aversion behavior, for people will take more risks to avoid losses than they will to realize gains.”

I’ll do more to not lose than I will to win. I will play it safe to protect what I currently have instead of taking risks to gain what I do not possess.

How about you? Is there something you’re supposed to be doing? Are you supposed to go back to school? Are you supposed to ask her out? Is your job just slowly emptying you 40 hours at a time? What areas in your own life are drunk on the idea of loss aversion?

In mine, it would be really easy to just continue to blog from the safety of my own house. Sure, I might occasionally get some hate mail or have someone unsubscribe from the mailing list but so what? I can handle both of those things. But what if I send my book proposal to a publisher and they hate it? What if I go speak somewhere and two people show up? What if no one comes to this party? What if lots of people come and it just sucks?

I think about questions like these and I want to just freeze. I want to crawl under my desk and tell people they’re right. The party is a silly idea. Who invites strangers to their house to hear them read unpublished essays and listen to live music? How can someone who thought the book of Joel was a typo when he heard it referenced in a book because he is so woefully unfamiliar with the bible, write a book about faith? How? Why?

When is it my time to pick up the mantle and do something big and wild? When do I stop playing it safe and try things that are ridiculous in scope and size? Maybe right now.

That’s how Elisha did it. After years of apprenticeship, he found himself in the desert watching his mentor prepare to depart. In 2 Kings 2:9 we see the following scene:

When they had crossed, Elijah said to Elisha, "Tell me, what can I do for you before I am taken from you?"

"Let me inherit a double portion of your spirit," Elisha replied.

I love that answer. He asks for twice as much as Elijah. That’s like telling Michael Jordan you want to be twice as good at basketball as he is. That really shakes to the core my understanding of being humble.

I can’t help but wonder if maybe I’m not asking for enough. Maybe God wants me to ask for gigantic things, for an empire, to sell a bajillion books and speak to crowds of thousands. But instead, I think I’m supposed to be humble and small and meek and quiet and so I ask for really tiny things.

I think it’s supposed to be big. I think asking for double is not a bad thing. That’s why I don’t hate prosperity ministry. I think they get a lot wrong, but they get this point right. They pray big. They look to God for God-sized things.

The story continues with Elijah being swept up in a chariot to heaven. Elisha stands there for a second and the verse tells us:

He picked up the cloak that had fallen from Elijah and went back and stood on the bank of the Jordan. Then he took the cloak that had fallen from him and struck the water with it. "Where now is the LORD, the God of Elijah?" he asked. When he struck the water, it divided to the right and to the left, and he crossed over.

The coolest part of that passage is that the first thing Elisha does isn’t pray. It isn’t waiting. He doesn’t meditate or make a sacrifice. He doesn’t test the waters of the Jordan, he parts them.

He walks to the edge and with no small degree of action and aggression forcefully strikes the water with Elijah’s cloak. No toe dipping. No nervous hand wringing. He immediately checks out whether he got his double portion. Using the Jordan analogy that’s like trying to do the dunk where you jump from the free throw line the first time you touch a basketball.

And what does he say to God? Does he humbly say, “please Lord help me?” Does he patiently weep, “I can’t do this thing God, please give me strength?” Again, no.

He essentially says, “God, are you down? Let’s do this thing.” He cries out “Where now is the Lord, the God of Elijah?” He says by his actions and his words, “I’m about to go do some crazy stuff for you God, you ready to roll?”

And when the water parts, he has his answer.

How about you? Are there some waters you’re trying to pray your way around? Are you at the edge of a river that you keep dipping your foot into? Is there an obstacle you’re supposed to throw yourself at that just seems too big or too hard or too dangerous?

Maybe. Mine is this ministry I’m trying to start. I think that’s the right word. Mine is being honest with you and writing regularly and finding a way to hang out with as many of you as possible in whatever ways I can.

And today, I want to strike the water. I want to say, “God are you down? Let’s do this thing.”

The mirror and the window.

2008-01-09T19:29:00.000-08:00

The mirror and the window.

There's a new post on 97secondswithgod.com that I think you might dig.

Check it out if you can't sleep tonight or your television is broken or your Xbox is tired.

The robot named "me" was beautiful. At first.

2008-01-09T05:02:00.001-08:00

The robot named "me" was beautiful. At first.

Have you ever tried to be someone else? Have you ever tried to change who you are? To make yourself better, or smarter or just different? I have and for a whole semester it worked.

I built a robotic version of myself during the Christmas break of my freshman year of college. I didn’t want to, but I found myself on social suspension for a disastrous Halloween prank, without any real friends and about to academically lose all my scholarships.

So while everyone else was being festive, I mentally constructed an entirely new version of me. I didn’t have any plans and certainly didn’t crack the Bible for guidance in this transformation. I decided instead to rely on what had always worked for me in the past. I built an opposite machine.

Pure and simple, I determined to be the exact opposite of who I had been the first semester. If I was a jerk to everyone in the fall, I would be nice to everyone in the spring. If had pursued questionable ladies at nightclubs, I would pursue wholesome girls at church. Never studying became relentless studying. Constant time with bad influences became no time spent with bad influences And so forth.

I just did the reverse of everything I had ever done first semester. The results? My grades went from 2.4 in the first semester to 4.0 in the second. I got straight A’s and kept my scholarships. Everyone liked me, a girl captured it best one day in the library, “You were such an A*&(&%$ first semester, but I really like you now.” It was amazing. It worked so well, and I secretly thought inside, “Forget God, when I’m in a jam, I’ll just whip out the opposite approach.”

The opposite approach served me well for a while, but in the summer of 2005 I ran into problems that were just too big for that small coping mechanism. I had done serious damage to my marriage. As the consequences of my actions approached, I realized I couldn’t just do the opposite of what got me there. I couldn’t disconnect and build a new robot. I couldn’t run in the opposite direction of all the messy parts of my life. If anything, I had to engage myself in them.

Every trick I relied on to solve problems failed. And when I cried out to God about why he wasn’t fixing the situation, he said it was because I kept expecting the fix to come from my menu of options. I kept, qualifying my cry of “help me.” What I was actually saying to him was, “help me in one of the following ways that I’m used to and have tried before.”

But God doesn’t work that way. He doesn’t take the recipes for success I’ve always tried and then just add some God flavoring. That’s frustrating, because that makes it really hard to manage him or life for that matter. Isaiah 55:8-9 speaks to this point: “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways. As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” I used to rage against that idea, because I wanted God to be like me. To fix things like I would. To handle things like I would.

But the truth is, his way is always more patient and loving than mine would be. If it were up to me, punishment and penance would be the first thing I received if I ever ran away from home. Guilt and anger are the first things that jump into my mouth when I mess up. But not God, because he’s different than us. He’s not restricted to the norms of cause and effect, action and consequence. His way is better. His solutions longer lasting. His fixes permanent.

Ultimately, God doesn’t just replace our solutions with new solutions from him. He replaces them with him. He knows that if he gave us a new list of action items, we’d worship that instead. When pushed into a corner, when darkened by stress and turmoil, we would seek comfort in our printed out list of instructions, instead of the instructor.

So instead he offers us a relationship. Full of mystery, full of creativity, and yes, sometimes full of frustration.

Today, I’m curious, what’s on your menu of fixes? When you find yourself in a hole, what’s the shovel you use to dig yourself out? Is it just trying harder? Is it a “just do it” kind of mantra? Leave a comment and share what’s on your mind.

The not so small difference between a rescue and a recovery.

2008-01-08T04:44:00.000-08:00

The not so small difference between a rescue and a recovery.

No one I love has ever disappeared. Physically speaking anyway.

No one in my family has ever gotten lost in the woods or vanished in a city. No boats have ever gone missing at sea, no horses returned home without a rider.

But if they had, if someone disappeared, the first and perhaps worst sentence I could hear would be this:

“We’re launching a search and recover instead of a rescue.”

That doesn’t seem like a big sentence, but it actually represents an important crossroads investigators reach in every case. It is at this point that they reveal what they truly believe about the missing person. A rescue is an effort geared at saving someone alive from a danger. A search and recover is an operation designed to retrieve a body of someone that already lost the fight to a particular danger.

Those are some rather morbid Tuesday thoughts, but they reveal something about my heart. You see, all too often in my own life, I decide that certain people are not worthy of rescue. I give up on them. I leave them on the side of the road and focus my day on search and recover efforts.

That is how things were with my friend Mac. He’s an alcoholic. When a mutual friend told me he had been arrested for DUI and was probably going to jail, I didn’t care. When my friend asked me to help raise money for his defense, I didn’t give. When that same friend said Mac needed our spiritual support, I didn’t pray.

Mac was too far gone I thought. Mac was a hopeless cause. Mac was at best, a search and recover. Give up on Mac already I said to myself inside.

Is there anyone in your life you’ve given up on? Maybe your parents hate God. Maybe, aside from God because I don’t think this is just a spiritual issue, they don’t even really like you. Maybe all the love and forgiveness you throw at them just gets thrown back in your face. And so you don’t try to rescue them anymore.

Another friend is coming to that point with his wife. She has moved out. Like two opposing armies they are gathering the pieces of their lives as evidence for what may be a drawn out, difficult custody battle. The idea of rescue is long gone. They are going to kill each other and then when the dust settles, perhaps they will search and recover what was lost.

This is a difficult life sometimes. Rescue is not easy, especially if the person missing is doing everything they can to not be found. But I think that might be what we are called to do. Yesterday on 97secondswithgod I wrote that God says he made us his “watchmen.” And I don’t think that means trying to spot dead bodies in the wilderness of the world.

I think that means going to the places where hurt reigns and offering our hands. I think that means returning to places we don’t want to ever go back to and offering our hope.

Mac is in my small group now. He’s been sober for two years now and reconciled with his wife. Some people didn’t give up on him. I did, but never again.

It has to be rescue.

Upcoming Event - Are you in?

2008-01-07T05:51:00.001-08:00

Upcoming Event - Are you in?

On Saturday, January 19th, we're having some folks over to our house for a night of hanging out, music and what not. Everyone is invited.

It's going to be in Alpharetta, Georgia, so if you're in the area, please shoot me an email at theacuffs@yahoo.com to let me know if you are coming.

I'm trying to get things squared away with the caterer, King Nacho, and knowing how many folks we're having will help.

It will be filmed too so if you can't make it or are in Iraq or Singapore, rest assured you can still check it out eventually.