Had to share this screen capture from my computer just now…

God joined Facebook

God joined Facebook?   You’d think that would have made the news or something.  And you’d think He would have WAY more important stuff to be doing.

It seems strange to me that I could be a fan of BNL, Jamie Cullum, God, Chocolate Chip Cookies, and the Green Bay Packers.  I get the concept, but something about it just rubs me the wrong way.  But, I was disappointed to not find an email address listed.  That would have been REALLY handy.

Words fail.

What words could describe the thanks due to a Savior who would give Himself on a cross for me?

What sentence could I construct that could capture the joy that is within me because of Jesus?

What story could I tell that would cause others to understand this joyous new life He has given me?

What poem could I pen that could communicate the love I feel from God?

What song could I write that would even give a glimpse of the peace that I have from knowing Him?

Yes, words fail entirely.  A million songwriters have tried and fallen short.   A million poets have failed as well.  A million writers have done their best, with millions more yet to try.  There is little chance I’ll ever be able to do any better.

I realize that the best I can do is to offer a simple, “Thank you, Jesus” and trust that He knows how much I wish I had better words.

I’ve heard people call Jesus a crutch for the weak-minded.  I guess they mean to say that they are strong enough to make it through this world on their own, and that somehow Christians are weaker than themselves.  After giving this some thought, I’m looking forward to the next time I have someone tell me this.  In the past, I would have tried to argue their point.  I think that now I’d say that they are absolutely correct and, in fact, hadn’t taken the analogy nearly far enough.

Is Jesus a crutch for me?  Absolutely!  You see, I am broken and in need of a crutch.  If I had a broken leg, it would be very stupid of me indeed to refuse a crutch and try to live in denial of my injury.  I would only be injuring myself more and more as I tried to walk around on a broken leg.  A crutch is a support.  A crutch allows for healing to take place.  A crutch benefits me.  What people who say this kind of thing don’t realize is that they are walking around on their own broken legs, so to speak.  They don’t realize their own need for a crutch.  They don’t understand that trying to walk around without it is only injuring themselves more severely, making them more and more in need of the very crutch they are refusing.

But Jesus is not just a crutch.  He is far more.  In keeping with the analogy, He is Life Support.  I’m hooked into Him for everything that I need to live.  Is it because I am weak, as the accusers say?   Absolutely.  In my weakness He is strong.  It is only when I realize that I am broken and weak that I can turn myself over to the Doctor who can set it all right again.

Isn’t it painfully obvious as you look at the world around you that it is broken… that we are all broken?  We are a bunch of screw-ups, really.  Some hide it better than others, but we’re all a mess.  You would think that the longer we exist as a species, the better we would get at being good, decent, loving people.  But is that what we see?  It reminds me of a verse in the Bible…

“And whosoever shall fall on this stone shall be broken: but on whomsoever it shall fall, it will grind him to powder.”  Matthew 21:44 KJV

The stone is Jesus.  Whoever “falls on Jesus”, or gives their life over to Him, shall be broken.  This is the kind of self-aware brokenness that God desires of us… to be able to see the weakness and broken parts of ourselves and give them over to be healed through Jesus’ sacrifice.  But those who do not fall on Jesus, but instead find Jesus falling upon them in judgment for rejecting His free gift of salvation, will be broken in a very different way.  These will not have Jesus underneath them, supporting them, but instead will be “ground to powder” once they realize how truly broken they are, and that they have rejected the way of redemption and restoration that was offered for their healing.  In a sense, they “grind” themselves to “powder” as they become more and more broken, yet refuse the healing offered.

Before people realize they need a crutch, they must first realize their leg is broken.  Before people realize their need for a Healer, they must first realize that they are in need of being healed.  Sadly, those who use this analogy as an attack betray the fact that they are oblivious to their own broken legs.

I am grateful for my crutch.  It is true that I am not strong enough to get through this world without Him.  And why would I want to try?  How foolish is the man who, limping about on a broken leg, refuses the support and healing offered by a crutch.

It seems I’ve been writing a lot about prayer lately.  For whatever reason, the Lord really has me in His school of prayer right now.  I find myself oft asking the same request that the disciples did, “Lord, teach me to pray.”  The wonderful thing about such a request is that He stands ready, willing, and even eager to enroll us in this school of prayer.  I had another lesson in this process today, something that I wanted to share…

You see, I often run into a recurring problem when I pray.  I start off really praying and, almost without recognizing it, end up talking more to myself than to God.  Has that ever happened to you?  You think you’re praying and then, all of a sudden, you realize that you’re really just thinking to yourself?  Now, I’m not totally convinced that this isn’t part of prayer.   There have been times that this has happened where I really feel like the Lord was guiding my train of thought and actually speaking to me — albeit subtly — in this way.  But sometimes it is just simply my mind wandering.  It drives me crazy.

I really needed to spend some time praying tonight, and wanted to make sure that I didn’t “drift”.  I decided that maybe shaking things up a little might help… you know… different place, different time, different technique… something.  I often pray while I walk around my community.  And this is what I started to do today.  But for some reason, I felt like I should take my prayer journal with me this time.  As I walked, I stopped for a bit at a little gazebo in a small park.  Planting myself down on a picnic bench, I started thumbing through the pages.  When I reached the blank pages toward the back, the idea occurred to me to write a letter to God.  Almost without thinking about it, I began writing… just pouring out my heart to Him.  It was odd, because it didn’t feel like writing a letter at all.  Oddly enough, it reminded me of when I used to sit in church with my brothers.  Not being able to talk out loud, we would get out a notebook and write back and forth to each other.  Instead of passing the notebook back and forth, we would just sit there and watch while the other one wrote… reading right along with every new word.  This is the image that came to my mind as I wrote… not some letter to be sent or communicated at some later date, but the image of my Father in Heaven, leaning over me, hand on my shoulder, reading as I prayed in ink and paper instead of audible words.

The cool thing about it was that it kept my communication focused on Him… kept my mind from wandering.  It was also cool that, after just a few minutes of this, I found myself putting the notebook aside and continuing my prayer in my heart.  It ended up being a very focused, very rewarding time with God.

I don’t think this will be my “new form” of prayer, by any means, but it’s certainly something I may turn to again when I’m not feeling particularly connected in my prayer life.

Do you ever get homesick?  Yes, of course, you do.  I do too.  But do you ever get homesick while sitting at home, with your family and friends around you?   Maybe I’m weird, but I do… a lot.  I’ll be sitting around with family and friends, enjoying an evening, eating good food, having good conversation, and then that feeling will hit.  It’s like this little nagging sadness.  It gives me an unsettled, restless sort of feeling that makes me wish I were…. well…. home, oddly enough.

I realize, looking back on my life, that I’ve had this feeling for a long time.  It’s kind of a subtle thing, though.  It doesn’t always come across like homesickness.  It usually strikes as a perceived need that has to be met.  I can easily tell myself that, when I feel unsettled, it’s because I need a nice big plate of comfort food…. mashed potatoes and gravy, stuffing, turkey… you know the drill.  Sometimes, when the feeling strikes a little harder, I’ll feel like I need to buy something.  I can rationalize that I feel unsettled because I don’t have the DVD I’ve been wanting, or the flat screen television that would really complete my home, or the car that would more reliably carry me around town.  When the feeling strikes even harder, I begin to think it’s because I’m not in the right career, or haven’t yet found the right hobbies or activities for myself.  When the feeling strikes really hard, I begin to think I’m living in the wrong part of the world.  I tell myself that if I could just live in the right place, I’d finally feel settled and at home.  Have you ever noticed that we spend almost all of our lives looking forward to “the thing” that will finally make everything good?   The right car, the right job, the perfect body, a fat bank account, an early retirement, a vacation, a winning lottery ticket?  But the funny thing (well, funny in a tragic sort of way) is that, if we are lucky or blessed enough to actually get a hold of some of these things, the feeling always returns again.  We might be happy for a day or two, but then another “thing” raises its ugly head and we’re off in pursuit of it, convincing ourselves that this new thing will be the thing that finally completes us.

C.S. Lewis addresses this beautifully in his book, “The Problem of Pain.” (I’ve added a few thoughts in italics):

“The Christian doctrine of suffering explains, I believe, a very curious fact about the world we live in. The settled happiness and security which we all desire, God withholds from us by the very nature of the world; but joy, pleasure and merriment, He has scattered broadcast. We are never safe (peacefully settled), but we have plenty of fun, and some ecstasy.  It is not hard to see why.  The security we crave (if we were actually given it) would teach us to rest our hearts in this world and (become) an obstacle to return to God; a few moments of happy love, a landscape, a symphony, a merry meeting with our friends, a bathe or a football match, have no such tendency. Our Father refreshes us on the journey with some pleasant inns, but will not encourage us to mistake them for home.”

Having read this and given it some thought, I realize that my moments of greatest homesickness usually come after — and sometimes even during — these moments of refreshing.  It is as if I catch a glimpse of my real home in these fleeting moments.   I know that a few ticks of the clock will find me back in this foreign country again, looking forward to the next brief rest at a “pleasant inn” and, ultimately, for the day I finally get to my true home.

Until then, I think I’ll try a new tactic.  Rather than contend with this homesickness by pursuing “things” that I think will settle me, I will instead pursue these “pleasant inns” that God has mercifully set up for us here…  “a few moments of happy love, a landscape, a symphony, a merry meeting with our friends, a bathe or a football match.”

I’ve always been one to watch the news.  It’s never really depressed me before.  Or maybe it has, but just not like it has lately.  It’s getting overwhelming, honestly.  I can’t think in thousands of dollars, let alone billions.  I can’t comprehend the mountain of debt we are piling up for our future generations.  I hear that China is the one loaning us all of this “bail-out” money.   As the Bible says, the borrower is slave to the lender.  I’m not sure being China’s slave is a great American solution.  Having said that, though, it’s not like I have some great new solution to offer.  I trust that our President is doing his very best out of a true love and loyalty to this country.  But something tells me our past generations — like the one Tom Brokaw calls the “Greatest Generation” — would have handled this differently.  It seems to me they would have been willing to sacrifice so much more than we are in order for our kids and grandkids to be in a better situation rather than a far worse one.  Anyway, I’ve wandered from my point.

Whenever I start freaking out about all of this, an image from the Bible flashes into my mind.  It is an image of a very old Jacob standing in front of the Pharoah of Egypt.   He must look his age at this time because Pharaoh’s first question is “how old are you?”  It is Jacob’s answer to this question that keeps me hopeful, keeps my focus on the right perspective, and calms my fears.

He says, “The days of the years of my pilgrimage are one hundred and thirty years.”

Why do I find this so encouraging?  Because Jacob teaches us a great lesson about the perspective we are to have as God’s elect.  He was well aware that this place — this world — was not his home.  It was just a land he was a pilgrim in.  By definition, a pilgrim is one who is on a journey to someplace else, a final place.  Jacob held on to this world loosely, looking forward to the world and reward to come.

God is doing something in this economic mess.  Some say He is bringing judgment.  Some say He is just allowing natural consequences to occur.  Some say it is the initial happenings that will set the stage for the Second Coming of Jesus Himself.  Some say it’s just dumb stuff that happens and God could care less.  Honestly, I have no idea.  And I’m not sure it matters.  What I do know is this… God has either ordained this to happen or has at least allowed it.  Either way, God remains in control.  I have this strong feeling that, if we could see this from God’s perspective, we would be rejoicing for the good He was going to bring from it.  If I had a peek of what God was doing, I would be rejoicing at every new gloom and doom newscast because I could see where it was all leading.  Again, I have no idea where it is leading, but I do have faith in God.  And I know that I am called to praise Him in the good times and the bad.  It is not a prerequisite that I understand what God is doing before I praise Him.  I can so easily look back in my own life on some of the worst times I’ve gone through and praise Him now for what He accomplished in my life through them.  Why would I now doubt that He is doing the same as He has always done before?

So, in this mess of money, greed, and panic, I choose to praise and thank God.  If I can’t see how to praise Him for the world around me, I will at least praise Him that I don’t truly live here.   I am a citizen of the world that waits for those that are His.  I am just a pilgrim here.

So my title may seem a little harsh.  But I think it’s biblical.  Let me explain.

In James 2:19 you find James writing to people who were confused about the relationship of grace and works.  He says this, “You believe that there is one God. You do well. Even the demons believe–and tremble!”

What James is saying here is that believing in God is not really that big of a deal.  After all, even the demons believe there is a God.  Satan himself surely believes in God.  While belief in God is a good thing, it is not enough, otherwise the demons and Satan would have as much claim to heaven as saved Christians do.

It comes down to our relationship with God.  We are made to love God, and receive love from Him.  And the Bible is very clear that, if we love God, we will follow His commandments.  All of His commandments are summed up by Jesus in two expressions of relationships… love God and love your fellow man.  That’s why works are such an integral part of salvation.  Not because our works earn us the admission ticket to heaven, but because they are evidence of a relationship of love between us and God… they flow from it naturally.  After all, we understand this very clearly in marriage.  Is there really love in a marriage relationship where there are no works of love?  There may be co-dependency or familiarity, but certainly not love.  Because we love, we do.  Because we love, we sacrifice.  Because we love, we try to please.  Because we love, we serve.

This is James’ point.  And he makes it even clearer in verse that follows; “But do you want to know, O foolish man, that faith without works is dead?”

It is not that works without faith earn anything, it is rather that faith without works reveals that there really is no living faith, no relationship of love.

We can get so concerned with getting people to believe in God that we can forget that, without a relationship of love, it is really quite pointless.  In this sense, faith must speak of more than just belief in God.  It must be a faith that comes from a relationship of love with God.  That is what separates us from the demons who also believe.  We not only believe in God, but our love for Him motivates us to work for Him, giving evidence of our relationship with Him.

I had the opportunity to go to some great workshops on prayer earlier this week as part of the 40 Days of Prayer for the Treasure Valley that is launching on February 25th.  I’ll probably go on to post in greater detail about some of what really spoke to me in these workshops but, for now, just wanted to share this simple little thought.

One of the presenters asked this question:  “Which is easier, to evangelize people or to pray for people?”  The unanimous answer of the group was that it was easier to pray than to go out and evangelize.  “And don’t you think that people who are prayed for would be easier to evangelize?”  Again, a unanimous yes from the group.  “So why would you go out and try to evangelize people that have not been prayed for?”

Now, he wasn’t trying to say that instead of evangelizing we should be praying.  He was only pointing out something that I do all the time.  I get all caught up in great bigs plans to evangelize without spending hardly any time at all in prayer for those I hope will hear and accept the gospel message.  I get the cart before the horse, so to speak.

These workshops are just one of many ways that the Lord seems to be speaking to me about the importance, power, and effectiveness of prayer lately.  I’m the kind of guy that often comes up with great big ideas — and even attempts a few of them — only to see the desire or interest to complete them fade away.  I think I’m beginning to understand that this is at least partially because I don’t start out with prayer as I should.  I get an idea in my head and just run with it.  It’s really no different than trying to evangelize an unprayed for people.  It is trying to undertake an unprayed for project.  I hope I’m learning my lesson, especially since the next project is about ready to launch.  Only this time, the project IS prayer, so maybe that’ll help. 

My kids are getting old enough that they will soon be driving.  It’s got me a little freaked out, to be honest.  They don’t seem old enough to be behind the wheel of a car.  One is 17 and the other is 15… 16 in a few days.  I was driving at 14, so I’m not sure what my hangup is.  But anyway…

As I’ve been teaching them a little bit about driving, I’ve found myself going to extremes in order to try to keep them safe.  Take speeding for example.  We’ve talked all about speed limits, speed limit signs, speeding tickets, and policemen with radar guns.  But what I’ve really tried to reinforce to them is that, “If you speed, you’ll get in a wreck and die.”  Pretty dramatic, right?  But it is the dramatic examples that seem to get through to them.  It’s what got through to me when I was in their shoes.  In reality, many other lesser things are much more likely to happen if they speed than a fatal car crash.  In fact, the vast majority of the time, nothing will happen at all.  They’ll get away with it.  Sometimes, but very rarely, they’ll get a ticket.  Every once in a great while they might get in a fender bender.  The chances of getting in a fatal accident because of speeding are real, but somewhat remote.  It’s hardly the likeliest thing to happen.  I realized I had used this same ‘extreme example technique’ to teach them lots of things.  Don’t walk alone or you’ll be kidnapped.  Don’t wander off or you’ll get lost and we’ll never find you. Don’t play near the street or you’ll be hit by a car.  Wear clean underwear in case you get in an accident (okay, I’ve never said that one, nor do I understand it, but that’s a different subject entirely). I realized that, when something is really important to get across to them, I tend to get really extreme to make my point.

Well, God does the same thing.  You see, I had been struggling with why there was so much blood in the Bible, especially in the Old Testament.  Lots and lots of animal sacrifices, sprinkling of blood on altars, and such.  I wondered why God would choose blood as the way to communicate with us the consequences of sin.  I realized that, just like me with my kids, God is using the most dramatic example He had at His disposal in order to communicate to us the seriousness of the danger.  He is sounding the most extreme warning He can of the real danger of spiritual death that comes from sin.  It’s effectiveness is evident by how much it affects people who read the Bible, and how much more it must have affected people who actually lived during the time of the sacrifices.  It is disturbing and a little overwhelming at times… but it’s supposed to be.  There is no denying that the images of bloody sacrifices communicates the very real danger of sin, just like the mental images of terrible car crashes just might help my kids make the decision to slow down when they are driving.  It is God being a good and responsible Father by teaching us as vividly as possible about the very real dangers we face.

The other thing that really spoke to me about this is that I suffered from the misunderstanding that God actually enjoyed these sacrifices… that it was something He took pleasure in.  Then I came across this incredible passage in Isaiah.

“To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices to Me?” Says the LORD. “I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams And the fat of fed cattle. I do not delight in the blood of bulls, Or of lambs or goats. When you come to appear before Me, Who has required this from your hand, To trample My courts?  (Isaiah 1:11-12 NKJV)

Here is God — the same God who required these sacrifices from His people — saying He doesn’t delight in them, He doesn’t desire them.  What’s up with that?  Almost immediately I had the image of a swear jar come into my mind.  It’s a method some people use to get people in their family to stop swearing.  Imagine you are a father and you institute a swear jar to help your son stop using bad language.  Every time he swears, he has to put another quarter in the jar.  A day later your son comes up to you with a great big smile on his face…

“Dad! You’ll be so proud of me,” he says.  “Look how much money I’ve put in the swear jar!  It’s really adding up!  You have no idea how many times I’ve had to swear today to get this much money collected!”

Your son has obviously missed the point of the swear jar, just like the Israelites (and us) miss the point of the sacrifices.  God did not delight in the sacrifices for sin.  His point was that He wanted them (and us) to stop sinning.  The swear jar wasn’t instituted as a way to make money, but to correct bad behavior.  The sacrifices for sin were not meant to be a pleasure to God but to correct bad behavior.  But as the scripture above says, the Israelites had become so confused that they were actually trampling His courts to make their sin sacrifices.  Even though we don’t have to make those kinds of sacrifices today, we can still suffer from the same misunderstanding that the Israelites did about them and start to believe in a God who delighted in blood and gore.

God does not delight in the shedding of blood.  Obviously neither do we, considering that is why so many people are turned off by all the blood in the Bible.  And that is precisely why He uses its symbolism so often throughout the Bible.  It speaks to us graphically, powerfully, and effectively.  Nobody can be left wondering about exactly how strongly God feels — and wants us to feel — about sin.

When I first started really studying the Bible in earnest, I found a God who seemed very concerned with being the center of His creation’s attention.  You can’t help but notice throughout the scripture that God expects to be worshipped… demands it even.  I had a hard time coming to terms with a God who claims to be love, claims to be good, claims to be perfect, and yet also seems at times to be completely preoccupied with His own glory.  He can seem to be a very vain God indeed.  This is something I struggled with for quite awhile, trying to rectify in my mind these character traits of God and getting them to mesh in some sensible way.

This, for me, was one of those things that took time to come into focus.  I’ve learned to really cherish the hard teachings in the word of God — the ones that make me scratch my head — because they are the very teachings that keep me searching for answers, keep me in prayer asking for God’s help, and keep me in the always rewarding process of trying to get to know the unknowable God.  After all, if you could read the Bible one time through and understand it all completely, why would you ever pick it up again?  I firmly believe that God has left His Word full of mystery, metaphor, poetry, and symbolism to keep us coming back over and over, and teaching us to understand it more deeply with each search.

The answer to this particular question – is our God a vain God? — came in two parts.  The first was the simple realization that God demands glory and worship because He is worthy of it.  He is the only Being truly worthy of it.  He is the only Being worth giving glory and worship to.  We, as humans, are going to worship something or somebody.  Turn the TV on any hour of the day and you will see it.  We worship movie stars, athletes, comedians, reality show contestants, and even politicians.  Walk down the street and you will see the worship of name brand logos, nice cars, huge status symbol homes, and perfect physiques.  We align ourselves more intensely with our favorite college football teams than we sometimes do with our own families.  We are constantly trying to give glory and praise to almost everything around us…  almost like that’s what we were made to do.

But that is only part of the equation.  Of course God is worthy of our praise and worship.  If you believe in God, that should be a no-brainer. But the second part of the equation is what really turned the lights on for me.

I believe the reason we tend to seek out things to worship around us is because we are literally designed to worship.  He doesn’t demand worship from us for His sake, He is trying to show us what will fulfill us as the human race.  He knows that the only thing that will truly fulfill us is the worship of Him.  He is what we are seeking.  He is what we are desiring.  He is the missing piece of our lives that we are trying so desperately to fill with everything in this world.  And this isn’t some theological position for me.  It has become true to me because I have experienced it so intensely in times of worshipping Him.

Have you ever noticed that nothing in this life really seems to fully satisfy?  As soon as you get the job you always wanted, you realize there is another even better job that you want.  As soon as you build your dream home you begin to discover things you would change or do differently with the next dream house.  As soon as you move to the city you’ve always wanted to live in, you begin to discover that it’s not the paradise you hoped it would be and begin wondering if the grass is greener somewhere else.  It’s like God is trying to tell us something in all of this.  Why would He have given us this intense desire for satisfaction in life and then leave us no way to completely fulfill that desire?   Well, He has given us the one thing that will give us satisfaction, the one thing that will finally complete us as humans.  He has given us Himself.  I can tell you that the only times I’ve felt completely whole in my life have been in times of worship.  When my gaze and my desire is on Him and Him alone, I am complete.  To borrow a cheesy line from Jerry McGuire…  He completes me.  All those feelings of being unsatisfied with the world around me melt away in Him.  I was designed to worship Him.

Unfortunately, it’s not a condition I can permanently enjoy until I am with Him in eternal life.  I think I’m getting better and better at being able to be in that place more often, and for longer periods of time, but it is still fleeting.  I still have misplaced desires that I try to fulfill with the world around me.  I’m still learning daily to turn these things over to Him and seek His ability to fulfill my life rather than seek my own ways.  I’m sure it’ll be a lifelong process.  But I am so grateful to have found what so many are still searching for in all the wrong places.

If you are reading this and are struggling with feelings of doubt, fear, disillusionment, depression, or lack of purpose, I encourage you to worship God.  Spend some real time seeking Him in prayer.  Spend some real time in the word of God, learning who He really is.  Spend some time singing praises to Him.  Spend some time confessing to Him and offering Him thanks.  Spend some time just kneeling at His feet and giving Him glory and honor.  If these things seem strange or uncomfortable to do, tell Him about it.  Ask for His help in learning to worship Him.  He is so eager to teach us how.  Find fellow believers that can come alongside of you in worship.

I was taught in elementary school that our basic needs are air, water, food, shelter, and love in order to stay alive.  But if we want to do more than just stay alive — if we want to live as we were designed to live — we must worship God.